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NEWS: Arrested Manga Translator Also Arrested in Japan in 2014 for Secret Recordings of Students


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Swissman



Joined: 11 May 2006
Posts: 793
Location: Switzerland
PostPosted: Tue Jan 05, 2021 3:34 pm Reply with quote
Yikes, he was one of those creepy ALTs, giving a bad reputation to all foreign language teachers. I pity the hardworking & honest ALTs who had to succeed him at the schools he worked at.
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AmpersandsUnited



Joined: 22 Mar 2012
Posts: 633
PostPosted: Tue Jan 05, 2021 3:47 pm Reply with quote
Perhaps another question to ask Viz (and other companies) is why they hired him to begin with if this was in 2014. If it happened before he worked with them it wasn't their concern? No background checks?
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ranran-001



Joined: 25 Oct 2018
Posts: 543
PostPosted: Tue Jan 05, 2021 4:16 pm Reply with quote
AmpersandsUnited wrote:
Perhaps another question to ask Viz (and other companies) is why they hired him to begin with if this was in 2014. If it happened before he worked with them it wasn't their concern? No background checks?


Koza was arrested but never formally charged with a crime. There would be no criminal conviction history.
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CatSword



Joined: 01 Jul 2014
Posts: 1489
PostPosted: Tue Jan 05, 2021 5:17 pm Reply with quote
Quote:
Between late March 2014 and June 19, 2014 at around 1:10 p.m., Koza allegedly trespassed into the girls' dressing room at the school, placed a digital video camera, and secretly took recordings. According to the board of education in Kami, a female fifth-year student at the school found a suspicious black paper box inside the girls' locker room on June 19, 2014. The box had a hole and a digital camera positioned inside.

Japan's Minor Offenses Act, originally passed in 1948, covers a variety of minor criminal offenses. The act includes articles related to trespassing and voyeurism.


*sigh* Japan...taking video of nude elementary school girls is not a minor offense. Man got off without a criminal change and waltzed his way into Viz like nothing happened.
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AutoOps007



Joined: 03 Jan 2014
Posts: 245
PostPosted: Tue Jan 05, 2021 5:41 pm Reply with quote
Wow, people just love attacking these companies, when they have nothing to do with whatever crimes committed by people they worked with. Viz likely didn't know, and if any of his work has been published recently, it may of been too late in the publishing process for them to stop. Viz cancelled the Rurouni Kenshin spin-off and Act Age as soon as they knew what happened with those creators, and I'm sure they would've done the same here.
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DeceptiTom



Joined: 20 Apr 2019
Posts: 41
PostPosted: Tue Jan 05, 2021 5:56 pm Reply with quote
For a second there I thought he was arrested for Manga Translating and they arrested him for the porn after the fact.
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TarsTarkas



Joined: 20 Dec 2007
Posts: 5922
Location: Virginia, United States
PostPosted: Tue Jan 05, 2021 6:33 pm Reply with quote
As to someone mentioning background checks, if any were done, it was probably U.S. only. I doubt background checks would extend beyond our borders.

But there really is no reason to do background checks on remote workers who are not full time employees for this job field.

Also, real background checks cost money.
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luisedgarf



Joined: 02 Oct 2004
Posts: 669
Location: Guadalajara, Mexico
PostPosted: Tue Jan 05, 2021 7:23 pm Reply with quote
TarsTarkas wrote:
As to someone mentioning background checks, if any were done, it was probably U.S. only. I doubt background checks would extend beyond our borders.


Not to mention, in some countries, like here in Mexico, there's strict rules about background checks, since those are normally restricted to jobs related with either law enforcement (police, military, etc) or any job when trust is essential.
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Cutiebunny



Joined: 18 Apr 2010
Posts: 1767
PostPosted: Tue Jan 05, 2021 8:55 pm Reply with quote
TarsTarkas wrote:
As to someone mentioning background checks, if any were done, it was probably U.S. only. I doubt background checks would extend beyond our borders.

But there really is no reason to do background checks on remote workers who are not full time employees for this job field.

Also, real background checks cost money.


How hard would it have been to enter his name and the kanji translation of his name into Google and see what turned up? It's not as if he has such a common name where there's likely to be a ton of listings popping up.

