-- Manga creator Takeshi Nogami ('Strike Witches'), in an open letter to CNN regarding "offensive" and "insulting" RapeLay coverage
Monday, April 5, 2010
Rationality
"Those products are developed for rational adults. You surely don't believe that a rational adult would be influenced by such a game into committing rape, do you?... We make works of art. Let me say that again. It is just art. I assume that you are capable of distinguishing fiction from reality like we do. Are you not?"
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I agree that being more open about pornography and hentai in games (as well as in general) is a good thing, and that couching the debate in terms of their influence is inane. The CNN article is willfully ignorant, especially because many hentai games do portray relatively healthy relationships. If you want to really analyze it, games promote viewing the women as human being possessing desires and tastes and objectives of their own in a way that most film porn fails to because they include a wooing period where you get to know them as a person and not as just a body. You don't NEED to justify it this way for it to be worthwhile or even acceptable, but it remains that you CAN and that makes the sensationalist, slanted article that much more offensive and insulting.
I think that fantasies are powerful. Being able to indulge your fantasy with art instead of in the real world is an especially healthy thing. If you try to repress your fantasies, they just get stronger and more insistent, which is part of how we get priest pedophilia scandals and gay politicians campaigning against their own interests. Some fantasies are okay to play out in real life (sexin' up another dude), and some are not (sexin' up a child) but in both cases treating yourself like a freak just makes you act like a freak.
Yes, by all means, let us listen to the Japanese man about our backwards attitudes towards rape¡
More seriously, RapeLay is visually arresting and makes for good newslike content, because it offends more people who see it. A less breathless analysis of gender relations in Japan would not get the same ratings: many fewer people will be offended by how actual Japanese women are oppressed and exploited.
I thought it was pretty weird that CNN decided to dig this up and run with it.
Everyone at the school where I teach was abuzz about it on Friday. I actually directed the students to your Slate article - really good piece of journalism, there.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, I can't say the same for the CNN segment.
"Hentai games are not new for Japan. This country has long produced products the rest of the world would call pornographic. But before the internet shrunk the world, it stayed here."
Wow. I'm not usually one to punching-bag the mainstream media, but that is pretty intensely bad.
The quote assumes that adult human beings are wholly rational, when quite clearly we are not. While it's unlikely that playing Rapelay will directly cause someone to commit rape, it would be naive, arrogant and paradoxical to believe these games would have no affect on the human psyche at all.
But yeah, the CNN coverage, from what I've heard, is pretty terrible; however, sorry to say, it's also par for the course in regards to the mainstream press' treatment of video games. They'll grow out of it – eventually.
Takeshi Nogami's letter in defense of Rapelay is a laundry list of misconceptions.
He ignores the likely very large amount of unreported rapes.
He says men and women are equals in politics and law. (It's funny because this is probably the area where the discrimination is worst)
He says Akihabara and Ikebukuro are utopias where everyone lives happily with no discrimination. No where is like that.
When you look specifically at one game it might not seem like a big deal, but the vast majority of porn out there involves sexual assault. and I'm talking about all porn here, including stuff produced in America.
Clearly the fantasy of sexually controlling women is powerful and extremely popular, and the porn industry is both feeding off of and encouraging it.
Regardless of how poorly written and racist the CNN article was, I find Takeshi Nogami's letter equally offensive.
News outlets are opportunistic, and love to focus on the fringes of any movement, because it makes for better copy. Nowhere is this more evident than in the political sector. I'm not sure I get the outrage on either side. CNN is doing what it always does, which is attempt to get more people to consume their product. In this case, they're focusing on a fringe game that isn't even published in this country, and probably can't be understood outside of the Japanese sub-culture in which it exists. Making a bigger mountain out of the medium-sized mountain CNN made out of a molehill is counterproductive, I think.
I think it's also important to note that CNN has been reported as having lost "almost half" of its viewers during the course of last year. This story could just be a sign of desperation on their part (or an indication of why they lost so many viewers in the first place).
Takeshi's point is essentially correct, and arguing about its semantics serves little purpose. You can argue all you want about the rationality of the human mind and its susceptibility to manipulation.
A work such as Rapelay does not have the intrinsic quality of turning people toward rape.
The moment we let the behavior of the deranged fringe (which certainly exists) define our sense of morality, we are utterly screwed as an educated, modern society.
"Simpsons Porn" is illegal in Australia and lands within paedophilia laws. So here, any ethical debate regarding animated rape is null and void from the start considering the Japanese affinity for sexualizing school girls and the fact that rape is a crime in the real world. Chances are, with the "Simpsons" precedent owning this sort of stuff will ruin your life.
..and also, thanks for the heads up regarding 'our backwards' thinking regarding rape. Dickhead.
This coming from a guy who lives in a country where someone just married an anime character. Japanese have had a hard time of separating the reality from fiction: they believe women DO enjoy rape, that fondling women on a train is satisfactory, and women in turn believe that if they aren't fondled, something is wrong with them. Don't forget, Japan used to have public vending machines where you can buy used panties, still doesn't teach sex education and is listed the #1 perverted country in the world. Rational? I think not.
The thought of making a game ABOUT rape is NOT a rational thing to do, so that makes the entire argument backwards.
