Archive for the ‘Japan’ Category

Microsoft looking after our morals?

Wednesday, November 10th, 2010

It sounds like game maker Alchemist is in talks with Microsoft regarding offensive content in their new Xbox 360 game called Galgun meant for the Japanese market.

I find this trend toward dumbing down video games to sanitize the world for children irritating.  California is currently defending a law that bans sales of violent games to minors.  Is it illegal to sell an R-rated movie to a kid in California (or anywhere else n the country for that matter)?  If so, how long before they outlaw that?

I’m so fucking old I remember when parents actually had to supervise what their kids read or watched.  I’m not kidding.  I really used to be like that.

Posted in Censorship, Japan, United States | Comments Off

Japanese porn star defeats Chinese censorship

Thursday, April 22nd, 2010

Japanese porn star, Sora Aoi is a favorite with Chinese men even though her movies are banned there.

I found this article in wizbangpop.com interesting because it seems to suggest that the First Amendment doesn’t include an exception for obscenity, which is such a rare event that it deserves mention.  The concept that obscenity is not protected by the First Amendment is an invention of the U.S. Supreme court, but it is largely accepted by the American public without challenge.

The article further explains the Christian religious connection to censorship laws in both the U.S. and Japan.

But, in both the United States and Japan, it was an attempt to use law to enforce religious values that was the main force behind efforts to control adult oriented entertainment. General Douglas MacArthur felt that forcing Christian religious values on the Japanese would make them less warlike, although the history of religion in the world has been largely a very violent history. The current war with terrorism around the world is largely a war by some Muslim religious extremists to force their religious views on the Christian world. And Catholics and Protestants continue to have icy relations in Northern Ireland. Rather than offering freedom to mankind, religion largely has become another tool of repression and fueled wars and conflicts. Instead of beliefs in myths and legends fueling hope for many persons, religion often ruined their lives instead and allowed the powerful to rule over the weak.

If any thing is plain to the casual observer, it’s the fact that religion has established a tradition of opposing free expression and they are certainly a powerful force in suppressing pornography.  Any  freedom of expression that exists in the United States owes much to the porn industry which has always been active in the front lines opposing those whose goal it is to suppress ideas they don’t like.

There are some forces that even government can’t control.  One could say that Sora Aoi is harness those forces against totalitarian China and, so far, she’s winning (and China is probably a better place for it).

Posted in Censorship, China, Japan, Obscenity, Pornography | Comments Off

Video game makes sport of rape

Wednesday, March 31st, 2010

Japanese RapeLay computer game is causing international controversy.

Of course, what really makes the game so reviled by feminists is the sex aspect.  Violent video games, where killing and maiming are the focus, have been a part of gaming culture for a couple decades and no credible connection to actual violent crime has been found.  Likewise, there is no reason to believe that this game would result in any violence against women.  Humans, kids included, can tell the difference between fantasy and reality.

Of course, games like this are precisely what is waved in front of the public by advocates for censorship.  What should be kept in mind is that, while these stories are new, the game itself has been around since 2006.

Posted in Censorship, Japan, Rape | Comments Off

Tokyo set to censor Manga comics

Tuesday, March 16th, 2010

According to the Telegraph:

The city assembly, which will vote on the proposed law on Friday, wants to restrict comics and animated images that contain sexually provocative depictions of “nonexistent minors” – an ambiguous concept that is taken to mean characters that people could reasonably assume to be minors, based on their appearances.

The new law would require the manga and animation industry not to sell works that depict sexual situations involving minors while also identifying works that depict rape and other violence as “harmful materials” and restrict minors’ access to such comics.

I guess they had to throw in that catch-all justification of “protecting the children”, although it’s clearly targeting adults.  Banning images that depict nonexistent people is really more about thought control, since there is no actual victim.

Of course, sexually explicit Manga that portrays nonexistent minors is already outlawed in the U.S.

Posted in Art, Censorship, Japan, Obscenity | Comments Off

Saving our soldiers from the evils of sex

Monday, February 8th, 2010

Apparently some countries don’t like the prostitution business that seems to spring up around American military installations overseas, especially South Korea and Japan.

Aggravated by the nonstop sex trafficking incidents involving Filipino women around the U.S. Military base in South Korea, the  Philippine  government decided to stop sending their women to the sex industry abroad.

Interesting wording.  The Philippine government decided to stop sending “their women” to the sex industry abroad.

So starting in 2004, the Pentagon made it a court martial offense to patronize prostitutes, which of course, does nothing more than push it further underground making criminals out of the people we expect to put their lives on the line in war.

I recently read a book called “Hell in a Very Small Place” which is about the French battle at Dien Bien Phu in Vietnam during the French Indochina War.  Rather than punishing soldiers for their normal interest in sexual pursuits, the French actually arranged for mobile field brothels to supply their soldiers with Vietnamese prostitutes.  Apparently they didn’t think that sex would tarnish their soldiers’ morals making them unfit to sacrifice their lives in battle.

Of course, as always, the U.S. government is too busy imposing their sense of morality under threat of prison to spend even a second dwelling on the futility of their policies and the harm they do.  As was the case in the 30s with alcohol prohibition, almost all the problems people use to justify the banning of prostitution are in fact caused, not by the prostitution, but by the laws banning it.

It’s the height of hypocrisy for a government to send a soldier off in the prime of his life to risk his life to protect us and then deny them harmless pleasures in the name of morality.

Posted in Japan, Prostitution, South Korea | Comments Off