I find it quite cute actually, they're going to lost the net battle i think, unless they start to scan and ban widely, in a dictatorship sort of way, it's possible, tiring and endless but possible...
I once had a Jasrac notification myself, i put away the material incriminated but it was once and i've used many pictures and others since.
But i still have a question in my mind : what if the pics were to be sold out of Japan ? For now, japanese entertainment is mainly national but 'what if', we're talking about pictures, right ? I'm not sure that every magazine about japanese pop culture in Europe have all the rights, usually you'll ask the music producer but with vertical organisations with rights no only on the musical or any 'creative' work of their artists and promotional use of their faces, but also of ... their personal faces ? don't know if i'm clear or not... As it's not gonna be the artists complaining for themselves as individual beings but the companies for their properties, how can it be internationally accepted (without raising questions about the abusive contracts of talentos companies) ?

Good post. This whole issue brings up a lot of questions, like: Why are Japanese people usually so sensitive about getting their photos published without their knowledge, unless it's done by someone accredited (photo-journalist, for example)? And are the artist agencies simply cynically using this sensitivity to get what they want, ie, no paparazzi or bloggers taking photos, or are there other things going on too?

Well, note the lack of photos on Mixi. That seems to show a natural disposition towards not wanting to be photographed.

Yes, great post Marxy! Talk about Marx's concept of alienation, whew...

Chompsky asked: "Why are Japanese people usually so sensitive about getting their photos published without their knowledge?"

Is this really so unusual? If you go around taking candid shots to publish in the West, you're liable to get your ass knocked out (I'm thinking of you, Vice do's and don't photog vultures)- and rightly so, I say!

But in the Japanese case, I'd say the desire for anonymity has a lot to do with the relatively severe social sanctions any perceived trangressions carry. Heck, I remember seeing one site with adults playing totally innocently on kids' jungle gyms, but with their faces blurred, (I guess) thinking that they'd never live down the ignomy of such unabashed childishness. Whereas in the West, social pressures actually encourage people to put their dumbest and most personal persversions into the public sphere (or at least perform the ritual of pretending to do so).

The Japanese edition of Wikipedia never includes photos in entries about actors, singers or other entertainers.

Most of the major film studios and prodcos are very strict about image usage and often charge an arm and a leg for a basic b&w publicity shot. The price discourages joe author or jane webmaster from putting the studio through the trouble of clearing usage with multiple talent agenices.

It gets even worse if said photos (or related publicity event visuals) contain shots of actors who happen to be singers.

One well-known jimusho in particular (you know which one) got upset at a Hollywood studio for posting video footage on the net from a press conference featuring one of its tarento.

Said jimusho also threw a fit when a clip from an animated film featuring one of its tarento's voices was posted on a Korean entertainment website.

Some companies and agencies here are doing their best to keep up with the times, but for the most part they hate the unregulated aspects of the internet with a passion! No other entertainment industry in the world would file over 30,000 removal requests with Youtube, especially when it involves footage you can't buy and isn't sold to begin with (ie. TV clips of your favourite tarento).

Hi. I've been reading this blog for two weeks, and I must congratulate Marxy for his superb entries.

On this issue, I guess it will take some time to the JASRAC, JIME and the other powerful 'jimushos' to give up to the internet chaos. Japan is almost the only country in the world where the mainstream newspapers haven't been affected by the online revolution, for example. At least some Hollywood studios are trying to settle and agree with YouTube and similar sites, 'cause they feel they can't win this 'war' in other way... But Japan... is another story.

Great post, really.

Chompsky asked: "Why are Japanese people usually so sensitive about getting their photos published without their knowledge?"

And yet, which culture is most known for its rabid tour-groups and photographing (at least in the '80s[1])? Has something happened to the Japanese psyche since then that has reversed this tendency? :)

On a more serious note, what are the specific legal differences between US and Japanese policies on photographing in public? I had thought US law essentially said 'if you're out in public, you can be publicly photographed'; is it not as clear here in Japan?

