The Asia-Pacific Journal | Japan Focus Volume 8 | Issue 35 | Number 1 | Article ID 3403 | Aug 30, 2010

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Cultural Flows Beneath Death Note: Catching the Wave ofPopular Japanese Culture in China　　デスノート下の文化的流れ−−中国に及んだ日本大衆文化の波

Peter Goderie, Brian Yecies

Cultural Flows Beneath Death Note:Catching the Wave of PopularJapanese Culture in China

Peter Goderie and Brian Yecies

Key words: China film policy, Death Note(2006), horror films in China, foreign exhibitionin China, film piracy, internet piracy

Abstract

To better understand the controversysurrounding Death Note in the Chinese context,this article explores the historical precursors tothe Chinese Communist Party’s ban on horrorfilms, and examines the attitudes of Chinesestudents at an Australian university. The articlealso proposes a new viewpoint about how tradeand popular presses in the West are attemptingto understand China’s changing role in theglobal cultural industries.

The government of the People’s Republic ofChina has often been criticized for its policiesregarding freedom of expression. Cinema inChina has been central to this criticism,particularly with respect to the distribution offoreign films. This article uses a case study ofthe Japanese film Death Note (Kaneko Shūsuke,2006) to advance current understanding ofChinese cinema found in important studiessuch as Chu (2002), Zhang (2004) and Berryand Farquhar (2006), and to show how newaspects of film-viewing are emerging amongmainland Chinese audiences.

Though it was not licensed by any Chinese

distributor and was eventually banned by thegovernment, the Death Note franchise hasgained popularity and notoriety within China.To better understand the controversysurrounding Death Note (see Figure 1) in theChinese context, this article explores thehistorical precursors to the Chinese CommunistParty’s ban on horror films, and examines theattitudes of Chinese students studying at anAustralian university, some of whom hadacquired the film illegally through internetpiracy while they were still in China.

Figure 1. Packaging and contents of the“100% imported” Death Note DVD set,

including a music CD, purchased from asmall DVD shop on the main street of a

Shanghai suburb in early 2009.

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Censorship, piracy and technology

Film, like many aspects of Chinese society, isheavily controlled by the Chinese CommunistParty (CCP). Even before becoming thegoverning body of China in 1949, the CCPtightly controlled information. Certain ideashave at various times been labeled taboo forboth political and moral reasons: in the twenty-first century, censored topics have includedpornography, the user-created content ofwebsites such as LiveJournal and YouTube, theviews of certain news media that are critical ofthe CCP, and information relating to Tibet,Taiwan, and the Falun Gong religion.Nominally, piracy is also one of these taboos,but intellectual property laws are notconsistently enforced, particularly in outlyingregions of China. In 2008, in a move that hasbeen mocked by news media in the West,horror films were also declared off-limits, andany media containing horrific elements“specifically plotted for the sole purpose ofterror” are now officially banned (GeneralAdministration of Press and Publications,quoted in Sun, 2008).

In the apparent age of the global village, thiscensorship would seem to be more difficult toachieve than ever before. Nevertheless,censorship persists, although not always inimmediate or obvious ways. The CCP’s mostinfamous act of censorship in recent years hasinvolved the group of policies which have beencollectively nicknamed “The Great Firewall ofChina.” Instead of directly accessing theinternet, Chinese internet users are connectedto each other through a national intranet,which allows them to access only certainapproved internet content (Dowell, 2006, p.113). However, this firewall is easily bypassedby determined parties using a proxy server orany number of widely available programs (e.g.,Psiphon, Tor, UltraSurf). Censorship thusbecomes extremely difficult to enforce.According to some analyses, the CCP reliesmore on self-censorship and the fear of

punishment than on actually blocking websites(Qiang, 2006; Hartford, 2000, pp. 259-260).Given the massive nationwide scale on which ithas been implemented, this system couldcertainly claim some success. However, thepsychological efficacy of this censorship isquestionable in the case of university-agedstudents, particularly in light of the studentinterviews conducted for this study (discussedbelow).

The CCP has pursued similar censorshippolicies in the field of cinema. These policieshave been proposed in the name of moralprobity and political security, but they alsoexist to protect a heavily state-supporteddomestic filmmaking industry from competitionwith Hollywood over local exhibition. As withthe Great Firewall, this censorship is oftencircumvented: a deeply institutionalized systemof mass piracy, and the cultural acceptance ofthis piracy, allows Chinese consumers to enjoyall manner of forbidden media includingsoftware, music and films. The black marketaccounts for an estimated 95 per cent of alltransactions involving audiovisual materials(Pang, 2004, p. 101). In some cities, piratedfilms can be purchased outside cinemas, andfor less than the price of admission (Chu, 2002,p. 48).

The internet has become the ultimatedistribution network for media pirates. Since2008, China has been estimated to be the homeof more internet users than any other country(Chao, 2008). As such, the limits of piracy areno longer spatial but technological, as access toillegal content is no longer dependent on thephysical processes of printing, copying andtransporting material goods. When audienceshave such broad access to illegal products,policy alone is not sufficient to prevent theoffending media from being seen. Thedetermining factor in whether a particular filmor program will be seen in the modern era isnot distribution, but demand.

