Yoshitoshi ABe Translation: “Regarding the Youth Protection and Nurturing Ordinance amendment (or, the so-called Nonexistent Youth Problem)”
Hello everyone. You will notice a marked drop in translation quality today because it’s not kransom but me, Shii, bushwhacking with my copy of Rikaichan. This evening I started recieving furious retweets from @AwatakeTakahiro regarding a recently accepted amendment to Tokyo’s Youth Protection and Nurturing Ordinance (青少年健全育成条例改正) which has been posted to Scribd. Awatake lives in Saitama so I figure something must be up here. I here translate a post by Yoshitoshi ABe regarding the amendment.
I was surprised recently by the major problems imbedded in the “Youth Protection and Nurturing Ordinance amendment”. Even though the amendment is coming into force just now, I hadn’t heard of it before a few days ago. For a full explanation, please visit this site: http://mitb.bufsiz.jp/
Simply put, even for characters of a story who do not actually exist, and even those who are portrayed not as minors but as adult figures, sales of works in which the panties of these characters can be seen can be restricted if you have a hunch that they appear childlike, for one thing; and more generally, it is an unconstitutional and ridiculous piece of legislation. I’m not talking about children’s books. I mean mass market publications, anime, games, and all manners of works. Both Doraemon and Sazae-san are right out!
http://otakurevolution.blog17.fc2.com/blog-entry-787.html
As you read more about this, please try and think about whether or not you want to live in a society that can pass these sorts of laws without resistance. What follows are my own thoughts. (I will employ the terms “good depictions, bad depictions”, but these are not my conceptions of good and bad. Rather, I only mean how these things are percieved in our modern society. Just making sure [this is understood].)
* * *
In order for people to understand and distinguish between good and evil, it is necessary to have good things to point out and explain that “this is good”, and have evil things to point out and explain that “this is evil”, in the same way.
If we lock a child in a sterilized room, they would not grow into a healthy adult with a normal heart!
[Corrected] Among porn and violent works, there are depictions of acts you are likely to never see in real life, yet which, if seen, would leave you mentally scarred. These must exist within society so that we can explain how they are wrong. If we regulate their expression, then, being raised in a place where such things do not exist, people will not have that chance to learn what is wrong or dangerous.
For example, war is obviously a bad thing, but even so, what do you think would happen if we had a complete ban on depictions of war? Children would wonder if war was good or bad, and what would happen if our society had something called war, and despite this foolishness would unfortunately grow into adults.
For us [humans], at some point on the path to adulthood it is necessary to know about these bad things.
For all the various evils in this world, only through “becoming a perpetrator”, “becoming a victim”, or “experiencing a depiction”, and these three means alone, can we understand them as evil.
Of course, I do not mean to say that “reading depictions of crime will cause you to become a criminal”. The only way one can learn to differentiate between good and evil is to be allowed to apply their own well-developed thought and reasoning to these materials. If you are forced to memorize “this is good, this is evil” out of a textbook, this is is not the same as discernment itself.
At the risk of repeating myself, there are for sale in the market today exceedingly brutal and violent things, and other things that the world has generally deemed unpleasant. I think it’s good for people with proper understanding to say “this is unpleasant”. That is, seeing these portrayals of evil, adults will be able to explain that they are bad, and this itself instructs children in proper thought. If there were no depictions of evil about, we would lose those necessary examples to instruct people in proper understanding, and the basis for knowing what is good and what is bad within society would become flimsy at best. That society would simply be a sterilized room.
If I ever become father to children, in the place that I live in, I believe that it would be impossible to raise them healthily in this weird kind of sterilized society lacking all violent or sexually explicit notions. I do not want to live in that kind of society!
Humankind has been entrusted with much power, but if we abuse that power to do away with things that we do not like, then thinking in that way, we will give birth to this sterilized room kind of society. The purpose of freedom of speech, in my opinion, is to defend against precisely that sort of thing.
[Anyway, I e-mailed the Tokyo Assembly and Tokyo City public contacts with these thoughts, in accordance with the approved format for sending public comments.]
March 10th, 2010 at 2:14 am
Neil Gaiman famously sent out a similar thing to his readers in 2008, but I think ABe says it much more succinctly and firmly, even with my poor translation.
March 10th, 2010 at 2:40 am
I have been following ABe for a long time, and I enjoy all of his work as an artist – Now I respect him even more. I didn’t knwo that was possible, but he still managed to surprise me.
