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| QUOTE | Comic Box Special Report
The Truth of the Pokemon Doujinshi Incident
by Nakai Yuki
(Letter from Nakai Yuki translated by Mary Kennard)
To the editors and readers of Comic Box Junior, Hello. Please excuse me for any worry I might have caused. My name is Nakai Yuki, and I am the person involved in the recent Pokemon incident. It seems that this problem has been taken up by almost the entire doujinshi world, and is no longer just my concern. I never thought that this incident would cause such furor. Last month passed like an endless nightmare, one from which I still haven't woken. Although I'm sure that many of you are acquainted with this incident from its coverage on TV and in the newspapers, let me recap. Executives of 3 companies holding the rights to [Pocket Monster] (Nintendo, Creatures, and Game Freaks), lodged a formal complaint of copyright piracy against me, and I was arrested by the police.Even though Nintendo's office is located in Kyoto, and I live in Fukuoka, the Kyoto police arrested me and carted me off to Kyoto. Because there had been absolutely no previous warning, I had no
idea what was happening to me. Bewildered and shocked, I could do nothing but blindly follow the police's orders. I suppose that when doujinshi circles heard what had happened, they wondered, "Am I going to be OK?", "I thought that we had been allowed to created doujinshi freely, but maybe I was wrong" or "It's going to be much harder to create doujinshi now."
Also I expect that there were many different responses, from those who
worried about me "Poor Nakai-san, what will happen to her?", to those who criticized-"You were wrong for drawing a book that broke children's dreams!" Even now, phone calls inquiring about me come to the Kyoto #7 Police Station, where I was arrested, and during my incarceration, my jailers often said "We got another phone call from some crying girl today" or "We asked for their name, but they just said 'That's ok, I'm just a friend from a long time ago' and then hung up". When I heard this, I thought that many doujinshi artists must have been trying to get in touch with me. Of course I wasn't allowed to make or receive any calls, even to or from relatives (Or to a lawyer! ed.) I had no idea how news of my arrest was spreading outside, except that my jailers sometimes told me that most of the papers had printed articles about me, or that I was the top story on the color page of the sports papers. One detective, who had visited printers, event headquarters and the homes of the people who had ordered my book told me, "You're becoming really famous-now you can stop plagiarizing and just do original stories". When I heard these words, I couldn't hide my shock at how big this whole thing had become.
Today I finally saw for myself the articles that had been written about me a full month age. Although I was afraid to read them, I was surprised myself at how calmly I was able to do it. When I thought about it, I figured that the memories of the unbearable things the police had said to me, over and over, everyday of my confinement, so that I could just cover my ears and shout "No more!", had hardened me. Nothing the papers or TV shows could say would be as great a shock as that. So when I finally read the articles, my only feeling was one of surprise-that they were full of lies and misinformation. For the first time, I realized how irresponsible today's press has become. The articles that appeared the day after my arrest were filled with mistakes-I was said to be an office lady, or a hostess-in Kyoto alone, 4 papers said that I was unemployed. They certainly didn't interview me, and the police said they don't release that kind of information, so I can only suppose that the reporters made it up out of whole cloth. Although my doujinshi was printed at a specialty printer outside of my prefecture "(the newspapers listed a local printer as mine. No detail was too small to get wrong-from the number of pages (32, not 29-anyone with sense realizes that there are no odd-numbered page books!), the price (600 yen, not 900 yen), and the mode of sale, the articles were filled with humbug. While I might have expected this of entertainment magazines and sports newspapers, should I have expected it in mainstream newspapers? Is it possible to call reporters like this, who write stories without doing even basic research, professionals? Beyond shock, I could only laugh cynically. How, after this, am I to trust any news, in any medium? I was so angry that I felt like
calling each and every newspaper and magazine. Someone knowing nothing of the situation would open his newspaper and believe every word there. Above that, the sports newspapers wrote that I was a dark and gloomy person....I've been called many things, from flashy, to frivolous, to sociable-but dark and gloomy is a first for me. It seems to me that the press have decided that people into doujinshi are all 'dark' or 'weird' or 'obsessed'-and that's the image we're saddled with, whether it's true or not. If I said nothing else, I just wanted to say-don't swallow whole everything the press feeds you.
So...January 13 is a day that I will remember all my life. Just after 9 in
the morning, my intercom suddenly sounded. Because I keep late hours, I had just gotten to sleep. Figuring that it was just a salesman of some sort at that hour, I ignored it at first. But the buzzer rang continuously, so
giving up on sleep, I asked who it was. A deep man's voice, in an unfamiliar Kyoto dialect, asked "Is that Nakai Yuki? This is the police. We'd like to ask you some questions." At first I didn't believe him. His accent was wrong, and I'd heard of people like the yakuza posing as police to force their way into an apartment. Unconsciously, I braced myself. Also, they used my pen name, which only very close friends use, so I figured that they couldn't be the police. But they refused to go away, so finally I pressed the autolock. Soon my bell rang-they had arrived at my door. I hesitantly approached the door, and looked out through the peephole. I saw a group of men, all in suits, clustered in front of my door. With not one uniform in sight, I could only think that they were not police, but yakuza. But having let them up, I had to talk to them, so, first securing the chain, I unlocked and opened the door. "What do you want?", I asked. One of the men replied, "We are Kyoto police. We'll tell you what we want after you've let us in. " Surely the real police would tell you what they wanted, whether over a chain or intercom? I definitely felt that something was fishy. If I opened the door, what would happen to me? I truly felt that I was in danger. "Are you really the police? If so, show me your badge!" As soon as I said this, he displayed his badge-it certainly looked like a police badge-but what if it was fake? It said Kyoto police, which seemed weird since I lived in Fukuoka, had no friends in Kansai, and indeed had never even been there.
