GagWatch

Yasukuni is a documentary by Chinese film-maker Li Ying about Japan’s Yasukuni shrine. The shrine, where Japan honours its war dead – including a number or war criminals – has seen its share of controversy in the past and, inevitably, some of that has affected reactions to the film.

Japanese MPs have called the film “anti-Japanese” and right-wing activists have threatened violence against cinemas planning to screen the film this weekend.

Five cinemas have cancelled screenings because of this.

The Guardian (via) reports that Ben Hills, the author of a controversial biography of Crown Princess Masako has accused the Japanese government of censorship after newspapers refused to carry advertisements for the book.

The English version of Princess Masako: Prisoner of the Chrysanthemum Throne was published in February, sparking protests from the Japanese foreign ministry and the imperial household agency, which accused the author of insulting the royal family. The Japanese translation of the book was scrapped, but the English version was released in Japan three weeks ago.

Hills, an Australian journalist, claims that Masako, who gave up a promising diplomatic career to marry the heir to the throne, Crown Prince Naruhito, in 1993, is suffering from clinical depression.

“This has become a freedom of speech issue,” Hills said during a visit to Tokyo. “I don’t care whether the Japanese people like my book or not - they should have the chance to read it and make up their own minds. This is what the foreign ministry and imperial household agency were trying to prevent.”

The book’s publisher in Japan, Daisan Shokan, was refused advertising space in all of the major newspapers, including the Asahi Shimbun, which positions itself as the country’s leading liberal voice. “One paper said it would not take an ad because [Hills] had not responded to the government protests,” said Daisan Shokan’s president, Akira Kitagawa. “I find that reasoning very strange.”

Hills said he had received threatening emails ahead of the Japanese publication of the book, and Daisan Shokan has also been the target of intimidation by ultra-nationalist groups.

The foreign ministry, predictably, denied there had been pressure on newspapers from it or the royal household.

A Japanese publisher has canceled plans to publish a translation of Princess Masako: Prisoner of the Chrysanthemum Throne following protests from the Japanese government.

The biography, written by Australian journalist Ben Hills, was released by Random House in December and claims to lift the veil of secrecy shrouding Japan’s royal family. The book is billed on the cover as “the tragic, true story” of the 43-year-old princess, a Harvard graduate who abandoned a diplomatic career to marry royalty, and describes her a virtual captive of the imperial palace who has been bullied by bureaucrats into depression.

Hills said in an e-mail to The Associated Press on Saturday that he was “very surprised and disappointed” by publishing house Kodansha Ltd.’s decision. “We regard this as a blatant attack on freedom of speech.”

He hoped to publish the book through another publisher with “the courage,” Hills said. “The Japanese people have the right to know what is going in their royal family.”

Criticising the emperor was regarded as serious crime in the first half of the 20th century and there is still a strong tradition of deference to the country’s royal family today. Japan’s Imperial Household Agency and its Foreign Ministry had demanded an apology from the author for “disrespectful descriptions, distortions of facts and judgemental assertions with audacious conjectures and coarse logic,” although government officials were unable to identify most of the passages they found problematic. The government has also complained to Random House in Sydney.

Hills said earlier this week that he and Random House stand by the accuracy of the book, had no intention of apologising and that the government was trying to pressure Kodansha to shelve the Japanese version of the book.

From Twitch comes the news that NHK, the Japanese public broadcasting company, and two production companies were fined US $16,529 by the Tokyo High Court after being found guilty of self-censorship in a documentary aired in 2001.

The documentary was about a mock trial of Emporer Hirohito for alleged war crimes in WWII, including the authorization of Japanese military brothels staffed by Asian slaves. Before airing the film, NHK executives met with then-chief cabinet secretary Shinzo Abe, now prime minister, and Shochi Nakagawa of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, who voiced complaints about the anti-imperial tenor of the show and urged the broadcaster to be objective. NHK then re-edited the program, cutting out the guilty verdit at the end and the incriminating testimony of Japanese soldiers. The plaintiff, Violence Against Women in War — Network Japan brought suit, saying that they weren’t consulted on the re-edit. Abe and Nakagawa were not punished. NHK has been known to buckle to political pressure, especially the majority LDP party, which sets the broadcaster’s annual budget.