Tokyo Governor Candidate “More Extreme Than Ishihara”
- Categories: Games, News
- Date: Mar 2, 2011 12:44 JST
- Tags: Announcements, Censorship, DPJ, Kanagawa, Politics, Tokyo
Kanagawa governor Shigefumi Matsuzawa has announced his intent to run for the position of governor of Tokyo, with his current statements and past deeds indicating he would be an even worse disaster for the anime and game industry than the outgoing Ishihara.
Shigefumi Matsuzawa, a 52-year-old independent politician formerly attached to the leftist DPJ, is currently serving as governor of Kanagawa prefecture (a prefecture adjoining Tokyo and with almost half its population of 9 million in the city of Yokohama).
He has indicated he plans to run in the upcoming elections for Tokyo governor, on a platform which he has made clear will be Ishihara-esque – in fact he has previously openly expressed his admiration for Ishihara.
His latest comments are indicative of this:
“I want to make new rules to protect our youth, not just for Tokyo but for the whole of the capital region. [i.e. Kanto including Tokyo, Yokohama, Saitama, Chiba, etc., over 42 million people]”
He goes on to voice his ardent support for Tokyo’s manga ban, and echoes Ishihara in wanting to ban the Internet as well:
“We should respect the results of the deliberations of the Tokyo governor and assembly […] Protecting our youth from harmful information is a major theme for us. Particularly the malign influence of the harmful, obscene or violent information on the Internet.”
His explicit wish is to see the ban extended throughout the Kanto region, much as Ishihara wanted to “run Japan from Tokyo”:
“I’d like to try to unify all the youth protection ordinances of the capital region prefectures to better protect our young.”
Needless to say, restrictions covering a third of Japan’s population and the heart of its publishing industry would form a de facto national ban.
He also famously appeared on TV denouncing the evil effects of games on children – unfortunately, the graphs shown on alongside him actually display dramatic decreases in in youthful criminality (with the total number of serious crimes committed by young people over the past 80 years shown on the left, and the murder rates for men of different ages from 1955 to 2000 on the right):
As usual with crazy reactionary politicians obsessed with banning things, video games are a prime target, evidence or no – in 2005 he had GTA3 banned in his prefecture as “harmful material” (the same technique currently being applied to manga in Tokyo proper) despite the fact that the game already had an 18+ rating.
His response to the resultant uproar was to proclaim the “silent majority” supported him.
Other recent comments have seen him baselessly assert that fiction corrupts the youth:
“Young people today have lost the ability to distinguish the virtual from the real, and they are influenced by the virtual into lives of crime […] I think national legal restrictions against games are required.”
Japan’s struggling game industry will probably lose all hope of recovery if he enters office.
His administration also came under scrutiny for publishing draft legislation defining “youths” as “people aged 0 to 30” and then going on to propose various draconian measures restricting youth access to “harmful material,” alcohol, sex, and so on.
Other leading candidates include a communist and a man who didn’t even know anything about the ban until he realised he had inadvertently annoyed its opponents – a none too reassuring election looms.
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Guess the world is coming to an end after all.
the mayans were right after all- the rest of the world will take another almost 2 years
Imperial Japan 2.0.
now i REALLY wish to see that guy brain inside out
they need to die as soon as possible so we can shit on their gravestones.
And of course, all Japanese people can do are be reactionists in what this guy does. There are few, if any, people fit to actually take charge with genuine ideas in Japan these days.
Well, if they keep fucking up, maybe they'll become a moot government that no one really adheres to.
"Protecting our youth from harmful information is a major theme for us." like those saying that politicians are liars and bribed.
what's worse...that this guy is running or that people might actually vote for this guy
...........Thank GOD i don't live in japan, things like this...............nonesence.
Bring Ishihara back.
Japans gonna kill itself and the only thing good thats gonna be left is Miku Hatsune/VOCALOIDS lol
They might even ban Vocaloids, who knows.
They will be banned eventually, for 'causing damage to music industry' or whatever shit they come up with.
