If you had asked me who the first mangaka to become a politician would be, Ken Akamatsu wouldn’t have been my first choice. Not to say that Ken Akamatsu isn’t capable of working in politics but I would have guessed mangaka that dealt more with politics in their works such as Naoki Urasawa. Nonetheless, the reasons are quite fascinating for why Ken Akamatsu transitioned into politics so I thought I’d give a quick background on who Ken Akamatsu is, some of his works, his involvement in politics and how he ended up becoming Japan’s first mangaka turned politician.
Ken Akamatsu was born in Nagoya, Japan on July 5th, 1968 and became interested in manga after encountering Sailor Moon. He ended up submitting a manga to the Shonen Magazine Newcomer Award while he was in college and ended up winning, kick-starting his career as a mangaka. Over the course of his career, some of the most notable manga that he’s created have been “A.I. Love You”, “Love Hina”, “Negima! Magister Negi Magi” and “UQ Holder!”. I most heavily associate him with Love Hina and Negima and something that is particularly notable about those series is the high level of fan service that is used.
He’s also been notable for several other interesting initiatives when it comes to manga. His series UQ Holder! was the first manga ever to have the Doujin Mark, a symbol that indicates that it’s ok to produce doujinshi based on the work as long as they follow certain guidelines. He has also worked extensively in the Japan Cartoonists Association, helped to establish J-Comi, now known as Manga Library Z, a service that distributes out of print manga and doujinshi and has even served as an advisor to the Japanese government with regards to manga.
However, he’s steadily become more and more politically involved over the course of his career. In 2011, he warned the government that modifying copyright laws in order to join the then upcoming Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement would end up destroying doujinshi and significantly harm the manga industry. He butted heads again with the government in 2013 with regards to the draft version of the amendment to child pornography laws which made no distinction between real children and fictional children and ended up successfully removing the restrictions imposed on fictional depictions in the final bill.
After continually opposing changes to copyright law, Ken Akamatsu announced in 2021 that he’d be running for a seat in the House of Councillors, the upper house of Japan’s legislature, under a platform of protecting freedom of expression and resisting foreign pressure to regulate anime, manga and video games. He ended up winning a seat in the national proportional representation block after receiving 530,000 votes across the 47 prefectures of Japan, all of which he had also campaigned in person in. Since then, he has been proactive such as creating a task force to preserve video games in a playable state and calling for new guidelines on AI generated artwork.
It’ll be interesting to see how Ken Akamatsu continues to serve as a politician over the course of his term. Let me know your thoughts on how Ken Akamatsu, a mangaka, became a politician, what your thoughts are on his policies, what you think about the idea of more mangaka becoming politicians in the future, what works from Ken Akamatsu you like or dislike and any additional information you might have on the topic.
Hopefully you have found this article interesting and informative and, if you wish to seek any of the works I mentioned, don’t hesitate to use amazon.co.uk or amazon.com for all of your needs!
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