Picture Perfect Paranoia

I am personally appalled at how the proposed displomatic strategy concocted by the Japanese government is rather… stupid, to say the least.

via MangaBlog

Perhaps the biggest problem is the highly sexualized nature of the form, which can be exceptionally seedy, if not illegal. Earlier this year, 13 manga comics, including “Rape Me in My School Uniform” and “Pedophile’s Banquet II,” were labeled “harmful books” by the Kyoto Prefecture for featuring excessive sexual acts involving girls under the age of 13.

Anime and manga also tend to perpetuate negative images of daily life in Japan. Madeleine Rosca, one of the International Manga Award winners, notes that the cartoons did nothing to sell her on the country. “Japan comes across as a bit scary culturally—terribly formal and deeply strict,” she explains. “Most of the stories we get tend to be stereotypes showing heavy workloads and strictness, and a super-adherence to tradition.”

Nor are the cartoons immune from the politics that color Japan’s international relations more generally, and especially with its neighbors. As Ming Wan, director of the global affairs program at George Mason University, cautions, there is a limit to how much Tokyo can push its cultural products before manga and anime are viewed as government propaganda. This is especially true in China, where some already see Japanese manga as a tool of indoctrination. An article published by the Chinese paper Global Times in June 2006 accused manga of trying to “retell history” to cover up Japan’s war crimes and infect Chinese children with Japanese values.

And there’s a certain weirdness factor. The nearest American counterpart to anime-inspired costume play may be Star Trek and Star Wars conventions, whose participants also dress up as their favorite characters. Those gatherings have entered the broader cultural consciousness more as a source of late-night television humor than as a viable goodwill export.

These points aside, it’s rather worthy to note that this experimental approach to bridging relations in the name of democracy is a bad start. As one commented noted on a thread in Anime News Network (credit to Brigid for taking notice):

Anime is a medium. Every medium has its good, bad, and ugly titles. This is like saying “movies shouldn’t be used for PR campaign because there are such-and-such pornographic films.”

It’s enough to explain my stand on this, by the way.

One must understand that media is a double edged sword. It can either make or break one country’s, as well as its government’s, reputation. Suggest another “cultural approach” please. Thanks.

UPDATE:

• Kyoto Police Identifies 13 Loli Manga as “Harmful Books” via ComiPress
• Kyoto Police Tightens Grip on Loli Manga via ComiPress
• Kyoto Prefecture’s harmful manga list revealed… a.k.a. I massage Gumugum’s feet and bath his cat via Icarus Blog