This document discusses debates around the perception of manga and anime as sexually deviant. Some key points: - Manga and anime are often inaccurately viewed as child pornography in Western countries due to biases and unfamiliarity with the genres. In reality, they span a wide range of genres for both children and adults. - Attempts to legislate fictional content as child pornography run into issues around freedom of expression and the nonexistence of actual victims. Studies also show no correlation between such content and actual sex crimes. - The characterization of manga/anime is often reductive, focusing only on extreme examples while ignoring cultural differences in aesthetics and content. Characters' ages cannot always be determined and

1. A Brief Introduction to Debates
Concerning the Perceived Sexual
Deviance of Manga and Anime
Patrick W. Galbraith
Duke University

2. Common starting point
• “Why are manga and
anime full of sex and
violence?”
• Presumes that manga
and anime are a
problem that needs to
be explained.
• Based on biased view of
comics and cartoons as
media for children.

3. Compared to what?
• Fred Schodt: “North Americans…are often horrified by
the contents of manga because they unconsciously
compare them with American comic books. Yet what
most Americans visitors to Japan fail to realize is that
manga today are no longer a medium for children
alone and that manga have become a mass medium
of entertainment as common as novels or film. … It
therefore makes more sense to compare manga with
videotapes or popular novels. Any video rental store
in the United States easily carries as much sex and
violence as any manga shop in Japan.”

4. Reduce media to “porn”
• Manga and anime developed into fuller forms of expression in
Japan; mass entertainment that reaches adults and children,
men and women, and sustains as many genres as novels or film.
• Not limited by associations with children; there is mature
content, and even room in the market for pornography.
• Would we say that novels or film have too much sex and
violence? Most would find that statement too broad to defend.
• We only get away with making it about manga and anime
because we are unfamiliar with the content and harbor
Orientalist stereotypes about Japan as deviant sexual Other.
• Select extreme examples to confirm stereotypes and work up a
moral panic.

5. “Japanese pornography”
• Minna agechau, licensed by US Manga
Corps and announced at AnimeCon
1991.
• Besieged with news crews all wanting
to know about this new wave of
“Japanese pornography.”
• Fox TV news and the LA Times.
• Under pressure, all copies were
purchased by the original licensor and
presumedly destroyed.
• Righ Stuf Entertainment: “What is
surprising is when the US media finally
discovers anime, it is portrayed as the
logical extreme of pornography.”

6. Issue of style
• In addition to a biased view of manga and anime that
reduce complexity and turn everything into “porn,” there
is the problem is of style.
• The manga/anime aesthetic is most often said to be
“cute,” with round shapes, soft lines and large eyes.
• This tends to make characters appear young, even when
they are not, according to the narrative.
• This, combined with the fact that characters that appear
young are involved in a range of mature narratives, leads
to misrecognition of manga and anime as “child abuse
materials.”

8. Relevant legislation
• Canada: R. v. Sharpe (2001): “‘person’
includes both actual and imaginary human
beings.”
• Australia: McEwan vs Simmons & Anor (2008):
“the word ‘person’ includes fictional or
imaginary characters.”
• United Kingdom: The Coroners and Justice Act
(2009) “requires that a person in an image is
to be treated as a child…despite the fact that
some of the physical characteristics shown are
not of a child.”

9. “Media attention directed towards
the [laws] has been limited so far,
but it appears that there is particular
concern about Japanese manga.”
“The physical features of this
drawing are clearly child-like…”
Details related legal movement in
United Kingdom
Canada
Australia
The United States

10. “Regardless of your personal
thoughts…any visual depiction
…that depicts a minor engaging
in sexually explicit conduct is
obscene. So according to US law
his behavior was criminal and
not merely deviant.”
“Fact: It is against the law to
possess kiddie porn, even if it is
a rendering of an imaginary child.”
From Criminology: The Core (2010),
a university textbook by Larry Siegel
and used widely in the United States.

