The Death Note-related hysteria in China continues to escalate as Reuters reports that officials in Beijing have begun seizing ghost and horror stories from stores in an effort to protect the “physical and mental health” of its youth.
Among the blacklisted books is Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata’s Death Note, the international phenomenon that’s inspired an anime series, two live-action films and a planned spin-off feature.
Schools and local governments throughout China have been banning stationery notebooks based on the manga for the past two years, fearing the consequences of students writing the names of teachers and classmates. In Death Note, any person whose name is written in the notebook will die.
According to the Reuters report, collections of scary stories have become increasingly popular among students and white-collar workers in China, despite being illegal.
May 15th, 2007 at 11:50 am
Oh, but Bush is the real maniac! Quit showing us how much worse the rest of the world is…
May 15th, 2007 at 1:10 pm
Yeah, because if other people are bad that means Bush is good! Whatever, dude…
Anyway, this sounds like another Seduction of The Innocent type situation, with the Chinese government cracking down on something it can’t control (youth subcultures) under the guise of it being a campaign “to protect the kids.” And the scary stories are their strawman. Just another battle in the never ending censorship wars.
It’s interesting (imo anyway) to note that the ghost story collections they’re cracking down on now are what sound like bootlegs. Do they have a whole system of underground publishers in China? If so, that’s pretty cool.