If we're being fair here, making a game about murder (GTA, Manhunt, God of War, etcetcetc) is not entirely a rational thing to do either. This is why it's FICTION. It's good for people to make some offensive fiction. I am strongly opposed to censorship in general principle, but if you want to try and censor eroge you also need to censor mankillers. That seems like an extremely counterproductive move to me anyway, and what makes it worse is that the article doesn't seem to make any distinction between Rapelay and more benign eroge. That's like rejecting the difference between Manhunt and Dead Space.
By what organizations, what standards, and what studies is Japan rated the "#1 perverted country in the world?" if I may ask? There persist such backwards attitudes about sexual assault in nearly every country. You could say that Americans think that women who have the audacity to walk alone deserve to be brutally raped. Of course few of us really believe that but the attitude does exist here. If somebody wrote a news article saying that the porn industry here is why American men are all a bunch of slavering sicko rapists, I'd get offended and probably go into defensive overdrive mode too
I have to agree with Peter's comments; Nogami's position is absurd. While I don't think that playing the game would prompt someone to go out and commit rape, in the same way that I don't think violence in games makes a killer, in my opinion, games like this which promote rape or sexual violence against women should have no place in the industry. To try to justify rape as art is incredibly irresponsible.
Now I don't agree with censorship in general, and I wouldn't call for a ban on any and all violence, but I think the context is important. I tried Manhunt when it was released, which by all accounts was a very average game violence-wise, but I couldn't stomach the premise behind it, that of a snuff movie.
With regards to Hentai games, i'm undecided. I do still think there's room for dating-sims, and maybe even Hentai games which promote healthy relationships. But arguably some of the games are more porn than erotica, and ultimately they're undermining the value of women right there, not to mention, as Peter said, that the vast majority of porn promotes sexual violence against women. The whole porn industry is set up to exploit - both the providers and the consumers - and is not something to be dismissed lightly as harmless fantasy.
What really winds me up about these debates (and I'm talking porn in general here, as the rapelay controversy is pretty representative of those arguments) is the depressing ratio of ideology to fact on both sides. While I've seen nothing to convince me that things like rapelay increase the likelihood of someone becoming a rapist, the appeal to 'rational human beings' is a joke. The idea that rapists are some kind of fundamentally different creature from ordinary people is (while I'd love to believe it) a very dangerous one, as is the idea that rape is incredibly rare. We don't know what makes people rapists, but it's a behaviour that's on a continuum from other, more common behaviours, and you can't dismiss potential causes of it out of hand - sure, there's clearly a difference between fantasy and reality. But to act like we know clearly how big that difference is, or how the two relate, is begging the question and taking an easy route out of a difficult issue.
Similar problems are raised by the other side of the argument, as exemplified by Peter's comment, don't have time for more now but I'll check back later.
@Dolphan
And how do you prove that something isn't a contributing factor to rape?
Ok, so some people think Rapelay is a potential cause for rape, and have absolutely no factual basis to back it up.
What can you even answer to that? What choice is there but to dismiss their claim out of hand?
Yet they're being taken seriously because they're screaming rape at the top of their lungs. Has "rape" become like "pedophilia" now, a keyword to shut down cognitive functions?
There have been a few good articles against Rapelay (Leigh's, for one), but all they amount to can be summed up as "I don't like it".
@Julian
"Murdering" games do have similarities to "sex" games, as they both appeal to baser instincts. There are, however, differences. Most "murder" games clearly have "bad guys" that we're supposed to kill for the greater good. Games such as Rapelay gives the player victims, girls that have done nothing wrong but go out on the street.
Do people aspire to murder? A small number of people with mental problems do. Do people aspire to have sex? Yes. Do people aspire to rape? I don't think anyone does, but there really is a fine line between what is consensual and not.
The last poll I saw was on G4, there was another poll here: http://www.geiguy.com/personal/japan-wins-most-perverted-country-competition/
My husband also went to Japan and saw how many open porn store fronts there were.
The common American thought about women wanting to be raped is no longer as strong as it once was; it was once a decision on the law books that has LONG since changed. No one thinks that way anymore.
It's fine that he got defensive, but he's going a bit overboard with his arguments and not looking at what goes on in his country, where they develop sex robots and have silicone boobs on walls above their urinals.
Let's also consider that, culturally, Nogami-San may well be correct in rationalising those games as Art. The Japanese culture's view of Art is less confused and cluttered by value judgements than Western culture.
The Japanese use of the term Art at it's basic level refers to any creation, or creative endeavour. The term has long been seen to include Manga and Anime and perhaps as a result of this more accepting use of the term as a descriptor, there's less hang-ups and deliberation over there as to what qualifies as 'Art' and what does not.
I do strongly believes that rational adults would not believe a video game as real and commit the unwanted crime such as rape. We all on liners should have the capability to distinguish fictions from reality in life.There are so many best online video game rental service available on web world offering these fictional sexy video games to play free online. But fiction is always fiction . Can never be facts.
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Scottish pop artist Momus showed some clips of Rapelay to his Japanese girlfriend, and she apparently "found them hilarious":
The reason Hisae laughed so much was that the "raped" girls have such a prissy and camp way of expressing their dismay that you can't take the thing seriously. "Not with that uncircumcized thing!" one declares, in the tones of a lady asking a passerby not to let his poodle foul the footpath.
In other words, I think there's perhaps an entire layer to the "experience" of the game that we're missing because we're not, you know, Japanese. Which isn't to say that Rapelay is much more than a cheaply produced jiggle-physics game with a taboo angle, designed to get people off or whatever ... but that perhaps we're taking too literally something that is far more tongue-in-cheek than we understand.
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