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[Irond Bill 156] - The Japanese Anime, Manga, and Video Game Holocaust
B:L
I've done worse.Registered User regular
I've done worse.Registered User regular
WARNING: This is not a general anime or manga thread. Don't post about anime/manga that you like/dislike or any commentary other than on this bill and the topic of censorship.
Today, Bill 156 was passed by majority in the full session of the Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly, which will negatively affect the Japanese anime, manga and gaming industries, and will also damage the already suffering Japanese economy. Self regulation will be mandated from April 1st and sales regulation enforcement will begin from July 1st,2011.
Details of the bill can be found in the following link:
http://dankanemitsu.wordpress.com/2010/11/24/bill-156s-total-scope/
The leading supporter of the bill is this guy:
Shintarō Ishihara, the far-right Governor of Tokyo and known xenophobe, homophobe, sexist, Rape of Nanking denier, believer of children-eating mountains and author of works depicting children being raped. He had been re-elected three times.
What this bill does is grant a government council authority to label anime, manga and games (but not real life works) as "harmful to children" if they contain any sexual or "psuedo sexual" acts that would be illegal in real life. The original law, which was already in place, had the following definition:
Any material that may be detrimental toward the healthy development of youth because of their capacity to be sexually stimulating, encourages cruelty, and/or may compel suicide or criminal behavior.
By changing the definition, this gives the council carte blanche to deem anime, manga and games as "harmful to children" under a very vague and subjective definition. The possible effect of this is a de facto ban on certain anime, manga and games, as publishers are forced to self-censor and stifle potential creativity. Works that depict homosexuality could also be banned, as homosexual unions are not legal. There is even a provision that if a publisher fails to follow this ruling multiple times, the governor of Tokyo can publically reveal their name and ridicule them.
This law is not an actual ban. but the reason I call this a de facto ban is because being labelled "harmful to children" means your works can only be sold in adult-only stores. This of course affects profitability and publishers will be unlikely to support a creator's work if they fear the council may label it "harmful to children." This is the biggest issue of the bill, as you can imagine a scenario where you would have to go to an adult-only store to buy an M rated game and how it would affect publishers and their choice of supported products. A major problem is that this may only be a Tokyo bill, but all the biggest publishers are located in Tokyo.
The effect of this bill is already being felt. Some publishers have banned all use of school uniforms in their works, including college uniforms, which means no more works set in high school or college. Works that contain underage romance or incest could not be published, no matter the literary worth of the work or how seriously and maturely they deal with the subject matter. If the publishers of video games take this law to heart like some others, this could mean no more Persona (school outfits) or Harvest Moon (depiction of underage marriage).
Some publishers are already up in arms about this form of censorship. The Big 10 Manga publishers have already vowed to boycott the Tokyo International Anime Fair. The Japanese Prime Minister, Naoto Kan, has expressed concerns about the Fair and Comiket being cancelled, stating that while the "healthy development of youth" is an important issue, it is also important for Japan to broadcast to the global audience, and that he urges all parties involved to work towards a solution to "prevent a situation where the international animation fair cannot be held within Tokyo".
Online, there have been proponents of this bill, stating that that the less loli stuff the better, but actually what this law encourages is more of those works. Moe-blob works actually do not violate this law, and as one of the steadiest revenue pullers more publishers would likely release more of these kinds of works than more creative works that could violate the law.
This means more generic moe, less Ninja Scroll, Berserk and Evangelion.
What are your thoughts on this bill? There is an obvious conflict of self-interest with the Governor of Tokyo, who hates anime and manga and would like his child-raping works to sell better than them. There is already a large write-in protest but the Governor has responded with what is basically "let them eat cake." The Prime Minister obviously has Japan's economy in mind when he opposes the bill, but we will see how much influence he has in overturning this. A possible effect are the publishers moving out of Tokyo, but that could be highly damaging and we won't know how many publishers would survive.
When is "think of the children" ever more important than rights such as freedom of speech?