11. ECPAT Report 2006
• “Furthermore, child pornography is widely seen in ‘anime’ or
‘manga’ (Japanese comics) and in computer games, which are
available in bookshops and convenience stores and often depict
female child characters in pornographic and erotic contexts.
Sections of civil society, including producers and consumers of child
pornography, some academics and lawyers, seem to be
desensitised and accepting of this form of child pornography on the
grounds of ‘freedom of expression’, which is prioritised to the
detriment of greater protection for children. They argue that there
are no actual victims or real children portrayed in such materials,
and fail to grasp the implications that their availability may have on
public attitudes towards children and on sexual crimes against
children. Even though little research has been conducted in Japan
to demonstrate such inter-relationships, studies undertaken in
other regions of the world have clearly exposed it.”

12. Three important things to note
• One, manga, anime and games are widely accused of being
child pornography, despite the fact that actual
pornographic manga and anime is only a small part of the
massive industry.
• Two, those who fail to see that virtual child pornography is
a problem are “desensitized.”
– A “gothic narrative” (James Kincaid) whereby the child is the
absolute good to be protected and the predator the absolute
evil. Any questioning of the evil means standing against the
child and with the pedophiles. Guilt by association can ruin lives.
– Issue of enculturation (Renato Rivera Rusca will discuss).
• Three, studies “clearly” expose the link between manga
and sexual crimes against children, which is untrue.

13. Some results of debates

14. Pornography “depicting minors are readily available and widely consumed.”
However, “the concern that countries allowing pornography would show
increased sex crime rates due to modeling or that adolescents in particular
would be negatively vulnerable to and receptive to such models or the society
would be otherwise adversely effected has not been vindicated. It is certainly
clear from our data and analysis that a massive increase in available
pornography in Japan has been correlated with a dramatic decrease in
sexual crimes and most so among youngsters as perpetrators or victims.”

15. To recap…
• We are misrecognizing the prevalence of pornographic
material, and in the process misrecognizing things as
pornography.
• We are misrecognizing the the real social problem of
(violent) sex crime (against children); data calls into
question the supposed connection between
“pornographic” manga and anime and sexual violence.
• Why, when we have decided in the United States that live-action
violence does not contribute to actual violence,
would be then argue that drawings in Japan lead to crime?
• Over-simplified media effects argument.

16. In Japan
• Less concern now about manga and anime, even pornographic
varieties, because they do not harm anyone in their production or
seem to place anyone at any quantifiably greater risk of sex crime.
• Obscenity ruling against pornographic manga upheld by Supreme
Court in 2007, but if genitals are blurred, there seems to be no
general issue about what expressions are allowed.
• Amendment to the Tokyo Ordinance on the Healthy Development
of Youth in 2010, but only intended for zoning, and only so far
applied to a manga that did not have an “adult manga” mark.
• When legislation was passed on simple possession of child
pornography in 2014, it manga and anime were not included.

17. “The law is meant to protect children. Manga and anime are a separate issue.”

18. ‘Japan’s Kiddie Porn Empire: Bye-Bye?’
(Jake Adelstein, Daily Beast, June 3)
• “This law is designed to protect the rights of
children,” says Mineyuki Fukuda, an LDP
politician and House of Representatives
member who has actively supported the bill.
“Manga, anime, and CG child pornography
don’t directly violate the rights of girls or boys.
It has not been scientifically validated that it
even indirectly causes damage. Since it hasn’t
been validated, punishing people who view it
would go too far.”

19. Three important things to note
• One, what is meant by “kiddie porn?”
• Legislation was meant to protect actual children, and thus focuses
on actual and pseudo child pornography. The most explicit forms of
manga and anime would be called “virtual child pornography.”
• Two, no evidence supporting even indirect harm of the distribution
of this material.
• Three, “thought crimes” (shiso hanzai) are a serious issue in Japan
harkening back to the rise of fascism in the 1930s and 1940s.
Freedom of expression is defended fiercely.
• Mark McLelland: “Since no actual child is harmed in any way as a
result of the creation and dissemination of fictional images, issues
of freedom of expression and thought come to the fore when
legislating against this material.”

20. Back to the issue of misrecognition

21. Note the tone of the report
• “Sexually explicit manga and anime.”
• “Young girls engaged in often violent sex with
older men” as the majority of content.
• “Fueling the darkest desires of sexual
criminals.”
• Content that is “so graphic” that it needs to be
blurred out and “so sexually explicit” that they
“turned [their] undercover cameras off.”

