A little while ago I read an article that said that China was trying to ban all Japanese animation. This proved unpopular and not particularly sustainable. Of course, young Chinese kids watch anime legally or not, online, and the effort to police that is substantial. However, the initiative still does exist and to some degree persists to encourage the local animation market to favor Chinese animation rather than Japanese. Eventually, this might translate to International gains which could add some interesting revenue and public interest for China.
This got me a little bit curious because lately, I’ve noticed a lot of anime made in Japan using Chinese manhwa or webtoons as source material. It got me wondering whether those shows are illegal to watch in China. That would be very weird right. I looked it up and couldn’t find a clear answer. As far as I can tell shows like All Saints Street and a Herbivorous Dragon… are not in fact banned in China at this time, but other anime are.
There are quite a few popular titles banned in China. The list includes shows you might expect due to violent or ecchy content that would be considered unsuitable for the population. Shows like High School of the Dead or Death Note because of depictions of violence towards others and especially minors. Even Black Butler made the list for containing “unsavory” material. I guess I can kind of see where they’re coming from, but why single out that shows specifically? If Black Butler is a step too far then a lot of other anime aren’t going to make the cut. I was particularly surprised to see that Sword Art Online was considered too violent and featured way too many weapons to be suitable for the Chinese public. But the title that really caught my eye was Psycho-Pass.
Now obviously if Sword Art Online has too many weapons and Black Butler is too unsavory then I can see why a show like Psycho-Pass would be considered unsuitable for the general public. However, that’s not what caught my attention. Aside from the usual explanation that the show was violent and featured guns therefore shouldn’t be allowed on the air in China, there was the quiet part out loud: Psycho-Pass is particularly dangerous to China because it encourages rebellion against the state…
You can understand why right? On the surface, this is exactly what Psycho-Pass does. In fact maybe not even just on the surface. It is a show that encourages people to question authority and to examine morality according to their own values rather than the ones of the state. Ultimately the main character, one that is presented as the ultimate good of the series, does choose to enforce the existing systems. That would seem to go against the argument of ensiding rebellion. However, it is a decision she comes at after much soul searching and after defining the system for herself. So if you just examined the show itself you could argue that maybe the Chinese government is misunderstanding the core messaging or interpreting it in the most negative way but ultimately it seems like a rational decision.
However the more I thought about it the less sense it started to make sense. After all, if China truly believes that a show like Psycho-Pass could create dangerous civil unrest, why didn’t it have that effect in Japan? Why would Japanese animation studios purposefully create distribute and then air a show that could be detrimental to their own society? The show takes place in Japan, that is literally the government the story questions. It’s the answer to this question that reveals something more interesting to me. Unless China is trying to say that their own society is so fragile that it could accidentally be completely corrupted by a random animation, the more logical explanation is that Psycho-Pass was created specifically to bring down societies like the one in China and not Japan. That the message was purposeful and aimed. And you know what, maybe they aren’t completely paranoid.
I have been meaning to talk about Cool Japan for a while. It’s a little complicated, well complicated is not the right word, there’s just a lot of history to it and that’s why I’ve never gone into it on this blog. Not sure it’s gonna interest anyone other than me. So I’m going to include a gross oversimplification of what Cool Japan is. Essentially a few decades ago Japanese officials noticed that their, let’s call it social and artistic capital, was becoming in high demand around the world. To put it in highly scientific terms, people taught Japan was cool.
And so the Cool Japan initiative was born. This was meant as an effort to put Japanese culture on the international stage and to make whatever parts of that culture seemed more monetizable, front and center. Small odd or funny news stories were purposefully translated into several languages and then leaked to international media and on targeted websites when normally they would have been overlooked altogether. These stories were carefully chosen to make Japan appear futuristic and quirky or interesting. A place like nowhere else on earth. Only in Japan! Even if these stories gave a completely unrealistic view of life in Japan.
Similarly, large grants were given to entertainment companies and the arts to produce national products that could be easily exported. And you guessed it, anime is a HUGE part of Cool Japan. The industry benefitted** (arguable) from the policies and was pressured to create shows that would in essence sell Japan to the rest of the world.
