>> |
Anonymous
SUMMERY OVERVIEW OF CENSORSHIP IN JAPAN This summery was written by Dan Kanemitsu
???Censorship in Japan have been alive and well ever since people in authority first encountered "vulgar" material being published by wood block prints during the Tokugawa period (about 1600 to 1850's.) From that day on, the tug of war between over-zealous moralists versus the enterprising publishers and artists continues on until this day. ???After the Meiji Restoration, the new "modern" government of Japan issued the new constitution in 1889. This constitution was not modeled after the US one, but on the German (Prussian) and British system instead. Guaranteeing freedom of expression was not on the top of the agenda in this constitution. Soon the government was going after various new "unruly" newspaper publishers in order to suppress political opposition against the government. When the government was drafting a law aimed at regulating the content of mass distributed publications, they included a clause which forbid the production, distribution, and publishing of material which can be deemed as being "injurious to public morals." The law which includes this clause, Article 175 of the Penal Code, inacted in the 1880's, is still in force today. The same law that forced the lower sections of nudes by Renoir and Manet to be covered by cloth is the same law that still remains at work behind the censorship of sexually explict material in Japan today.
|