Bill submitted in Japan to stop sale and export of Anime art

[JWR]

If this passes I can see it causing a large problem for our hobby.

https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2 ... an/.126160

[Pixel]

That would put a crimp in studio sponsored conventions here in the States. I bet YJ (and the related deputies) will love it too.

I can't say this completely surprises me. I've heard some Japanese consider their animation art "national treasures."

I note they sure watch alot of our movies. I bet they don't having a problem with Japanese people buying American animation production art, should they decide to do so.

It's funny, it bet none of the people pushing this mind gaijin buying the finished product, based on all the Anime BluRays sold at rip-off prices directly by Amazon. You'd think the BluRays themselves were national treasures.

This is something to watch closely, obviously. Thank you for bringing it to broader attention.

[xiaolungbao]

Doubt it will impact me that much. Rarely see cels from series I collect anymore since most are locked away for decades now. If cels do appear I have no doubt some deputy service will happily charge to help arrange shipment of cels out of Japan. In all my years collecting I've found the truism, if there is a demand a service will meet it, and if a service does not exist yet, one will be created.

[Pixel]

Yes, I have heard much the same thing; however, a "black market" in anime production goods would make them all the more expensive.

[xiaolungbao]

True, but the issue is not the cost to buyers, it is whether this 'bill' will effectively stop the sale and export of anime art. The cost is a result not the cause, right?

[Pixel]

In any case, there is a lot of money tied up in this sort of thing. Some deputies are Japanese-owned as I understand this. Perhaps all the money circulating will make the politicians think-Japan's economy hasn't been at it's best in well, I don't know how long. Do they really want to take this revenue stream off the table? Not everyone would go black market for it.

It almost sounds like they don't want it sold at home in Japan, either. That can't work, there's far too much of it out there, how will they store it? Their environmental laws there are pretty tight, from what I gather.

Or do they mean to destroy the originals? If that is the case, how can they make an arguement that they are preserving it?

I'm don't intend to get really worried about this yet, but politicians will be politicians. As I said it is something for collectors to keep an eye on.

[grEenLeaFx]

Umm aren't they a little too late on this bill as cels pretty much phased out 2 decades ago? I doubt this bill will pass as noted they are trying to also get out of the copyright laws, it will cost a lot of money, and other museums are already displaying/preserving production art there.

[Pixel]

They're going for original manga materials as well as cels.

Were they to get their way, I would expect they'd go for all of it at some point. Genga, layout/corrections, douga proper, etc. Anything to do with animation production.

I mean, if they're going with the national treasure angle on this, where would they stop?

[cutiebunny]

As I mentioned on ANN, trying to prevent cels from leaving Japan is like trying to herd cows back into the barn after they've been free for two decades.

If the Japanese government truly thought that production artwork is a national treasure, where were they when Madhouse was liquidating its vault artwork to save their studio? Or when the glut of Inuyasha cels hit in 2008? Why aren't they cracking down the studios that burn their production artwork?

If, and that's a big IF, this passes, artwork will still leave Japan. Deputy services will likely be necessary to buy artwork off Mandarake. But if there's one thing I've learned from being in this hobby for as long as I have, it's that money talks. Artwork will leave Japan as long as foreigners are willing to pay for it. And unless Japan is willing to increase its Customs force to examine every package and suitcase going abroad, artwork will still slip through.

While I did like the portion of the bill that seeks to create a museum to exhibit this artwork to the public, I'd like to hope that they hire some people familiar with animation artwork preservation. I haven't been too impressed with the preservation packaging that some YJ sellers have used in the past.

[LunaArt]

This has got to be a joke, right? It seems like a ridiculous bill for the reasons people have already posted on this thread (and in the discussion thread on the link). The thing that really gets me is this notion of national treasure as quoted in the article "[the materials and cels] must be preserved as treasures of Japan,".

You should see the condition I receive a lot of their "national treasures" in. Cels and sketches that have been carelessly cut, ripped, bent, stapled, taped, etc. and my personal favorite: having the sketch ripped off the back of the cel, leaving several paint chips stuck to the sketch only to allow the sketch to once again get stuck to the back of the cel. I mean, I could go on and on with the varieties of the ways that cels have been abused before coming into my collection. Half the time I feel like I am rescuing anime artwork so I can start preserving and caring for it in the manner it deserved all along.

I'm usually a mild mannered collector, but it chaps my hide a little bit when they say they want to preserve their artwork by keeping it in Japan and out of foreigner's hands. Maybe you should have started in your own backyard long ago by not allowing these materials to often be treated as cheap throwaway items in the first place.

I wonder what Mandarake thinks of the bill . . .

