3.17: Time Over

Show Notes

This week, we review and analyze Mobile Suit Gundam ZZ (機動戦士ガンダムΖΖ) episode 19 - “Ple and Axis” (プルとアクシズと) - discuss our first impressions, and provide commentary and research on the origin of Elpeo Ple's name (pronounced ElPee Puru).

This episode comes with a content warnings - the research on the origin of Elpeo Ple's name deals with the history, sociology, and legal efforts to prevent creation and distribution of simulated (ie drawn) child pornography in Japan. The topic is also discussed extensively in the talkback.

- News article written after Kyoto and Nara criminalized simple possession of Child Pornography:

Tomasz Janowksi, Teppei Kasai for Reuters, Pressure on Japan for stronger laws on child pornography, SEPTEMBER 19, 2012, available here.

- News article noting increasing enforcement against child pornography traffickers but also noting criticism that Japan's lack of a ban on simple possession at the time was hampering international enforcement efforts:

Reuters, Japan police crack down on 300 child porn cases, August 8, 2008, available here.

- News article about the passage of the 2014 amendments to the 1999 law:

Arata Yamamoto for NBC News, Japan Finally Outlaws Possession of Child Pornography, June 18, 2014, available here.

- Opinion piece reflecting on passage of the 2014 law, opposition to it, and its limitations:

Sawa Omori for Al Jazeera, Manga and anime: Japan still treating children as sexual objects, August 11, 2014, available here.

- Newspaper article discussing passage of the 2014 law and the provisions, aimed at simulated child pornography, that were stripped from it:

The Japan News by the Yomiuri Shimbun, Possession of child porn to be banned, June 7, 2014, available here.

- Article regarding the "Junior Idol" industry of girls under 15 and as young as 9 who appear in commercial clothed-but-sexualized photo spreads:

Jun Hongo for The Japan Times, Child Porn Scantily Disguised as Art? Photos of preteen girls in thongs now big business, May 3, 2007, available here.

- Law review article looking at Japanese laws regulating simulated or virtual child pornography and proposing methods to improve compliance with its international treaty obligations:

Cory Lyn Takeuchi, REGULATING LOLICON: TOWARD JAPANESE COMPLIANCE WITH ITS INTERNATIONAL LEGAL OBLIGATIONS TO BAN VIRTUAL CHILD PORNOGRAPHY, Georgetown Journal of International and Comparative Law, Vol 44, available here.

- Wikipedia article on Tokyo's local ordnance that gives the city limited power to regulate pornographic manga.

- Article regarding Watsuki Nobuhiro's child pornography arrest and conviction, plus the subsequent return of his manga to Shonen Jump:

Brian Ashcraft for Kotaku, After Child Pornography Fine, Rurouni Kenshin Will Resume Publication This June, April 23, 2018, available here.

- Article on the legislative process and policy-maker debates that produced the 2014 law:

Watanabe, Mayuko (2017) : An Analysis of the Japanese viewpoint on regulatory policy of virtual child pornography, 14th Asia-Pacific Regional Conference of the International Telecommunications Society (ITS): "Mapping ICT into Transformation for the Next Information Society", Kyoto, Japan, 24th-27th June, 2017, International Telecommunications Society (ITS), Calgary. Available at https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/168547/1/Watanabe.pdf

- The US legal case mentioned in the piece that struck down a ban on simulated child pornography as being an over-broad limitation on free speech:

ASHCROFT V. AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION, 535 U.S. 564 (2002). Available at https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/00-1293.ZO.html.

- The Iowa case that found imported lolicon manga to be obscene:

U.S. v. Handley, 564 F.Supp.2d. 996 (S.D. Iowa 2 July 2008).

- A brief explainer on Obscenity law by the Cornell Law School Legal Information Institute.

- U.S. Department of Justice's Citizen's Guide to U.S. Federal Law on Child Pornography.

- United States Sentencing Commission's History of the Child Pornography [Sentencing] Guidelines.

- The introduction of this book addresses the culture of silence around child pornography in Japan and the challenges of researching it:

Mark McLelland, The End of Cool Japan: Ethical, Legal, and Cultural Challenges to Japanese Pop Culture, (Routledge 2016).

- More articles, book chapters, etc.:

Kenneth Alan Adams, The Sexual Abuse of Children in Contemporary Japanese Families, The Journal of Psychohistory; New York Vol. 34, Iss. 3 (2007).

Patrick W. Galbraith, Lolicon: The Reality of 'Virtual Child Pornography' in Japan, Image & Narrative, Vol 12, No 1 (2011).

Patrick W. Galbraith, Seeking an Alternative: "Male" Shojo Fans Since the 1970s, from Shojo Across Media: Exploring "Girl" Practices in Contemporary Japan (2019).

Patrick W. Galbraith, "The lolicon guy": Some observations on researching unpopular topics in Japan, from The End of Cool Japan: Ethical, Legal, and Cultural Challenges to Japanese Popular Culture, Edited By Mark McLelland (2017).

M. Gigi Durham, The Lolita Effect: The Media Sexualization of Young Girls and What We Can Do About It, (Abrams 2009).

Shari Savage, Just Looking: Tantalization, Lolicon, and Virtual Girls, Visual Culture & Gender, Vol 10, 2015.

Tomoko Saotome, The Reality of Sexuality for Teenage Girls in Japan, Japanese Medical Association Journal, Vol 53, No 5. Available here.

- Report discussing how aspects of Japanese culture, including a code of silence, contributes to widespread sexual exploitation of children and under-reporting of the problem in official sources:

ECPAT Country Overview on Japan: A report on the scale, scope and context of the sexual exploitation of children, 2018, available at https://www.ecpat.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/ECPAT-Country-Overview-Japan.pdf.

- English text of the Japanese Constitution.

- Record of a 1997 Senate Hearing on the subject of Proliferation of Child Pornography on the Internet (S. Hrg. 105-214).

- Unofficial English translation of Japan's 1999 law banning Child Pornography prior to the 2014 amendments.

Mobile Suit Breakdown is written, recorded, and produced within Lenapehoking, the ancestral and unceded homeland of the Lenape, or Delaware, people. Before European settlers forced them to move west, the Lenape lived in New York City, New Jersey, and portions of New York State, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Connecticut. Lenapehoking is still the homeland of the Lenape diaspora, which includes communities living in Oklahoma, Wisconsin, and Ontario.

You can learn more about Lenapehoking, the Lenape people, and ongoing efforts to honor the relationship between the land and indigenous peoples by visiting the websites of the Delaware Tribe and the Manhattan-based Lenape Center. Listeners in the Americas and Oceania can learn more about the indigenous people of your area at https://native-land.ca/. We would like to thank The Lenape Center for guiding us in creating this living land acknowledgment.

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