Manga artist and politician Ken Akamatsu was appointed Parliamentary Vice-Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology and Parliamentary Vice-Minister for Reconstruction on Wednesday, November 13 as part of an emergency cabinet meeting of newly elected Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba’s second cabinet.
Parliamentary Vice-Ministers assist the Minister and Vice-Minister of their respective Ministry, but cannot act in place of the Minister in case of their absence (unlike the Vice-Minister).
Akamatsu, a member of Japan’s big tent conservative Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), became the first manga creator to win a seat in Japan’s House of Councillors (upper house) in the National Diet (parliament).
Akamatsu has historically focused on issues affecting Japanese creators, including the controversial freelance invoice taxation system.
Akamatsu delved into politics in 2011 when he warned that proposed changes to Japan’s Copyright Law would “destroy” derivative dōjin (self-published) works. Kensaku Fukui, a lawyer and a Nihon University professor, wrote an essay about the ongoing Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP) talks that prompted Akamatsu’s remarks. Akamatsu continued to speak about his concerns on the TPP talks in the following years.
In 2013, Akamatsu joined other creators in opposing the LDP and its partners’ proposed amendment to child pornography laws. According to the bill’s opponents, the initial drafts did not differentiate between pornography featuring real children and images of children. Akamatsu visited the Diet and the LDP headquarters to express his concern, and the final bill passed in 2014 without a ban on explicit anime and manga.
In 2019, Akamatsu and the rest of the Japan Cartoonists Association formally expressed their concerns on a government subcommittee’s plan to expand the scope of copyright law. Downloading anime images, illustrations, and photographs that were illegally posted to personal blogs and Twitter accounts would have also been illegal, as would copying and pasting song lyrics. The proposed change would not have been limited to directly downloading images themselves — taking screenshots of illegally uploaded media would also have been against the proposed laws.
In 2022, Akamatsu characterized criticism from the global gender equality organization UN Women as “external pressure” to regulate Japan’s “freedom of expression, especially for manga, anime, and games” and added that such pressure was not new. He elaborated that such regulations needed to be approached with rationality and not be obeyed simply because an outside party was demanding it. Akamatsu’s definition of “external pressure” does not necessarily mean “outside Japan.” He used the removal of PSAs featuring Virtual YouTuber Tojou Linka as an example.
© Ken Akamatsu, Kodansha, Tokyopop
Akamatsu launched J-Comi’s “Zeppan Manga Toshokan” (later Manga Library Z) digital manga library service in 2008, and launched a beta test of the site in 2010. Akamatsu initially posted all 14 volumes of his Love Hina manga for free with six pages of advertising and no digital rights management (DRM) for one month to test the viability of the business model. Japanese publishers Shueisha and Kodansha began collaborating with the site in 2010. The site will shut down in two weeks on November 26, due to issues with credit card companies and a termination of all payment services.
The site gained notoriety in 2011 when it posted Seiji Matsuyama‘s Oku-sama wa Shōgakusei (My Wife Is an Elementary Student) manga, which Naoki Inose, Tokyo Vice Governor at the time, cited as an example of which manga should be restricted under Tokyo’s then-recently revised Youth Healthy Development Ordinance. Though the site was only available in Japanese, it launched an English and foreign-language version beta test for select titles in 2011.
Akamatsu launched the UQ Holder! Magister Negi Magi! 2 manga with the title of UQ Holder! in Kodansha‘s Weekly Shōnen Magazine in Japan in August 2013. The manga transferred to Bessatsu Shōnen Magazine in October 2016, with the new title UQ Holder! Magister Negi Magi! 2, fully revealing the manga as a sequel to Akamatsu’s earlier Negima! manga. He ended the manga in February 2022 during his campaign to run for the House of Councillors.
Tokyopop published Love Hina in North America, and Del Rey and Kodansha Comics have published Negima. Both manga and Akamatsu’s Itsudatte My Santa manga inspired various anime projects, and Negima also inspired a live-action television series.
Sources: Prime Minister’s Office of Japan website, Ken Akamatsu‘s X/Twitter account
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