[1] Perhaps this title now goes to China?

"But in the Japanese case, I'd say the desire for anonymity has a lot to do with the relatively severe social sanctions any perceived trangressions carry."

This seems to echo the Mouer/Sugimoto idea that Japanese society is a panopticon-like surveillance state where everyone's moves are watched and judged by the seken (世間). Photos are permanently indicting.

"The Japanese edition of Wikipedia never includes photos in entries about actors, singers or other entertainers."

I agreed with this until I realized that the Japanese wikipedia has no pictures of anything.

"for the most part they hate the unregulated aspects of the internet with a passion!"

I have said it before, but the Japanese entertainment world works on the idea of information control and collusion. The internet fundamentally destroys their cushy system, especially when their control of rights is much stricter than what was already seen in other media markets worldwide. The net was an extension of free media principles in the US and Europe, but a direct challenge to the closed off world of information dispersion in Japan. It has already seriously changed the what kind of information is available to the general public and it's only going to get worse once sites can increase their credibility.

>everyone's moves are watched and judged by the seken (世間)

this is a very interesting idea that never gets elaborated enough in regards to japan and i think it needs to be. The fine line between socialist utopia and dystopia.
The idea of the , well shall i say rhyzomatic panopticon (a contradiction in terms) has been a basic ingredient in any attempt towards socialist living . from stalin's purges, to retrospectively successful living estates in eastern europe (read zizek for rather moving accounts on how true socialism developed in eastern europe in spite of the socialist state-machine).
Add to this the obscurity of the seat/site of power [ btw. you'll never convince me that johnny's jimusho has anything to do with totalitarianism] and you have quite a puzzling picture really.
I think as long a as the analysis is driven by economics and sociology things won't go very far, some form of psycho-logy/analysis is also necessary. that's why even say the films of Hideaki Anno are so mightily illuminating.

Just to balance things out a bit, I should say that in terms of press I've had few problems receiving images from studios, prodcos and agencies.

The problems are more evident with the borderless, Godless internet and foreign usage rights in books and non-news magazines etc.

Alin, how would you describe Johnny's Jimusho then?

uhm, totalitarian-by-default? fractral? off the top of my head.

I don't know if I would use the term totalitarian or autocratic with Johnny's. They are a "monopoly" in their market. I agree that some psychology is necessary (and apologize for less of this kind of analysis since it's not my background), but for a company (company!) like Johnny's, you do need to look at it in business and economic terms. It is first and foremost a monopoly, and maybe its effects on culture can be described in other ways.

we have at least two different paradigms here and have to be careful not to mix them up.i guess you're ultimately speaking more of an economic monopoly which surely has direct effects on culture, but culturally speaking it reduces and multiplies, doesn't even attempt to totalize, expand. The holywood system on the other hand, while supposedly strictly obiding anti-monopoly rules works straight with culture - and is a monopoly in that sense, its modus operandi would come much closer to what i'd call true totalitarianism.

-it reduces and multiplies, -- thus leaving its edges, its outside territory, dynamic

Well, note the lack of photos on Mixi. That seems to show a natural disposition towards not wanting to be photographed.

Not sure I buy this, at least not in the country that invented purikura. Seems more indicative to me of a general preference for internet anonymity.

Well there's a difference between in-group portraiture and out-group/public portraiture. The purikura vs. paparazzi line seems to back up the conventional wisdom on Japanese social groupism.

-- general preference for internet anonymity.

internet = 外 ??

wow marxy, we simultaneously said the same thing.

I beat you by 3 minutes.

"everyone's moves are watched and judged by the seken (世間)
this is a very interesting idea that never gets elaborated enough in regards to japan and i think it needs to be."
Already does,alin.
There is a historian named.Abe Kinya prof.of Hitotsubashi univ.died last year.The man established 日本世間学会.Lots of books he wrote about Seken.Highly recommended.

