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Minori: We’re Banning You For Your Own Good!

Category: Japan Game: Default Posted on Jun 26, 2009 3:27 am


If you have no idea what is going on, read the notice of eroge studio Minori first in my previous article.

The recent decision by Japanese eroge studio Minori to close off its site to the outside world under the pretense of “defending our culture” has been clarified with a fuller explanation, which can be read below:

The original notice of barbarian exclusion:

minori official website.
This website cannot be browsed excluding Japan.

Some foreigners seem to be having an antipathy against EROGE.
Therefore, We prohibited the access from foreign countries, to defend our culture.
Sorry for you of the fan that lives in a foreign country.

minori Inc.

To which has been added some carping about how Japanese couldn’t possibly oppose their own politicians, and need foreigners to do it for them:

Why minori blocking foreign accesses?

We are little perplexing now because we received a lot of response about this issue from foreign people.

Now we will tell you the short detail about the reason why blocking you to this website, because of we, all Japanese EROGE makers were facing at the problem, the crisis of “Freedom of speech”.

Currently, The bill that allows to limiting the content (It is censorship. Isn’t it?) to all EROGEs is being discussed in the Diet because intellectuals and politicians said “Japanese EROGE were being problem and troubled with the foreign country. Therefore we should make EROGE hidden away from foreign country, and also its content should be limited and censored”.

Okay, now we trusted the word what they said at once. So we blocked you to make stay away from the trouble.

…Do you like that?

If not, please tell your idea directly to Japanese government and politicians.
(For example, you can write the letter to the administration of Japan directly from here.)
(If you can comprehend Japanese…There is information of the politicians in Japan.)

Otherwise, you just can talk your idea about this issue at your blog or other media to inform the existance of this problem to the public. It would be very helpful for us.

If you do so, we might be able to recover the “Freedom of speech” and the barricade lying in between us would be taken away.

Please help us.

We hope this separation would be only for short moment.

Sincerely.

Of course, it is rather naïve to think that Japanese politicians, particularly the ardently feminist ones, are doing anything but seizing upon convenient foreign outcry in order to use it as a rhetorical appeal, so as to push their own agenda of censorship, and even more naïve to think that they will take any notice of non-voting foreigners when even their own constituents fail to oppose them.

If foreigners have such power over Japan, it seems strange endless foreign histrionics about the evils of whaling have failed to get it banned…

It also seems improbable that the Japanese mass media will be interested in “foreign anime fan outcry over Japanese censorship,” when it can instead manufacture the sensational outcry against “rape games in our shops!”

The reaction against the move internationally has been less than positive, but predictably the online reaction in Japan has been delightedly xenophobic: we hear almost unanimously that “This can’t be helped”, “Damn foreigners are attacking our culture!”, “They are all just dirty pirates anyway!”, and “All eroge makers should ban foreigners!”

Many joyously call for “eroge sakoku”, sakoku, “closed country”, being the term for the long centuries of isolation the nation endured due to Shogunate paranoia about foreign influences.

Any suggestion that responsibility for these outrageous restrictions on freedom of expression lie with wicked foreigners is of course facile scapegoating, as any reference to the following three facts will attest:

•The mass media reports condemning eroge all originated in Japan, with the overseas reaction barely registering.

•The politicians calling for bans are all Japanese, and come from all three major parties.

•The eroge industry body, the EOCS, made no protest whatsoever and then censored a vast variety of material which was never even mentioned by domestic or international media.

It seems many Japanese being subjected to this oppressive ban would rather blame foreigners than actually make any effort to oppose the ban themselves, a position which it is hard to be sympathetic to.

Originally from SankakuComplex.com

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Well, I have nothing more to add as my comment, I don't have to.

comments ( 11 )

Folder
Post Time : Jul 09,2009 4:27 pm

ah please.. probably a minor group is making a big deal.. its like crime,sex,violence + drugs on T.V for NA but you know WHAT???? IT ISN"T LIKE THAT FOOL!

lumpasaur
Post Time : Jul 09,2009 5:19 am

 doesnt seem to be anything wrong with this +

lumpasaur
Post Time : Jul 09,2009 5:19 am

 doesnt seem to be anything wrong with this +

DukeMagus
Post Time : Jun 27,2009 9:48 am

in fact... it looks like "cultural imperialism" from me, and japan is the victim...

 

truth to be told, they ALMOST NEVER do what the ero/hentai games show (well they have less rape cases than many contries)

 

if you really want to understand, take these "politically incorrect" games as some kind of escapism... just remember that in terms japanese are one of the most strict cultures of the world... In USA if you wanna be a rebel, you smash cars and spray down statues, there the best you can do is paint your hair green and use an odd costume.

they're already repressing themselves, it is one of the most "civilised" countries because of it. since tehy can't DO anything wrong, they IMAGINE all the wrong things they will never do...

Have you ever played "God of War"? did you like it? now WILL YOU KILL EVERYONE BECAUSE OF IT?

 

case closed, Japan are innocent, and the foreigns wanting to repress their culture are a bunch of imperialist paranoids.

naridas
Post Time : Jun 26,2009 11:38 pm

 @rent no means to flame at u you but why do they have to be "forced" to learn english, why dont we learn japanese and understand them better.  By learning their language u understand their culture a lot better than they just speaking english, since their language is also their mentality

no comment about the article though ^^"

rent
Post Time : Jun 26,2009 7:41 pm

Japanese people have been for generations in their culture keeping own things or own secrets(example, secret receipe, inventions etc.) within themselves and have the natural habit to do so except when it comes to commerical profits(example, cars, tvs, washing machines, restaurants, few online games etc.). If all the population can speak, listen, read, write English then their evolution of thinking will change and be in tune with the world today and beyond.

Sasame
Post Time : Jun 26,2009 4:24 pm

Bah, how lame. They blocked foreign IP's just because they were being bashed by them. They are just ignoring the problem, not dealing with it. This is great policy. Not everyone is agains't this shit that has been going for the past 3 weeks. In doing so they probably blocked 2/3 of the people that even go to their site. 

ReaperV
Post Time : Jun 26,2009 10:49 am

There is another article about this already :X.

itsJUN
Post Time : Jun 26,2009 8:45 am

Rape is wrong, must i say more?

Cyrusnagisa
Post Time : Jun 26,2009 5:19 am

*sigh* see what happens when people try to enforce their beleifes on another group? -.-

shamaru486
Post Time : Jun 26,2009 4:28 am

aaaaaa?WWWHHHYYY?