In a chilling escalation of corporate censorship, Melonbooks, a beloved hub for fans of anime, manga, and especially doujinshi has been forced to suspend VISA and Mastercard transactions both online and in physical stores starting December 19, 2024.
This abrupt decision comes on the heels of relentless pressure from global payment giants, who are demanding Melonbooks scrub so-called “problematic” content to align with their prudish, Western moral codes.
Let’s not sugarcoat it: this isn’t about “protecting” anyone. It’s a blatant attempt by Western corporations to dictate what’s acceptable in Japanese culture, effectively colonizing it with their sanitized, puritanical values.
For those unfamiliar, Melonbooks is a chain of specialty stores across Japan that serves anime, manga, and especially doujinshi enthusiasts.
In the eyes of global payment processors, this makes them a prime target for censorship. Doujinshi refers to self-published works from independent creators, ranging from fan fiction and original stories to explicit erotica. Melonbooks isn’t just about books; they stock everything from Blu-rays and CDs to niche merchandise, making it a haven for otaku culture.
What truly distinguishes Melonbooks is its commitment to supporting independent creators, offering a platform for content that mainstream publishers wouldn’t touch.
Melonbooks has remained tight-lipped about the exact reasons behind suspending VISA and Mastercard payments, but it’s widely believed that pressure to restrict adult content is at the heart of it.
This follows a disturbing trend where various Japanese storefronts, both digital platforms and retail chains like Melonbooks have either cut off support for these payment methods or, like the eroge distributor Denpasoft, capitulated to such draconian demands by removing multiple products from their catalogs.
Doujinshi isn’t just another art form; it’s a cornerstone of Japan’s vibrant and diverse media ecosystem. It’s a creative outlet where artists can explore themes that might be seen as taboo or provocative by Western standards but are embraced within Japan’s more open-minded artistic circles. Melonbooks has long championed this freedom by providing a platform for independent creators to connect with their audience, offering niche content that often includes sexual themes, fetishes, and parody works of popular anime and video game franchises for sale both digitally and physically.
But then there’s the problem: VISA and Mastercard. These payment giants have been tightening their grip on Japan’s media landscape, coercing retailers like Melonbooks into censoring content they deem “problematic.” We’ve seen this play out before, with retailer Toranoana forced to remove lolicon and shotacon material after these corporations labeled it as Child Sexual Abuse Material.
Let’s call this crackdown what it really is, a thinly veiled assault on Japan’s artistic freedom, driven by foreign corporate moralizing that seeks to impose its values on a culture that has long cherished creative expression and autonomy.
VISA and Mastercard’s demands typically focus on purging content that involves explicit themes or challenges social norms in their home markets, with little regard for its artistic or cultural value. Starting December 19, users at Melonbooks will be limited to JCB and American Express cards, as Japanese netizens increasingly turn to their own national banks over foreign payment processors notorious for scrutinizing Japan’s homegrown content.
This trend isn’t isolated major platforms like DLsite, Niconico, DMM, and U-NEXT have similarly disabled VISA and Mastercard payments due to the same demands.
The timing of Melonbooks’ announcement couldn’t be worse, coinciding with the lead-up to Winter Comiket (Comiket 105), one of the world’s largest doujinshi conventions. This last-minute change throws a wrench into the plans of many attendees, forcing those still reliant on VISA and Mastercard to scramble for a JCB card if they want to participate without hiccups.
Japan stands as one of the final bastions of artistic freedom, yet these financial giants are dead set on dragging it into their sterile, homogenized world order. Let’s not mince words: this is cultural colonization, plain and simple.
Under the guise of “corporate responsibility,” VISA and Mastercard are strong-arming Japanese businesses into conforming to Western standards, showing a complete disregard for Japan’s rich cultural identity. Despite being global entities, they refuse to respect the cultural nuances of the nations they operate in, choosing instead to impose their sanitized values on everyone else.
It’s downright infuriating that these corporations have the power to dictate what Japanese stores are allowed to sell, essentially holding them hostage with the threat of cutting off their ability to process credit card transactions. VISA and Mastercard wield an iron grip over global money transactions, effectively monopolizing the market. So, when Japanese retailers like Melonbooks decide to flip them the bird and willingly lose their licenses in favor of alternatives that aren’t as uptight, it speaks volumes.
At the core of this issue lies a fundamental question: Who gets to decide what art is acceptable? Japan has a proud history of celebrating creative freedom, yet it’s facing a full-scale cultural invasion from the West, hellbent on controlling and monetizing Japan’s rich literature, gaming, and entertainment industries.
On the gaming front, we have corporate behemoths like BlackRock and the Vanguard Group, which strategically buy up 5-8% of publicly traded shares in companies. Their game? Not just profiting by lending out these shares to trading firms for shorting, while staying net long but using their financial clout to manipulate and corrupt these companies with incentives tied to compliance.