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According to the Motion Picture Association(MPA), China has the highest piracy rate, forfilm and for other products, across the globe(MPA, 2004, p. 6). China has been infamous foryears for piracy of all manner of intellectualproperty, most notably software, brandedapparel and accessories such as handbags andwatches. According to recent estimates, piratedgoods in China are causing US$2 billion in lostprofits per year (Rawlinson and Lupton, 2007,p. 88). Recent years have seen the proliferationof internet piracy through person-to-personfilesharing, and through Chinese video-sharingwebsites such as ouou.com, where newepisodes of American television programs haveappeared, with complete Chinese subtitles,mere hours after their American release (Lin,2007). Internationally, 80 per cent of allcounterfeit goods seized by US customs in 2006were en route from China (Wade, 2007).

Until the 1980s, copyright law was not officiallyrecognized in China, and the CCP was itself amajor distributor of pirate software (Massey,2006, p. 232). After multiple bilateralagreements between the PRC and the UnitedStates in the 1990s, and particularly sinceChina joined the WTO in 2001, China’sintellectual property laws have largely come toconform with the standards demanded of UScopyright holders. But throughout most ofChina these laws have barely been enforced.US ire aside, institutionalized piracy remainsprolific due to inconsistent enforcement of thelaw (Massey, 2006, pp. 232-233). The WTO hasfiled formal complaints protesting China’s laxenforcement of intellectual property rights(Wade, 2007). The defenders of Chineseintellectual property have also expressedconcern, noting that while the Chinese marketis only a small fraction of the global marketenjoyed by international distributors, a Chinesecompany’s business is often entirely domestic.To Hollywood, the Chinese market representsthe potential for additional profits, but to manyChinese copyright holders, success on theChinese market is the only way to cover costs

(Hood, 2005, p. 53). Even Zhang Yimou’sinternationally successful Chinese film Hero(2002) was seen as a massive investment,which needed to be protected from domesticpiracy. At the film’s premiere, there was onesecurity guard for every three audiencemembers, ensuring that absolutely no bags, cellphones, or hidden cameras built into eyeglassesor watches could be brought into the cinema(Berry and Farquhar, 2006, p. 212). At leasttwenty websites were blocked for attempting tohost pirate copies of the film (Business Weekly,2003).

Of course, this kind of aggressive enforcementof intellectual property rights is atypical, and inthe unique case of Hero, the CCP's motive wasclearly protecting its economic and ideologicalinvestment in the film, rather than protectingintellectual property on general principles. TheJapanese Death Note franchise presents aninteresting comparison: in the case of state-sanctioned material such as Hero, intellectualproperty rights are enforced, so the only meansof access is the legal one; but in the case ofunsanctioned media such as Death Note, nolegal avenue exists, and thus piracy is the onlymeans of access.

Foreign films and the Chinese filmindustry

The CCP has long viewed cinema as a valuabletool for shaping public opinion. During theguerrilla war struggles in the years 1927-1950,it relied heavily on film to spread awareness ofits cause in the cities. In the 1930s, it used itsinfluence within the China Film Culture Societyto produce numerous films depicting classstruggle (Hu, 2003, pp. 79-81; Pang, 2002, p.58). After 1949, it moved swiftly to monopolizethe production and distribution of film underthe government-controlled Chinese FilmCorporation (CFC) and sixteen officialproduction studios, and established the BeijingFilm Academy (Chu, 2002, p. 46; Zhang, 2004,p. 201).

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During the 1980s and 1990s, the CFC’smonopoly gradually gave way to a semi-capitalist network of privately funded studiosand distributors. Beginning in 1984, the state-owned production studios were privatized andheld accountable for their own profits andlosses, but the state continued to dictate whichscripts could and could not be filmed. Privateregional distribution monopolies wereauthorized in 1993 by the Ministry of Radio,Film and Television (MRFT, later the StateAdministration of Radio, Film and Television, orSARFT). Thirteen new private film studios weregranted production licenses at the provincelevel in 1995; more licenses were granted atthe district level (along with licenses fortelevision stations) in 1997 (Chu, 2002, pp.45-46).

In this same period, the so-called “FifthGeneration” of Chinese filmmakers (includingZhang Yimou and Chen Kaige, graduates of theBeijing Film Academy), began to attractinternational attention to the Chinese filmindustry, particularly through film festivals inCannes, Berlin and New York. However, theirsuccess was not reflected in the industry’searnings: in 1980, China’s population of justunder 1 billion people purchased well overtwenty billion tickets (Chu, 2002, p. 43). But by1994, ticket sales had dropped to 3 billiontickets among 1.2 billion citizens (Zhang, 2004,p. 282).1 In addition to suffering from theproliferation of alternative viewing practicessuch as home video and piracy, Chinese filmscontinued to suffer from the censorship of theCCP. The party still retained enough control toveto productions at any stage, even after ithanded over the economic responsibility for itsdecisions to the filmmakers (Time, 1982; Chu,2002, p. 45). Notable casualties included theAugust First, Changchun and Pearl Riverstudios, which incurred the biggest losses ofthe 1990s (Zhang, 2004, p. 284).

