The immensely popular Japanese manga industry is reporting increasing pressure from multinational credit card companies — many based in the U.S. and directly targeted by anti-porn crusades by religious conservatives — to censor their contents to maintain their current payment processing arrangements.
Advertisers are always looking for new traffic sources to convert their offers. Manga and anime websites are a great source of traffic even for adult offers, but targeting to this mainstream audience requires a different creative thought process, along with adhering to certain restrictions.
7-Eleven Japan, along with another Japanese convenience store retailer, Lawson, both publicized today that they plan to stop selling adult-themed magazines and explicit manga comics by the end of August.
The U.N.’s special rapporteur on the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography, Maud de Boer-Buquicchio, has asked Japan to ban manga comics that have "extreme child pornographic content," a move that critics say would limit artistic freedom of expression.
Japan's upper house of Parliament passed a bill Wednesday that makes it the equivalent to a felony, with prison sentences up to a year and $10,000 penalties, for those found with explicit images of children.
The chief editor of manga magazine Comic Mega Store and two others were arrested today for allegedly distributing obscene images in two magazine both marked with 18+ labels.
Tokyo's manga porn crackdown was stepped up today as the city's Metropolitan Assembly's General Affairs Committee approved a proposed ordinance revision aimed at regulating sales and rental of manga that contain sexual depictions of minors.
