Sophia University Institute of Comparative Culture Lecture Series 2016

‘A Moral Firestorm:’The Politics of Translating Manga Today

Patrick W. Galbraith

July 19th, 2016
6:30pm – 8:00pm
Building 10, 3F, Room 301 Sophia University Yotsuya Campus

Manga are among not only Japan’s most successful cultural exports, but also its most controversial.
In 2015, an envoy from the United Nations called on Japan to do more to ban ‘extreme’ manga, in
particular depictions of sexual violence against underage characters. That same year, a contributor
to an English-language collection of academic essays advocated refusing to translate such material
to stop its global spread – alongside an inspiring historical episode of burning objectionable
content. This talk examines the work of translators and researchers in the current moment of
heightened concern about manga. It focuses on the fraught publication of an interview with, and
drawings by, Uchiyama Aki and the commercial publisher who decided to excise the interview and
drawings when threatened with ‘a moral firestorm.’

Patrick W. Galbraith received a Ph.D. in Information Studies from the University of Tokyo, and is
currently pursuing a second Ph.D. in Cultural Anthropology at Duke University. He is the author of
books such as The Otaku Encyclopedia: An Insider’s Guide to the Subculture of Cool Japan (Kodansha
International, 2009), Otaku Spaces (Chin Music Press, 2012) and The Moe Manifesto: An Insider’s
Look at the Worlds of Manga, Anime and Gaming (Tuttle, 2014), and the co-editor of books such as
Idols and Celebrity in Japanese Media Culture (Palgrave, 2012), Debating Otaku in Contemporary
Japan: Historical Perspectives and New Horizons (Bloomsbury, 2015) and Media Convergence in Japan
(Kinema Club, 2016).

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