Your thoughts on This Particular Topic?

Personally, I really don't see how this bill would result in the decline of the anime industry. All it seems to suggests is that works will be investigated if there are concerns. As long as it doesn't go to far i.e. they investigate every panty shot, then it should be fine. The question should be are the politicians doing this to help a major concern or to just control and regulate?

I can understand why such a bill is being discussed as there are people that may go to far as they are not satisfied with manga and anime.

 

I found this article on Japanator:

Uh-oh: Anti-Loli bills return to Japanese politics
They fought the law, but the law wants to win!
12 hours ago - 6:00 PM on 05.31.2013

Ooh, boy, here we go again! It seems that Japanese politicians have seen the low-hanging fruit, and returned to the subject of legislating morality, with the exploitation of non-existent underage youngsters once again the target du jour.

In what looks to be a national-scale repeat of Tokyo's infamous Bill 156, an alliance of Japan's ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and the right-wing New Koumeito and Japan Restoration Party (the latter of which is headed by Bill 156 proponent Shintaro Ishihara and the recently controversial Toru Hashimoto) are seeking to uncomfortably expand the nation's existing child pornography laws.

Now, this is a really touchy subject, and I'd be doing it a disservice to try to summarize it amateurishly. Instead I direct you to someone fully tuned-in to the issue, professional translator Dan Kanemitsu, who's written extensively about the subject here. It's well worth the read, not just for understanding Japanese law, but how such principles may be applied in your own country.

But if you really, really insist on the dreaded "TL;DR", I've put a few points you can consider below.



The expansion relies on a very problematic definition of what constitutes "child pornography", one so vague that it could encompass virtually any depiction of an underage (i.e. under 18) person.
The expansion specifically targets games, anime, and manga, while excepting media like novels. With the vague definition in mind, the law could criminalize forms of expression that would be considered protected even in the most puritan interpretations of American law.
The move has attracted widespread opposition from the industry, with organizations like the Japan Doujinshi Marketplace Association, Comic Market Committee, Japan Cartoonist Association, Japan Book Publishers Association and the Japan Magazine Publishers Association, and the Japan Animation Creators Association (JAniCA) releasing statements of concern, as well as from industry personalities like Ken Akamatsu (creator of Love Hina) and Leiji Matsumoto (Captain Harlock).
And as a bit of trivia, it's worth noting that Shintaro Ishihara (who's helping champion the expansion) made his early career writing novels that feature graphic depictions of the sexual proclivities of underage youth. If the expansion passes and is implemented, his novels would be protected as normal, but anime and manga creators would run afoul of the law if they attempted to adapt that work. Doesn't seem entirely fair, does it?


I can now understand why the industry is concerned. That Shintaro Ishihara is a real shyster!