In order to draw audiences back to cinemas,the CCP authorized a number of major policy

changes in the 1990s. These included issuingthe production licenses for the thirteen newprivate studios in 1995, encouraging privateinvestors to claim the title of “co-producer”with an investment of 30 per cent of a film’sbudget in 1996, and, most notably, giving theCFC permission to buy and distribute a limitednumber of imported films, under box-office-splitdeals, after 1994 (Berry and Farquhar, 2006, p.205; Chu, 2002, p. 46; Zhang, 2004, p. 282).The decision to accept imports was aparticularly radical change. American films haddominated China in the 1930s and 1940s, butsince shortly after the ascension of the CCP topower in 1949, the local industry had beenfiercely protected and almost all overseas filmswere prohibited from being screened (Hu,2003, p. 20; Wang, 2007, p. 1).2 The Fugitive(1993) was the first Hollywood film to beendorsed by the CCP, in November 1994 on anexperimental basis, and despite poor marketingand overpriced tickets the film earned arespectable RMB25.8 million (US$3 million)(Zhang, 2004, p. 282; Wang, 2007, p. 2;RMBGuide, 2006). Following this experiment’srelative success, the CFC authorized thedistribution of up to ten imported films peryear, dubbed into Chinese when appropriate(that is, when the imports were not importedfrom Hong Kong). Most of these imports farsurpassed the success of The Fugitive, withTrue Lies (1994) and Titanic (1997) earningRMB102 million and RMB360 million (US$12.2million and $43.5 million), respectively, in 1995and 1998 (Wang, 2007, p. 2; RMBGuide,2006).3

Simultaneous initiatives sought to strengthenChinese production of films, rather thanstrengthen the box office as a whole. In 1995,to prevent imported films from dominating thebox off ice, the MRFT announced that“mainstream melody” films – state-endorsedfilms which promote a politically correctChinese worldview – should make up 15 percent of all screen time of distributed films, withdomestically produced films as a whole making

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up two-thirds of all screen time (Chu, 2002, p.47; Zhang, 2004, p. 284). There was a five-yearplan, dubbed the “9550 project”, to produceten outstanding Chinese films per year from1996 to 2000 (Zhang, 2004, p. 282). Whileregular Chinese film production wouldcontinue, these particular films would bereleased with the goal of promoting officiallyendorsed Chinese values and balancing out theAmerican influence. For every Hollywoodblockbuster, there would ideally be anoutstanding Chinese film seen by the samenumber of people. The studios that were tomake these f i lms would compete forgovernment subsidies totaling one-third of allinvestment in Chinese filmmaking at the time(Chu, 2002, p. 47).

Despite the limited number of imported films –domestic films outnumbered them each year byten to one – the CCP has acknowledged that theimports still accounted for 60 per cent of allbox office earnings throughout the years of the9550 project. Other sources estimate thisfigure to be as high as 85 per cent (Chu, 2002,p. 43; Berry and Farquhar, 2006, p. 206).During this same period, only 15 per cent ofChinese films made any significant profit, andmore than two-thirds could not cover theirproduction costs (Wang, 2007, p. 2; Zhang,2004, p. 284).

One of the outcomes of China joining the WorldTrade Organization in 2001 was renewedpressure from the United States to allowHollywood greater access to the Chinesemarket. As a result, the maximum number ofimported films was increased to twenty peryear, with the intention of further expandingthis figure in the future (Berry and Farquhar,2006, p. 206; Chu, 2002, p. 53). In recentyears, the Chinese market has becomeincreasingly attractive to foreign filmmakers,with box office proceeds increasing by 25 percent per year (Thompson, 2008). DespiteChina’s screen quota for international films, theMPA still considers China to be a lucrative

developing film market (MPA, 2004, pp. 7-8).Hong Kong filmmakers in particular have beengiven incentives to take part in co-productionswith China, since the Closer EconomicPartnership Arrangement of 2003 allowed suchco-productions to apply for recognition asChinese films rather than imports (Hammond,2004).

Zhang Yimou’s Hero (2002) was a uniquelyphenomenal success, appealing to a domesticaudience, recovering its costs of about RMB250million (US$30 million) and selling more ticketsthan Titanic (Berry and Farquhar, 2006, p.211). It gained the support of both the censorsand the prime minister, who diverted militaryresources toward the film and organized itspremiere, which he attended personally, in theGreat Hall of the People (Wang, 2007, p. 2). Infact, the film had already covered its costs fromthe presale of soundtrack and DVD distributionrights alone before its premiere (Berry andFarquhar, 2006, p. 212). Overall, the filmearned US$177 million at the global box office,including US$54 million in the United States(Thompson, 2008a; Box Office Mojo, 2008).This US revenue was equivalent to thirty timesthe combined Chinese profits of all of theHollywood films released in China that year(Hood, 2005, p. 53). This exceptional successstory is illustrative of the Chinese cinemaindustry’s potential, as well as the kind of boxoffice returns that the US industry might dreamof in the Chinese market.

However, in a market of over one billionpeople, even Hollywood films are still achievingonly one-tenth of their anticipated profits(MPA, 2004, p. 6). The Chinese box officeearnings of Titanic, at RMB360 million(US$43.5 million), only accounted for 2 percent of the film’s total earnings worldwide(Wang, 2007, p. 2; Box Office Mojo, 2008).4

Further, these low profits of Hollywood films inChina are only earned by films that havereceived official permission to be screened.

