hijitsuzai seishounen

A few comments on current matters that are too short to warrant a proper post of their own, but too long to just dump on Twitter. Topics include the Google story and other lolicon stuff, the Minorigate, some events I have attended lately, and thoughts on currently airing anime.

Some final comments about the “Google dropping lolicon sites from search results” story, and a quick look at related legal problems elsewhere.

As explained in the previous post, Google picked up on a complaint that loliero scanlation site Little White Butterflies was hosting child pornography, and pulled it from search results after filing a report to NCMEC. Pointing out that the material hosted there was clearly not child pornography under US law, the site owners asked on Google's webmaster support forum that the takedown be reviewed. The request has been ignored so far, and it appears that Google has no intention of addressing the site owners' concerns (not even by telling us that they won't overturn the takedown).

You have probably heard about CNN recently stirring up gratuitous controversy over Rapelay, an issue that should have died down almost a year ago. It is not difficult to imagine that lobby groups within Japan are using Western media to put pressure on Japanese elected officials on related issues. And it might be working: at any rate, that CNN report is getting quite a bit of attention on the Japanese Internet (though not yet on mainstream media). CNN is also getting many hits for that piece of quality reporting, to the point that reporter Kyung Lah got to put up an even finer follow-up article yesterday: a cultural-essentialist explanation of why Japan is so perverted. And there were a couple of silly CNN blog posts on the subject in between, to boot.

Nogami Takeshi, a Japanese mangaka known for such works as Koutetsu no shoujo-tachi (art, Shounen Ace), Serafuku to juusensha (Champion Red Ichigo) or various artworks for the Strike Witches franchise, has written an open letter to CNN in reaction to the latest report. He asked if someone could translate it. I am pleased to oblige. Note that I may not agree with all arguments made in this letter, and I don't really think it's likely to gain many supporters for our viewpoint, but it's an entertaining read.

Even with the Tokyo hijitsuzai seishounen reform proposal on hold for a while, the proponents of regulation have been keeping pretty busy. Before turning to the second part of the ongoing clarification post, I'd like to mention a couple of important news tidbits that seem to have received little attention on the English Internet.

As mentioned in the previous post, and despite suspicions of a last-minute reversal, it was decided last Friday that the so-called hijitsuzai seishounen reform proposal introduced a few weeks ago in the Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly would be given further consideration. It should not go to vote before the summer. It isn't dead yet, though, and since there has been a measure of confusion as to what the proposal was actually about or why it was introduced (including awfully researched pieces surfacing in the Western mainstream media), this is an attempt at clarifying things a little.

I initially set out to write a single tl;dr post on the subject, but it kept getting bulkier as I went along, so that cutting things into writable, and hopefully readable, pieces began to look like a good idea. This will be three-part post: this first part gives an overview of what the proposal is about, what it isn't about, and how it came about. The second part (later this week?) will be a more in-depth look at the major specific changes that the proposal meant to introduce, and the problems they create. The third part should cover the reactions to the proposal and future prospects regarding the whole affair.

So it seems that all hell won't be breaking loose just yet. Thanks to an unprecedented mobilization of the cream of the crop in all things manga (artists, publishers, critics, professors and more), the Minshutō majority in the Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly announced yesterday that they would push for a postponement of the vote on the “juvenile nonentities” (hijitsuzai seishounen) reform proposal and a reexamination thereof. Their allies are expected to support the motion as well. The Jimintō-Komeitō minority, who introduced the reform bill to begin with, does not seem prepared to back down, but if votes go along party lines (and since public announcements have been made, it is likely that they will), they should be overruled during Friday's debates.