In 2011, the National Assembly of South Korea revised laws surrounding child pornography to cover materials featuring “creations of persons who can be perceived as minors” in sexual situations, expanding the definition of illegal practices to include the perceptions of…
Category: International
The Inconvenience of Barefoot Gen
Translator and manga industry expert Dan Kanemitsu submitted the following opinion piece on the recent ban of Barefoot Gen from the perspective of being close to the ground in recent battles involving manga regulation in Japan. In December of 2010,…
New Zealand Library Refuses to Carry Lost Girls
When New Zealand cartoonist Dylan Horrocks (Hicksville, Batgirl) requested that his local Auckland library purchase a copy of Alan Moore’s Lost Girls, the library denied his request with the argument that the book potentially violated New Zealand law. Horrocks received…
Barefoot Gen Pulled from Matsue School Libraries
Keiji Nakazawa’s internationally renowned manga Barefoot Gen, which depicts wartime atrocities from the perspective of the seven-year-old protagonist, has been pulled from primary and middle school libraries in the Japanese city of Matsue. Citing “portions that warrant consideration as appropriate…
Muslim Cleric Renounces Prior Protest Against Danish Cartoons
Seven years after Danish political activist Ahmad Akkari began protesting the caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad featured in Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, he has publicly renounced his former stance and apologized for the affects his protests had. Akkari, a practicing Muslim,…
CBLDF’s Comic Market Speech On Manga Freedom
Last weekend, CBLDF Executive Director Charles Brownstein traveled to Tokyo for the Manga Freedom Speaking Tour, a series of presentations and meetings about free expression issues facing manga and how fans in the United States and Japan can band together…
Thailand’s Overzealous Censors
Thailand doesn’t skimp when it comes to censorship. According to a recent article by Brian Ashcraft at Kotaku, the country’s scrupulous censorship laws commonly disrupt the dubbed anime that is broadcast on Thai television. Whatever is deemed inappropriate — be…
Syria Continues Campaign Against Dissenting Artists
A cartoonist who co-signed a 2011 document calling for the removal of Syrian President Bashir al-Assad and his government was arrested in late July, one more in an ongoing string of arrests, harassment, and disappearances of dissenting Syrian cartoonists. Cartoonists…
CBLDF Executive Director Charles Brownstein to Visit Tokyo for Manga Freedom Speaking Tour
This weekend, CBLDF Executive Director Charles Brownstein will literally travel to the other side of the world — to Tokyo, Japan — for a series of lectures and meetings on manga and free expression, hosted by Comic Market (Comiket), Comitia,…
HarperCollins India and the Pixelated Penises
When Canadian comics artist Chester Brown’s graphic novel memoir Paying For It — about his encounters with 23 different prostitutes — was first published in 2011, it received generally favorable reviews and was widely applauded for its honesty. But in…