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Those films that do not receive state approvalcan make no profits through legal channels,regardless of the demand for them in theChinese market.

Death Note

The underground popularity of Death Note inChina helps us to understand how transnationalcultural flow is circumventing the new modesof Chinese censorship. In particular, localpractices involving online media piracy haveenabled Death Note fans to maneuver underthe radar of the SARFT (State Administration ofRadio, Film and Television), which issued arather widely publicized ban on the franchise,and circumvent the wider ban issued by theGAPP (General Administration of Press andPublications).

Figure 2. Death Note DVD available inChina.

The entire Death Note franchise has gainedpopularity and notoriety the world over,5 but ofparticular significance here is the two-part filmversion of the original story. The first DeathNote film earned US$25 million in Japan, andthe sequel almost doubled that figure at $43million, staying at number one in the Japanesebox office for four weeks (Elley, 2007). In theUnited States, more than ten film companiesexpressed interest in producing a remake, withWarner Bros. eventually acquiring the rightsand commissioning a script in 2009 (The Star,2007; Fleming, 2009). In South Korea, theDeath Note spin-off film fared better in itsopening weekend than did the contemporaryOscar winners Atonement (2007), Juno (2007)and No Country for Old Men (2007) combined,all of which opened the same weekend (Paquet,2008). The franchise has also sparked its shareof controversy in countries other than China.There have been many accounts of Americanchildren making death-lists in the style of theseries (Anime News Network, 2007; 2008a;2008b; 2008c). In a Belgian case dubbed the“manga murder”, Death Note was linked to apossible real-life murder or medical prank:parts of an unidentified human body werediscovered along with notes referring to thefranchise’s main character, Kira (La DenièreHeure, 2007).

Death Note tells the story of a young geniusnamed Yagami Light. At the beginning of theseries, a bored death-god named Ryukrandomly hurls a magical notebook (see Figure3) out into the world. The notebook isdiscovered by Light, who learns that if aperson’s name is written in the notebook, thatperson will die – but when the writer eventuallydies, their soul will belong to Ryuk. Despite thecost, Light decides that the death note has thepower to save the world from evil, and hebegins writing down the names of evildoers allover the world. Most media in the Death Notefranchise follow Light's conflicts withinternational law enforcement – because assoon as people realize that these mysterious

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deaths are actually murders, then the hunt forthe killer (aka “Kira”) begins.

Figure 3. The notebook andaccompanying quill pen included withthe Death Note DVD set available at

unofficial DVD shops in China. The blacknotebook pages show the instructions for

using the book.

Generically, Death Note could be identified as ahorror film, however many fans find that themind-games and superhuman feats of

deduction (reminiscent of Sir Arthur ConanDoyle's Sherlock Holmes) are the real focus ofthe story and the source of the dramatictension (e.g. Elley, 2007). Thematically, thefranchise explores the inability of legal andpolitical authorities to regulate society, themorality of capital punishment, and thecorrupting nature of power. While variouscharacters express contrary opinions on Kira’svigilantism, it is generally implied in the storiesthat by promising his soul to Ryuk (see Figure4) in exchange for the death note, Lightbecomes evil. The actions of the death godRyuk in the franchise’s various endings alsoplay to human concepts of justice and fairness,in a universe that is neither fair nor just.

Figure 4. Ryuk. Image courtesy ofMadman Entertainment.

As is typical of the Australian distribution ofJapanese anime and manga franchises, DeathNote only began to be distributed officially inAustralia long after its success elsewhere. TheDVDs (see Figure 5) were distributed byMelbourne-based Madman Entertainment,released gradually between February 2008 andNovember 2009 (Madman, 2009). The animeseries also began free-to-air distribution onABC2 in 2008. Almost all consumption of DeathNote in Australia up until that point would haveinvolved piracy, likely conducted through thecontroversial but ubiquitous practice of“fansubbing”, the free distribution of pirated

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episodes including fan-made subtitles.6 Thanksto the internet, fansubs are often in globaldistribution within a matter of days after anepisode has premiered on Japanese television.And while they are not technically legal, inmost cases no legal alternative exists untilmonths or years later when a show is licensedby an international distributor such as Viz orMadman.

Figure 5. The Australian double DVDrelease of the live-action Death

Note series. The saying “The humanwhose name is written in this note shalldie” appears on the external front coverof the packaging as well as on the front

of the DVD case.

Though Chinese-language versions of the DeathNote manga and anime have been legallypublished in Taiwan and Hong Kong, neitherhave been released in mainland China throughany official channels. The manga wasdistributed by Taiwanese Tong Li and HongKong–based Animation International Ltd., whilethe anime aired on Hong Kong’s TVB Jade andon the Animax channel in both Hong Kong andTaiwan. All of these versions are written intraditional Chinese script, not the simplifiedscript used in mainland China, and in somecases are dubbed into spoken Cantonese. The

live-action movies were also aired withtraditional Chinese subtitles in these regions –in fact, the first film was the most successfulJapanese film in Hong Kong in ten years (ComiPress, 2006; Elley, 2007) – but they werecertainly not among the limited number offoreign films imported by the Chinese FilmCorporation.