22. Let’s take the mosaic off

23. Note the inaccuracies
• This is a horror manga, not pornography.
• No more graphic than many American horror
films (or crime novels).
• If I put a mosaic on the cover of an American
horror film and described it as child porn, would
that not be odd?
• Where is the porn? It’s listed genres are “Horror,”
“Mystery,” “Psychological,” “School Life” and
“Shounen.”
• Again we have a discourse about “Japanese
pornography,” which reveals our own bias.

24. Puni Puni Poemy (2001)
• In Japan, it is recognized as parody
anime that exaggerates the
sexualization of “magical girls.”
• In Australia, it is MA 15.
• In the United Kingdom, it is R18.
• In New Zealand, it is refused
content.
• Why? Because they claim it “tends
to promote and support the
exploitation of children and young
persons for sexual purposes, and to
a lesser extent, the use of sexual
coercion to compel persons to
submit to sexual conduct.”

28. All right, some examples?

30. Kodomo no jikan
• To be clear: this is not “pornography;” listed genres include
“Comedy,” “Drama,” “Ecchi,” “Mature,” “Romance,” “School
Life,” “Seinen,” “Slice of Life.”
• May 2007: Seven Seas Entertainment cancels its localization.
• Publisher: “My primary reason for canceling…is due to my
recent realization that later volumes in the series can not be
considered appropriate for the US market by any reasonable
standard.”
• But is it? The original author, Watashiya Kaoru (female), had this
to say: “The boundaries on the depictions of loli and so on vary
with each locale, era, and culture…”
• (The objectionable scene is question is a teacher almost getting
an erection when his student rubs up against him.)

31. Novel in fact much
more explicit than
Kodomo no Jikan.
“Only convincing
love story of our
time.” We allow it
in text, but not
in drawings? Why?
If this is not media
bias, then we must
be prepared to say
that some thoughts
should not be
thought or shared.

32. Literary classic Refused content

33. Three important things to note
• One, manga and anime are targeted specifically
for being visual, accessible.
• Two, we speculate that the reader of manga is
simply using the material to feed some sort of
sick sexual desire, but not so for novels.
• Three, the fear that someone might be harboring
pathological or antisocial thoughts and be
aroused by this material (again, all speculation)
goes beyond “pornographic” material.

34. So, that’s all the evidence we need now?

36. Wait a minute!
• While dark and violent, and using a characteristic cute style,
Madoka is certainly not child porn. (No sex at all in the work.)
• Won at the 16th Animation Kobe Awards, Newtype Anime
Awards and the Grand Prize for animation in the 2011 Japan
Media Arts Awards.
• It is certainly a challenging work, but why in the world should
this be a problem? Because we are now seeing it through the
lens of “child pornography,” which then makes it obscene.
• If we are to limit this expression because someone might get
the wrong idea, then all entertainment will have to be
harmless to everyone that might potentially see it, which will
in turn seriously limit freedom of expression.

37. When did Japan start to see characters bathing as child porn?

38. Pedophilic gaze
• Amy Adler: “What does it do to children to protect them by
looking at them as a pedophile would, to linger over
depictions of their genitals, and what does it to do us as
adults to ask these questions when we look at pictures of
children?”
• “As everything becomes child pornography in the eyes of
the law – clothed children, coy children, children in settings
where children are found – perhaps children themselves
become pornographic.”
• Also tend to place the viewer in the position of the
pedophile, always under suspicion of being aroused.

39. Panicked fandom in United States
• “Anime is terrible. It used to be okay. Now, it’s not. It’s inbred
trailer-trash in entertainment form…it’s just a bunch of shit
pandering to perverts and pedophiles. Anime heroes used to be
people with amazing job descriptions; now they’re reasonably
young men who find themselves miraculously sharing houses
with a dozen girls aged six to nine, accidentally almost touching
every other scene.” Kotaku.com (3/3/10)
• Note that very few harem anime ever have dozens of characters
aged six to nine. The author is misrecognizing the age of
adolescent and adult characters based solely on the visual style.
• Note also that the author feels confident in calling anime fans
perverts and pedophiles simply for watching anime.