March 10th, 2010 at 3:02 am
I love it when Japanese people talk about having rights, when they live in a country where censorship is widely practiced, and confessions are routinely extracted via torture.
March 10th, 2010 at 3:24 am
Like Javbw, I have also enjoyed ABe’s works, and look forward to more from him.
However, my reaction to this was exactly the opposite of his. Not because I disagree with ABe’s stance on obscenity laws, necessarily, but because the line of argumentation he uses is ridiculous.
It is possible for us to explain to others the evilness of war without glamorizing it, and Japanese creators have done just that with works like Barefoot Gen and Grave of the Fireflies. Or in America today, in sharp contrast to the adrenaline rushes of The Hurt Locker and Green Zone there are contemplative films that focus on the human cost of war like The Messenger and Taking Chance.
Similarly, I don’t buy ABe’s argument that you need to allow child pornography to exist for people to be able to figure out that child abuse is wrong. Listen to the accounts of those who have been abused, or watch a film like Precious, I’m sure you’ll get the idea.
The last two sentences which talk about freedom of speech and tolerating opinions you disagree with have merit, but the rest of the post is just bunk in my opinion.
March 10th, 2010 at 9:48 am
I love it when Japanese people talk about having rights, when they live in a country where … confessions are routinely extracted via torture.
It sounds like you’ve mixed up Japan and America. Want to try again?
March 10th, 2010 at 3:48 pm
Excellent speach, and from my favorite artist! Thanks for this translation~
March 10th, 2010 at 4:24 pm
Shii: Japan routinely coerces confession, it’s just how their justice system works culturally. Any country with that sort of population size and conviction rate that high…probably goes without saying. Plenty of literature on this too.
March 10th, 2010 at 4:43 pm
“Among porn and violent works, there are some that depict the subjects in a way that has no connection with reality, or that has only a punishing effect on the body and mind. These must exist within society so that we can explain how they are wrong.”
Wait, what?
March 10th, 2010 at 5:14 pm
jpmeyer, as written, that translation does induce some problems. I had it checked and found I was wrong. ABe was not defending the sale of obscene material without context. I have revised the translation accordingly. In fact, social scientists claim that manga provides context for obscene acts far more often than non-Japanese graphic novels.
omo: You have a strange definition of “torture”.
March 10th, 2010 at 5:25 pm
ABe is a great artist, but his post is just bad. Comparing banning loli and pseudo loli material to banning every single negative image out there? Huh?
I hope he really didn’t send out his thoughts to the Tokyo Assembly. He’s forgetting the age of the people over there. These people grew up without these pedo images, in a “sterile” environment, and you know what they (probably) think? “We turned out pretty damn well, look how Japan was rising up. Now look (what they preceive) how shitty everything is right now?!”
In my opinion, his making the same mistake as the other side:
1. What you see will affect your thoughts.
2. Your thoughts affect your behavior.
3. Therefore what you see will affect your behavior.
Totally wrong.
March 10th, 2010 at 5:40 pm
Damn, that was fucking terrible, especially at the last part. What I meant to say was: Seeing “A”, means thinking “A”, leading to a specific type of behavior. Just wrong in my opinion.
March 10th, 2010 at 6:19 pm
Ah, that one makes a lot more sense
March 11th, 2010 at 12:49 am
It’s set up like this: ABe is either wrong or right.
If ABe is right, then we shouldn’t censor.
If ABe is wrong in his assertion that images have an effect on action, then so are those who seek to censor, and then we still shouldn’t censor.
Also, let me point out that the very idea that you don’t need “examples of evil” (for lack of a better term) to understand the divide between good and evil is Western. In some Asian philosophical systems, the right way of doing things is appreciated by both doing things the right way and doing things the wrong way. (Loosely put, if you screw up, you appreciate more what it means to not screw up.) This is in a sense more scientific: even if we all agree X is good, why would we assume that anything not X is bad without proof? (Maybe one way of doing things is valid, but another way is equally valid . . . ) Is it really so clear that what ABe is saying is absurd, or is it that Westerners often lack the cultural grounding to appreciate it?
In any case, I find this line most compelling: “try and think about whether or not you want to live in a society that can pass these sorts of laws without resistance.”
March 11th, 2010 at 2:02 am
[...] here is a manga creator’s take on the whole incident. He mentions that the whole legislation is an unconstitutional and ridiculous piece of legislation. [...]
