Trigger Warning : Mentions of Sexual Assault (SA), the SA of Minors, and Child Sexual Material
Artwork Idea & Description :
For my intervention artwork, the industry/issue I wanted to intervene in was the manga industry in Japan. This presented many challenges I would have to try to overcome, but I chose this topic because it’s one I genuinely care about and would love to be able to better. In Japan, the manga industry is almost comically awful, and an excellent example of the evil that can be perpetuated when the only thing being considered is money. Japanese mangaka (manga artists) work absolutely brutal hours well in excess of 100 hours a week, demolishing their health in service of their art and their company. Sometimes, these same mangaka commit crimes ranging from the SA to having terabytes of child sexual abuse material. While of course it’s not all of them, there are a handful of high profile cases just with Shonen Jump, and every time as soon as the convicted predators serve their sentence, they are welcomed back with open arms, an especially worrying standard considering the magazine is expressly (at least in part) targeted at children.
With this issue plaguing an industry I love, I was inspired by the MyCelia Barbie done by the Yes Men. I liked the format and the humor it allowed for as well as how directly and explicitly it pointed towards an actionable plausible solution. Instead of suggesting that Mattel go green via mushroom barbies, I wanted to suggest that Shueisha (the largest manga publishing company) start caring about it’s employees and taking measures to both limit the suffering they endure and the suffering they inflict.
Artwork Execution & Challenges :
I created a fake Shueisha Website with a satirical company announcement describing how they were going to start caring abut their employees. I leaned heavily into the satire in an attempt to heed the advice of my peers and professor and protect myself from any potential legal trouble. I made the site with WordPress, and below you can see a comparison of the sites.
Fake Website I Made: https://shueishacom.wordpress.com/?_gl=1%2A1ho68ra%2A_gcl_au%2AMTk2NTIyOTkxNi4xNzMzMjYyNjM4
Real Shuiesha Website : https://www.shueisha.co.jp/en/
The first image at the top of my post is a sliding gallery of Shueisha manga double page color spreads. This is distinct from the real Shueisha website, which has a bunch of images filling the whole screen horizontally and also sliding right to left. WordPress did not have the ability to recreate this feature, so I did the best I could. Besides that, thankfully, the official Shueisha website is very barebones which made parts of it easy to copy. The top of my fake website should say “Shueisha” but that’s a premium feature I have to pay for. Beyond the technical limitations of the software I was using, I think I did a good job of copying the basic elements of the Shueisha websites, and with more time (and maybe a WordPress Subscription) I think I could make it look identical.
For the actual content of the article, I tried to be both highly satirical (to make it somewhat clear this wasn’t real) and still bring up real issues and real stats with those issues (with how long mangaka are overworked for example). I did this to, just as the Yes Men, make it clear the problem is real and affecting people, and that the solution is needed, possible, but distinctly fake highlighting how the company is willfully just not doing it.
To spread the article, I ran into some issues. I don’t speak Japanese, but I could translate the entire article fairly easily. However, I would have no way of telling how off or fake the translation would sound, and it might hurt the meaning of what I wrote. In terms of location, I was also unsure, as I needed some way to spread this fake message but don’t have many distribution channels. I decided to post the article to reddit, but unfortunately, the one SubReddit with the largest amount of people that would be interested in my message (r/manga) doesn’t have a meme or shitpost or some other “not serious” flair to make it clear that this isn’t real. Additionally, despite my site having text on it, when I link it in reddit, it’s blank for some reason. Nevertheless, that’s where I posted it, and I hope at the very least a few people end up reading it and find it funny and “real” (speaking to a real issue) and it doesn’t get taken down.
Reddit Post :
Artwork Reflection :
I really liked my idea for this post, but I recognize the issues that arose with execution. Creating a website proved more difficult than I thought as my progress and vision for what the website was supposed to look like was stymied by the limitations of the software I was using, both technical (some features where just not available) and monetary (some where paywalled). If I had to do this again, I *might* choose WordPress again, but this time make extensive use of CSS to code the specific more complex parts of the website I wanted. That way, the site would look much much closer to how the real website looks.
Additionally, I recognize my distribution could have improved. If I had to repeat this, I would make a new reddit account, be active in various larger and smaller manga subreddits for at least a month, then contact the moderators and let them know what I am trying to do. With moderator approval, I could make the post, ensure it wouldn’t, get taken down, and raise more awareness/engagement. In terms of reaching out to more Japanese people, I would try to find a more reliable way to translate what I wrote (either a better service or try to find someone that speaks Japanese) and also more extensively research Japanese internet culture so I could essentially find the Japanese version of reddit and post it there for more engagement and more raised awareness.