‘The logic of business is coercion, monopoly, and the destruction of the weak, not ‘choice’ or ’service’ or universal affluence.’ –Thomas Frank
…50-year-old Nobuhiro Komiya who for the last two years has worked tirelessly doing one of the most unlikely and mind boggling of jobs - censoring the unending torrent of hentai manga or pornographic comics which flood Tokyo’s book shops and convenience stores.
“It’s a tough job. (…) It’s totally different to reading manga as a hobby,” he says.
A visit to the Department of Youth Affairs and Public Safety on the 35th floor of Tokyo’s towering Metropolitan Government building, where Komiya and his small team of censors get down to the grisly task of comic book censorship, reveals we are talking about a lot more than the width of Wonder Woman’s bust.
Spread out over the white Formica table-top are the worst of the worst - a hand-picked selection of the weirdest and most shocking examples of hentai from the country which invented it.
“Normal sex doesn’t sell well,” Komiya remarks. School sex, tied-up sex, abnormal sex, sells. So this is what they draw.”
photo { Asha Schechter }
