With Japan being one of the cleanest, safest, crime-free countries around, you might be surprised to learn about the thriving sex industry here. Or perhaps you may not be surprised, since there is a thriving sex industry in almost any other part of the world as well. But now is neither the time nor the place for that particular discussion.
It’s well known that Japan is the capital of ‘cute’, and many products and services will have cartoon characters as an important part of their branding on public image. This is true with the sex industry, or mizu-shobai (lit. ‘water business’), as well. These businesses really can’t be expected to show the upmost respect to basic laws when they are surviving on the borders of what is and what isn’t morally, socially, and legally acceptable, commonly resulting in copy-right infringement.
The other day on the ground at school, I found a little hand-out for one such borderline not quite sex-industry but not exactly a legitimate bar, best described as mizu-shobai.
With the images of a fake Chinese Government run Disney Land fresh in my mind, the obvious ‘Disney Influenced’ images scattered throughout the small piece of paper caught my attention.
First we have the a version of what would seem to be the pub’s logo.
Clearly this graphic is comprised of Disney’s font
Placed in front of Big Ben with a fairy to remind of us Tinker-bell from the Disney rendition of Peter Pan.
There are also various cartoon characters scattered throughout that are clearly copies of Disney characters.
Just some random duck, or is it the Donald Duck?
Just your average happy bear, or is it Winnie the Pooh?
A dirty rat, or Mickey Mouse?
Lastly, another logo-esc image can be found on the pamphlet.
The silhouette of a castle is unmistakably intended to make those who see it think of the Princesses Castle from Snow White, which is also part of the logo for Disney Land. And then there’s also the name Neverland in itself.
So is this a problem? Most certainly it is. All these characters are either original Disney characters or Disney renditions of characters in children’s stories. Even if Tokyo Disney Land had not come to Japan, there isn’t a single Japanese person who doesn’t know Disney nor it’s characters, so there is no chance that this could just be some coincidence, nor is there any chance that this is not only intentional, but a direct attempt to capitalize on the works of others by presenting the image of association with Disney. This is something that Disney takes very seriously, and has worked hard to prevent from happening in Japan in the past. When Tokyo Disney Land was built, Japan Rail had intended to name the train station nearest to it “Tokyo Disney Land Station”, however this was met with complaints from Disney. Naming the station Tokyo Disney Land Station would allow for other business to use the name of the station as part of their location, and in turn business name. Imagine “Tokyo Disney Land (Station) Red-Light District Information Center”.
How big of a problem is this? Should all American business pull out of Japan and be on the lookout for a second coming of post WW2 Japanese mass plagiarism? For that, I’d like to compare it to the fake Chinese Disneyland. First, what makes this worse than what was/is going on in China is what characters are being used. In the fake Chinese Disney Land, some of the more obvious copies were not of Mickey Mouse, but of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. This is important because these characters are not original Disney characters, just Disney renditions of a long told story in western cultures. There are many people unhappy with what they see as Disney’s attempts (and success) at copyrighting western culture and capitalizing on it. This example of plagiarism in Japan contains more elements of copying original Disney characters, and there is no one who can logically form an argument to say that is not a problem.
But in reality, this is nothing close to as big of a problem as the fake Disneyland in China. We’re talking about some little private own bar where you pay for the company of women, tucked away on some corner street, lost in the urban sprawl of Tokyo. Although this is clearly an attempt to capitalize off of Disney, no one in their right mind would think ‘Sweet Pub Neverland’ is actually associated with Disney, and with something as small scale as this their is virtually no way this could be costing Disney profits. But more importantly, the fake Chinese Disneyland was government run, government sponsored mass plagiarism, theft, and thievery. Disney would certainly be within their rights to crush this business into nothing with a lawsuit, but it would probably cost them more to make the phone call to the legal department than they could ever get from the whole ordeal.
From the perspective of someone studying to become a designer, this is pretty disgusting. What especially gets me is the obvious fact that someone who knew what they were doing to at least some extent worked on this pamphlet as a designer, re-creating the images based on the Disney works. If a license was required to work as a designer, it would be suitable for this person to have theirs revoked.
But really, I’m not too worried about something like this, and I don’t think anyone looking to invest in or work with Japan should have anything to fear. If we’re going to look to Japan’s sex industry for our basis of forming views of morals, we (American and other western societies) had better look at our own involvement in the sex industries in our own countries and throughout the world. Many such industries depend on our sex tourist dollars.
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