> lack of photos on Mixi.

in contrast this is considerd inappropriate content at gaijinpot club

'Where the photo is a cartoon, illustration, animal, scenery or object of anything other than yourself'

having said this i don't think the ratio of self/not-self photos is that different on mixi and say livejournal

Aceface, i don't know professor Abe's writing but i'm sure there would be. I was really thinking more about the discussions here and the fact that often this kind of stuff used to get labeled nihonjinron.

Marxy, you are absolutely right to identify my comment as springing from Sugimoto. His "Introduction to Japanese Society" had a profound impact on my thinking (along with Halliday's "A Political History of Japanese Capitalism," Monthly Review Press and sadly out of print), coming, as it did for me, coupled with lived experience, as I am indebted to a friend and colleague for pointing out that the typical Japanese open office environment is a perfect panopticon, with desks arranged so that the head of each section is afforded a clear view of all subordinates, while subordinates have only peripheral views of their section head. Sorry if this is stating the obvious for people like yourself who may be intimately familiar with such environments.

Alin, interesting point about the role of mutual surveillance and coercion in societies that represent themselves as utopias, or have that image (or its binary partner in the imaginary, dystopia) projected on them by outsiders. This is related to the Orientalizing gaze, and if we are to appreciate the "good" parts of Japanese society that have developed in spite of the conservative state-machine (but hey, let's do remember the point about de-subjectifying, I agree you on that, and so does Gene Sharp, pace Étienne de La Boétie), we have to wipe both essentilized models from our eyes.

By the way, you mentioned Anno, there has been a great deal written about Evangelion from a psychoanalytical perspective- and of course it invites this as there are open references to Freudian concepts throughout the series/films. Also, I have not seen it myself, but I understand that "Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex" explicitly mentions Jameson, and Osawa Masachi's "Comparative Sociology of the Body."

http://www.ntticc.or.jp/pub/ic_mag/ic012/zadan/summary_e.html

Related thinker Morioka Masahiro has what looks to be a very interesting English language blog:

http://www.lifestudies.org/weblog/

He seems equally comfortable discussing Wittgenstein and "Ashita no Joe" and writes essays like "What do We Learn from Japanese Feminist Bioethics?"

Aceface, thank you for the tip and I'm very excited to read more about 日本世間学会! Could it be that one of the main differences between contemporary "low context" and "high context" cultures (please permit these particular essentialized models temporarily for the sake of argument) is that the latter use ubiquitous video security cameras to create their surveilled environment (London being most exemplary), while the former rely on old-fashioned human beings (not to be too inflammatory, but North Korea springs to mind)? Which is more effectively oppressive, I wonder? And isn't Japan kind of becoming a kind of a mixture of the two approaches?

PS: Just to make clear what I wrote in my previous post, the magazine I was criticizing earlier takes candid pictures of ordinary people and publishes them with derogatory comments demeaning their fashion sense. I wasn't endorsing assaulting "legitimate" photojournalists (whatever that might mean, not sure if I should include paparazzi in this category)- just fashionista bullies!

Brown:
Well Abe was an expert in medieval Germany and he was pretty skeptical of applying western development of the society and individuality directly to Japan.I can't say they are making any argument about orwellian society of all the surveilance cameras and biometrics.

From their home page:

日本が「封建制」を脱し「近代化」がはじまってから、およそ100年以上がすぎた。わが国においては、もともとSocietyの翻訳語であった「社会」という言葉がふつうにつかわれるようになった。

しかし依然としていまでも、なにか不祥事があった場合のお詫びの言葉は、「社会に迷惑をかけて申し訳ない」ではなく、「世間に迷惑をかけて申し訳ない」である。阿部謹也さんが鋭く指摘するように、わが国には世間は存在しても「社会」は存在しない。

