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Adult, occult books given government support as part of Tohoku restoration project

6 Comments

Back in 2012 the Japanese government earmarked one billion yen for the Kindigi project which grants subsidies to publishers so that they can digitize their works to sell online. The ebooks are intended to allow people in regions affected by the Tohoku earthquake to get easier access to information. As an added bonus, it was hoped this would give Japan’s ebook market a shot in the arm all over the country as well.

However, one year after the digitization of 64,833 works was completed with tax money having paid for half the cost, a group of people involved in the publishing industry have been distributing flyers and organizing meetings over the handling of Kindigi. They found that among the thousands of ebooks were several that they deemed controversial including 100 “erotic” works such as "Aan… Ecchina Kaikan Ai" (Unn...Dirty Pleasure Love).

The Sendai based group has been handing out pamphlets with the cover of "Aan… Gokujo No Kaikan Erosu & H Zenbu Misemasu!!" (Unn… Ultimate Orgasm Erotic & Dirty: Everything Exposed!!). Along with the title is a caption reading “Is this part of rebuilding businesses?” and information to an event to discuss what titles were selected for Kindigi on May 22.

So how did the government come to select "Unn…" above all other erotic manga anyway?

With Kindigi underway in the spring of 2012, the JPO was established by a publishing industry association to go to each publisher and ask which titles they wanted to be digitized. Those requests were then evaluated by an external review committee who were instructed to “give priority to publications considered helpful (including entertainment) to the people in affected areas.” They were also told that publishers might try to sneak in other titles, so they had to be vigilant with public money.

However, the following November, almost six months after the first requests were reviewed, only 10% of the anticipated amount had been passed into digital formats. This presented a dilemma for Kindigi, because the government subsidies were only good until the end of the fiscal year (March 31).

So while around 6,000 books were digitized in the first year of Kindigi, the later six saw a digitizing frenzy of nearly 60,000 titles to make full use of the budget before the deadline.

According to reports, the 64,833 digitizations contained somewhere around 100 adult themed works including "Kindan No Kikan Ai Gekijo No S & Junjo No M" (Forbidden Pleasure Love: Furious S & Naïve M) as well as some titles dealing with the occult and obsolete electronic equipment. About 2,287 of these books (3.5%) had something to do with the Tohoku region.

As the public grew aware of this, the head of the review committee Akira Nagae issued an apology saying, “Books that I don’t think are really appropriate were collected… This was the result of bureaucratic logic which says to consume as much of a budget as possible.”

On May 7, the JPO asked all publishers involved to review their digitized contents within the following two weeks. They are also considering demanding that the subsidy money be returned in some cases.

Sources: Kindigi, Yahoo! Japan News

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6 Comments
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Interesting. Substantially less than 1% of thr books are questionable yet the headline makes it out that they are the onlyintentionallythat they have received government support.

I am not saying I am in favour of them being available however I find the headline to be misleading and the article to ve intentionally negative. Over 63000 books have been digitalised which is a positive. But lets focus on the negative aspect.

poor

3 ( +7 / -4 )

I do not want my taxes used for this. Let the publishers digitize - would seem an unavoidable course for the future. They should improve the libraries in Japanese public schools - most are tiny.

5 ( +5 / -0 )

I find it utterly ridiculous that publishers were paid to digitize. Anyone who knows anything about modern publishing (i.e. not government officials in Japan obviously) knows that all published books are digitized by the publishers already. The old days of printers laboriously setting little wooden blocks to spell out the letters on a page or standing over photocopy machines then gluing the pages together are long gone.

Publishers take the original manuscript, stick the pages into the feeder tray of a bulk scanner, press the "start" button, then go back to their computer and review the pages for minor formatting errors, before emailing the book to China where a printer produces a couple of thousand copies for the company (and a couple of million copies for the grey market).

As for all this fuss about a little porn ending up in the mix... oh stop being such prudes. One look at the search results for google from any country in the world shows that anyone who's tech-savvy enough to read an e-book is already probably looking at porn.

1 ( +4 / -3 )

It's Japan where the Fax is still used, digitizing is a big thing and not really understood by the Old duds in power. They are uncomfortable with what they don't understand, that's all. Porn is an easy negative they point to. Meanwhile they can stand in a convienent store reading a comic depicting child rape. There are some issued that will only be resolved when 2 or more generations get power.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

Porn is important to.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

I shall have to try to improve my Japanese reading skills...

0 ( +0 / -0 )

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