What do you think about the censorship of The Cove in Japan?

The Japanese never seem to like to face the reality of their misdeeds. In a way, Japan is a very “ethnocentric nation”. Take for example, their “white-washing” of historical textbooks in their schools, and how they continue to gloss over the atrocities they committed during World War 2 against Chinese and Korean civilians, and to the thousands of American and British POWs, a lot of whom they tortured and carried out cruel experiments on. The Cove example is not as serious or as vile, but it parallels the “denial” factor that paints many a Japanese mind.

By the way, I am not saying all Japanese are like that, but quite a few are. And I don’t have anything against Japan, as my mother is Japanese. I am only making an objective statement.

I did live in Japan for a few years. From what I understood of the culture they try to control civil unrest by censoring thing they feel will create civil unrest. Turning a blind eye to things that they do not deem as a priority. They are more concern with how their society behaves as a whole. Individualism isn’t something that is promoted. Individualism created caos and they are all about order. So if the people in this small village has been doing it for years and it has not created problems than it is not a priority or even a concern. Japanese pride if fully endorsed and such a film can tarnish that pride.
That is why as @MRSHINYSHOES said acts of violence during past wars are omitted in their schools.
There is this very prominent attitude in Japanese society where they do all they can to ignore whatever their neighbor is doing unless some crime is being committed or their neighbors are a rebellious type. Rebellion is weeded out because you are then ostracized in the society and become unlikely to succeed unless of course you belong to a rock group or something of that nature.
Its been over 10 years however since I lived there and some changes seemed to be occurring back then so I imagine some more have taken place since. Japan is a very old culture and it will take them time to change.
I certainly don’t agree with the killing of these wonderful animals but I can understand why they feel the way they do about rocking the boat. Being as proud as they are comes with certain conditions and that is that at times you must swallow your pride when you are wrong. They really don’t do that part well but then few proud people do.

The Good: I love Japan like no other country. The level of human respect, safety, and straight forward good natured honesty is beyond imagination. There are just loads-and-loads of great and wonderful people. Tokyo is a modern marvel with the level of safety achieved in one of the world’s largest cities. Having been around, I believe Tokyo to be the most amazing city in the world – without peere.

The Bad: When I was there the movie Peal Harbor (2001) was released. The Japanese version was cut and actually had added scenes. There was this scene where a Japanese bomber pilot opens his cockpit and yells down to a bunch of towheaded boys playing baseball: “Run away; run away to safety!” Total cheeseball that. I hear re-editing is standard practice. (etsssssss Honto?)

The Ugly: I concur with everything said above. I’ll just add that I was blown away by the minority faction of ultra-nationalist with their black vans running all over town with huge blow-horns chanting who knows what. Talk about embarrassed. Not me. Early on I didn’t understand but a word or two, but 10,000 people in all directions were looking away from me in shame. It reminded me of the scene in The Blues Brothers (1980), “The JEW is using the Black man as muscle…” Surreal. I chose not to take it too seriously. My girlfriend and I were repeatedly refused service in “nice” places because we were gaijin. (That’s not true – I’m told – it was really because we did not speak Japanese fluently.) Same with taxi cabs though. How would they know if I spoke perfect Japanese as they zoomed past me?

The museum at the War Shrine is insane. As I walked around I had a Brit and Ozzie behind me and – without a word – total strangers – we all instinctively huddled-up and quietly talked to each other to see if we were actually seeing what we were seeing. Instead of “The rape of Nanking”, it was “The Nanking incident” showing Japanese soldiers helping Chinese peasants. There was this one room you walk into and the entire perimeter is surrounded with images of small Japanese children burning in flames, arms in the air screaming (a diorama – with those fans with red and yellow cellophane whipping over the top). In Japanese institutional dogma the U.S. were the aggressors, and purposefully dropped fire bombs on children. That’s the takeaway. I’ve had detailed conversations with multiple Japanese who feel whole heartedly that the US forced Japan into the war by performing various naval blockades of fuel. “We had no choice.” “You made us.” Poppycock.

But wait – it was so over-the-top unbelievable that it was a good thing though. Made me think. My John Wayne and Mrs. Miniver movie vision of WWII isn’t exactly unbiased if you think about it. Do I have any unbiased understanding of the war? Moments like that make you want to inventory your own misconceptions before casting stones.

As far as The Cove (2009) – it was crazy: the scenes beating and stabbing little dolphins – the one shot of the poor little guy bobbing for his life over the net with his bloody entrails trailing behind him, and then he slowly sinks – dead. It’s not a great movie, but has tragically great captured moments. I think it is an “important” movie.

As you might gather, I am not surprised AT ALL at it being censored.

So that’s what I think, since you asked.

I recently wrote an essay for my Modern Japanese History class on the Rape of Nanking and Japan’s censorship of its war crimes, so this is an all too familiar subject to me.

I can’t really add that much to what has already been said, because it’s all true. Japan has a history of censoring what it feels would cause negative reactions with the public, especially those against the government. Even back before modern times, when the shogun and daimyo ruled the land and samurai (even low-class samurai) were allowed to cut down any commoner who failed to bow before him, there was very little in the way of rebellions from those suffering people, simply because they were taught from birth that it was the samurai’s just right to do things like that.

The tradition of respect and deference to higher authority lingers to this day, obviously. It’s part of the reason the Japanese are so well-mannered. On one hand, those who do censor such things as “The Cove” and Japan’s atrocities during WWII claim to be doing so not to upset the Japanese people. In reality, they’re imposing self-censorship on behalf of the government (and in older times, the Emperor). Japan is the Land of the Rising Sun, blessed by the Sun Goddess Amaterasu herself, so obviously it is a perfect country. Not true, of course, but the government seems to be doing a good job of making its people believe that, not to mention all the pre-teen anime fans who see Japan as a perfect paradise.

Don’t get me wrong; like @ipso, I also love Japan, its history, culture and people. But I don’t want to delude myself that it is nothing more than a flawed society just like every other one. Japan’s cultural tendancies may explain why all this censorship happens, but it doesn’t give them an excuse. Germany had to own up to its crimes against the Jews in WWII, and the United States to the many terrible things we did to the Native Americans (it hasn’t been that much, but at least we accept that we were in the wrong). Japan should be no exception.

On a side note, I have an interesting anecdote about this subject. Last summer, the film The Cove premiered at the film festival in my hometown, where I work at a local bookstore. One day, a group of pleasant and polite Japanese tourists came into the shop, looking at all our cute things (we sell purses, toys, and other decorative things at the store too) and buying everything they could with a whale on it. They spoke little English, and I happen to study Japanese, so I (very excitedly) got to conduct business with them in Japanese – my first time doing something like that. It was awesome. Shortly after they left, a local guy who happened to be associated with The Cove came in and started ranting about how that same group of Japanese tourists were actually part of the companies that were facilitating this slaughter of dolphins as shown in that very film. My coworkers knew the guy from around town as being a little strange (he was banging the counter as he talked about how he was following the group of Japanese to see what they did, which was just touristy stuff like shopping and going to museums), but he left an impression. In five minutes I had gone from feeling elated about my Japanese experience to feeling quite perturbed and confused. Ah, the life of an independent bookseller.

I think you need to be clear the the cinemas that have decided not to show the film have done so in the face of right-wing ultra-nationalist protests and threats of “sabotage”.

Information here.

Facts, people, pesky though they may be, are important.

@the100thmonkey Good point. Thanks. :)

You’re welcome :)