[Drac of the Sharp Smiles]

Cutiebunny and LunaArt, you both just said everything I was about to say. (*LOL*) Anime art rarely seems to be treated like it's a national treasure by the look of some of the things I've received. Thankfully, there are exceptions. ^_^

I have more concern if the bill passes how that would effect what we currently posses. There have been more than several examples in the art world of countries hunting down items which have been long owned by foreigners and insisting they be returned under the notion of "they never should have been removed in the first place" even if said items were acquired through completely legal ways at the time of acquisition. Some of the art news regarding Egyptian art over the past decade(?) comes to mind.

[cutiebunny]

I'm not concerned with Japan trying to repatriate its newly considered national treasure. First and foremost is the matter of appraisal. While I've seen Evangelion and Ghibli set-ups sell for $20K+ on Mandarake in the past, that's just a drop in the bucket compared to what paintings by Monet, Picasso and any other famous artist have sold for. The same goes for Chinese Ming Dynasty pottery; No one is going to drop $20 million on the average Sailor Moon cel.

The second issue would be the legal fees involved in repatriation, not to mention the fees involved in paying someone to deal with language barriers. While I have no idea as to how much a lawyer costs in Japan, in the US, those fees for the time needed to prepare a case for trial would be astronomically high. Let's say, for example, that the Japanese government targeted my collection. They'd first have to find my name and address. If they wanted to make a point, they'd probably want to hire a firm who had a history of winning artwork repatriation cases. All of these things cost money, and unless everyone involved was willing to work for free, would the perceived value of my collection and any possible revenue that could be generated from its display in a museum offset the cost involved to legally obtain it? Probably not.

What I could see the Japanese government doing is offering to buy artwork from private collectors. This makes the most sense to me as it would be the best use of their money. If government officials want to prove to the public that the foreigners are taking all the good stuff, making offers to private collectors for their best items is the best way to do that.

[Pixel]

Cutiebunny and LunaArt, you both just said everything I was about to say. (*LOL*) Anime art rarely seems to be treated like it's a national treasure by the look of some of the things I've received. Thankfully, there are exceptions. ^_^

I have more concern if the bill passes how that would effect what we currently posses. There have been more than several examples in the art world of countries hunting down items which have been long owned by foreigners and insisting they be returned under the notion of "they never should have been removed in the first place" even if said items were acquired through completely legal ways at the time of acquisition. Some of the art news regarding Egyptian art over the past decade(?) comes to mind.

Some of that art is centuries, even millennia old. Not only that, some of it is ceremonial/burial artifacts, which are treated very differently from animation art.

In any case, if they want anime production art left in country, they should have never allowed it sold in the first place. Trying to sell something from an ancient Egyptian pyramid would almost certainly land one in serious hot water. Animation art from all over the world is sold all the time, all over the world.

I can't help but think something else is going on here. This isn't about preservation-I bet the people pushing this simply don't want foreigners having Japanese animation memerabilia, but they know better than to actually say that out loud.

[xiaolungbao]

I agree the real issue is the purpose and intent behind this proposed bill. Like many of you I highly doubt the effectiveness of this proposal since much of the newly classified "national treasured artwork" has been out of Japan for well over 30 years. Talk about too little too late. SMH. Since we are taking the time to interpret it does seem this bill is designed to prevent non-Japanese from possessing Japanese created artworks. Also does anyone else feel this proposal has ethnocentric undertones?

Definitely agree with Cutiebunny's assessment the Japanese government might use a private party to make offers on private collections. The thing is even if they do this, it is doubtful Japan has any legal claim to ownership of the artwork after it has already been sold off internationally. At best some private collectors might be enticed to sell back some artwork, but the majority once it has left Japan, consider it gone for good scattered across the globe.

[sensei]

Concerning the way in which animation art has been "treasured" in Japan, consider the fate of an exhibition of original set-ups that Disney put together from its archives for a Japanese tour tp promote the release of the dubbed "Sleeping Beauty" feature film. This was discussed in this March 2008 thread. (Link to the original NYT article is here in case there is a problem linking to this earlier thread.)

Briefly, Walt Disney loaned original set-ups from the early Technicolor "Silly Symphony" shorts, plus original bgs from Fantasia and both concept and production art from Sleeping Beauty, some 200 items in all. At the end of the tour, Disney donated the whole show to the National Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo. "But the material was not considered a good fit for its permanent collection," the Times article explained, "so the museum gave the pieces to Chiba University to enhance the study of the visual arts." Chiba University, a national institution formed from a coalition of medical and polytechnical colleges, did not have any immediate interest in or use for the collection either. So the collection was stored in a janitor's closet from 1960 to 2004, when it was found by chance. After extensive rehabilitation work by Disney archivists, the collection was given another tour, then returned to Disney, as Chiba did not feel that it had the proper facilities to maintain the art. So now these "national treasures" are back in Anaheim.

One wonders what effort any archive, museum, or gallery in Japan will be willing to devote to maintaining the "national treasures" of Japanese anime art? Certainly nothing like what each of us does to rehabilitate and maintain the art we obtain. Not to mention the effort many of us give to using it in an educational way to promote knowledge and appreciation of animation as an important artform.