ABSTRACT
In December 2000, government officials, officials from the entertainment industry, parents, and their children were busy playing out an all too familiar script. In this case, the setting for this latest episode of the media violence controversy was Japan. Movie director Kinji Fukasaku had released an incredibly popular movie, Battle Royale. The film deals with conflict between junior high school delinquents who are sent to an island and told to battle to their death with automatic weapons. One viewer, who reacted to the film by noting that it “makes you think,” still declined to see it a second time because “it was just too grotesque” (Schaefer, 2000). Japan’s education minister, Nobutaka Machimura, discouraged owners of theaters from showing the film at all and clearly implied that its contents were “of a harmful nature.” The Motion Picture Code Committee restricted admission to children who were under 16 years old. However, this restriction did little to diminish the film’s popularity. It made world headlines, partially due to the fact that young viewers camped out on sidewalks for 2 days in order to gain admission to the opening showing. Part of the controversy was fueled by an apparent “copycat” crime in 1998 that involved a Japanese TV show titled Gift. Characters on that show carried butterfly knives and were blamed by parents, educators, and government officials for inspiring a 13-year-old boy to stab his teacher to deathwith a butterfly knife (Schaefer, 2000).
