Forum - View topicNEWS: Tokyo's 'Nonexistent Youth' Bill Officially on Hold
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Gamen
Posts: 225 |
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Does no one read the bill? It's a ban on the distribution of sexual depictions of minors TO MINORS. Hentai, whether lolicon, shotacon, or your mainstream high school fantasies, is safe. Stores in Tokyo would just have yet another reason to not sell those goods to minors 
Racy shoujo manga, on the other hand... Well, suffice to say, the bill is doomed, whether in Tokyo or Osaka, precisely because it is targeting popular, mainstream works, not easily marginalized ones. |
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Hexon.Arq
 Posts: 79 |
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"Nonexistent Youth."
...That's a great band name. |
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Anymouse
 Posts: 685 |
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Precisely, Gamen. There is actually very little benefit in targeting lolita fetish pornography, because the only people who read it are lonely and weak men who don't do a whole lot except buy pornography. The major problem are the vast amounts of risque and degenerate children's comics, especially girls comics, which target and corrupt the future of society. Those comics will be tolerated because people are unwilling to ban anything which restricts their freedom. It doesn't matter that premarital sex is glorified and encouraged, or that rape is turned into entertainment, it only matters that mainstream consumerism marches on. Everyone can make themselves feel better by complaining about people who buy creepy porno.
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Gamen
Posts: 225 |
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Ouch. That hits deep. Seriously, though, if those shoujo manga are encouraging premarital sex, they're doing a pretty bad job at it. Maybe someone knows the source, I don't, but last I heard the proportion of sexually active adolescents in Japan had not changed appreciably in a long, long time. Seriously and on topic, even, banning depictions of sex and rape is one thing, banning anything remotely related to adolescent sexuality is quite another... Though maybe not to your puritanical sense of morality. |
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Anymouse
Posts: 685 |
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Maybe I am getting a bit puritanical, but it's hard for me not to look at the last 100 years of countries like the U.S. and Japan, and not think that a great deal of things have been lost. So much of what made us exist was our forefathers views on sex, and their willingness to reproduce. I find it amusing that people say they don't know how to raise their countries birth rate. If you want to raise it, the grass roots methods should be easy enough. Cost of living? The 1940's can tell you about a thing called "frugality".
Sorry for going off topic. It's hard not to weep at our society's obsession with personal pleasure and success. |
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NGK
Posts: 244 |
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Hold up... So the motivation for passing this Tokyo bill is to curb shoujo manga that contains lots of fanservice??? If that's the case then I guess we're giving seinen mangas such as lolicon a wee too much credit and coverage then. Seinen lolicon mangas are clearly labeled and marketed to adults only, and I doubt store owners will proudly display "COMIC LO VOL 123538756837 on sale NOW!!!" and sell that stuff to minors. |
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Gamen
Posts: 225 |
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I don't know what their motivations are. However, the bill only bans distribution to minors of works containing sexualized depictions of persons appearing to be minors. So given the rather racy stuff that's been popping up in the last decade in shoujo manga, I'm guessing that it's aimed more at late-night anime and shoujo/shounen manga than it is any adult media, making it a youth morals issue rather than a pedophile issue. As far as the Comiket/doujin angle goes, I just don't know enough to make a call. |
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eragon2890
Posts: 159 |
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Wait a second -- it doesn't ban anything? Are you 100% sure (I mean, have you read the bill yourself and is your Japanese language skill at native level?) Because in that case, I don´t have to worry here in the Weed... eh Netherlands and I also don´t see what all the fuss is about.... 