I am grossly oversimplifying things here. In my opinion, Cool Japan is a very interesting bit of political and media history and I encourage anyone that has an interest in these things to go read up on it for yourselves. In very short, the idea was to drive up international sales of national Japanese products, encourage tourism, and position Japan as a country of interest and influence on the international scale.
But that’s the rosy optimistic view of it. It’s not easy to find any explicit mention of using media for international pro-Japan propaganda but it would be silly for us to completely dismiss the idea.
First, it’s easy to see that a good portion of media from anywhere in the world has nationalistic messages. Similarly, you will likely see media from most places (that aren’t completely censored) have media that criticize national policies. That’s normal. But usually, that media is created with a domestic audience in mind.
Anime is not always created that way. In fact, anime is often created in a sort of dual audience demographic. Shows are meant to appeal domestically but ultimately the lucrative international market is the main goal. As such, any messages that are either supportive or critical of national policies are also crafted with this audience in mind. Things are going to get out of the family so to speak. It also means that any media with messages that are either biased against other cultures (not to say downright bigoted) are also added with the expressed knowledge that members of that culture will see them. As such a little bit of delicacy is required.
Subtle political messaging in anime has always been present. If you decide to look for it you will find it pretty much everywhere although it was a bit more obvious and unified in older shows (like 80s to early 2000s). It’s not always so obvious as overt as the nationalism of Attack on Titan. Sometimes shows just tend to push specific cultural viewpoints or moral stands or even something as simple as foods. There’s a reason why we see so many traditional Japanese dishes in anime. Why we are so much more likely to see someone snack on dango or Takoyaki than a candy bar or chips.
Most of us might not think of this as propaganda. We associate the practice with nefarious goals. At the end of the day, propaganda is simply information used to promote or publicize a particular political cause or point of view. All media is full of it. But at one point anime was specifically used for it and it’s hard to tell to what extent it still is.
I am not sure I would say that Psycho-Pass “encourages” dissent from or rebellion against the status quo. Rather, I view it (especially the first series) as a philosophical meditation on the nature of society and whether authoritarian regimes – especially those that can reliably deliver order, stability, peace and general human flourishing) are necessarily “bad” or less preferable to societies in which “freedom” is the dominating paradigm. Of course, in a traditionally conformist society like Japan, that may be a debate that has a specifically culturally-driven emphasis – one that might provide it with a different “twist” or perspective to that which is prevalent in the West.
That said, I can actually understand why the CCP have banned this anime: precisely because it depicts the very kind of society which the Chinese government (especially under the current regime of Xi Xinping) is trying to create – namely, a controlled society governed through intensive close scrutiny of the citizenry. Granted, they haven’t developed a “psychometric” system like Sybil that can not only “read” people but also indicate their likely criminality; but China’s facial recognition and CCTV surveillance technology is among the most advanced (and heavily utilised) in the world. And no-one is under any illusions that further advances (and implementation of AI) aren’t going to be deployed to make it even more sophisticated and effective.
So it’s not a stretch to say that present-day Chinese society is an analog to the society portrayed in Psycho-Pass. Which, of course, is the last thing the CCP want the citizenry to realise or have suggested to them (not that I think they’re not already aware!). But banning shows like Psycho-Pass aids in the process of distracting the public with other products: like home-grown animation, much of which seem to address Confucian themes like loyalty to the state and the preservation of order and stability…
The Cool Japan initiative is usually framed in terms of “soft power”. In other words, fostering a positive image about Japan abroad. First of all, to give a boost to the culture & tourism industries, as you mention. And over the long term, to encourage a deeper sense of affection among a foreign populace towards everything Japan — its people, products or officials. That can help a bit if you want to, for example, push exports of Japanese technology abroad, or negotiate trade deals with foreign countries, or nudge other governments into cooperating on certain foreign policies.
As an aside, similar story with the JET program. The main goal isn’t to bring in randos with zero teaching skills, to comprehensively drill kids on the various intricacies of the English language. It’s to create enduring ties between these people & Japan. You never know, maybe these folks will lean Toyota when they get their next car, instead of Ford or Volkswagen. Maybe they’ll buy bundles of manga every month. They could end up visiting Japan regularly, and spread the bug to all their friends. Or they’ll found a small business, and decide to import their goods from Japan. And maybe they’ll end up in some level of government, help craft slightly friendlier policies towards Japan. These programs are a kind of investment for the future.
