CANBERRA, Australia — Japanese pop culture retailer J-List was informed earlier this month by shipping company DHL Japan that “Australian customs have started rejecting packages containing any adult product,” among vocal calls by local politicians to crack down on hentai anime and manga and to fully enforce Australia’s vaguely worded anti-porn import rules.
DHL Japan then advised J-List to "stop sending adult products" to Australia. “Following that, current Australian orders with adult items in them were returned to us this week," a J-List rep added.
According to a recent Vice report, which quotes statements shared via the J-List blog, the newly enforced import ban now includes any product marked with "+18" on the J-List catalog, such as pleasure product “Onaholes,” "waifu" pillows, hentai manga, "doujinshi" (zines), cast-off figures and many others.
The ban is also worded to include “JAV DVDs,” which is the term for all Japan-produced adult videos.
The Australian border authorities’ website states that people entering Australia are not allowed to bring in anything that might be “illegal pornography.” The poorly worded regulation defines “illegal pornography” as “child pornography (any depiction of children in a sexually explicit manner),” but also adds the highly subjective and overbroad category of “publications, films, computer games and any other goods that describe, depict, express or otherwise deal with matters of sex, drug misuse or addiction, crime, cruelty, violence, terrorist acts or revolting or abhorrent phenomena in such a way that they offend against the standards of morality, decency and propriety generally accepted by reasonable adults are not allowed.”
As Vice reports, “earlier this year, several South Australian politicians called for an urgent review of the nation’s federal classification laws” after visiting comic bookstores.
"You have Astro Boy and Pokemon and in amongst all that material there are titles which clearly contain material that meets the definition of child exploitation material," MP Connie Bonaros told the press at the time.
Bonaros is an MP for the local SA-Best party, an offshoot of a party initially started by lawyer Nick Xenophon with the chief purpose of banning gambling and poker machines.