My apologies for the hugely faulty statistics we provided last month, when debating the necessity of a ban on loli eroge and anime in Japan - a hot issue which the Diet of Japan had just decided to ignore for 3 years, last week. Confident in the numbers provided by Sankaku Complex at the time, I wrote that that there are only 300 cases of child abuse a year in Japan - which turns out to be far, far away from the truth!

A fresh story published today by Mainichi (Cryo backup) reveals that during fiscal 2007 alone, there were 40,618 reports on child abuse, according to a survey ran by the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare. But don't worry, things aren't quite as bad as they seem, because this figure also includes cases which aren't the kind of "child abuse" we usually have in mind... And here's the explanation for that:

"After the [Child Abuse Prevention Law] was revised in 2004, the number of police reports on child abuse cases increased because the revision stated that children forced to witness their parents suffering violence by their spouses or cohabiters can also be defined as psychological abuse for children."

Holy crap, that means I was also psychologically abused as a kid! But then again, so were most of the kids here in Romania, where beating your wife senseless is one our best kept traditions, topped only by heavy drinking. Which reminds me, I should finish up with the news here, there's a big game tonight which just so happens to be the ideal excuse for exercising said tradition.