Images or mentions of knives, ransom or blood — or anything else that can be seen alluding to the hostage crisis involving two Japanese in Syria — have been cut out in Japan.
Some animations and other entertainment programs are altering, canceling or postponing episodes violating those sensitivities — typical of the kind of self-restraint shown in Japan to avoid controversy.
The fates of a Japanese journalist and Jordanian military pilot were still unknown on Saturday after the latest purported deadline for a possible prisoner swap lapsed with no further messages from the Islamic State group holding them captive.
A second Japanese hostage has reportedly been killed.
The restraint by broadcasters and other media has spilled over into politics as opposition lawmakers, mindful of the crisis, toned down their criticism of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and his team.
When dozens of lawmakers appeared in their traditional kimonos this week to mark the opening of the annual session, they were attacked on blogs and social networks for looking too festive and insensitive.
The hostage crisis broke out on Jan. 20, with the release of an online video showing the two hostages with a black masked man wielding a knife, demanding a US$200 million ransom in exchange for their lives.
Not wanting to be seen as insensitive — a huge faux pas in a society that holds consideration for others in high esteem — Japanese broadcasters quickly screened out any buzzwords and related images, all in the name of jishuku, or self-imposed control.
In the latest example of self-censorship, a production team for animation comedy Detective Opera Milky Holmes TD on Friday said that it has decided to suspend its fifth episode for being “inappropriate.” The episode was entitled Carol’s Ransom.
The popular male pop group KAT-TUN was supposed to sing its new song Dead or Alive on TV Asahi’s Music Station show on Jan. 23, but instead performed White Lovers.
Another band, Ling Tosite Sigure, altered lyrics that included the words “knife” and “blood.”
The following day, Fuji Television Network canceled an episode of animation Assassination Classroom, citing “inappropriate material given the current situation.”
So far, the restraint is relatively mild. In the months following the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami disaster that killed more than 19,000 people, neon signs were dimmed and parties and comedy performances canceled.
Predictably, the popular band Southern All Stars had to avoid singing their hit song “Tsunami.”
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver