Ishihara: “Otaku Have Corrupt DNA”
Tokyo’s governor Shintaro Ishihara has accused manga fans of being “abnormal” and having “corrupt DNA,” whilst condemning sexually explicit manga as “causing harm without a single benefit.”
His comments were made at a recent press conference, in which he sought to justify his support of the ban by rambling about genetic defectives:
“There are indeed plenty of perverts in the world. The DNA of these pitiful people is corrupt. They are indeed abnormal.”
The perverts in question are apparently anyone who opposes his ban.
This of course comes not long after he called homosexuals “genetically defective” and “pitiful.”
Another remark saw him criticise loli manga:
“Stories with young children being raped serve no purpose. They cause nothing but harm with no benefit.”
However, in the same press conference he went on to praise Vladimir Nabokov’s classic lolicon novel “Lolita” – “It was shocking at the time, but at that level the description is quite beautiful.”
When it was pointed out to him that when he was criticised during the 1972 publication of his own novel “Shinjitsu no Seikyouiku” (“True Sex Education”) he defended himself by saying “Literature of any kind does not lead children to commit crime or cause juvenile delinquency,” he merely responded that “I was wrong.”
In other recent remarks he again restated his indifference to the industry boycott of the Tokyo Anime Fair, saying “Who cares if they don’t come – they’ll come next year!” and even expressing his belief that the attendance of the anime industry is not necessary to an anime fair at all – “It doesn’t matter if they never attend it!”
All this from the man who has been writing rape novels for the past 50 years.
A synopsis of Ishihara’s 1956 novel “Kanzen na Yuugi” (“The Perfect Game”), loosely adapted into a movie:
A group of youths kidnap a mentally retarded girl whom they brutally rape and keep as a sex slave. After failing to sell her to a brothel, they dispose of her by throwing her off a cliff.
“Taiyou no Kisetsu” (“Season of the Sun”), a 1955 novel which sold a million copies and was also made into a movie:
A tearaway boxer in highschool begins a sexual relationship with a schoolgirl (by sticking his penis through a paper screen door), whom he soon grows tired of. He sells the girl to his brother for 5,000 yen.
The story ends with the girl becoming pregnant with her former boyfriend’s child and dying after a botched abortion, with the protagonist showing remorse for the first time in the story whilst attending her funeral.
“Shokei no Heiya” (“Execution Room”), a 1956 novel with a movie version, was the most controversial of his novels due to all the copy-cat crimes it inspired:
A group of young men pick up two women, who they go drinking with. They slip sedatives into their drinks and subsequently rape them. The girl’s friends catch up with them and stab one of them to death in a fight.
Interestingly, in 1957 a group of 7 16-year-old youths were arrested for gang-raping a 16-year-old girl whom they had drugged. Police later discovered the crime was modelled on the events described in “Execution Room.”
The book was also connected with a case where a middle-school boy crept into his neighbour’s house and placed sedative in their sugar, putting a housewife into a coma.
Another case saw a group of high-schoolers put a sedative into a girl’s coffee and drag her off to a nearby ryokan, where they attempted to rape her. Yet another case involved a group of unemployed youths kidnapping a woman for use as a sex slave.
Incidentally, all Ishihara’s novels are on sale in Tokyo bookshops and can be bought by children with no restriction.
