Freedom to Think
Shingo over at Heisei Democracy has put up a detailed time line of the recent anime-related controversies that are causing niche doujinshi artists to come under fire from mainstream Japanese media. It’s a rather disturbing development which mirrors that of the demonization of video gaming in conservative American media.
While we all had a good laugh over “Nice boat”, I think it’s about time we take a sombre look at what is perhaps the sign of worse to come.
I believe in age restrictions and having laws restricting speech that can cause direct harm (i.e. Rwanda), but I am otherwise against censorship. I have talked about similar issues in the past, so I think it’s pretty clear where I stand. As Evelyn Hall famously said,
I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.
Correlation is not causation, leave harmless deviancy be. It is a slippery slope to hell to persecute someone for harmless drawings. Let’s ban YouTube too?
November 9th, 2007 at 10:31 pm
that quote just reminded me of Michael Moore’s movie sicko. it depicted that he actually helped a person that was anti-moore through monetary means when he posted on his anti-moore website that he could no longer afford to keep the site afloat because of the illness of a family member.
needless to say the site is still going strong. haha.
November 9th, 2007 at 11:03 pm
If you study doujinshi history through academia, eg Sharon Kisella and others, you will find that this is not that uncommon. It’s a cycle. The authorities have never liked doujinshi and for good reason.
November 9th, 2007 at 11:19 pm
Until they actually start to actively crack down (which I don’t think they will), I don’t think there’s anything to worry about.
November 9th, 2007 at 11:34 pm
DM is right about the slippery slope to hell regarding the persecution of someone for harmless cariactures of their own imagination. It certainly isn’t right to deprive someone of his freedom of thought and expression. We are born with brains, and brains are to be used for thinking. If it is all like this, does it mean that society itself is nothing but a machine shop full of humans bounded by a puritanical collective intelligence?
Well basically it is still the same bunch of people who make all these outcries. The typical lazy and irresponsible bunch of parents who don’t bother to educate their children and push all the blame to the media.
The world is ever changing and one can’t expect that children think the same way as they do in the past. Education has to change, be it at home or in school. If educating is done, people probably wouldn’t have to even bother about setting censorship laws to ruin their economy.
And if you don’t want your child to be one of those who watch HHDs* all day and go out with suggestive girls all night, my suggestion is that you guide him or her nicely and don’t start stupid groups like PAGI to give the government irrelevant stress. Otherwise, don’t have children.
This is my 2 cents worth of crap. Feel free to disapprove of it.
*Hentai Haruhi Doujinshi
November 9th, 2007 at 11:35 pm
nah, banning youtube is a little too extreme
Most likely won`t happen anyway
November 9th, 2007 at 11:55 pm
@Quote from Evelyn Hall
I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.
Well said. Freedom of the right to speak is fundamental to an Open and Inclusive Society. Which we are heading towards – not yet…
November 10th, 2007 at 12:10 am
tj han: Well it’s a cycle in the sense that people only remember it when it appears in the news.
But if, during one of the cyclic incident, the outcry gets loud enough for some group of politicians to feel the need to make a show of it and pass a law, it will have lasting impacts.
It would be next to impossible to repeal such a law once it’s passed due to political inertia.
November 10th, 2007 at 1:24 am
>somber
fix’ed ~desu
November 10th, 2007 at 1:45 am
Sorry, I don’t speak American.
November 10th, 2007 at 3:38 am
“>sombre
fix’ed ~desu”
Sombre is correct English.
Somber is correct American English.
November 10th, 2007 at 6:50 am
Well, being from Germany I’m used to politicians blaming random stuff for murders and other crimes. (e.g. “Killerspiele” in Germany….)
Still sucks. Didn’t think other countrys would be as stupid as we. And no Japan out of all.
November 10th, 2007 at 7:09 am
Don’t ban the material but make access to them much tighter. Only let the people who are old enough to know it’s all fake and can control their thoughts have access. People do get influenced, especially children.
Take the Death Note manga in China for instance. Writing a name in a black note book won’t really kill someone but when you know WHY they are doing it, the damage is already done. I think it can get even worse if a person becomes depressed or emotionally unstable and these ideas unconsciously etched into the back of their minds suddenly floats to the surface as their next course of action.