Death Note’s Japanese publisher, Shueisha, hasnot gone to any great lengths to sell its productin China,7 and in fact has been quoted aspublicly announcing “we did not give anylicense to publish Death Note in China foranyone. All of [the Death Note products inChina] are pirated” (China Information AgencyNews, 2007). The act of piracy does not seemto be the real concern in China, though. Theentire Death Note franchise is now contrabandon two separate counts: it is necessarilypirated, in the same manner as most AustralianDeath Note products have been up untilrecently, and more importantly, it has beenrecognized by the Chinese government asobscene and dangerous. Considering China’slong-standing reputation for officially ignoring(or even endorsing) mass piracy, there isnothing redundant about banning oneparticular variety of pirated material.

During the early days of the Death Notefranchise as a serial manga, it createdcontroversy in the Chinese city of Shenyangwhen school students apparently began writingteachers’ names in replicas of the Death Notenotebook (Anime News Network, 2005). As theseries’ popularity grew, so did the moral panic,with local Chinese media identifying furtherexamples of students keeping death lists in thestyle of Death Note in Wuhan and Nanningafter the release of the anime and films(Chutian Metropolis Daily, 2007; Yahoo! Japan,2007). The Nanning case appeared on nationaltelevision. One newspaper interviewedstudents, parents and shop clerks in Shenzhen,generating still more controversy by quotingstudents who proclaimed that Death Note’s

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appeal lies precisely in the fact that it is “scary”(a sentiment not generally shared by olderfans), and one clerk who admitted to sellingabout seventy Death Note notebooks each day,typically to elementary and middle school girls(Shenzhen Daily, quoted in Comi Press, 2007).

In May of 2007, concern about the proliferationof Death Note merchandize reached newheights, as bookstores and newsstands locatednear schools in Beijing were raided byauthorities looking for illegally publishedhorror stories, citing “the physical and mentalhealth of young people” as the reason (Reuters,2007). Local media made special note thatadaptations of Death Note were the targets ofthe crackdown (Xin Jing Bao newspaper, 2007,cited by Reuters). The raids quickly spread tosmaller regional cities. Throughout May of2007, officials in the city of Lanzhou reportedlyreceived numerous death threats from studentsin response to the manga’s confiscation (Zhou,2007). By June 2007, one month later, theGeneral Administrat ion of Press andPublications (GAPP) announced that “China hasconfiscated 5,912 Death Note books, 1,364horror CDs and DVDs and 11,930 other illegalhorror books across the country” (People’sDaily Online, 2007). A new type of crackdownon foreign cultural products had begun.

The controversy over Death Note in Chinacame to a head in February of 2008, when theGAPP announced a national ban on all mediacontaining elements of horror, particularly“alien-looking” characters such as demons,monsters or ghosts (Yunlong, 2008).8 Thedecision, like many other censorship initiativesin China, was mocked by various Western newspublishers.9 The British Telegraph reportedthat, following Steven Spielberg’s withdrawalfrom the promotion of the 2008 BeijingOlympics, his “most lovable creation”, E.T., wasbeing targeted by Chinese officials seekingrevenge (Telegraph, 2008). The ban wascovered in Reuters’ “Oddly Enough” section(“it’s news, but not, you know, the important

kind”), and on the internet news site Slashdotthe story was listed as befitting the “won’tsomeone think of the braaaaaains” department,with the tags “censorship”, “movies”, and“idiots” (Reuters, 2008; Slashdot, 2008).Following these sorts of reactions, the GAPPissued a defensive statement that family-friendly media such as E.T. (1982), HarryPotter (2001) and Shrek (2001) would not betargeted by the ban, only films that are“severely harmful to minors’ physical andmental health” (China Daily, 2008a).

Student Interviews

The uniquely difficult challenge of policing thespread of illicit material through internet piracyis surely a factor in the ubiquity of suchpractices as person-to-person file sharing, butit is not a complete explanation because it doesnot address the demand for pirate media. Togain a better understanding of this trend, thisstudy investigates the attitudes, beliefs andconsumption patterns of several Chinesestudents studying at an Australian university.Participants were asked about their knowledgeand opinions of horror films, and given theopportunity to watch the first live-action DeathNote film (Kaneko Shūsuke, 2006). While thefranchise is forbidden in China, the film isreadily and legally available to Chinesestudents while they are studying and living inAustralia. As noted above, the franchise wasreleased in Australia between 2008 and 2009,by Madman Entertainment

Chinese students in their early to mid twenties,in particular, were selected for this studybecause of their anticipated familiarity withcircumventing censorship control mechanisms.According to general global estimates, youngadults (ages 16-24) make up 39 per cent of allpirates, and 58 per cent of internet pirates(MPA, 2004, pp. 11-12). University-agestudents have also been the major targets ofseveral recent anti-piracy campaigns in China(MPA, 2008a; MPA, 2008b). However, these

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participants are not a representative sample ofany larger population. They form a case study,which can be used to illustrate how someindividuals might negotiate the issues offreedom of information and intellectualproperty.

