Art history and theater professor Robert Peterson lectured on manga to a packed house on Friday at Eastern Illinois University. Peterson said the image of manga as porn is flawed, noting that “Japan has very strict censorship laws” and asserting that most pornographic manga is drawn by fans. This doesn’t exactly square with the accounts I have read . Anyway, he makes an interesting point:
In 2001 a Texas retailer was fined for selling adult manga. The district attorney argued that all comics are intended for children so the retailer was found guilty for selling pornography to children.
Yeah, they should have checked with Joe Camel on that one.
Peterson also says that many female characters in manga are good role models and mentions CLAMP, the manga publisher run by four female manga-ka.
If I remember correctly, in the end he got nailed because it was within a school zone and any selling of porn is illegal in that zone…
As far as pornography in Japan, there’s plenty of the commercial variety, but I think I’d agree that it is probably still mostly amateur, just because of the sheer volume. Comiket is the biggest comic convention in the world and some large percentange of doujinshi is pornographic…
the professor is full of crap. Commercial Japanese prono manga is all over the place, with themes I can’t even write down. The only “censorship” they have is a tiny, semi-transparant block places strategically in “sensitive” places which doesn’t hide anything anyway. Manga’s not REALLY considered porn for normal guys so the censorship thereof is rather lax (aside from some cases when they are published in a manga mag, as with the “Angel” controversy years ago.