Japanese dismiss rape game complaint
HOPES THAT Japan had moved past Shogun era attitudes to women were dashed as a computer game maker whose game awards points to players who rape females brushed off complaints from US rights campaigners.
Yokohama-based games manufacturer Illusion said that the campaign to have the game. "Rapelay" banned in Japan was pointless because it was perfectly legal in Japan.
Spokesman Makoto Nakaoka said he was bewildered by the move as it made games for Japanese tastes and laws. He didn't need to know what was acceptable in the US because it does not try to sell the game there.
Although that is not quite true. As we reported earlier this year the game was on sale on Amazon until someone complained and it was pulled.
New York-based Equality Now launched a campaign this week "against rape simulator games and the normalisation of sexual violence in Japan".
Activists are asked to pen protests to the maker and Prime Minister Taro Aso, arguing the game breaches Japan's obligations under the 1985 Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women.
You don't have to be Freud to work out that the game shows a dark side to Japanese attitudes to sex and women. Players earn points for acts of sexual violence, including stalking girls on commuter trains, raping virgins and their mothers, and forcing females to get abortions.
Japan only just bought in a law against making kiddie porn, but the law does not cover actually owning it.
US online retail giant Amazon in February took RapeLay off its websites after receiving complaints but clips of the game were still available this week on popular video sharing websites.
According to AP, a spokeswoman for the Japanese government's gender equality bureau said the office "realises the problem is there" and it is working out what can actually be done about it. Presumably without offending any male in charge by making him give up his Japanese schoolgirl porn. µ
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When it comes to sexual weirdness, I say the Japs take the cake.
Rape: it's like saying "hello" in Japan
Yeah, the USA or England or Europeans or Indians or anyone has no weird sexual habits.
Way to deny ever knowing anything.
Will this be released on the Wii?
Does anyone else find it odd that you can shoot someone in a video game to big splash of blood but rape is taboo?
What if the game was raping men?...is that then ok because its not against women?
I mean hasn't the video game player and industry insisted that violent video games don't desensitize people to violence?
Does anyone else see an incompatibility here?
I think the game itself is disgusting but I just find a disconnect between what is and isn't acceptable in a video game
Illusion is a bit correct
Virtual Rape (18+) is not exactly considered illegal in Japan if it is for electronic gaming purposes
Most Western countries may find this disgusting and immoral but do not forget that Japan is not a Western country and Japanese traditions are different from that of America and Europe...
...how anyone in the United States, a country with sexual assault rate per capita 15 times higher than Japan, thinks he's in a position to force their moral standards on it.
Bleh in the GTA series, you dont rape... you pay a hooker, then when she's done you kill her to get your money back.... much better no...?
There is always people with way too much free time on their hands trying to control what other people do with their lives.
This genre of gaming is old in Japan, nobody ever cared to protest against it. Then Amazon, willing to milk the cash out american costumers, put the game in retail in the US. The freeloaders were outraged, how can someone actually simulate something like that? How is he not playing our bloodshedding, crazy shooting in school inducing games? It will increase rape in Japan (which it actually doesn't).
Although I must say I disagree with almost the entirety of this article, as horrendously biased as it is, the worst part is the hypocrisy at the end. You speak out against some perceived threat to equality, then patronise the woman from the Gender Equality bureau by making her out to be a wilting flower that is incapable of doing anything if it is antagonistic to men, despite her commenting that it is something they are working on.
Perhaps they have more important issues to focus on than worrying about whether a group of pixels are happy or not, and are unhappy that a man is trying to suggest that a computer game is the most important thing they are able to cope with.
It seems to me that Japan is one of the few countries, and the Japanese one of the few peoples, against which expressions of racism are still considered acceptable
Anyway, using statistics rather than prejudice, we get a different picture of the Japanese:
Murders per 100,000.
1. Russia Federation 18.07
2. United States 6.32
3. Malaysia 2.73
Taiwan 1.17
Spain 1.08
Japan 0.58
Rape per 100,000.
1. United States 34.20
2. England and Wales 14.69
3. France 13.38
Taiwan 8.82
South Korea 4.38
Spain 3.23
Japan 1.48
(source: http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview/id/3231.html)
So the Japanese appear to be 10-20x less violent, and less sexually violent than there counterparts in Europe & the USA.
How does it make any sense at all to ban a game that involves rape but not ban games that involve murder? And I don't need or want anybody telling me what games I can and can not play. I'm a grown man, thank you very much. I can make those kinds of determinations for myself. Next these folks will be trying to tell us what kinds of movies we can and cannot watch and what kind of books we can and cannot read. I you don't like the game then don't play it. But you don't have the right to ban it. That's called censorship.
Why should we call rape simulators disgusting while playing such ugly games like Gears of War. I assume, mass murder is more grave offence than rape, isn't it?
It's all fantasy anyway. And yes the hypocrisy is strong here in this argument. If you have to ban rape fantasy then you have to ban murder fantasy.
Since neither virtual fantasy is actually hurting anyone (its just the idea of it that is the argument here) were left only with the interpretation of the morality and apparently hypocrisy is the result?
Good job guys, glad you all are thinking clearly.... (facepalm)
I live in Japan. Japan not violent? You have got to be kidding. The Japanese official stats need to be taken with a pinch of salt. Women have real problems trying to report sexual offences. They usually get fobbed off.
Some parts of officialdom have recognised there is a problem as they have introduced women only carriages on the train. Beware of the pervert signs are everywhere in parks. Local government is supportive. Central government is still fighting WW2 and hasn't figured out what century it is.
Why did Amazon pull the game ? I want to buy it. I'll bet the people who "complained" about Amazon selling the game were a bunch of soccer moms, with nothing better to do. They have no right to police what the adult population buys.