Enter ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) initiatives, which have gutted the AAA Japanese gaming landscape. Capcom, SEGA, Square Enix, and Bandai Namco have all been dragged down, churning out mediocre products crafted to appease a global audience.
This has led to rampant censorship of any “problematic” content that might offend the perpetually outraged, along with the erasure of attractive female characters and fanservice, anything remotely revealing or beautiful must be purged.
The icing on this shit cake? DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) initiatives force-feeding players a diet of artificially diverse characters, stripping games of male and female descriptors and replacing them with the soulless “Body Type A” or “Body Type B.”
What we’re witnessing here is the West’s imperialistic grip tightening around Japan’s neck, forcing its vibrant, unapologetically unique culture to conform to bland, homogenized standards. And for what? To appease some ESG checklists and virtue-signaling corporate overlords who couldn’t care less about artistic integrity or cultural authenticity.
Japan’s animation industry has essentially transformed into an export-driven market. The surge of anime’s popularity in the West has led to a massive uptick in production, yet the quality and diversity of content have steadily declined. To keep up with deadlines and cut costs, animation studios increasingly outsource to Korea, which has compromised the craftsmanship that once defined the industry.
Currently, nearly a quarter of the revenue in Japan’s animation sector comes from foreign markets, driven largely by entities like Crunchyroll, which licenses anime for Western audiences while appropriating it with politically sanitized English dubs. Netflix has jumped on the bandwagon too, not only distributing anime but also spearheading collaborative projects.
While Japan’s anime industry is more profitable than ever, raking in record-breaking revenues, its core has been hollowed out by Western influence. The kind of content getting greenlit today is a far cry from the edgy, unapologetically provocative series of the past.
Studios now favor safer adaptations that steer clear of risqué or erotic themes, especially nudity, to appease overseas markets. If an “ecchi” series does manage to get adapted, it’s often watered down, with heavy censorship to cater to younger viewers and character designs toned down to align with so-called global norms.
The provocative, bold designs of loli characters, once a staple of niche otaku culture, are sanitized beyond recognition to avoid backlash.
But the problems don’t end there. Beyond VISA and Mastercard’s crusade against what they arbitrarily label as “child abuse material,” Japan faces another encroachment on its creative sovereignty. Enter Blackstone, a colossal investment firm that recently acquired the largest e-manga platform, Infocom, for a staggering $1.7 billion. This move effectively grants them the power to deny any mangaka a platform for distribution on a whim.
This tightening noose around Japan’s creative industries isn’t just a matter of financial control, it’s an attempt to strong-arm the entire country into producing content that fits neatly within a Westernized, sanitized framework. By controlling the flow of money and threatening to sever distribution channels, these corporate overlords are pressuring Japan to abandon its unique, boundary-pushing content in favor of bland, universally “acceptable” fare.
The message is clear: conform to our standards, or we’ll cut you off at the knees. For how long can you fend for yourself?
Much like the hollow promises of diversity initiatives in gaming where the rhetoric of “inclusivity” is just a facade for corporate interests, globalization is less about bringing cultures together and more about forcing them into a bland, uniform mold. Corporations like VISA and Mastercard aren’t champions of cultural exchange; they’re gatekeepers wielding their financial power to reshape content according to Western ideals.
Instead of celebrating diversity, they’re erasing it, one “problematic” doujin at a time, turning Japan’s rich, eclectic creative landscape into yet another casualty of their crusade for sanitized, politically correct content.
The silver lining? Some Japanese retailers are pushing back, refusing to bow down to these demands. By proactively suspending their licenses with VISA, Mastercard, and even PayPal if necessary, they’re drawing a line in the sand.
Sure, it may frustrate consumers who now have to jump through hoops to open a JCB account or use other methods, but better that inconvenience than watching Japan’s unique creative wares vanish under corporate censorship. However, this defiance comes at a cost, as the West’s cultural rot continues to sink its claws deeper into Japan.
The threat isn’t just from payment processors. The United Nationsm, a body infamous for committing unspeakable acts of horrors against children while condemning fictional works as “pedophilia” has taken aim at Japan’s anime, manga, and gaming industries yet again, demanding a purge of content that allegedly promotes “violence against women.”
Japan is now caught in a no-win scenario, eventually they’ll submit to these demands and sacrifice their creative freedom because the only other option to exterminate the Western cancer that has taken hold is to go scorched-earth, cutting all ties with Western influence and walking away from billions in revenue.
Let’s be real, though, Japan isn’t going to burn it all down. Instead, they’ll endure a slow, painful decline as their once-thriving industries, especially gaming, are slowly compromised beyond recognition.