Five participants were first interviewedindividually and asked to discuss their opinionsof films, especially horror films, and to comparetheir experiences of watching films in Australiaand China. The interviews were recorded forlater review and analysis. When theseindividual interviews were completed, the fiveparticipants and two others were invited as agroup to watch the Madman DVD release of thefirst Death Note film. These seven participantsthen took part in a group interview discussingwhat they liked about the film, whether theyfelt it deserved to be banned, and why. Theparticipants’ descriptions of their film-watchinghabits were generally supportive of previousresearch: while some students owned legallybought DVDs, most chose piracy (particularlyvia the internet) as their preferred method offilm consumption. Several participants felt thatcinema tickets were too expensive, particularlyif they wanted to see a popular new film. Theone student who preferred to see a film in acinema, ‘Taylor’,10 still only went to the cinemaabout four times per year – and even this iswell above the average for a Chinesecinemagoer in recent years (USC US-ChinaInstitute, 2008; Coonan, 2008b; Screenville,2008). None of the participants had been to acinema at all during the time they had spent inAustralia, nor were they planning to do so.

Of the many films that participants suggestedwere among their favorites, only one film wasChinese (Hero). Some participants didsometimes enjoy Chinese films, but theygenerally preferred foreign films. Most of thefilms students mentioned by name wereHollywood films, although ‘Ray’ and ‘Taylor’enjoyed Japanese cartoons, and ‘Naomi’ was afan of Korean love stories. As to which films

they deemed worth buying on DVD, ‘Wendy’and ‘Naomi’ pointed out the benefits of thosewith professionally translated subtitles andmultiple soundtracks: DVDs of foreign films,they argued, were more attractive than Chinesefi lms not s imply because of the f i lmsthemselves, but because the degree of control av iewer has when watch ing a DVD i sparticularly appealing for foreign languagefilms. They also liked films whose subjectmatter was “unreal” or “not close to our reallife,” a trait that they associated more withforeign films.

Most of the participants were familiar withDeath Note, to varying degrees. Of the sevenstudents, ‘Roger’ and ‘Wendy’ had seen theDeath Note film in China, and ‘Roger’ and ‘Ray’were fans of the manga and anime versions.‘Roger,’ ‘Wendy’ and ‘Ray’ all said that theyhad acquired Death Note in its various formsvia internet piracy in 2006 or 2007, and had notrouble doing so. The other students had heardof the series through the Chinese news media.‘Taylor’ had seen the books for sale in China,but had not purchased them.

Those who had consumed Death Note productsbefore had experienced no trouble obtainingthe material online, though ‘Ray’, ‘Matt’ and‘Steve’ all agreed that the material would bemore difficult to find after it had been banned.Still, ‘Steve’ maintained that, using the popularperson-to-person file-sharing protocolBitTorrent (or “BT”), it would probably be farfrom impossible. ‘Ray’ estimated that thedifference would simply be a matter of howlong it would take to find the material, perhapsan increase from five minutes to half an hourdue to government attempts to remove thematerial from popular Chinese servers.11

Beyond accessing Death Note, participantsgenerally seemed comfortable and familiar withpiracy. ‘Ray’ had participated in retail piracysince the late 1990s, and ‘Steve’ had beendownloading films since around 2003 –

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coincidentally, soon after ADSL becameavailable and affordable in China (CNNICstatistics, 2002-2009). ‘Roger’ almost alwayschose to download films rather than go to thecinema, again citing overpriced tickets. Otherparticipants had all seen pirated films, with‘Naomi’ and ‘Taylor’ each citing their families’DVD and VCD collections, and ‘Wendy’describing her experience of seeing adownloaded version of Death Note with herfriends. When the group was asked if theywould be upset if piracy became impossible,‘Steve’ laughed and stated emphatically, “ofcourse, my life would be ruined!” However,none of the students felt that they were takingany legal risks. ‘Ray’ even commented that“there’s still no laws in China to punishpeople”. While this is not exactly true (and‘Ray’ did later concede “maybe there are laws,but I don’t know about it”), participantsbelieved that consumers of pirate goods arerarely punished, while the distributors of thepirate goods are dealt with severely. As anillustrative example, the first citizen of Beijingto be imprisoned for piracy was arrested afterten thousand DVDs were seized from his storein December of 2007 (Coonan, 2008a). Thefocus on distributors rather than consumers ofpiracy appears to be a key feature of theChinese government’s attitude toward piracy(and it is supported by the action plan from theState Office of Intellectual Property Protectiono f the P .R .C , 2006 , sec t i on I I : LawEnforcement). However, ‘Steve’ observed thatin less centralized online piracy networks suchas BitTorrent, this mode of law enforcementbecomes obsolete, as all users are small-scaledistributors.

Opinions on the Death Note film were dividedevenly within the small group who took part inthis study. Some participants enjoyed it somuch that they were disappointed that we werenot going to watch the sequel that same night,while one participant, ‘Matt’, found the filmgeneric, boring, and unnecessarily long.

All of the participants insisted that the film wasnot a “horror film”. They defined a horror filmas a film made with the intention to scare itsaudience. (Similarly, the GAPP’s ban on allmedia containing horror described a horrorfilm as “specifically plotted for the sole purposeof terror” ; China Dai ly , 2008a.) Theparticipants did not feel that the creators ofDeath Note had this intention. ‘Wendy’, whohad already seen the film in China, repeatedlypraised the film for its interesting use ofsupernatural elements like the death god Ryuk,and the death note itself. “I don’t like horrormovies,” ‘Wendy’ said. “They scare me. I can’tsleep well.” However, she enjoyed Death Noteand encouraged her friends to see it and takepart in this study.