Strangely, none of the reports mentioned the fact that “violence against women” is almost twenty times more common in the US than it is in rape simulator world leader Japan, instead choosing to uncritically repeat the tired calumny that Japan is a rigid patriarchy in which women languish as practical chattel.
This behaviour sets a disturbing precedent; there are many more extreme titles than RapeLay available in Japan, encompassing everything from AV to ero-manga; if publishers are willing to fold at the slightest breeze of criticism from a group which is not even Japanese, and from complaints without any legal weight whatsoever, it would appear their future is in doubt, as displays of weakness will only encourage further feminist aggression.
So many good comments really. I totally agree that this is such a Hypocrisy!
killing and smashing someones head with a baseball bat is perfectly fine but raping is not. Who decide these things anyway?
Also by banning video games you don't solve anything and the statistic is a good way of showing that.
If you cant separate fantasy from real life then your a moron and don't have a place in society in the first place i think.
And i really like the Japanese culture and the fact they don't bend down like very other country now days. They can actually think for themselves.
Almighty American is trying to spread her wings into unknown territory! Who are they think they are? Earth's fucking saviour!?
The only reason this game got ANY press at all in the States is that it temporarily appeared on Amazon.com and then was subsequently removed. These kinds of games have been in Japan for a long time, and all this crybabying is just giving them more publicity.
I'm sure sales will be higher in the States than they ever would've been had people just ignored the matter.
No likee, no buyee.
After college I specialized in Japan for social psychology. Before getting there, Japan was for me a perfect country, but after working there for one round year, I was shocked the many differences between Europe and Japan about this matter.
E.g. When a Japanese woman get slapped at her bottom by a stranger (or not), they usually just grin and move away.
There are many man that use to assault women at trains or buses and not just when they're crowded.
Working there I had to speak with some women from different ages that had been rapped, sometimes even at work and not a single one was willing to present charges.
Socially speaking they act as if the better was to forget things and act as nothing happened.
I'm not saying that every single Japanese man have issues with this and most sure is not because they played this game. But like this game, all media showing rape and vexation to women is a reflection of the real view of some Japanese men towards women.
For me, are women who should stand up against this, not westerners nor men, the problem is they think these situations are normal and they should do nothing...
OK so everyone can see this before they make any retarded comment: RAPE IS UNDER-REPORTED IN JAPAN EXACTLY BECAUSE OF ITS ATTITUDES TO WOMEN.
There.
I should have figured a blog with a large number of male visitors would behave in that way, but I do like to have some faith in men :(
Oh and "encourage further feminist aggression." piss off.
I feel that rape games are banned because it highlights the inequity's still existent between men and women.
Do you think any of these games will feature men getting raped? This is why it is banned.
Kind of similar to if a game targeted black people only, it would be racist.
- Yes I know, Resi-Evil 5, but this has white people in it and the other games are set in places in which you kill white people. I still feel a bit weird about this game though!
Gears of War is a really bad example of fantasy killing, because the creatures aren't human, Manhunt is a better example.
Actually there are many male rape games produced in Japan, though of course it is unlikely that any will be protested against any time soon. If you are going to complain about these games you should be complaining about the rape, not the women in it.
Additionally, there are many games in which you only kill white people. Does this make those games racist?
Seeing things only from the perspective of the gender you were born into is a limit for everyone, but trying to make yours out to be the sole victim in any circumstance is rarely true to life.
....no bearing on real life and anyone who suggests they do really needs to play a game everyonce in a while, however anything that encourages rape should be frowned upon no mater what medium its presented in and should definately not be sold on something as commercial as Amazon.
http://www.pressbox.co.uk/detailed/Consumer/Cheap_TVs_311688.html
Saying that "Japan is different" is acting with the condescendence rooting behind every form of discrimination and racism.
Many of the Western animanga fans supporting Japan's discriminatory "tradition" are really the ones being racist, by casting Japanese people into a paralised role and defending far-fetched ideas that Japanese people themselves are not totally proud of.
That's some hipocrisy too.
I can go to any AMERICAN store and buy games like GRAND THEFT AUTO where you can steal, beat, and murder, and people are outraged cause some guy in Japan made a rape game?! Not to mention the fact that Japan has less of a crime rate, sexual and non, than the countries complaining about the game. HYPOCRITES. I can only hope that the decision is overturned and the complainers slapped down and sent home crying.
First off, anyone trying to logically pidgeonhole all violent games as "murder" games has been drinking the Jack Thompson Kool-Aid a bit too long.
First off lets look at some of the more popular games like Gears Of War, Halo, Call Of Duty, Killzone, etc. These are not "murder" games as some have ridiculously claimed. It's all about the context of the game. It usually goes, I am a soldier and am fighting for the survival of the human race/country. I am surrounded by people trying to kill me and so I am returning fire.
But for a "murder" game I would have to carry out acts in somewhat the same fashion as how Rapelay plays out, where everything is planned against an innocent victim. Games like Grand Theft Auto can't accurately be labeled this way because the actions of killing innocent people are not forced onto the player and are not a focal point of the game.
As for this game I could really care less about what happens to it since I would never buy it. The only issue is the ripple effect it could have against other games that aren't that bad.
It's ok for other types of violence to be in video games but not rape? This game would not create rapists anymore than other games create murderers.
I was raped a while back and am doing my darnedest to find this game to help desensitize myself. If anyone knows where I can get it...please post a link here..I will check.
This is ridiculous sexist nonsense. There are more definitely games where men get raped. The sequel to Rapelay features this, in fact. There's also a game where the main character is a man who gets transformed into a girl and gets raped by men (but I'm sure people will find a way to twist that too).
Look: if crimes get underreported or something: find some proof of that. Crimes get underreported in the US as well, so let's see some comparative ratios.