March 11th, 2010 at 7:53 am
[...] from Japan: ANN has the latest Japanese comics rankings. Manga-ka Yoshitoshi ABe reacts to the proposed amendment to the Tokyo ordinances that would prohibit depiction of young-looking [...]
March 13th, 2010 at 3:41 pm
[...] more about this proposal at welcome datacomp, where a more detailed explanation of the proposal is [...]
March 15th, 2010 at 5:57 am
In my opinion humans can get to cruel behavior with or without cruel information seen in Manga.
It doesn’t matter what they see, if cruel information is baned the people who get criminal will find an other opportunity to see what they want to see. They prop-ably kill a bird or torture a dog or something like that.
It is widely known that some of the cruelest mass-murderess where very protected as they grew up, shielded for a lot of cruel imagery, and still the graved for it and found a way to satisfy there needs by cruelty and killing.
It is not the Manga, it is the humans them selfs that are the problem. If we don’t understand that the processes to cruel behavior are in everyone of us, then we will never understand why people get to criminal behavior.
It is easy to say that ‘they, the evil people’ don’t belong to us. So a church like the Catholic Church in Rome are saying it is the Devil that molested all those kids years ago in Europe (I am from Europe). While it where the priest who did it, but by saying it was the Devil, they can put the responsibility away from them selfs. Herby turning away from being human.
Here is the problem. Shielding everyone for things you don’t want to see: then we just closing our eyes, but the real world is still in front of us. There is the real danger, so don’t shoot the messenger if the message is to real. Keep watching the message and deal with that.
Erwin
the Netherlands
March 15th, 2010 at 3:21 pm
[...] it is broadly worded, poorly researched, and unconstitutional. Yoshitoshi ABe has a particularly interesting opposition to the amendment, and a few dozen manga creators and publishers on Twitter have vocalized their [...]
March 17th, 2010 at 5:45 am
[...] Englische Übersetzung eines Blogartikels von Yoshitoshi ABe [...]
March 17th, 2010 at 11:03 pm
I love ABe but this is such a generic Japanese response. I realize I’m doing some serious stereotyping here, but this sort of surface level, somewhat baseless, way of going against “the mold” is totally Japanese. A lot of it is kind of lost in translation, but at its core the message is really simple and not at all believable.
So if we are exposed to good and bad things then we’ll know what’s good or bad? I mean it’s totally ridiculous to just assume this is true. It’s not completely off, but what he should have said is just “in order to have a society with free thought (which is hard to find in Japan as it is) we need to push ourselves to allow intellectual freedom no matter how disruptive it may be.” I’m assuming ABe is just taking the Japanese route and is sort of beating around the bush here (and also making an argument that appeals to Japanese sensibilities).
Anyways, that’s just my take on it. I’ve heard about a thousand similar arguments from coworkers and in other interviews. This is not, however, to say that the average individual in any other country is much better.
March 18th, 2010 at 5:29 am
I’m not sure why you were expecting ABe to be some sort of cross-cultural wunderkind; I just translated the post because the Japanese view on freedom of speech is interesting, and ABe was a more interesting person to present it than, say, the speakers at the “emergency conference” earlier this week.
March 21st, 2010 at 4:12 pm
[...] Serial Experiments Lain and Haibane Renmei has offered his thoughts on the situation, translated by Welcome Datacomp. ABe makes some very valid arguments: that Japanese classics such as Doraemon would be outlawed [...]
March 22nd, 2010 at 6:42 pm
Well since I like him a lot, I was expecting a lot more out of him. He’s been fairly interesting in previous interviews. It was a let down. Oh well.
April 3rd, 2010 at 3:58 pm
Vote was on March 30, why are there no updates?
April 3rd, 2010 at 8:54 pm
The vote was postponed.
April 5th, 2010 at 7:25 am
Perfect speach! I found it through yaoi related site. I think the big problem is not the same loli and shota but that some characters in the other genres looks like minors without being minors. Also sometimes some character is under 18 but looks like 20-25. What about these cases? They have to refine the text. Also when they succeeded to prevent the REAL minors that they want to prevent the imaginary ones?o_O
April 29th, 2010 at 6:59 am
@Shii: the voting was postponed to when ?
April 29th, 2010 at 7:17 am
according to wikipedia, the voting was “skipped”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_status_of_cartoon_pornography_depicting_minors
May 29th, 2012 at 2:47 pm
Japan is on freaking ASSBURGER SYNDROME. What happened Japan? Too much western influence?