Article in NY Times on Japanese depictions of...

[Madara]

The subject of this article sometimes comes up around here.



Here's the link:



http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/10/busin ... wanted=all

[Ap2000]

I've read about this on Japanprobe.com.



I'm strictly against censoring fictional media, even if it would depict me getting killed in a brutal way.



I would however agree that photobooks, DVDs etc. featuring girls below the age of 16~18 should be banned. It's just way too easy to exploit underaged girls with their dreams.



However, with the Internet being so wide-spread it's quite useless to ban anything anyway.

[eri]

Choice quotes:

“There is a culture, an industry that worships youth and innocence,” said Mariko Katsuki, who published a book last year chronicling adults who are attracted to small children. “Much of the attraction is nonsexual, but sometimes it becomes a dangerous obsession.”



...But in the last five or six years, books and videos have emerged that sidestep the law by featuring girls, some as young as age 6, posing in swimsuits that stop short of full nudity. The models, who are paid about ¥200,000 a shoot, often dream of careers in acting or music, industry insiders said.



...

“To a degree, it has become socially accepted to lust over young girls in Japan,” Mr. Nakai said. “Condoning these works has meant more people have access to them and develop an interest in young girls.”



...

“I don’t even think about how old these girls are,” Mr. Yoshida said. “It’s a completely imaginary world, separate from real life.”

Hmm the last two quotes make a good contrast. I don't think idol media or manga "create" a pedophile but I do think it normalizes it and deafens the broader social response towards something that can be very damaging to a child. I see similar things happening in the US all the time (though, not about pedophilia; just more broadly about sex hysteria). Dominant media depictions can displace the real discomfort and danger experienced by young women for a vague "common sense" that "hurhur she was asking for it" or "take it as a compliment."



For that matter, it is biologically impossible for pre-pubescent children to enjoy sex or understand sexual desire. So when it becomes "normal" for a 9 year old to be "sexy" (but a 20 year old "gross"), the only sexual pleasure happening is on the side of the adult viewer. I think this is why people believe these works justify that self-gratifying, self-centered view of sexuality that pedophiles and rapists share. I also wonder if this is related to the anxiety over the birth rate in Japan.



But it is really tricky and not all of the representations are directly sexual. When I was younger, I really liked flipping through PurePure or Up To Boy because I just liked looking at pretty pictures of girls my age. But then it's like....wow, why is there a $30 magazine just of pictures of 13 year old girls in their school uniforms, pajamas, or whatever? I still like H!P obviously in a non-sexual way but I can't shake the creepy feeling that I'm actually supporting some industry built on pedophile's wet dreams. Complicated!

[al kusanagi]

Just wait a few years and the HP Kids grow up into smokin' hot goddesses like Maimi.



Seriously though, the biggest bullshit thing about the Japanese manga/anime/game bans is that it gives FICTIONAL characters more rights than actual human beings, and that's messed up regardless of which side you're on.

[luciole]

Wow.



It's not surprising that Japan's passing more laws now, especially with outside pressure. The article itself covers a lot of points, but I'm not sure how much further Japanese politicians can push



("To protest the ordinance, 10 of this country’s biggest publishers have said they will boycott the Tokyo International Anime Fair next month"? There has to be more to that than what is written).



I think most of the arguments against the laws are for the fictional universe because it is fictional (or because the reporter chose to focus on that). It's easier to argue for--instead of arguing that full feature DVDs and photobooks featuring 12 real year olds is perfectly normal.

[Madara]

I've been trying to figure out how to post on this subject for a while and this seems like a good opportunity. Every so often I see something really disturbing along these lines in children's anime. For instance, I've seen a couple of Doraemon films, spinoffs of the popular anime series about a robot cat from the future and his association with little Nobita and his friends. The girl next door in the show, Shizuka, is only about ten years old, if that much, yet in the Doraemon films I've seen the animators contrive to put her in nude scenes. The first one I saw, "Nobita's Little Star Wars," has a scene in which Shizuka is shrunk to tiny size so she can live in her dollhouse, and we see her taking a bath in the dollhouse and it seemed innocent enough at the time. But in the next one, "Nobita's Dinosaur," they all go back in time to the dinosaur era and Doraemon creates separate living quarters for the kids and the girl has full nude shower scenes. (Nothing like that for the boys.) In another scene, where Doraemon is using a device to create bathing suits for the kids, poor Shizuka is topless for a few seconds and the other boys leer at her before Doraemon corrects his mistake. This did not seem so innocent to me.



I mentioned this to a couple of student friends of mine, both of whom were doing research for theses covering somewhat related subjects. One is a female graduate student from Taiwan, who was then doing a sociological paper on otaku and "moe," and the other is an undergrad, an American male of Chinese-Indian ancestry, doing research on anime and law. Not in a position to show them the examples, all I could do was describe them. Both of them insisted there were no taboos in their cultures about underage nudity and it was all perfectly innocent and there was no salacious intent. I'm not so sure.



For the record, "Doraemon," the most popular and long-running anime show in Japan ever, has never been released in the U.S. in any form.

[eri]

[quote name='Madara' timestamp='1297355730' post='93535']stuff[/quote]



I don't think it is necessarily about sexualizing the girl per se. There could be a comic effect where the viewer will laugh at how the boys get excited over non-existent breasts or that the viewer (esp if a child) will share a kind of titillated interest in something coded as taboo. I also think there is a little bit of "playing grown up" when children are interested in mimicking certain sexualized scenarios/tropes they've learned in society even when they do not fully understand them (ie. little girls dancing "sexy").



So..

It isn't that little girls are sexy and you want to see them naked

But, it is telling that nakedness will be sexualized for all females, regardless of age



Regarding those Doraemon scenes, I think it is already suggestive that the nude scenes are only of the little girl (none of the boys). And obviously, its significant that the sexualization of her nudity is WRITTEN INTO THE PLOT directly, revealing that the Japanese boys within the world of the anime and the Japanese writers constructing the show share some notion that a female's nudity (no matter the age) is sexualized.



Al: to defensively claim that these are imaginative worlds across the board is a lazy misunderstanding of audience reception. Children do not clearly demarcate reality from fiction in the same way an adult might. Cartoon characters ARE representative of real human beings and even when the plots are fantastical, the character relationships and emotions are always realistic. For that matter, cartoons are often didactic and this is probably why these legislators are so uncomfortable with sexual material popping up in kid's stuff. (Say what you will but most people would define anime and manga as kid's stuff)



The problem is when the fictional representation overwhelms the reality. We see this happening ALL THE TIME. Just the other day I was talking to someone about how cheerleaders are automatically perceived as sluts simply because of the overabundance of pornified cheerleader media representations. And while this is a minor inconvenience for the most part, it gets complicated when cheerleaders are excluded from athletic scholarship/funding considerations (even though the routines involve high degree of gymnastics skills, strength, precision, and artistry sometimes). It also gets complicated when conjoined with the hypermasculinization of sports and the way everyone looks the other way when football players sexually harass or assault women. Boys will be boys and cheerleaders are just sluts, amirite.





And whatever, this is tl;dr and I'm sure I'm not going to change anyone's opinion.