Even before the western world was introduced to anime through mechas and magical girls, mangaka used the art form to speak on critical real-life issues. From Keiji Nakazawa’s Barefoot Gen, a story based on his own experiences as a survivor of World War II, to Keiko Tobe’s With The Light, a fictional account of a mother raising her autistic son. Religion is also a real-life topic that merits thoughtful discussion, but it looks like publisher Shueisha disagrees, though not for the reasons you might think.
In 2021, Shueisha greenlit Mariko Kikuchi’s anthology essay series, “Kami-sama” no Iru Ie de Sodachimashita ~Shūkyō 2-Sei na Watashi-tachi~ (A Home Life With God ~We Children Born Into Religion~). The series contained interviews with people born into specific religions and reflecting on their experiences within them, including Kikuchi’s own experiences. The series debuted on Yomitai in September 2021 and had four chapters released previously, with the fifth chapter released in January of this year. Soon after, on February 10th, Shueisha pulled the fifth chapter and issued an apology for “offending a particular religion or group of believers.” Shortly after that in March, Shueisha pulled the previous chapters, citing that their removal was due to “insufficient fact-checking”.
Kikuchi has since spoken out about the manga’s removal in Flash magazine:
“Kikuchi told Flash that her editor initially told her to change the drawings of the altar and institution in chapter 5. Later, however, she was informed suddenly to revise the entire manga. She was also told that interviewing a single person was insufficient research, but received no answer when she asked how many interviewees were sufficient. She said that she declined to alter the manga and asked to end the serialization instead, perceiving the edits as a means of suppressing the voices of those who have left the religious groups.”
But the whole lynchpin of this story is the organization that was featured in chapter five of the anthology: Happy Science. For those unfamiliar with the cultish Happy Science, the organization was founded in 1986 and is notable for believing in aliens and for selling “spiritual” COVID-19 vaccines. They also created their own anime for marketing purposes, something YouTube creator Mother’s Basement covered in detail over the course of two videos last year.
While Kikuchi herself could not confirm or deny whether Happy Science was behind the complaints to her editor, others such as fringe religious group researcher Yoshiro Fujikura find them to be the obvious party, due to the effect they’ve had on Japanese media at large over the past few years. He is quoted as saying, “Looking back on the past 1-2 years, even when there have been scandals related to religious groups, their names are not reported. Multiple outlets have reported on Kikuchi’s case, but none have mentioned Happy Science by name.”
Happy Science has, of course, not confirmed their involvement in A Home Life With God being pulled, releasing this statement on the manga’s cancellation instead.
“Kikuchi’s manga contains numerous factual inaccuracies and an unfair, negative portrayal of the faith and its teachings. It also conflates the issue of children seeking independence from their parents with the issue of religious faith. Regarding the decision to remove it, we believe that Shueisha reached that conclusion through independent discussion.”
Source: Anime News Network