I can just see it coming... "Vocaloids are ruining it for all real artists out there. It's unacceptable that a computer software sells more music than many bands who need their income to survive."
vocaloid will make a counter attack and bug them till they died
Reminds me of the outcry by drummers when drum machines were first introduced...
Yeah, and most of them will probably be talentless hacks who need to use auto-tune. That'd be the day.
the only will pass here is Doraemon
welcome to 70's... year of youth of governor
have you ever been in japan? no,you think japan is the holy land of the otaku? or some crap like that,poor guy you have no idea.0_o you have a very weird and wrong image about japan.
have you ever been in japan? no,you think japan is the holy land of the otaku? or some crap like that,poor guy you have no idea,when is the scene gonna believe that akihabara is as little as and as big as the internet?,otaku in japan have gotten less and less from the years gone by.0_o you have a very weird and wrong image about japan.hatsune miku,so that's it? hatsune miku? that's the scene? that's were anime ends, put hatsune miku some boobs,15 years old getting raped and that's it? man...what a mess
Dear lord, shit in and shit out. Now I know why Japan has such a scat fetish. The biggest pieces of shit are in power!
I could follow and understand in general his ardent desires to keep children away from sex and violence concepts within reason... until the 0-30 part. That officially made him a retard.
It is very reasonable and understandable to keep kids away from such things until at least age 10 when they reach the age of reason and their brains can begin making complex connections based on how they were brought up. That way they can officially differentiate everything in games as not reality. But this guy is just a thoughtless idiot. Only thoughtless idiots would even consider giant bans as any type of reasonable solution.
Someone has to pay for his retirement.
He wants the generations beneath him to be slaves.
Not really, old fashion thinking like Ishihara, you'll follow wat you see on any kind of media without judgement.
That's AweSome! Wasn't there an anime called Shigufumi a few years back? When he is elected he can be called The DEATH DEALER on all those well under his toes~ Imagine this in his somewhat dank office for no apparent reason: "TAX-TAX-TAXES on those depraved game Rapers!" underling toe sucker whimpers, "mighty Lord, their all closed~"-"TAX the Young for all their depravity!"-"sir.. they have no jobs and suck on our tits daily~"- A Mighty high octave screech is heard,"The soon to be dead! REMOVE their Pensions!!!! They're WeAk~ WEAEEEKeK!!".. It'll be the Best N. Korean Anime ever produced out of 2012!
I'm not saying I agree with all the bans or with these people being in charge... but does anyone else have a sort of morbid curiosity about what people in Japan will be like if this kind of thing keeps going for a while? It's kinda like watching a Saw movie.... You don't agree with any of the crap that's happening but you get to watch the test subjects....
Artifact you lied to us! you said 'it seems the worst scenario is better than Ishihara' D=!!
Take dumb out, dumber comes in.
What the flying fuck, 30 year old is "youth"? this man needs to go to an adult care center and get sedated, around RIGHT NOW.
Where's Dr. Kevorkian when you need him?
Such protectionism will only create a helpless generation who can't do shit for themselves.
They even lamp shaded this in the Simpson's.
http://www.imdb.com/video/hulu/vi2893414425/
seems the current gen of politicians already is
You think that man is a good sign of an older generation that can do anything right? This man already got elected by someone before.
People who can survive on their own should prefer political representation that does not act on gut feelings and irrationally.
0~30 youth?
Hell yeah! I'm 40yo and I'm a Lolicon... oh wait!
too bad otaku are too busy fapping to their k-on action figures to go out and vote.
lol, japan is finished.
Not Japan; otaku all around the world are finished.
No, it is the beginning of a end. Ever heard of that one?
No NO NO!!! DO NOT WANT DO NOT WANT!!!!! T-T T_T o_O
Another ass with Shi* in his name, and he looks like a dictator, need to go to japan and rig the election to ensure that he will NOT win.
hehe I'm actually scared, more afraid than playing DS2 on hardcore mode
Oh I got a pretty good reason why crime rates dropped, more people started to get into anime
good night sweet japan. (enter date when that fugger assigned to office)
This kinds of politicians are killing Japan's economy and yet people who support them hasn't realized it yet, wat dumb-asses.
