Osaka has classified a variety of boys love (or yaoi) manga as “harmful publications” and placed restrictions on their sale and distribution.
The new restrictions, previously covered here, ban under 18s from buying or reading the publications in question, which in practice means the rags will be consigned to the “adult corner” along with actual pornography. Their circulation will likely be adversely affected as a result.
The standards for inclusion as a “harmful publication” are extremely easy to apply – if more than 10% of the pages, or more than 10 pages outright, deal with sex the manga can be classed as harmful. 8 magazines have so far been designated as such.
For a thick magazine with many hundreds of pages, 10 pages of content dealing with “sex, etc.” may well be a very low proportion of the overall content, making a large number of publications potentially bannable.
Osaka’s governor recently began talking about adopting copycat legislation based on Tokyo’s loli ban, but it went further by singling out BL manga.
Just why it is necessary to ban girls from reading stories about homosexual men has never been effectively explained – the stories cannot promote sodomy amongst girls as they are incapable of performing it, and nor is it likely they are turning girls into sexual predators intent on violating men or boys. Most girls of that age are already sexually active in any case.
Sheer moral hysteria, for its own sake, seems the only plausible explanation.
Hey Artefact, I know it’s mostly guys on this site, but every once in a while can we get some articles on yaoi and BL too? Like artist spots and anime articles and stuff.
For a second there when i read Osaka i was thinking of Osaka from Azumanga
One sentence: GET OVER IT!
This is utterly ridiculous. There is nothing ‘harmful’ about yaoi. Its not hurting anybody. I agree that it should be for 18+ just to be fair to other things that have sexual content and have an age restriction on them, but to BAN any of it? That’s the stupidest thing I have ever heard.
You guys can ban, denounce, complain about anything you want to, its not going to stop GAYS from existing. Its not going to stop people from writing it or fantasizing about it or drawing it. So just give it a rest and stop being stupid. I’ve seen a lot worse and I bet anything you OSHA people have WATCHED or BOUGHT a lot worse yourselves.
Doing something like this is only going to create more hate against the homosexual community because people will have no way to understand and attempt to accept it. I state again, stop trying to make something disappear just because you don’t like it, its not gonna work. Homosexuality, Bisexuality, Transsexuals, all of it will exist you can’t STOP people from feeling how they feel. It doesn’t work that way.
2012
5000 bird mysterious drop from the sky,
before that…
Anime/Manga gets bannings…
The world is truly ending, or being reborn shittier with more control
Must end the madness now
I don’t know if someone already mentioned what I’m about to say, but someone said this was to drive attention away from catholic-priest molesters in japan correct?
You do happen to know that Japan’s form of Catholicism is very different than the original western compliment. If I’m correct they incorporate bits of Confucianism, Hinduism, etc and other religious theory in Christianity sector of Japan. Also the priests in Japan are allowed to marry.
I doubt Catholic-priest molestation is on a high in japan. SO what would there be to divert attention from?