Japanese Censors raided by the police!

Cops see through porn watchdog's fuzzy stance on private patchwork

Japan's adult movie fans are shaking in their boots after police raided the organization that blanks out the dirty bits to make sure stick flicks aren't deemed obscene, according to Shukan Bunshun (9/13).

Most mainstream adult movies in Japan are screened by the Nihon Ethics of Video Association (NEVA), which is responsible for placing the digital mosaic over genitals in Japanese porn.

But the late August raid on NEVA was conducted because police accuse it of distributing indecent materials by allowing the digital mosaics to become so transparent as to be effectively useless.

"Police raided two adult movie DVD companies and NEVA because it said the digital mosaic over the genitals had not been applied properly and the ethics organization allowed that to happen too easily," a reporter for a national daily tells Shukan Bunshun. "Police questioned NEVA officials for days about the incident."

Adult movie companies joined together in 1981 to form NEVA to independently monitor blue movies so that they would not raise the ire of authorities. The August raid was the first ever to target the ethics body. Though there are few people who enjoy the digital mosaics NEVA is responsible for adding, there are even less who think it has been so lenient to have gone too far in displaying actors' private parts.

"There is a genre called 'Indies,' which are movies made by companies that don't belong to NEVA. The mosaic in Indies movies is almost non-existent, yet NEVA got raided because the cops thought the digital alteration wasn't opaque enough," an adult video industry source says. "What I think was the real motivation of the police action was to send a message to the entire industry, where the trend has been to make the mosaic more transparent."

Once watching videos became common in Japan in the '80s, "Indies" video makers had a gripe with NEVA, saying it was too strict in its application of the mosaic. In 1996, they set up their own self-monitoring organization called the Soft Contents Association. The new organization led to a decline in NEVA's power.

"For 'Indies' makers, the rule of thumb is basically 'Anything Goes.' And 'Indies' videos are more popular in the market than those that go through NEVA," the adult video industry source tells Shukan Bunshun. "NEVA have responded to members' calls for a little lenience and since 2004 has allowed them to use a more transparent kind of digital mosaic that shows more, while last year saw NEVA permit its members to display pubic hair and anuses. But the police raid on NEVA really should serve as a warning to everybody in the industry."

NEVA is extremely apologetic over the incident.

"We truly regret what happened," a NEVA spokesman says. "We will continue to watch what happens from now on and deal with the situation in a careful, strict manner."

"Indies" representatives at the Contents Soft Association, meanwhile, are remaining tight-lipped.

"We don't want to say a word about this case," an association spokesman tells Shukan Bunshun. (By Ryann Connell)

Quote by SusanEngland
Soft porn does nothing for me at all.