Our Formal Opinion on the UN Committee for the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women's "Protecting Women's Rights in Japan - Proposal to Ban the Sale of Manga and Video Games Depicting Sexual Violence"
Introduction:
This year, on February 16th, 2016 the UN Committee for the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women held a "Protecting Women's Rights in Japan" conference. We would like to share our opinion on the "Proposal to Ban the Sale of Manga and Video Games Depicting Sexual Violence."
Opinion Summary:
We are absolutely in agreement that the protection of the rights of women in Japan is important. On the other hand, we think it should be carefully and seriously evaluated whether the measures taken to ensure those protections are valid ones or not. If we are asked to consider whether "Protecting Women's Rights in Japan" requires us to "Ban the Sale of Manga and Video Games Depicting Sexual Violence," then we must reply that that is an absolute "no."
Reasons for Our Opinion:
Reason #1 - The so-called sexual violence in manga and video games is a made-up thing and as such does not threaten the rights of actual people; therefore, it is meaningless in protecting the rights of women.
Reason #2 - In Japan, and especially when it comes to manga, these are creative fields that women themselves cultivated and worked hard by their own hand to create careers for themselves. If we were to "ban the sale of manga that includes sexual violence," it would do the opposite and instead create a new avenue of sexism toward women.
Detailed Explanation of Reasons:
About Reason #1 - It goes without saying that the rape and other crimes of actual real people who experience sexual acts from partners without consent is an actual violation of their rights concerning sexual violence and should obviously be forbidden by law, and that it's necessary to protect and support victims. However, the figures in manga and video games are creative fictions that do not actually exist, and thus this is not a violation of any real person's human rights. We should focus on attacking the problems that affect real women's human rights as quickly as possible.
About Reason #2 - In Japan, and especially when it comes to manga, these are creative fields that women themselves cultivated and worked hard by their own hand to create careers for themselves.
Already in the 70s there were women-focused manga magazines and many talented women manga writers came from them.
In this way, before the Equal Opportunity Employment Act for Men and Women passed in 1986, there was already a space where women flourished and had established the "shoujo manga" genre. And of course, within women's manga, sometimes the topic was of romance and sex.
Among the manga for women in our country, there were titles that took up the history of women's sexual exploitation and slavery. "The Cliff For Those Would Be Parents" by Fumiko Sone was one such work. Against the backdrop of the real history, it is a work that paints the life of a girl who lived in poverty and was sold into service as a prostitute for the Makunishi Harem in Hokkaido's Muroran, and how she lives through the experience.
For the people who live in these times, it is manga like this that creates an opportunity for people to imagine the pain of women living in that era. However, because this work contains depictions of sexual violence, if we employed a ban on the sale of "manga that depicted sexual violence," it would go out of print and eventually people would lose that chance.
If we were asked to give similar examples of manga that would go out of print and be unavailable if the ban on sales of "manga that depicted sexual violence" were in effect, there would be no end to the examples we could give, but "The Song of the Wind and the Trees" by Keiko Takemiya and "BANANA FISH" by Akimi Yoshida would probably be listed among the examples. (Note that while both listed works contain sexual violence toward men, sexual violence is not a problem limited to only women, and therefore should not be treated as exclusively a women's rights issue.)
In this way, it can be predicted that if we were to ban the sale of "manga that depicts sexual violence," a great deal of publishers would cease publication of a huge amount of works. In the creative field of manga, the effect would be that women who have worked so hard to create a place for vibrant careers would have that place shrink right in front of them, as well as have their efforts negated. In addition, if we were to put ourselves in the places of manga readers the chance to know about the history of the sexual exploitation of women would be lost, as well as a method for them to come to know about it. If the creative fields of manga were attacked, trampled on and destroyed with such prejudice, it would damage not only the women manga writers, but also spread to other women creators in the field, as well as the female readers. This would be a sexist punishment that only narrows the career possibilities of Japan's women.
It is noted that on the other hand when it comes to "manga that depicts sexual violence" a certain segment of people are going to find it unpleasant. Nevertheless, to ban expression and commerce unilaterally based on feelings of whether or not something is unpleasant, or viewpoints on what should be moral, is a practice not to be condoned. The basis for feelings about what is or is not repulsive, and moral viewpoints, will differ based on the individual or their region and that culture's segmented local society. The basis for the values in Local Society A and the basis for the values in Local Society B are not necessarily going to match.Therefore it stands to reason to suddenly use one local society's standards as the standards of a society as a whole would only prompt a massacre of discord in conflicting values among the people in the greater society.
If we are to aim for the smooth operation of society as a whole, then there might be workarounds we can implement so that a certain type of person can avoid suddenly running into "unpleasant expressions" they don't want to see, but these should be limited to regulations in zoning and circulation only. We should not ban any manga that depicts "unpleasant expressions" under content guidelines that enforce moral standards unilaterally on society.
Conclusion:
As stated above, we cannot say that banning the sale of manga and video games that "depict sexual violence" is valid, even if we were to agree that the goal of protecting the rights of women is correct.
There is nothing to be gained from regulating fictional sexual violence. However, while you're trying to fix the rights of fictional characters, you're leaving the human rights of real women in the real world left to rot. As well, in Japan, the entire reason we have a media genre such as manga that developed to take on themes such as the sexual exploitation of women came from an attitude to tolerate "drinking the pure and the dirty without prejudice." It's because we had the freedom to express our views and with that to express the view of a world of humans that live and die, that there are pure and wonderful things and dirty and nasty things mixed with each other.
Manga is a field where women have put in their hard work and effort to cut forward paths and cultivate a place of their own. We believe that in order to protect this place from being trampled on, it will need our continued hard work to pass it on to the next generation, and it is this effort that will link to the greater freedom and rights of women.
The End
February 28th, 2016
Kumiko Yamada, Women's Institute of Contemporary Media Culture Representative and Designer