Japanese blogs and forums have been set abuzz by the arrest of a man for allegedly publishing “obscene” doujinshi. 39-year old Masaya Miyashita (宮下昌也), a professional illustrator known for his work on erotic PC games, was taken by Matsuyama police on charges of distributing obscenity through five bookstores. (Miyashita supposedly worked under the pseudonym “Shiyami Yasamata” and has a website which is inaccessible at the moment. But here’s the archived version.) 6,600 copies of his doujinshi were confiscated. Police also estimate Miyashita has made a profit of over 15 million yen from doujinshi since 2003.
I have yet to find any info on the doujinshi themselves, although one blogger describes one of them as a B5-sized 64-page book with a cover price of 1500 yen. (See Edit 2 below.)
Original Japanese news reports here:
Ehime Shimbun (with video)
Additonal Japanese blog reactions here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here.
Most bewilderingly, nothing in the news reports or blog entries I’ve looked at thus far give any indication as to why, out of the tens (hundreds?) of thousands of adult doujinshi and manga published in Japan, Miyashita’s works were specifically targetted. Consignment sales of doujinshi through bookstores is nothing out of the ordinary, and with so little concrete information, some bloggers have sinisterly posited that the investigation may have originally been spurred by tax evasion suspicions, along with far more obvious theories such as the ongoing media backlash against “lolicon” or lack of proper mosaics.
Incredibly, police have also indicated that they may pursue actions against the printer and bookstores as well (highlighting one of the truly insipid aspects of obscenity prosecution… this is the only crime where law enforcment proceeds on an assumption of guilt. For something to be obscene, it has to be found obscene by the courts. So before Matsuyama police decided to arrest Masaya Miyashita, the printer and bookstore were perfectly within their legal right to sell those books since they weren’t obscene… until the police said they were!) It is unknown which printer/s and bookstores may be targetted, but from the video at Ehime Shimbun it appears the books were printed at the popular doujin-press Bro’s, while the bookstores are likely the usual major doujinshi sellers such as K-Books, Toranoana, or Melonbooks, although one can’t be certain as any evidence of the books must have surely been removed from those websites by now.
With so many details still unclear, I’m not sure what this arrest could portend for the greater doujinshi community and the ero manga market at large. But when adding together all the recent developments, from the obscenity conviction against Shobunkan being upheld, the greater media scrutiny over certain genres of ero manga, and now the arrest of a doujinshi author, it wouldn’t be a stretch to say that free artistic expression by adults in Japan hasn’t been in such a perilous state in quite a long time.
Edit: Coverage by ComiPress and Anime News Network, in case there are further updates.
Edit 2: Doujinshi seller Doujindou has cover images of Miyashita’s newer doujinshi which indeed matches the one shown in Ehime’s video report, 秘密ã®ã‚¹ãƒšã‚·ãƒ£ãƒ«ã‚¹ãƒ†ãƒ¼ã‚¸ / Secret Special Stage.
Edit 3: Canned Dogs points to Nippon Hikikomo…err… NHK’s coverage of same, but note that NHK’s website does not seem to have workable permalinks for the stories. The new wrinkle here is that the official reason for the arrest is leaning towards the covering up of privates being “insufficient.”
Checking through the 2ch messages again (over 1000 of them), someone does post a couple of scans of the doujinshi in question. The clitoris is whited out in the art… but that’s about all.
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What’s with this sudden crack down on all the cartoon pr0n? It seems like something new every week. Don’t make any bussiness trips over there Simon, we might hear stories about the capture of an american loli distribution ringleader
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Pingback from MangaBlog » Blog Archive » Summer reading on August 24, 2007 at 5:20 am
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leaning towards the covering up of privates being €œinsufficient.€ They told us one year, [it was the first time out books went to Comiket--and they went with a friend] that we had to censor the penis in Empire of Dirt [Trigun doujinshi], and then another year [again, we were guests at a table] we had to cover up penis–and remove tones from pubic hair. We did that, it came back with…we had to remove the pubic hair. :/
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I don’t suppose anybody has any idea what motivated the police in the first place to crack down on this author. I guess seeing this sort of thing unfold oversees, you expect some organization like the PTA, religious organizations, or voices in the media to be putting pressure on the government. Are there such groups putting out press releases or statements of approval when things like this go on?