I disagree that a company should not do background checks on remotely working employees. They're still employees of the company and they still can damage a company's reputation if and when issues like this pop up. And while real background checks cost money, Viz is a business and they're making money off of his work. It would be a completely different story if Viz were a scanlation group.
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Zimmer



Joined: 08 Jul 2015
Posts: 199
PostPosted: Tue Jan 05, 2021 9:36 pm Reply with quote
#895229 wrote:
For a second there I thought he was arrested for Manga Translating and they arrested him for the porn after the fact.
That sounds familiar somehow. I'm probably thinking of that Nintendo(?) data leaker.
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TarsTarkas



Joined: 20 Dec 2007
Posts: 5922
Location: Virginia, United States
PostPosted: Tue Jan 05, 2021 11:11 pm Reply with quote
Cutiebunny wrote:
How hard would it have been to enter his name and the kanji translation of his name into Google and see what turned up? It's not as if he has such a common name where there's likely to be a ton of listings popping up.

I disagree that a company should not do background checks on remotely working employees. They're still employees of the company and they still can damage a company's reputation if and when issues like this pop up. And while real background checks cost money, Viz is a business and they're making mioney off of his work. It would be a completely different story if Viz were a scanlation group.


Why would you check Japan? He could have committed crimes in South Korea, Mexico, or even Italy. I don't know Kanji either, and have had a hard enough time trying to find info on my favorite mangaka, would probably be even hard trying to find some nameless American.

I don't think your neighborhood babysitter business conducts foreign background checks on their prospective American employees.

Also I don't put much value on Viz getting hurt by a bad employee in this business, even their reputation. You are never going to please everyone, and you can go bankrupt trying to. Personally, I don't see it being cost effective to do real background checks on every single consultant or minor remote worker, in non-sensitive positions.

Perhaps Justin Servakis can chime in, on what he thinks.
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GVman



Joined: 14 Jul 2010
Posts: 730
PostPosted: Wed Jan 06, 2021 10:33 am Reply with quote
Wasn't this contract work he did, too? That doesn't make him an employee of a company.
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Tempest
I Run this place.
ANN Publisher


Joined: 29 Dec 2001
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PostPosted: Wed Jan 06, 2021 2:01 pm Reply with quote
AmpersandsUnited wrote:
Perhaps another question to ask Viz (and other companies) is why they hired him to begin with if this was in 2014. If it happened before he worked with them it wasn't their concern? No background checks?


No one does background checks when hiring a contract translator. He wasn't an employee and the job didn't involve giving him access to anything particularly sensitive except possibly a slightly advanced look at next week's manga chapter.

A standard background check likely wouldn't have turned anything up anyway. He was charged with the equivalent of a misdemeanor in a foreign country.

Cutiebunny wrote:
I disagree that a company should not do background checks on remotely working employees. They're still employees of the company and they still can damage a company's reputation if and when issues like this pop up.
He wasn't an employee. He was a contractor. It's not SOP at most companies to do background checks on contractors or employees if they aren't being given access to anything where there might be a risk. Background checks are common for people who work directly with children, cash, security, weapons, IT, etc. Definitely not for comic book translators. You suggest checking his name in Kanji, but that's easy to say in hindsight because you know the crime occurred in Japan. Should they have also checked it in every other language? Should they ask all prospective contractors for a list of countries they've lived in the past and google their names in those countries? Honestly, it isn't a reasonable expectation.

There are also privacy concerns, "Where I lived in the past is none of my client's business," would be my answer if a translation client asked for that information, and in many jurisdictions, the law would be on my side.

ranran-001 wrote:
Koza was arrested but never formally charged with a crime. There would be no criminal conviction history.
He was charged. We don't know if he was convicted though.

GVMAN wrote:
Wasn't this contract work he did, too? That doesn't make him an employee of a company.
Correct, Viz was his customer (or his company's customer), not his employer.

It's unfortunate that companies may have to start doing background checks simply because of "optics."
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Calsolum



Joined: 11 May 2010
Posts: 904
PostPosted: Thu Jan 07, 2021 1:45 am Reply with quote
Ugh disgusting.

This nonsense of some principals wanting to protect their school's image over their students is something you should only see in fiction.

I hope that everyone involved in this incident are punished to the full extent of the law and hope that the families affected by this can move on peacefully.
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Rob19ny



Joined: 13 Jun 2020
Posts: 1976
PostPosted: Fri Jan 15, 2021 2:20 pm Reply with quote
Well, the plot certainly thickened. This makes it a history. Whether it was just bad luck or intentional, you can't defend that.
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