The age bit here isn’t a big deal. This just catches national law up to the already lower end of prefectural laws (all 16 to 18 I think). The bigger change is that the victim no longer needs to prove they physically fought back for it to be considered non-consentual.
The fact that age of consent was 13 in a developed nation is a good reminder that as far as we’ve come, human kind as a whole still has a long way to go.
Every prefecture had already raised the local age of consent to at least 16, several are at 18. So this is just the national level playing catch up.
No, it’s the change to the rape definition that makes all the difference here. It’s a massive change for the better.
But how does prosecution work in Japan? When is it national jurisdiction? It does matter.
Woah, 13?! Dawm
