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Kyojin no Hoshi's Kawasaki Refuses Tokyo Anime Award

Jun Itō, the editor-in-chief of Akita Shoten's Champion RED magazine, told manga creator Takeshi Nogami that fellow creator Noboru Kawasaki (Kyojin no Hoshi baseball manga) is refusing an award that would have been given at next year's Tokyo International Anime Fair (TAF).

According to the editor-in-chief, Tokyo contacted Kawasaki about attending the event to receive the award. Kawasaki then contacted Machiko Satonaka, the manga creator of Lady Ann and the executive director of the Japan Cartoonists Association. Satonaka told Kawasaki that it was ultimately his decision, but she also gave him the details about the recently passed amendment to the Tokyo Youth Healthy Development Ordinance. (The amendment will expand the number of manga and anime that fall under "harmful publications," the legal category of works that must not be sold or rented to people under the age of 18.)

As a result, Kawasaki decided to refuse the award. The people from Tokyo then suggested that Kawasaki can receive the award on any other day besides TAF, but he refused again.

Kawasaki is best known for creating the classic baseball manga and anime Kyojin no Hoshi, which will mark its 45th anniversary next year. Nogami is collaborating with anime writer and setting advisor Takaaki Suzuki (Strike Witches, Last Exile) and translator Dan Kanemitsu (new Evangelion films, Love Hina) on a dōjinshi (self-published work) about the recently passed amendment.

The Japan Cartoonists Association is one of several organizations that opposed the amendment, and Akita Shoten joined the nine other manga publishers in Comic 10-Shakai in boycotting TAF because of the amendment. Eight media companies are holding a new event called Anime Contents Expo on the same March weekend that TAF scheduled its two public days.

[Via Takeshi Nogami, Dan Kanemitsu]

Update: More background information added.

Update: Jun Itō's name added. Thanks, Nayu.