Hello, To Whoever You Are. I Hope A Friend Sent This To You, Or You Found This Scrolling, Or Someone

Hello, to whoever you are. I hope a friend sent this to you, or you found this scrolling, or someone reposted the text elsewhere online. Long story short, if you like anime and manga, we need your help. HERE’S WHY WE’RE MOBILIZING.

As many of you may not know, Kadokawa Publishing, one of the oldest and largest publishers of manga in Japan, and owner of a catalog of IP’s that almost certainly includes your favorite publication or show, has recently named a new CEO, Takeshi Natsuno, who has former experience in the early Japanese internet industry and who currently sits on the board of the World Economic Forum. As one of his first acts since being appointed in March, he went on an online livestream and claimed that manga was too risqué for global appeal and that he was open to exploring imposing “new standards” that would bring, in one swoop, roughly 45% of Japan’s manga industry in line with Apple and Google’s capricious content standards that currently control YouTube, Twitter, Facebook and Apple’s online platforms, such as Music and Podcasts.

This livestream has Japanese fans hopping mad. They’re organizing to try and stop this policy. But they know they can’t push back alone. In order to push back against Kadokawa, they need help from abroad. That’s where you, dear reader, come in.

We cannot control what Kadokawa does directly. But that doesn’t mean we’re out for the count. Individually, Kadokawa has no incentive to listen to any of us, and their CEO certainly seems not to value the input of fans, anyway. In fact, there isn’t even an option on Kadokawa’s contact page to contact Mr. Natsuno unless you’re a shareholder. But there is an institution Kadokawa will respond to, and that institution is the Diet, Japan’s legislative assembly.

The Diet already knows about this threat. Ken Akamatsu, the famous author of Love Hina, has been warning for years about coming regulatory attempts on the anime industry. A panel of female authors has appeared before the United Nations to rebuff calls to ban certain manga from sale. Sony Interactive, after relocating their headquarters to California, announced a draconian censorship code that has seen the market for indies on PlayStation shrink dramatically as Japanese developers panic. This is a real problem, and it is already taken seriously.

There is national momentum behind enshrining anime and manga as key strategic resources for Japanese soft power. The government is currently converting mangaka residences to museums, adding manga properties to historic registers, and establishing national councils to secure the independence of the medium, including government subsidization of a National Manga Center. The iron is hot, and it’s time to strike.

HERE’S WHAT I WANT YOU TO DO RIGHT NOW. BEFORE YOU CLOSE THIS TAB:

In 2012, Japanese voters in Tokyo elected a politician named Taro Yamada, who campaigned on protecting the freedom of expression of Japanese artists from business and governmental regulation. He also wears a bow tie. In 2019, fed up with increasing demands to censor art and media for the upcoming Olympic Games, a coalition of nerds, otaku and their political allies handed Yamada a massive re-election.

You can send a message to Councillor Yamada right here. (please note that bottom checkmark is a newsletter subscription, you might want to turn that off)

I want you to contact him right now. I want you to write a message, in whatever language you speak, explaining that you are a fan of anime from overseas, and that you want this naked subsumption of Japanese media to speech codes dictated from foreign companies stopped this instant. I want you to tell him that you want to join the fight to keep Japanese media, fair, free and independent. I want you to tell him that Japanese media is at risk of being kneecapped by aggressive foreign tech monopolies, and that this is no longer an issue of simple artistic freedom but of naked economic sabotage against competitors.

I want you to put your heart into whatever you write him, and then I want you to send this link to your friends and have them write him. I want so many foreign pleas for help in Councillor Yamada’s office that he thinks foreign spectators were let in for the Olympics. I want him wading through your pleas. I want him to look at his inbox and go “holy sweet pecan pie” and then I want more on top of that.

Councillor Yamada also works with the Association for Freedom of Entertainment Expression, an artists’ lobby that opposes government censorship in Japan. I want you to send them a message, too, and I want you to explain that the United States, through tech companies, is engaging in soft regulatory suffocation of Japan’s domestic media production.

If you really want to pack a punch, I want you to send Councillor Yamada a letter. Snail mail. Copy-paste his address onto your envelope.

〒100-0014 千代田区永田町2-1-1 参議院議員会館623号室

If you’re still pissed off, you can send foreign messages to Prime Minister Suga’s office, but chances are low this will help much. Suga probably doesn’t care, and he’s also busy with a certain sporting event that has his nation on high alert.

HERE’S WHAT I WANT YOU TO DO IN THE COMING DAYS:

Social media platforms are not your friends. But they’re the best hope we have. I want you to disseminate this call to action. I want you to translate it if you can. Ask your Discord friends to help out. Post it on Twitter. Tag anitubers, anitwitter people, anyone you can think of. Come up with some clever hashtag like #KeepMangaFree, I don’t know; I don’t use Twitter or Discord. Use the #NoNewStandards hashtag. You mobilized to keep the Internet free, now manga needs your help, too. Say it loud, and say it with all the fans in Japan who need your help. Don’t let these companies limit free expression.

Make posts in other communities raising awareness. If you don’t want to be associated with this post, don’t even mention it. Disavow us. We’re just passing the signal, grab and transmit. This has nothing to do with GamerGate or any stupid culture war. This is about keeping a medium we all love independent. Whether you’ve only ever read popular shonen or binge multiple series a week, whether you read official translations or fan scanlations or buy the volumes at the bookstore. Whether you’re an angry weeb, a progressive activist, are apolitical, or anywhere in between. Whether you post on animemes, or goodanimemes, or no meme subs at all. This is bigger than that. No matter what, we need your help.

You totally pirated manga at some point. Don’t lie. Now is your chance to give back. Because if we don’t act soon, the fate of manga may not be pretty.

OG POST LINK, with FAQ. Please, I urge everyone and anyone to do their part, even if it seems like just the bare minimum.