As I stood there regarding them with suspicious eyes, he suddenly thrust the badge forward, saying "That's enough! Let us in! We can't talk if you
don't."After waffling for 4 or 5 minutes, I asked them to wait a minute
while I put some clothes on over my pajamas. I unlocked the door, and in
that instant 7 men pushed into my apartment. One of them said, "You
published a Pocket Monster manga, did you not? Nintendo had filed a claim of copyright infringement, and we have a warrant for your arrest.". From his breast pocket he took out a piece of paper, opened it and thrust it into my face. Arrest warrant? This is right out of a detective drama...Could this be candid camera? Unbelieving, these and other thoughts ran through my mind. I'd never done and illegal thing in my life. I was to be arrested for drawing a doujinshi about an anime I loved? I'd never heard of such a thing.
Many of my friends also drew doujinshi, and for that matter, thousands, no, tens of thousands of fans gathered in Fukuoka Dome for doujinshi events every month. "Why was I being arrested?" I asked over and over. But it was not a dream. Nintendo had filed a complaint, I was being arrested, and Kyoto police were rifling my apartment.
From that second, until my release 22 days later, I was to experience not
one second of freedom. It was the start of a period in hell. For several
hours, the police searched my rooms, and shoved everything they thought related into boxes. I was then hauled off to Kyoto, and at the station shoved into a waiting paddy wagon, manacled and bound around the shoulders with rope, which the police held as they made me walk before them. Still manacled and bound, I was carried to the police station (and the same later when I went to court). Others in the paddy wagon with me were thieves, drunks and pushers. Being treated as a criminal just like them was the most humiliating experience of my life. The only time I was released from the manacles was inside the police station, and in the prison cell-in other words, when I was behind bars. If I set even one foot outside, I was manacled and bound again. I was under observation 24 hours a day. Brushing my teeth, eating, sleeping...I wasn't allowed one second of freedom or privacy. This prison life continued for 3 weeks-sitting on the hard floor, surrounded by cold concrete walls in my empty cell, shivering in the cold, drowning in fear and sorrow, unable to communicate with anyone, all I could do was cry. In addition, I was forced to undergo daily inquisitions by the police, until I thought that my nerves would snap. I truly think that my mental condition was not normal at that time. Every night, unable to sleep, I stared at the unfamiliar concrete ceiling and iron bars, and thought that I would like to die.
What comes after would take pages and pages to write, so I think that I'll
write about my complete experiences in a doujinshi. Everyone out there who creates doujinshi is probably wondering when their turn will come, others may be wondering just what exactly happened-but what I really want everyone to understand is that this isn't just my problem, it's the problem of everyone who loves doujinshi. So that no one else undergoes the terrible experience I did...So that events can continue to be held freely....So that doujinshi are not wiped off the face of the earth...All of us who hold the same interest and dreams must think together about what can be done. But I myself don't know what is best to do, or even what is right anymore.
Everyone, from the police to Nintendo, has their own side of the story, and everyone will have their own opinions. I'd really like to hear from
[Junior]'s readers as to what they think, no matter what their opinions.
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Nakai san goes on to detail what has happened to her since-she was forced to move out of her apartment (no small problem when you have to pay 6 months rent to move into a new one), she lost her job (unable to communicate for 3 weeks, no wonder-and how do you explain? "Yes, but I have an excuse-I was in jail!" That goes over real well with employers...) All of that combined with the fine (I don't entirely understand this part myself, but apparently she was basically tried by the police and fined) cost her about 10,000 dollars. The letters we've received so far have been mostly positive, with the largest shock seeming to come from the police calling dj plagiarizations....She's also been contacted by lawyers (in the US, anyway, she'd have a really strong case, but here it seems to be pretty standard behavior for the cops [remind me not to do anything illegal-besides producing parody dj books, that is...ack!]) And the publicity has definitely not been great for Nintendo-while of course little kids neither know nor care about the controversy, doujinshi fans also make up a large part of their audience (with more money than kids,too)- and many, many of them, whether they like Pokemon dj or not, are pretty mad...
If anyone wants to write her, you can either send letters to me by
e-mail(tylertoo@beehive.twics.com), or to Comic Box by snail mail
Fusion Product
Tokyo Japan 166-0001
Suginami-ku
Asagaya-kita 2-13-13 3F |
Amazing how justice is served. America or not. Found the link on Anizona Forums. Click here for report!
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Confusing situation about Doujinshi
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