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Annf
Posts: 578 |
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Gamen’s correct. The bill wouldn't have created any legal penalties. What the bill did was specify new criteria under which books would be added to Tokyo's "harmful books" (有害図書) list, which itself also doesn't have any legal penalties but is used as a reference for certain kinds of self-censorship by non-adult publications. It's intended to be a list of "things children shouldn't read." It wouldn’t have any direct effect on adult comics, which are already not sold to minors, though there is some fear that, if a legal concept of “non-existent minors” is established, it could later be referenced and incorporated into actual censorship laws with penalties. |
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Paploo
Posts: 1875 |
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................ while it is over worries about minors encountering the material, it does concern porn. I think you misinterpreted some things about. Hentai will be affected by this. Also seriously, celebrating you can still have minors in your porn=gross beyond belief. |
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Paploo
Posts: 1875 |
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No, that's just other people twisting the wording to suit their paranoid theories. If you guys have links to prove otherwise, why not provide them? Everything I've read has seemed to indicate it's primarly an issue of virtual child pornography and the attempt to ban it. http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20090331i1.html It mostly centers on child pornography concerns, not stuff like shojo manga dealing with teen issues. Child porn laws only came into effect in Japan in 1999, and still have major loopholes in them, a cause of concern for many. http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20090612f2.html And it all started with concern over the game Rapelay, after a foriegn scandal called attention to issues local women's rights groups had been concerned about for years. So shojo manga didn't start this, a porn video game where the player rapes a mother, then her children, did. Either way, whatever babbling creepy pro-lolicon people do here, it has no affect on Japan itself- this is a law that's being put fourth by people in Japan looking to improve child porn laws in Japan, and the fact that Osaka's now taking on the issue as well is proof it's not just a random event. There's a definite need and desire across Japan for laws like this. |
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Gamen
Posts: 225 |
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I think you're reading too much into the emoticon.
I have a link: http://fr-toen.cocolog-nifty.com/blog/2010/02/post-cbc1.html ...But your two links have nothing to do with this bill, which may be your problem. There seems to be an automatic assumption that since there have been previous virtual child porn bills, anything that mentions minors in sexual situations is one. I agree that hentai is included in the ban, but I'm arguing that its distribution is unaffected because minors aren't the intended audience to begin with.
Uh, no? It doesn't ban production, no, but it does ban distribution to minors. So anything with a target audience in that age group would likely no longer turn a profit or be sold at all, in Tokyo at least. You can't even give it away. Edit: Honestly, yes, you probably could give it away... And it's so restrictive that stores may even ignore the ban and sell. As Annf noted, there're no actual penalties. The proposed bill does ask for cooperation with the ban, for businesses, citizens, and parents to take on the responsibility of keeping minors from being treated as sexual beings, but I don't see any penalties described. I think I'll leave my part in this discussion at that... If I'm right, there's no way the bill would pass, much less be obeyed, and if I'm wrong... It still applies to mainstream media and will be fought. Assuming it ever comes back to the table after this deferment it's doomed either way. Last edited by Gamen on Sat Mar 20, 2010 10:55 am; edited 1 time in total |
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m_milburn
 Posts: 8 Location: San Francisco |
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I honestly feel that this "Bill" was influenced by the Western/American culture. After so many years, why did japan finally decide to create this "bill". I honestly believe the "heat" came from American distributors, like Borders who have a hard time categorizing manga age-appropriate books and want Japan to do it for them. Some parents get pissed off that they purchase books that say "16 and older" but have sexually explicit material in it that in America would be categorized as rated "MA/R". What do you think?
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Anymouse
Posts: 685 |
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I have a feeling this has more to do with conservatives in the Liberal Democratic party, since this has been a persistent issue in Japan since probably the late seventies - look at "Sukeban Deka" for an example of the stuff that was stuffed into girls comics back then, and then think of all the things you will find in Ranma. After all, Minister Shinzo Abe was on a committee that opposed Sex Education. I think that this recent attention on child pornography is just part of the justification for this crackdown on a 30 year old problem. I find the idea that this bill is targeted at childrens comics to be absolutely delightful, because that means someone has finally decided to address the 300 pound elephant in the room.
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Gamen
Posts: 225 |
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I don't know if you're a Poe pulling my leg out of ignorance or whether you really hold such extreme puritan beliefs (Ranma? Really? And with just a cursory glance at Sukeban Deka I don't see anything objectionable), but here is a link of examples of the racy shoujo manga I refer to: http://www.sankakucomplex.com/2008/09/11/ero-shoujo-manga/ (NSFW). That, and late-nite anime like kissXsis, Queen's Blade, Kanokon, Ladies vs. Butlers, etc are what have PTAs all over Japan up in arms. I feel confident that the ban was not intended to be applied to classics like Ranma 1/2, but whether it was malice or incompetence that resulted in such a broad definition, I couldn't say. Edit: It occurs to me you could also be a Poe demonstrating a puritan point-of-view, a slippery slope example of "well, if you let concerned parents ban racy shoujo manga, this is what the uptight busybodies will want to ban"... In which case, no offense meant. It never occurred to me that when you referred to glorification and encouragement of rape and premarital sex, Ranma was at the top of your list. 
Last edited by Gamen on Sat Mar 20, 2010 12:59 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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