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INTEREST: Japanese Communist Party Claims No Contradiction In Opposing Regulation of Anime, Manga

A little context here might help: The Japanese Communist Party holds twelve of the 465 seats in the lower house. The LDP has 278.

monsieurb1982 wrote:

So most of anime could send you to jail if someone have the money and energy to sue you. Or at least it's to be decided by the supreme court. I live in the most loved country of the world. It's called Canada.

Let's correct some of these statements:
1 - Most anime is not pornographic, possession of Naruto, One Piece, Ghost in the Shell, Miss Kobayashi, Demon Slayer, Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid, Love Live, etc. would never get you sent to jail in Canada. In fact, neither would possession of Kare Kano, Redo Of Healer, Domestic Girlfriend, Koi Kaze, Kodomo no Jikan, or Oreimo. But yes, the original uncensored version of Kite could put you in Jail in Canada.
2 - While VCP is more heavily regulated in Canada, it's worth noting that our laws regarding "private use" child porn, as well as age of consent, are significantly less restrictive than in the United States.
3 - You can't go to jail as the result of a lawsuit, and you can't sue someone for a crime. Criminal law and civil law are entirely different things. So no amount of budget on the part of a plaintiff will ever result in a guilty verdict.

I agree that the Hansel et Gretel case is deeply troubling. The Judge came to the right decision IMHO, but it never should have made it to court. What weighed heavily in the author's & publisher's favor was the fact that the novel was "literature" and not written to elicit sexual arousal.

Quote:

Now, the man is free because what he wrote against sex with people under 18. But I always wonder if it was a consensual sex act between two teens, what would happen? For example, in the Ayashi no Ceres opening, where you see a girl making love in an artistic way... not pornographic... how do the canadian law see that?

The answer to that lies partially in whether or not the situation is described explicitly. The Ayashi no Ceres opening isn't explicit. The Hansel et Gretel depiction was explicit, which is why he was charged.

Had the exact same event been described, in the same graphic manner, in a book written for sexual arousal (ie: Pornographic in nature), I suspect the author might have been found guilty.

-t

monsieurb1982 wrote:

Japan is such an unique country. Even the far left, the communist party, prefer to discuss and respect the freedom of speech.

Karl Marx was very much in favor of free speech. He said that censorship was instituted by the bourgeois elite and is a tool of the powerful to oppress the powerless[1]. As I stated earlier, global communist parties tend to be Marxist in nature, not Maoist or Stalinist.

The CPC's repression of freedom of expression comes largely from the fact that they are an authoritarian regime, not from the fact that they are communist. Right wing authoritarians aren't particularly big on freedom of speech either.

So no, there's nothing ironic, or uniquely Japanese about the JCP's support of freedom of speech. It's also worth noting that Japan's citizen's are among the least supportive of freedom of speech in the world[2] despite the fact that their constitution firmly entrenches freedom of speech and press [3] and Freedom House reports that Japan is about as "free" as the United States[4].

1: http://humanityjournal.org/blog/karl-marxs-theory-of-free-speech-part-1/
2: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/11/freedom-of-speech-country-comparison/
3:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_Japan#Freedom_of_speech_and_of_the_press
4: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_the_Press_(report)

Albyher0 wrote:

This whole thing literally caused the red scare again, I saw every Mangaka, free speech orgs and countless politicians(ishin, CDP and LDP) just demolishing the JCP for this and it was trending harder than the elections. Even some I always assumed pretty liberal(Oowara was liking resist commies stuff) The big issue is the JCP dont want to pass laws to regulate this content, but they want to push to change social consensus regarding this stuff being bad(it arguably is) so people stop wanting to profit from it and create it.

If you mean Sumito Oowara then that's not surprising. He was the mangaka westerners tried to cancel because people found out he followed loli artists. Not a surprise he'd be against such a ban. I don't see how this is a liberal or conservative issue though. Censorship affects everyone and can be used by anyone to suppress ideas they don't like.
Censorship is a real uniting issue for pretty much any creator in Japan.

Sorry about the words I used. I said "Sue" because of my imperfect english. but now that you used the right words in your third point. French is my primary language by the way.

That said, about the VCP, the possession and even the access of child porn (so anime and manga too) can lead people to jail. That apply to streaming services and manga scanlations (official or not) too.

there is someting wrong with the law or at least with how the justice system works.

And we are talking about anime and manga here, but for me it's not the only thing that matters. That can be the freedom of speech of people who don't think like me, the gay's rights, etc. For me, all of that is important and that's why I'm here in that topic. I think all people should care about other people's rights when someone challenge it, because one day or another, it will be their rights and if they didn't supported other people, they will not be supported when it will happens. They will be alone...

But what matters for me now is only how communism is in the real world, not on the paper.

Yes, I've written about VCP many times in my 21 years of anime journalism on this site. I'm very much aware of the Canadian laws. But you said "most anime." That's my biggest issue with your post. You seem to imply that most anime contains child porn, or at least lolicon. That's not true, and a falsehood that we really don't want people believing in. We've spent decades fighting the "all anime is porn" trope, we don't need actual anime fans propagating it.

But parties like the JCP and other communist parties around the world are working towards the communist ideal. Imagine being dedicated to democracy, you're not going to abandon the term just because there are failed democracies, or countries that call themselves "democratic" when they are anything but. Obviously this isn't an equal comparison, because there are many very successful democracies, while even the most successful communist states are entirely authoritarian and still host significant human rights abuses.

Thankfully the current LDP in power is not pro censorship of fiction with at least one member of the cabinet (that I know of) confirming that the party is committed to protecting expression in anime, manga, LNs, etc.

Does Japan have a pop culture figure equivalent to Elvis in terms of going from young, slender, and hip to older, fatter, and shooting televisions? Because I think such a celebrity should be the mascot for the JCP about now.

I admit I haven't paid too much attention to this other than what's stumbled upon my feed, but all the Japanese celebrities I follow (mostly mangaka, game directors, artists, etc) that commented on this voiced their opposition to the JCP and haven't really seen any of them voice support for the party. Purely anecdotal, of course.

But there's a point where the ideal can't be separated from the 100% consequence. If I start lighting people on fire only because I want to make beautiful fire, but for some reason people keep getting burned, it would be weird to try not to judge me by the totally predictable and reliable consequence of my goal. In this context, the irony I was pointing to is that there's a lot more historical evidence that ties communism to evil than that ties "fictional child pornography" to evil.