In a huge culture war victory, mangaka Ken Akamatsu has just won a seat in Japan’s House of Councillors. He ran as a member of Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party, and became the first mangaka to win a seat in said house.

By the way, Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party is similar to America’s conservatives, and a mangaka is an author of Japanese comic books.

This is a culture war victory because Ken has strong anti-censorship views, particularly concerning manga (Japanese comic books). He’s of the opinion that if westerners are interested in manga, they should have them as the author intended. He was also outspoken against proposed legislation which would have outlawed many doujin (unofficial, independently-made manga) because the legislation in question would have been overly strict in handling copyrights, and made no distinction between drawings and photographs when it came to depictions of nudity.

Considering this, it seems likely that Japan’s mangaka are going to continue to hold strong in resisting western pressure to adopt woke themes in their work, and with a mangaka now championing them in public office, their position is getting stronger.

Because Japanese entertainment is free of woke themes, many are turning to manga and anime as an alternative to the politically-charged comics and cartoons produced by western entertainment companies. Foreign influencers recognized that this is happening, and have attempted to include manga and anime in their sphere of influence, to various degrees of failure.

It was just last year that the president of Kadokawa expressed his belief that manga was more extreme than swimsuit content, and that he wanted the company to change so it would be more likely to be reviewed by western tech companies like Apple and Google. Because his words had the potential to cost his company a lot of money, he was made to take a pay cut, which included paying back back-pay.

Prior to his election, Ken Akamatsu was most famous for Love Hina, a comedy about a boy who made a promise to meet a girl again upon attending a prestigious university, but forgot her name. As he studies for the entrance exam, he becomes the manager of a girls dorm.

It stands to reason that those in the creative arts would take less kindly to attempts to censor them, but things aren’t always so straightforward. With western media companies, it’s usually the companies that have creative control over IPs, and the IP creator usually sides with the media company because they don’t want to risk losing involvement with their own brainchildren. Western media companies tend to bow to vocal minorities, in part because they wish to avoid the potential for negative publicity, but also because western activists tend to be entitled and belligerent. Worse yet, western media companies tend to lack either courage or principle.

Japanese media companies tend to be more principled, and what’s more, because the manga industry is highly competitive, mangaka tend to make fewer choices that would risk alienating their audiences.

Japan now has someone in their House of Councillors to represent mangaka and those who read manga, and he has a strong anti-censorship position. The woke mob continues to lose ground.