Oh shit....
Another Shitstorm has come. . . . . . . .
A Challenger Appears!
there are no winners...
Japan: Game Over in 2012.
Japan can't catch a break can they?
If Japan is looking to the left to solve their economic problems then....LOL
THEY ARE FUCKED. Leftist side of politics means government spending, and where does the government get its money - from the people. Take from one and give to another.
Look, anime/manga are not Japan's main source of revenue - but take that away and your losing a significant source of revenue. With Japan's credit rating being downgraded to poor - they need all the money they can get.
The people of Japan need to wake up and GO EGYPTIAN on their retarded politicians.
and go ahead and try to ban the internet, I know that will go over well with the people....heck, take their porn away and people might start realizing what a load of bull their elected officials are, and the crap they have to go through day in and out to keep those politicians in their comfy lifestyle.
You think there are people in Japan who storm the gates when governments come down hard on them? Wake the fuck up. Stop watching Code Geass and learn the truth about Japan. If the government told the Japanese people that using the internet would make them less Japanese, there would be a complete stop of net use there overnight. They are that racist. They're a placid, useless race of people who do what the fuck they're told to whether it's right or wrong. Personally, I think all the samurai stuff is BS and they were really a nation of feudal otaku who, when they weren't being ordered around by their women, wrote a fictional history of themselves as sword-weilding heroes.
They nid to be like Singapore, do whatever just to earn $$.
japan has very limited supply to weapons, metal pipes ftw
Screw pipes. Katanas ftw.
Off with their thumbs!!!
We need some otaku kamikaze 特別攻撃隊!!!!
Well, isn't the police and JDF cleared to have firearms? Not that most angry otaku would know how to handle them properly, it's not America.
Unless they watch gun-centric anime...
That's the wrong way to use a pipe. Combine them with a few easy to get items and you can make a flame thrower,an air cannon , or even bombs from pipes.
They can make Molotov cocktail.
So how about instead of the guy running for governor we run up metal pipes up his ass?
That's brilliant!
It wouldn't be the first time the yakuza stood up to help the population. They've done so before, after earthquakes. So why not? If that's what it takes...
You know, I completely agree with this. Good thought.
absolutely. yakuza ftw!
Yes precisely, they need to cut all government controls over the economy and then they will thrive and not go boom-and-bust! OH WAI...-
Ever heard of a person known as John Maynard Keynes?
They tried Keynesian economics during the Great Depression, now today, historians believes Keynesian economics extended the US's Great Depression. The problem was reactionary politicians passing things like Smoot & Hawley and trying to whack-a-mole individual sections of the economy trying to improve it, in fact, they worsened it.
Central government control of the economy just doesn't work in a capitalist setup, it actually undermines the system. The only reason China has control of its economy was that the revolution completely changed the economic system that really didn't exist. You cannot centrally control what was from the beginning a laissez-faire style economy. Thats the problem politicians run into nowadays in the United States.
Another point is that we look at the Great Depression, and the solution that FDR suggested, but you should read up on the 1920-21 Depression and study the measures taken there. In fact, Laissez-faire measures were reinstituted tied with government downsizing helped improve the economy. Take note, the depression was the result of the large governmental and tax increases under the Wilson administration (including the institution of the 16th Amendment, a Federal Income Tax, a "Progressive tax" (their words)).
This coming from a history major
wait so dearest history major, please let an economics major talk to you about economics will you.
Keynesian Economics is not the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, Smoot-Hawley was part of the global retreat into protectionism which FAILED. Keynesian Economics is about increased government spending to fill the gap caused by a recession due to business cycles. Keynesian Economics is the New Deal under Roosevelt, which created jobs, created the modern highway system in America and got the country out of the Great Depression.
