Top manga publisher Kadokawa’s president has spoken out against Tokyo’s impending manga ban in no uncertain terms, accusing Ishihara of discrimination and comparing his his actions to those of Japan’s wartime secret police.
Kadokawa’s CEO Shinichiro Inoue had this to say in a recent magazine interview:
The remarks of governor Ishihara are discrimination against a particular business, and discrimination against the manga and anime media.
Fiction and reality have no connection in the first place… young people today understand this and can make that distinction, so there’s no need to be excessively concerned about fiction like this.
Ishihara himself is no stranger to discrimination, having become notorious for racist comments and lately having diversified into bashing homosexuals.
Kadokawa’s main public response so far has been to withdraw from TAF, although the actual political effectiveness of this has been limited as Ishihara simply doesn’t care about the manga industry and would clearly much rather everyone be reading his r**e novels.
He went on to note that Ishihara’s efforts to control creative thought “are reminiscent of the totalitarian censorship” Japan endured during the war years.
He took particular umbrage at the remarks made by the Tokyo government to the effect that “masterpieces won’t be censored” and “we decide which are masterpieces” – “no mangaka wants to make works just to please the authorities,” he responds.
He closes thus:
Japan’s anime and manga is a world standard. It would be ironic indeed if it were the world which had to tell Japan’s statesmen the value of their own culture.
This rather supposes they have ears to listen in the first place – Ishihara for his part has based his career on making reactionary remarks to other old people.
He has also been annoying mangaka for some time – the images shown are from an actual manga by Fist of the North Star mangaka Tetsuo Hara featuring a governor “Iwahara,” published a decade ago and with the text updated to reflect current events.
here’s me thinking that if a mangaka wants to keep his manga running minus profit, he’ll just turn it into a webcomic instead..
It’s not just ero manga that places Ishihara as the bad guy, you can take a look at all the war like doujins. Ishihara is always the first one to die.
“young people today understand this and can make that distinction”
damn straight, though there are some people who really don’t understand and does people like ishihara blame them because one mistake is equivalent to all
“young people today understand this and can make that distinction, so there’s no need to be excessively concerned about fiction like this.”
I’m calling bullshit for the simple fact that if this were true young people wouldn’t be taking side against, say (and I don’t meant to turn this into a rant on it), lolicon even though “Fiction and reality have no connection in the first place…”
Japanese Animation Industry just realize after he insulted many people who watch anime?