ComicBitsOnline.com

 Considering the nature of Japanese Hentai and its extremely graphic sexual nature in some cases,as well as Japan’s previous laid-back attitude to the material,the news that a Hentai creator has been arrested was a stunner!

But there is still confusion amongst groups discussing the matter.  Simon at Icarus Publishing writes:

 ” Japanese blogs and forums have been set abuzz by the arrest of a man for allegedly publishing “obscene” doujinshi.  39-year old Masaya Miyashita (宮下昌也), a professional illustrator known for his work on erotic PC games, was taken by Matsuyama police on charges of distributing obscenity through five bookstores.  (Miyashita supposedly worked under the pseudonym “Shiyami Yasamata” and has a website which is inaccessible at the moment.  But here’s the archived version.)  6,600 copies of his doujinshi were confiscated.  Police also estimate Miyashita has made a profit of over 15 million yen from doujinshi since 2003.

Most bewilderingly, nothing in the news reports or blog entries I’ve looked at thus far give any indication as to why, out of the tens (hundreds?) of thousands of adult doujinshi and manga published in Japan, Miyashita’s works were specifically targetted.  Consignment sales of doujinshi through bookstores is nothing out of the ordinary, and with so little concrete information, some bloggers have sinisterly posited that the investigation may have originally been spurred by tax evasion suspicions, along with far more obvious theories such as the ongoing media backlash against “lolicon” or lack of proper mosaics.

Incredibly, police have also indicated that they may pursue actions against the printer and bookstores as well (highlighting one of the truly insipid aspects of obscenity prosecution… this is the only crime where law enforcment proceeds on an assumption of guilt.  For something to be obscene, it has to be found obscene by the courts.  So before Matsuyama police decided to arrest Masaya Miyashita, the printer and bookstore were perfectly within their legal right to sell those books since they weren’t obscene… until the police said they were!)  It is unknown which printer/s and bookstores may be targetted, but from the video at Ehime Shimbun it appears the books were printed at the popular doujin-press Bro’s, while the bookstores are likely the usual major doujinshi sellers such as K-Books, Toranoana, or Melonbooks, although one can’t be certain as any evidence of the books must have surely been removed from those websites by now.

With so many details still unclear, I’m not sure what this arrest could portend for the greater doujinshi community and the ero manga market at large.  But when adding together all the recent developments, from the obscenity conviction against Shobunkan being upheld, the greater media scrutiny over certain genres of ero manga, and now the arrest of a doujinshi author, it wouldn’t be a stretch to say that free artistic expression by adults in Japan hasn’t been in such a perilous state in quite a long time.”

Be interesting to see what happens next.