In fact the laissez-faire policies that you promoted so much were in fact done! by the two republician presidents before Roosevelt, Hoover and Coolidge. and guess what happened when these laissez-faire policies came into place, the recession got even worse!! Laissez-Faire policy worsened the recession --> with low business and consumer confidence, for the government to do nothing as well is to consign the economy to collapse. Keynesian economics props up the economy despite this collapse in business and consumer confidence.
btw one can be laissez-faire in cultural and social issues, but still feel that the government has a role to play in stabilising the economy through the boom and bust cycle. this article is about anime and manga, i don't see how you think you can transpose a laissez-faire approach to culture into the economy, these are two entirely separate fields with entirely separate concerns.
where are you doing your history major? Elementary school? my goodness, even a High School kid knows better than to call Smoot-Hawley a Keynesian policy. Which "historian" believes that Keynesian economics worsened the recession? Why don't you talk to your economics history professor (or in your case your elementary school teacher) and ask him whether there is a consensus that laissez-faire was the way to go during the Great Depression. My goodness, even the monetarists don't think so. wow... just pure stupidity.... i feel bad for you if that's what they are teaching you at school
You're a history major?
Then why don't you tell me who created almost all of the power stations in rural areas?
Don't know? FDR!
U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed a bill that created the TVA on May 18, 1933. The law gave the federal government a centralized body to control the Tennessee River's potential for hydroelectric power and improve the land and waterways for development of the region. An organized and effective malaria control program stemmed from this new authority in the Tennessee River valley. Malaria affected 30 percent of the population in the region when the TVA was incorporated in 1933. The Public Health Service played a vital role in the research and control operations and by 1947, the disease was essentially eliminated. Mosquito breeding sites were reduced by controlling water levels and insecticide applications
I lifted that from another site.
You have FDR to thank for lifting that entire fucking area out of poverty thanks to cheap power.
FDR drastically improved peoples quality of life thanks to good old government help.
The wall streeters didn't give a shit if a bunch of rural people got malaria and died, FDR fixed the shit the free market wouldn't take care of.
FDR saved countless americans lives and he created the foundation for nashville and a number of other big cities in that region that were allowed to prosper thanks to FDR bending the "free market" over his desk and making it his bitch.
Tax and spend is a wee bit better than Borrow and Spend though.
And while taxes are annoying, they're also a necessary evil in order to keep society running.
Firemen, doctors, police officers, garbage collectors, and all the other civil servants do need to get paid as well, for doing their job.
Because entrusting such things to big business is an even bigger mistake, because to them the only thing that matters is the bottom line.
Gulf of Mexico is a good example of that, lets save some money by not ensuring that our rigs are up to the required safety standards. Who cares if something goes wrong, and it causes countless people to lose their livelyhood and/or effects their health negatively.
Even taking into account the fines and damage compensation claims, the fat cats will still be getting their bonus. And to hell with everyone else.
they will not GO EGYPTIAN
they have been groomed to be docile BITCHES, and this will not change
And they shall shall rape them so hard, they'll feel it in the morning when they wake up :D
LOL I'd love to see them try and 'protect' anyone 18+ from 'harmful material'. That's a shit storm of epic proportions no matter where you are.
Saying that left wing economics doesn't work, is not accurate, its propaganda. Mathematically govt spending provides a greater boost to the economy than tax cuts, Its just economics. Long term it is probably more desirable as well since it helps infrastructure and gives more spending power to consumers and since Japan has deflation, yeah consumer spending power is important. Depending on the economic conditions both can work though, like stagflation got owned by right wing economics cuz people had the spending power but the economy still wouldn't grow.
Meh, DPJ isn't even economically left-wing.
LOL - government spending is taking money from paul to pay peter - GOVERNMENT SPENDING DOES NOT WORK!
Someone has to die to archive their goal. Can Japanese youth ready to die for their cause ? I doubt that
Ha-Ha.
The moderate left "leftist" (social democrat and democratic socialist for instance) politics in general are just fine, even financially. The richest countries in Europe mostly are moderate left or were such when they got wealthier.
And more importantly, there's not an instance of 40% of people who live with 5% of the nation's wealth, like in the USA...
Left? It's China there!