Don’t the publishers and authors put any sort of organized pressure on the government themselves to repeal the law? Has there been any movement in legislature to remove or clarify this contradiction? And Simon, how do you know they were tipped off? (And why would they do that?)
Sorry for the questions, just curious. You’d think that with all the money involved, the government would have the sense to lay off everyone.
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Good god. Aside fomr having seen countless doujin where all that’s covered is the clit, it’s more sad that this is ok.
I don’t pay a lot of attention to the Japanese political scene, so I’m not sure of whether they’ve got an ACLU, but I have to wonder where those sort of groups are at times like this. I mean, I know people are hesitant to stand up for porn with free speech reasons going on, but you’ve got some old limp dick ruling on whether something is obscene. It’s not like these books are being given out as prizes for kids or that there’s a law requiring anyone to buy any ero book that they see.
EXPLAIN IT TO ME SO THAT I CAN UNDERSTAND SIMON!?!?! WHY ARE PEOPLE BANNING THINGS THAT OTHER PEOPLE WANT TO SEE JUST BECAUSE THE FORMER DOESN’T LIKE IT?!?! HOW IS THIS AN ADVANCED CULTURAL IDEA?!?
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Being married to a Japanese women, she certainly feels very strongly about following the letter of the law in the U.S. But I don’t have too much reluctance to disobey any rule I find ridiculous. Such things thankfully don’t put too much strain on our relationship. She puts up with my ero manga collection though she calls it “criminal.”
Having seen movies about the student movement in the late 1960s, when I socialist/communist ideas (unions, anti-military, etc.) were popular, it seems at that time getting in trouble with the law was sort of part of the game. You’d think that anti-authoritarian resistance such as civil disobedience would have (permanently) caught on during that era. It still seems like such a cool thing to do in this country, anyway.
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I honestly do not understand this. I really don’t see any reason for Miyashita to be targetted unless this has to do with taxes.
Simon you mentioned Article 175 and yes Comiket tries to get its participants to follow a certain code of conduct in cooperation with that law. Doujin have to state on their cover whether they are 18+ or not (not enforced). All doujin need to have contact information sincluding email address (not enforced). And while self-censorship is followed by everyone there is no standard. Miyashita is not the only one just covering up a clit. Others do not do that only white-out/black striping tips of penises or the point of penetration. Others avoid it altogether by just drawing detailed bisections which are never covered up (rarely even in magazines).
Not having read the manga in question I cannot say if these books are obscene or not. But the samples available on the web seem to say otherwise. Actually given the amount of self-censorship I could even say that Miyashita did more than some publishers do. That might come as a surprise to some but I saw some pages in magazines that seemed to forget Article 175 and these were in the manga of major pubs like TakeShobo and CoreMagazine. Now I noticed that CoreMagazine’s Comic LO and Moe Pub’s MoeMax had a lot of white-out and for good reason. But I could easily say that the level overall of “coverage” by even pubs is at a low. These things go in cycles as attention comes and goes but given the recent wave of investigations by the popos I would think it would be in the best interest to be on the cautious side.
I can say Miyashita does not label his doujin 18+. I can also say that the guy is essentially out in the boondocks where the cops might be more sensitive about such things. The subject matter is a kids video game I believe (Super Robot Wars… Which by the way Syowmaru parodied.) None of these are good reasons but something tells me the pta and other focus groups are behind this and until there is some proper education on this (for parents, con producers and doujin sellers) these issues will sadly continue to pop up.
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OT: Gorou Horikawa also did a parody of Super Robat Wars (V and VV), and I doubt Miyashita’s version came close to those either.
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