Comic Megastore Magazine Canceled
Japanese publisher Core Magazine has announced the end of publication of the Comic Megastore adult manga anthology magazine following yesterday’s arrest of Core Magazine editorial department chairman, 55-year-old Akira Ota, along with two other employees, on charges of violating Tokyo’s media obscenity code. The three individuals are being held responsible for the publication and sale of the Comic Megastore and the Nyan 2 Club amateur erotic photography monthly magazines. Both magazines are labeled “adults only” and both publications employ (minimal) mosaic censoring. Ota and one of the other charged individuals have claimed that they believed that Core Magazine’s publications were within the stipulations of Tokyo’s obscenity laws. The third arrested individual has reportedly already plead guilty as charged. Comic Megastore has been in print since 1993 and as of this spring sold over 20,000 copies each month.
Core Magazine Co., Ltd. was founded in 1985. The publisher employes 115 people and generates over 17 million yen ($170,000 USD) in monthly sales from the publication of a wide variety of adult and non-adult periodicals.
Source: Anime News Network
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God, this sort of news. From a global perspective J-censorship will always be baffling–though also a good place to begin discussion and spread knowledge of the fascinating laws and culture of Japan–but I can’t shake the feeling that Core is the victim of corrupt politics or organized crime here.
It’s like the oddly specific crackdowns on this or that “entertainment” establishment every so often in the name of curbing prostitution. Why all of a sudden? Why one specific club involving inappropriate towel usage while the dozens of parlors to its left and right, openly engaged in far worse activities, get a pass? It reeks of someone failing to pay the appropriate entities their “dues” and losing “protection”, or an elected nuisance making an example of an easy target (perhaps after clearing it with the mafia, who are often said to regulate business and legal goings-on more than the police in any district). Someone rubs someone wrong (pardon the pun?) and a publisher gets shut down. Someone failed to bribe someone. That sort of feeling. It actually makes the laws seem farcical, stirs the pot without making any changes, and destabilizes the (admittedly crummy, if just part of all I’ve speculated above is true) foundations of free business in a country that is really, really, really stretching thin in all its industries.