Navigating Legal Lacunae and Sociocultural Tensions: Deepfake Pornography as Gendered Digital Violence in Japan

This paper critically examines the proliferation of deepfake pornography in Japan, positioning it within the country’s entrenched technopatriarchal structures that enable gendered digital violence. Recent data rank Japan third globally in consumption of AI-generated sexual deepfakes, with over 18 million annual site visits (Yomiuri Shimbun, 2024). Victims—over 99% female and often minors—are targeted through non-consensual appropriation of images sourced from social media and school yearbooks (Security Hero via NHK News, 2024). Deepfakes magnify harm by leveraging scale, anonymity, and permanence, compounding psychological trauma and social stigmatization amid a sociocultural context marked by pervasive victim-blaming and sexual repression. Situated in a historical continuum of mediated misogyny, voyeurism, and commodification of women’s bodies, deepfake pornography constitutes a digitally reconfigured extension of gendered violence. Japan’s legal framework, while criminalizing child pornography and distribution of authentic non-consensual imagery, remains ambiguous regarding synthetic sexual content, creating a critical regulatory gap that leaves victims vulnerable. This legal ambiguity reflects broader cultural tensions: puritanical anxieties around sexuality coexist with the urgent need to regulate emergent digital harms. Drawing on van der Nagel’s (2020) theorization of deepfake pornography as gendered digital violence transforming women’s images into consumable commodities, this study analyzes media discourse and institutional responses to expose competing logics—a moral panic over alleged sexual “corruption” that paradoxically obscures victim-centered legal reform. Addressing this crisis requires multifaceted, intersectional interventions that transcend technological detection to enact legal clarity, provide survivor support, and evolve frameworks of agency and consent within Japan’s complex socio-technical gender regime.