40. Out of all these characters, perhaps only one “appears to be” six or nine.
(She is actually an alien and 708 years old and officially appears to be eight.
That’s one of the problems with talking about the age of something fictional
– there’s no way to confirm it! You can’t get a birth certificate or anything…)

42. “‘She looks like she has an elementary school girl’s head on a woman’s body,’
my father, a child psychiatrist, commented… The sexualization of underage
(or underage-looking characters) in manga…” Goes beyond “lolicon” or hardcore
stuff to raise questions about manga and anime more generally. Pathologizing.

43. This character is 19 years old.
When in her normal form on the left,
she is between 7.5 and nine meters tall.
A well-endowed giant and a warrior.
When she “micronizes,” a rare anomaly
in her genes means that she looks like
the “child” on the right. She is teased
by the man she loves and treated like
a child. The man dies without ever
responding to her love. Tragic character.
I know an American male who loves this
character, but he insists that he only
loves the “macro” version. He artificially
splits the character to cut off half. Why?
Because he does not want to be
seen by his friends as a pedophile.

44. “Lovers forever.”
Does this image
make you feel
uncomfortable?
Is it because the
person drawing it
or drawn to it might
be harboring certain
thoughts? But how
do we know what
they might be
thinking? Should
we be speculating,
much less writing
laws based on such
speculation?

45. Is it all hypothetical?
• In 2010, Ryan Matheson was arrested crossing the
border to Canada. He was accused of having “child
pornography” on his laptop.
• What did he actually have…
• An image of a moe-style parody (manga/anime
style that appears young) of the Kama Sutra.
• Border patrol described it over the phone to a
detective, who “advised that the images would
constitute child pornography and directed that the
subject be arrested.”

48. Is this obviously “child porn?”
(Can we judge age? Even the
sex of those involved in sex?)
The manga-style character is
itself suspect and dangerous.

49. Non-existent minors and imaginary crimes
• The perceived prevalence of extreme (compared to what we
are familiar with) expressions in manga and anime, combined
with the perceived youth of characters, leads easily to
charges of obscenity. More often than not, this is rooted in
bias.
• Based on speculation that someone attracted to the material
must harbor certain desires and poses a real danger to others,
we tend to imagine and police crimes where there are none.
• The issue is one of freedom of expression. We cannot afford
to align ourselves against certain expressions just because we
do not like them or they make us uncomfortable. We don’t
know what manga/anime fans are thinking, but the law
ought not to be based on speculation and regulation of
thoughts, whatever they may be.

50. Expansion of authority
• We must not regulate based on fear of a “roaming danger”
(Michel Foucault). All this achieves is to put our thoughts
on trial, to make us all suspects and potential sex
criminals and invite expansion of authority.
• Engaging in thought policing, we potentially align ourselves
with a conservative agenda that seeks to control access to
materials that might lead to “bad thoughts.”
• (Takashi Yamaguchi, who has been involved in court cases
and activism surrounding manga expression, will tonight
take us into territory beyond manga and anime and raise
questions about the conservative turn in Japan.)

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53. Chatterley definition of obscenity
• One, “uselessly excites or stimulates sexual desire” (itazura ni
seiyoku wo kōfun mata wa shigeki seshime).
• Two, “harms the proper level of sexual shame in an ordinary
person” (futsūjin no seijō na sei-teki shūchishin wo gai shi).
• Three, “goes against good sexual morals and notions” (zenryō
na sei-teki dōgi kannen ni han suru).
• (This is perhaps a step above the United States, where judges
get to decide the value of a work as if they were art historians
or critics, but it still takes us into dangerous waters. Should
we be speculating about what does and does not arouse
people and to what extent? Also “proper level of sexual
shame,” “ordinary person” and “good sexual morals” seem
suspect.)

55. Manga-style character is suspect
• Author ties the video to “lolicon,” a keyword in debates about
manga and anime as virtual child pornography.
• Is this video, which contains no sex, somehow tied to lolicon, child
pornography and hence a culture of child abuse?
• We are speculating about what people think…
• Some commenters say that the video is not about lolicon, but
rather 16-bit games (youth, fantasy and nostalgia).
• Murakami Takashi: “Mister’s goal with Pharrell’s music video was
constructing a ‘landscape of an innocent summer dream.’ But it’s
very possible to imagine that this dream would seem like a
nightmare when viewed from the stance of someone like the
person who wrote this piece.”
• Pedophilic gaze (Murakami also brings up Orientalism)