“The more logical explanation is that Psycho-Pass was created specifically to bring down societies like the one in China and not Japan. That the message was purposeful and aimed. And you know what, maybe they aren’t completely paranoid.”
Well, you can never rule out the ability of government officials to display a level of zeal, not commensurate with common sense. But I believe Chinese officials would be dumb to think that of Japanese officials. I honestly can’t think of worse ways to destabilize Chinese society, than anime… First, any foreign movie or show you want to display in China will probably undergo regulator review by communist agencies. Any whiff of subversive content will earn you a swift rejection, absent requisite modifications. An approval, if given, can be revoked at any time. And if you lack that approval, good luck finding your anime online — the Great Firewall isn’t called that for no reason!
Now, a few inventive folks may try to find workarounds. But the vast majority of people aren’t that tech-savvy, and the authorities persistently crack down on most VPN use anyway. Local sites hosting these videos will be punished. Plus, the millions of censors employed by the state are hard at work, advanced AI tools in hand, to find any trace of suspicious behavior online. Why risk getting a mark on your profile, when you easily could wind down your day watching approved shows? It’s just a cartoon. It ain’t worth the effort or trouble.
“Why would Japanese animation studios purposefully create distribute and then air a show [Psycho-Pass] that could be detrimental to their own society?”
Well, firstly because Japan is a liberal democracy, not a totalitarian state. (Thank you, Captain Obvious!) By and large, individuals are free to express their views on sensitive topics, without fear of surveillance or retribution. And the state doesn’t occupy such an outsized role in the daily lives of citizens, so it’s much less sensitive to criticism. Secondly, because the show asks questions that are quite relevant in a Japanese context, today.
While democratic institutions & civil liberties function fairly well in Japan, they didn’t grow in an organic way. They were imposed from the top down, after Japan lost the war. You’ve sometimes written that societies in other liberal democracies usually value individualism quite highly — which makes sense, since it’s the beating heart of liberal ideology. On the other hand, Japanese culture, like other East Asian cultures, tends to prioritize social harmony & the well-being of the collective, over that of the individual. Also, it tends to defer to authority or convention, rather than question it. And it tends to shy away from difficult decisions, preferring to ignore them or pass the buck instead. Urobuchi simply takes these habits & values, and ramps them up to their logical extreme, in order to justify the utility of the Sybil System. (These are some of the ideas someone like Ikuhara is also obsessed with, although he plays with them in other ways.) If a message is purposeful & aimed at someone, it’s towards a Japanese audience.
I think Chinese regulators can be more or less cognizant of the above, while believing it’d serve party stability & public unity better not to broadcast some of these inconvenient questions to citizens. Some of them would only do it, out of a sense of self-advancement or preservation. But others would, because they truly believe that is the best decision for the country. And if you view the party’s fortunes as intrinsically tied to the country’s well-being, as many Chinese do, you can build a good case for that. Either way, there’s no need for the officials to justify themselves to foreign audiences, only to party higher-ups. And when addressing their own populace, they can simply put the ban down to “excessive violence” or “lack of public morals”.
Nice list of banned anime you have there. The same justification works for Attack on Titan too. I don’t really know about nationalism. But that show displays a deep mistrust of its state institutions, and cynically erodes every position of moral clarity expressed by its “heroes”. That isn’t a worldview conducive to a productive society. Add in the violence, and it’s easy to justify a ban!
On top of all the murders, Death Note indulges youngsters’ fantasies’ to reshape their world’s order. I assume that’s a big no-no. Never watched Black Butler, so can’t comment. As for High School of the Dead, not sure what the issue is. Maybe the bouncy boobs?
I’ve heard of Cool Japan, but don’t know much about it. Googling around a little makes it seem they’re focussing more on the distribution and marketing than the production, though, so it’s hard to guage the effect this has on content. The drive also seems more economic than ideological (about imports vs. exports). It’s an interesting topic, but nothing I can say much about.
It’s a bit too wide a subject for a single post but I figured I would throw it out there