On the other hand, if you completely rid the world of this fictional material, entertainment would be too generic and dang boring. So no, don’t ban creative work because they can be influential.
November 10th, 2007 at 7:35 am
Ack. You people are over reacting. Remember Jack Thompson and Columbine? The violence in video games hasn’t suffered a bit. And Thompson now is a famous idiot. Once the scandal driven Japanese media has someone else to shoot at, loli’s and tentacles will once again be churned out at a steady rate.
November 10th, 2007 at 12:13 pm
The elections are drawing near, no?
November 10th, 2007 at 12:26 pm
@Beowulf
Saying that it will all blow over is being far to optimistic. IIRC it was one of the US presidents that said that the price of liberty is eternal vigilance. What if it doesn’t blow over? It’s always the small liberties that go first, with politicians and media saying that it was for the good of us all.
The thing that concerns me the most is the small chipping away of everyone’s rights until there is nothing left for anyone.
November 10th, 2007 at 8:04 pm
One part of me wants to go on a rampage… but that would only prove the point so I´m calm.
One part of me is laughing so hard tears are starting to fall since how much more stupid can the humans get? The answer? Infinity.
This third part of me is telling me that this is just the usual shit since we´ve had movies, we´ve had extra much that videogames bring fourth violence and now it´s time for anime.
The only thing that´s missing now is that someone kills a politicial here in Sweden and says he/she was under the Hinimazawa(or how it´s spelled from Higurashi) syndrome…
So my best solution for this? Keep your eyes on what happends, but do nothing since then it´s like adding fuel on a fire, it only burns stronger and longer.
And then again, when will people learn that anime/videogames are fiction? Why not stop everything then? Books like Harry Potter since it brings our children to think they can fly with a broom and thus go into suicide mode when they try to fly.
The show must go on…
November 10th, 2007 at 9:39 pm
I think one of the biggest problems about all this is that the majority of people just doesn’t care unless they are directly affected by something. Therefore they ignore what happens around them and the chopping of their rights and the tightening of censorship laws will go on. Once they realize their mistake it will be too late already.
Where I live this is what happens all the time since 911. It was just yesterday that our parliament passed a law that forces our internet service and cellular phone providers to storage every connection data for at least 6 months. Currently this law restricts the access to this data to authorities investigating against people that are suspected of severe crimes or terrorism.
That public outcry was rather quiet and the mass media largely ignored this topic. Obviously, the majority of people didn’t care because they are neither criminals nor terrorists, but I guess it just takes a few cruel crimes that are heavily exploited by the mass media (+politicians) or a little bit of lobbying on the part of the content industry to widen the access to the data.
Something similar happened around 2002 when some attention wh.. err I mean politicians wanted the police to be able to spy on everyone’s banking account to find terrorists and criminals. Back then the public outcry was pretty quiet, too. Nowadays pretty much every government agency has an easy access to everyone’s banking account.
When it comes to censorship and civil liberties it’s better to fight the beginnings instead of waiting until it’s too late. But this is easier told than done when everyone around you simply doesn’t care and/or ignorantly trusts their leaders.
November 13th, 2007 at 1:29 am
If I can take drmchrs0′s take on censorship, it’d be rather disappointing not to hotlink the famous Martin Niemöller’s poem.
If the price of civil liberty is eternal vigilance, then so be it. The onus will must lay on the civil populace. By literal denotation, democracy is “rule by the people.” Hence rights and responsibilities also lie on the general people to ensure those liberties are not whittle away.
Unfortunately, the very same democratic rules also suffer from “majority-minority dichotomy”, where at the expense of minority rights, the policies rule the majority. Somehow the Swiss model of democracy is increasingly deafened by all sorts of populism models of democracy. Not to mentioned the increasingly restriction of civil liberties from formerly democratic institutions (guess which country I’m inferring to).
So in short, all of us must play a part in ensuring a lively debate. Because, when they come for you,
September 9th, 2009 at 9:14 am
Wasn’t tht quote from volitare?