For the purposes of this study, the followingelements in the film were identified as potentialsources of “horror”: the physically monstrousRyuk, the supernatural power of the deathnote, and Light’s willingness to kill. Theparticipants had something to say about eachof these elements.

When asked, “Is Ryuk scary?”, all of theparticipants said no, and some laughed. AsRyuk is invisible to all characters except Light,he is played mostly for laughs; in one quietscene, Ryuk appears suddenly and loudly,dangling from the ceiling, only to be told byLight to “shut up” . Ryuk a lso has aninexplicable obsession with apples. Aside fromthis comedic element, ‘Taylor’ described Ryukas “just the god of death”. ‘Taylor’ also pointedout that, while Ryuk is an ugly creature whowants people to die, he doesn’t care whetherpeople are moral or immoral, or who wins orloses. ‘Ray’ said that Ryuk would inevitably “bethe winner anyway” regardless of whathappens between the human characters, asRyuk’s only goal is to be entertained. He ismostly a plot device, and (at least in the firstfilm) he never kills anybody or makes any otherattempt to change the course of events beyonddropping the death note in the first place.

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The details of why death notes exist and howthey work are further fleshed out in the sequeland parts of the animated series, but in the firstf i lm the death note s imply appearsmysteriously, without a proper explanation forwhy it exists or where it came from. ‘Matt’insisted that the premise was “bad sciencefiction”. Other participants commented that theunexplained supernatural elements were simply“mysterious” or “interesting”. Overall, theparticipants felt that the unexplainedsupernatural elements of the film showed thatit is “not realistic” and “cannot be true”, whichthey also felt made it less horrific.

The film’s main moral conflict involves theprospect of a single person with the authorityto carry out capital punishment, and thatperson being willing (if not eager) to exercisethis authority. It is notable that the film openswith the supernatural killing of a criminal whohas escaped legal punishment – the death notesucceeds where the legal system has failed.The participants were unable to come to muchconsensus as to whether Light’s actions in thefilm were morally justified. Some studentsidentified with Light's goal of ridding the worldof crime, and felt that Light had a fair sense ofjustice, while other students insisted that hischaracter was clearly intended to be a villaindue to his ruthless vigilantism. Most of thestudents could agree, however, that Light’sshift from idealism to corruption as he gainedmore power was the intended moral of thestory, highlighting the relationship betweenauthority and tyranny.

Most participants also agreed that, between Land Light, children would have a hard timedeciding which character was a “good guy” andwhich was a “bad guy.” In fact, even the adultsin this study had trouble deciding this. ‘Naomi’and ‘Wendy’ felt that the game-like competitionbetween the two characters could lead childrento associate killing, or violence, with fun.‘Steve’, a fan of video games, took issue withthis claim, and drew an ironic comparison to

similar controversies over the interactiveviolence of video games, but he defended theright of individuals to decide for themselveswhat media they want to consume. For themost part, the participants felt that Death Notewas probably unsuitable for children under theage of about sixteen. However, all of themagreed that many children would be curiousabout the films, possibly because they wereforbidden. ‘Taylor, ‘Ray’ and ‘Naomi’ felt thatchildren about ten years old would often befamiliar with “worse” stories than Death Note,which contain more violence and gore (thesefeatures are mostly absent from Death Note –the victims simply drop dead after their namesare written in the book).

Conclusions

The interviews suggest that internet piracy isnot an isolated phenomenon, but exemplifies awider trend of liberalization among Chineseyouth. The openness of Chinese students toforeign media, and their critical approach toboth domestic censorship and internationalconcepts of intellectual property, embody atype of free thinking similar to some of theways that media are understood in NorthAmerica and Australia. Their views correspondwith China’s transformation from a politicizedmass culture to an individualistic, consumeriststate (Palmer, 2006, p. 145). The consumptionof forbidden foreign media thrives despite theChinese government’s censorship policies;audiences pay little heed to state edicts thatthe censored material is harmful to the moralsof society. Young people want to learn aboutforeign culture through film and television, andone of the simplest and most direct ways theycan do so is through piracy, either via theinternet or the black market. Criminality andlaw enforcement did not even seem to be anissue to this study’s participants in terms oftheir everyday media practices.

Considering the history of piracy in China, theirbeliefs are perhaps unsurprising. However, the

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nature and impact of the piracy of foreign filmsin China have changed. Piracy of Hollywoodfilms in China might have been seen as apositive force for foreign film producers twentyyears ago, as it would have created demandand increased pressure on the Chinesegovernment to open up the Chinese market toimported products (this is to say nothing of theimpact of piracy of other more availableproducts, nor of the export of pirated materialproduced in China). But now that some legalalternatives to piracy exist, the black marketharms both the domestic and the foreign filmindustry, and the choice to consume piratematerial challenges those who are legallyproducing and distributing the content.

