system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: Pornography censorship in Japan.

C'mon, we've all seen it. Little black bars placed somewhere on the genitals. It doesn't even hide anything, so what's the point? I know the censorship has a lot to do with westernization, but my question is more about the bare-minimum effort into actually censoring things.

EDIT: In about two hours, this post has racked up nearly 600 karma and 200 comments (a personal best). In line with reddit tradition, I'd like to say that I'm really glad my highest rated post is about dicks and how much of them we should see.
gpt
It comes from an old Japanese law that came from the Meiji Era (1868-1912) where content "injurious to public morals" was forbidden.  This law was influenced by Western Victorian morals.  Over time the law was relaxed in other cultures but Japan was more conservative and kept the law around.

The law was eventually reinterpreted to allow you to show breasts and pixelated genitals, but fully uncensored genitals is still illegal under the old law.