Today, Bill 156 was passed by majority in the full session of the Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly, which will negatively affect the Japanese anime, manga and gaming industries, and will also damage the already suffering Japanese economy. Self regulation will be mandated from April 1st and sales regulation enforcement will begin from July 1st,2011.
Details of the bill can be found in the following link:
http://dankanemitsu.wordpress.com/2010/11/24/bill-156s-total-scope/
The leading supporter of the bill is this guy:
Shintarō Ishihara, the far-right Governor of Tokyo and known xenophobe, homophobe, sexist, Rape of Nanking denier, believer of children-eating mountains and author of works depicting children being raped. He had been re-elected three times.
What this bill does is grant a government council authority to label anime, manga and games (but not real life works) as "harmful to children" if they contain any sexual or "psuedo sexual" acts that would be illegal in real life. The original law, which was already in place, had the following definition:
Any material that may be detrimental toward the healthy development of youth because of their capacity to be sexually stimulating, encourages cruelty, and/or may compel suicide or criminal behavior.
By changing the definition, this gives the council carte blanche to deem anime, manga and games as "harmful to children" under a very vague and subjective definition. The possible effect of this is a de facto ban on certain anime, manga and games, as publishers are forced to self-censor and stifle potential creativity. Works that depict homosexuality could also be banned, as homosexual unions are not legal. There is even a provision that if a publisher fails to follow this ruling multiple times, the governor of Tokyo can publically reveal their name and ridicule them.
This law is not an actual ban. but the reason I call this a de facto ban is because being labelled "harmful to children" means your works can only be sold in adult-only stores. This of course affects profitability and publishers will be unlikely to support a creator's work if they fear the council may label it "harmful to children." This is the biggest issue of the bill, as you can imagine a scenario where you would have to go to an adult-only store to buy an M rated game and how it would affect publishers and their choice of supported products. A major problem is that this may only be a Tokyo bill, but all the biggest publishers are located in Tokyo.
The effect of this bill is already being felt. Some publishers have banned all use of school uniforms in their works, including college uniforms, which means no more works set in high school or college. Works that contain underage romance or incest could not be published, no matter the literary worth of the work or how seriously and maturely they deal with the subject matter. If the publishers of video games take this law to heart like some others, this could mean no more Persona (school outfits) or Harvest Moon (depiction of underage marriage).
Some publishers are already up in arms about this form of censorship. The Big 10 Manga publishers have already vowed to boycott the Tokyo International Anime Fair. The Japanese Prime Minister, Naoto Kan, has expressed concerns about the Fair and Comiket being cancelled, stating that while the "healthy development of youth" is an important issue, it is also important for Japan to broadcast to the global audience, and that he urges all parties involved to work towards a solution to "prevent a situation where the international animation fair cannot be held within Tokyo".
Online, there have been proponents of this bill, stating that that the less loli stuff the better, but actually what this law encourages is more of those works. Moe-blob works actually do not violate this law, and as one of the steadiest revenue pullers more publishers would likely release more of these kinds of works than more creative works that could violate the law.
This means more generic moe, less Ninja Scroll, Berserk and Evangelion.
What are your thoughts on this bill? There is an obvious conflict of self-interest with the Governor of Tokyo, who hates anime and manga and would like his child-raping works to sell better than them. There is already a large write-in protest but the Governor has responded with what is basically "let them eat cake." The Prime Minister obviously has Japan's economy in mind when he opposes the bill, but we will see how much influence he has in overturning this. A possible effect are the publishers moving out of Tokyo, but that could be highly damaging and we won't know how many publishers would survive.
When is "think of the children" ever more important than rights such as freedom of speech?
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Individual rights and freedoms aren't as important in Japanese culture as they are in American/European culture.
But this still looks like an assinine bill.
And of course panty vending machines are still available.
From what I hear, the majority is actually against this. It was just pushed through very quickly by certain political parties. The bill had been defeated before as well.
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According to Wikipedia, Japan doesn't heavily enforce the porn laws they already have. So hopefully little.
Why is it okay to have "harmful to children" content in one medium but not another equally prominent one?
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Because it is not a very well thought-out bill.