つまり私達は、いまだ世間を離れては生きてゆけないような存在である。

「社会」を対象化し、学問として語ることはできても、年賀状を出したり、お中元やお歳暮をすることの意味に思いを馳せる人間がどれほどいるだろうか。

考えなければならないことは、わが国の「社会」の解明にとって、世間の解明が前提であるということである。世間はわが国では「隠された構造」としてあるが、しかし、それは依然として「謎」のままになっている。

日本には「社会」にかんする学会は存在しても、世間にかんする学会は存在しない。

この不思議さは、学問がもともと西欧からの輸入品としてのみ展開されてきた事情を考えあわせても、世間をきちんと対象化し、それを冷静に論じてゆくことがたいへんむずかしいことを意味している。

この「隠された構造」に光をあてるのが、この学会のさしあたりの目標である。大事なことは、それが同時に、自らが存在する「基盤」（実存）をゆりうごかすことになるということである。

学会のさしあたりの目的を最大公約数的にいえば、以下のようになろう。もちろん、このような方向は固定的なものではなく、ひとつの暫定的な「網打ち」にすぎないし、各自さまざまな読みかえが可能であるし、読みかえてほしい。

哲学、法学、言語学、歴史学、経済学、経営学、精神医学、文化人類学などあらゆる西欧 から輪入された学問領域を、世間という観点から批判的に見直す学会をめざす。
細分化されタコツボ化された学問領域や、（学会という世間の）つまらぬしきたりなどといった、いわゆる「アカデミズム」にとらわれない「出入り自由」な学会をめざす。つまりゆるやかであたらしい「知のネットワーク」をめざす。
なによりも大事なことは、「隠された構造」である世間を対象化すること。つまり自らの存在（実存）を対象化しうるような内容をめざす。

Not just simple nihonjinron here.

Regarding photos and anonymity on Mixi.

A couple of months ago I translated a survey about Japanese use of Social Networking Sites (SNS) like Mixi et al. Photographs were not specifically brought up in any of the questions, but there were a VERY large proportion of responses from people who said that they used Mixi to have anonymous relationships with people that had no crossover with their "real" life. Many users said that they would never want a "real" friend to find their Mixi account, and had no interest in actually meeting their Mixi friends in real life.

To me, this seems to be in sharp contrast to Myspace, on which I have never seen an truly anonymous account that was not some sort of joke, and has invitations to real world events integrated as a key feature of the site. Myspace users will of course have "friends" that they have never met in person and perhaps never well, but they are almost always on the same list as "real" friends.

OK first let me say the closing line was the best Marxy has ever written!

Marxy also commented: "I have said it before, but the Japanese entertainment world works on the idea of information control and collusion"

Replace "entertainment world" with "society" and you sum up my recent thoughts nicely. The 外 bit nails it as well. It basically re-inforces my idea that we are living in a state of refined feudalism and the method is not so much owning the bodies of the peasants but their minds.

I'm afraid we are at a tipping point on this issue here and frankly it is my greatest worry in terms of the future economic importance of the nation. If one is as conspiracy minded as I am, one might see that the near complete failure of the entire English education program both in school and private might be a deliberate ruse. Pretend to teach the masses how to get outside information but dont actually give them the skills to do so.

As far as the Internet goes, I've talked to some of you before about my "Black Routers" story about how the introduction of the Net was delayed and stage managed by the powers that be until it could be done in a controlled way. The use of keitei terminals as network clients further supports this. The system in place here with phone terminals allows consumption but very little in the way of creation. Even the consumption aspects are deliberately limited in the sense that the genuinely liberating tools of translation of ideas are beyond the capacity of these terminals. Someday I really have to write all this down in one place...

BTW back on topic and very conspiracy minded, I wonder if this poster has anything to do with a purported paparazi shot of certain idol and a person from beyond these shores of equine purportions?

I'm coming to this post late, but just to add....these JAME ad campaigns have been going on for at least 4 years, on Yamanote Line and elsewhere. I experienced some of this "intimidation" firsthand a couple of years ago and wrote about it here (http://www.easterwood.org/hmmn/?p=440) for anyone interested.

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