Japan is a great nation of customizers, adapters, and modifiers. You can see it in the cuisine, which is often a fusion of different influences and turned into something new.
It’s also evident in various subcultures.
Though original content is common too, Doujinshi (privately printed/bound magazines and manga) are sometimes a type of fan fiction, where people make their own versions of popular professional manga and anime.
Cosplay is similarly derivative. Fans dress up as their favorite characters and put a new spin on the franchise.
But when does derivation go too far? When it’s commercial? Or when it’s sexually “inappropriate”?
The question of copyright infringement has long haunted the doujinshi market, which operates in a kind of loophole at present and tolerated by the copyright owners of the original IPs.
But a man in Kyushu who modified anime figures and sold them was fined recently for copyright violation.
The man took heads from existing figures and skillfully added them to the bodies of other figures in more sexually suggestive poses.
Amusingly, the police covered the face of Fujiko Mine (from Lupin III) when they put the figures on display for the media, as if trying to protect her modesty (though the more overtly sexual parts of her body were still visible).
In March, Kyoto police had no such qualms when it came to displaying similar customized figures of Nezuko from Demon Slayer, which were made by a 48-year-old man in Wakayama who sold several such figures via online auctions in 2021 and 2022. He was arrested for copyright infringement.
There was a similar case in May last year involving a man in Okayama making modified figures of Asuka (from Evangelion) and selling them online. He was likewise arrested by Kyoto police.
These are, to us, examples of creative and talented modification that doesn’t compete with regular figures available via the mainstream commercial market, but the court in Kagoshima, southern Japan, saw otherwise, and fined the 46-year-old ¥300,000 in a judgment handed down on April 27.
He sold 14 such figures on online auctions as well as accepted specific commissions from clients, charging as much as ¥25,000 to produce a remodeled figure.
Such modifications of figures (or cars) for “malicious” purposes is known as makaizo (魔改造) in Japan, literally “devil’s modification.” But who is the devil in these circumstances? The people who make the figures for a bit of extra cash and to bring happiness to other private individuals? Or the police and big publishers, who punish fans for pursuing their passion?
And does this apparent crackdown have worrying implications for the parody products and releases that are very common in the Japanese adult toy market (especially from Tama Toys) and adult video porn industry?