And I'm not sure I've ever seen nudity on TV. But there's also not many programs where nudity could happen. But when movies are on TV, they tend to be completey uncut and uncensored.
Seconded.
Yeah, I'm curious to see how this will actually affect things, since political machinations can still take place even if this bill is in. It's horrible legislation in that it is too vague (and oddly at the same time specific, with regards to the media covered) but that also allows quite a bit of room for dealing between enforcers and publishers.
I wouldn't want to be a publisher/mangaka working under this though.
I would figure they'd start looking at their options to move out.
So are we alleging that without this, no good manga could be written?
Glorification of, or exaggerated illegal sex acts?
God damnit Japan. Maybe I'm misunderstanding what that means over there, but, as an outsider, it seems pretty clearly pointed at rape fantasy/incest/loli shit.
See bold. Homosexuality isn't illegal, is it? If not, then unless the gay marriage is between brothers, I don't see that being an issue.
The bill states:
The marriage (illegal) isn't a sexual act, and the sexual act (gay sex) isn't illegal. So unless they are 'closely related,' they aren't being regulated under this bill.
Is this not the actual bill I'm quoting here? I'm using the same quotes as the link in the OP.
[Edit] Shit, on a third read I'm not sure it is even talking about marriage. "Closely related" is a vague term; I'm pretty sure it only brings up the fact that their "marriage would be illegal" as a specific measure of how closely related they mean.
There's a few other factors on those that are kind of specifically Japanese. For one, there's a generally poor mental health system. A lot of things never get diagnosed, often because of the family being ashamed of admitting somebody has a mental illness or the person themself being ashamed. Something like just basic chemical depression is viewed as the same thing as being mentally retarded.
Also a generally high stress lifestyle (Japanese people get lowest amount of sleep in the world, and among the fewest vacation days), and that suicide is romanticized culturally.
But that's a different discussion.
Hard to say exactly. Can't even be sure how accurate the translation is. It may even only be in regard to things that minors can access, and properly labeled "adult only" stuff might be ok.
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/106174-Child-Safety-Bill-Could-Cripple-Anime-Industry
This bill actually doesn't affect anything already labelled "adult only".
As you can tell by some confusion on what it means, the law is vague enough that they can apply it against homosexual acts if they please, and given that the lead supporter of the bill is a homophobe, it is very likely they'll do so.
This law wouldn't be so damaging if Tokyo wasn't the base of operations of so many publishers.
On the other hand, we then got Ellis and Moore.
I'll take that deal.
Shitty Tumblr:lighthouse1138.tumblr.com
This bill is to kill off their Ellis's and Moore's in favor of more Jim Davis.
Shitty Tumblr:lighthouse1138.tumblr.com
Seriously, guy: cite that shit. I've read all the quotes you've provided and I'm not seeing any language that can be twisted to encompass homosexuality; whether gay marriage is illegal or not. Mass confusion doesn't mean the law can be applied to label homosexuality as AO. It means, simply, that the masses are confused. The lawyers aren't going to be.
It says in the bill anything that is “harmful to the development of children”. I'm sure that is vague enough to encompass homosexuality.
By that standard it could encompass too much candy.
You're quoting the beginning of a sentence, which actually later contains specific qualifiers, from the preexisting law. If this is your concern:
The gay-themed comics would already be AO.
A BL mangaka, Kanako Meiji, reports that her publisher is considering canceling a reprint of her BL works.
Even if lawyers think it might be ok, it's too big of a risk for some publishers to give it the go ahead in this kind of environment. The older law's range was "too", this new law's range is "any and all".
Seeing the word "anime" on Debate and Discourse got my hopes up that we could finally have an anime thread again, but I guess I'll never get to talk about anime to anyone worth conversing with ever again.
Right?
Right!?
Shitty Tumblr:lighthouse1138.tumblr.com
You're right that the new bill 156 doesn't outright list homosexual relations as part of the illegal acts and thus suggests works involving such (unless between close relatives) should be in the clear.
What does affect those titles is the existing harmful material classification law if creatively used.
I wouldn't say that is necessarily true.