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NEWS: Core Magazine's Head Editor, 2 More Arrested for 'Obscene' Manga, Photos

I've never read these magazines in questions so I can't comment on what censoring they did or didn't use... but it seems to me that the obvious question here is: where is the standard for censorship actually defined in policy or law? Otherwise, it seems to me that the police can just decide they don't like you and say "we don't think it's censored enough", and then arrest you because they said so.

This is exactly the sort of thing that was considered troublesome with the other laws that were being proposed in recent months. Selective enforcement based on vague ill-defined "we'll know it when we see it" standards, that keeps everyone guessing whether they'll be targeted next.

The more important issue is why Japan has censoring in the first place on magazines that are rated 18+. I know it has been that way for a while, but I'm sorry a lot of those magazines sold feature far more questionable material on the whole making a black line over a penis kind of moot. So its okay to show a women getting rapped by a tentacle monster, as long as there are a few well placed bars. Ridiculous, really.

It's based on a law made back in the 1940s, put in there by the U.S. occupying force (I think I saw something recently claiming this wasn't actually true, but as far as I know, it is). So yeah, you can probably thank the U.S. for this particular bit of bullshit. Of course, this doesn't absolve Japan for how they choose to enforce it or any additions, as they've shown they're quite willing to do.

HitokiriShadow wrote:

It's based on a law made back in the 1940s, put in there by the U.S. occupying force (I think I saw something recently claiming this wasn't actually true, but as far as I know, it is). So yeah, you can probably thank the U.S. for this particular bit of bullshit. Of course, this doesn't absolve Japan for how they choose to enforce it or any additions, as they've shown they're quite willing to do.

Refer to my post above, the censorship was done to the Japanese by themselves, right after the Russo-Japanese War. It falls in line with other things the government was trying to do away with, like mixed bathing at sentos and onsens because it's "indecent". Don't blame MacArthur for this.

Ah, okay, your post wasn't there when I started writing mine. Interesting, for many years, the "the U.S. did it" thing came up as a correction when this topic came up and I never saw a correction to that until very recently. So I guess Japan gets 100% of the blame for this stupid law after all.

The more important issue is why Japan has censoring in the first place on magazines that are rated 18+. I know it has been that way for a while, but I'm sorry a lot of those magazines sold feature far more questionable material on the whole making a black line over a penis kind of moot. So its okay to show a women getting rapped by a tentacle monster, as long as there are a few well placed bars. Ridiculous, really.

In practice, I suspect it's really about finding the content itself (or those who distribute/publish it) "offensive" and using the "lack of sufficient censorship" as the excuse to perform the arrest.

And what does censorship mean? A thin black/grey/white/transparent bar over certain parts of the anatomy? Completely whited-out? Fully mosaic'd? Replaced with a Subway sandwich? There's no standard, so artists basically just do what they choose and most figure "good enough."

Because censorship like that is a gesture, they're "censoring" to get the law off their ass but they don't want to tarnish their own work over a stupid century old law. Again, it depends on the artist and how strict they want to be; Japanese prison is a miserable place.