With Japan having already banned the sale of R4 cartridges in the country, the Japanese Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry has now said in a recent announcement that the import of R4 cart - or other similar flash cart devices for the Nintendo DS - has also been made illegal.

According to a Kotaku report, which translated the announcement by the Japanese Ministry, the ban on the imports of R4 cartridges in Japan is apparently an upshot of the fact that though the R4 cartridges were initially devised as a mechanism to play home-grown apps and software, the cartridges had rapidly transformed into a popular means for illegally downloading and playing DS games.

The infamous R4 cartridges - which are widely used in the country for DS piracy uses - essentially enable the gamers to store and run an array of software straight from the device, included all full DS games that have been downloaded from the Internet.

Despite the fact that Japan officially banned the sales of R4 sales way back in 2009, the cartridges became available at Japanese retailers within a year of the sales ban, owing to some loopholes which implied that retailers could largely getaway without punishment for selling the device.

However, as a result of the newly-announced complete import ban on R4 cartridges in Japan, any person caught importing the R4 cartridges into the country could henceforth face a prison sentence.