The participants in this study were fairlycomfortable discussing their piracy habits, butmore deviant activities cannot be discussedquite so openly. When one participant jokinglyraised the subject of the banned Falun Gongreligious movement, the other participantswere quick to distinguish between thedownloading of illegal material relating toFalun Gong, and their illegal consumption ofDeath Note. The CCP’s stance on Falun Gonghas been made abundantly clear by a long termmedia campaign in China, denouncing it as anevil cult. While students did not care about theillegality of Death Note, they insisted that theywould never download material relating toFalun Gong. This difference can easily beattributed to different levels of emphasis innews reports about the two topics, and to theinconsistent or lackluster enforcement ofintellectual property laws, but it is aninteresting comparison nevertheless.

The participants found the Death Note filmperfectly suitable for their own consumption,but they did feel that it was unsuitable for thechildren whom the Chinese media identified asDeath Note’s fans. This raises a familiarquestion: should China adopt a ratings system(and thereby legalize content which is currentlybanned) similar to that of Australia’s Office of

Film and Literature Classification or the MotionPicture Association of America? The idea hasoften been suggested, and in fact at one point itwas announced that such a system would beimplemented in 2005 (Smith, 2008, p. 134). Butthe GAPP currently maintains that such asystem would be “too sensitive for the generalpublic”, and that allowing products such asDeath Note or Ang Lee’s Lust, Caution (2007)to be released in their entirety to any audiencewould be nothing less than legalizing thedistribution of dangerous, immoral material(Mingxin, 2008). However, even if one were toconcede that Death Note and other bannedmedia are dangerous, the brute-forcecensorship of an outright ban, accompanied bythe confiscation of all horror films, can beeasily overcome through internet piracyanyway. While a ratings system does nothing tomake inappropriate films more difficult to see,it gives audiences a clearer understanding ofwhat to expect. It also encourages an informedchoice of how to self-censor on the part of bothfilmmakers and audiences: the former becausefilmmakers can set out to achieve particularratings as a way of targeting particularmarkets, the latter because such discretecategories might encourage a deeperawareness of which kinds of content childrenare exposed to. The prospect of making aninformed decision appeals particularly to theliberal mode of thinking displayed byparticipants in this study.

This liberalism may surprise some in the Westwho continue to see China as a totalitarianstate, but these students’ attitudes towardsmaterial such as Death Note are contributing toChina’s impact on cultural industries aroundthe globe. Further research, possibly involvinga larger cohort of overseas Chinese studentsstudying in different geographic locations,might lend more weight to this conclusion.

Peter Goderie teaches part-time in the Bachelor

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of Communication and Media Studies degreeprogram at the University of Wollongong, andis an avid role-playing gamer. In 2009, hereceived a first-class Honours degree for hiscoursework and thesis, which examined JossWhedon's internet miniseries, Dr. Horrible'sSing-Along Blog (2008), as a point ofintersection between the culture industry andthe gift economy. Peter researches how fansvalue their media, and the radically differentways that legal and political authorities assessthis value.

Brian Yecies is Senior Lecturer in Media andCultural Studies and the Co-convenor of theBachelor of Communication and Media Studiesdegree at the University of Wollongong. Hisresearch focuses on film policy, the history ofcinema, and the digital wave in Korea. He is apast recipient of research grants from the AsiaResearch Fund, Korea Foundation andAustralia-Korea Foundation. His book Korea’sOccupied Cinemas, 1893-1948 (with Ae-GyungShim) is forthcoming in the RoutledgeAdvances in Film Studies series.

They wrote this article for The Asia-PacificJournal.

Recommended citation: Peter Goderie andBrian Yecies, "Cultural Flows Beneath DeathNote: Catching the Wave of Popular JapaneseCulture in China," The Asia-Pacific Journal,35-1-10, August 30, 2010.

Notes

1 While this figure from the 1980s seemsrather large, the estimate is reproduced fromthe original source faithfully. More research onthe peaks and troughs of annual ticket sales(and profits, which are currently on the rise) isneeded elsewhere.

2 The small number of imported films screenedin the PRC between 1949 and 1994 includedSalt of the Earth (1954) and Rambo: First Blood(1982). The rights to show these films were not

bought with a percentage of box office revenue,as per a standard box-office-split deal, but witha flat fee paid to the American distributorsusing the CFC’s meagre export earnings(Wang, 2007, p. 1; Berry and Farquhar, 2006,p. 205).

3 With the influx of even this relatively smallnumber of foreign films, China’s own relativelylow-budget production industry has struggledto remain competitive in the local market.Between the withdrawal of much statesponsorship and the impossibility of gainingpermission to make the films they wanted, anumber of directors who began their careers inthe 1990s, the “Sixth Generation”, broke awayfrom the mainstream studios and beganproducing low-budget films for overseasdistribution. These films were often filmed onhand-held cameras and using a naturalistic“documentary” style, without permits (Zhang,2004, p. 289). The directors include Lou Ye,Zhang Yuan, and Wang Xiaoshuai. Despite theirrecognition in the rest of the world, thesefilmmakers have been mostly banned withinChina. At the other end of the spectrum, a typeof film, which became a clear staple of Chinesec inema by the la te 1990s , the “newmainstream”, earned moderate success bymimicking the style of Hollywood films, thoughthese films still did not typically reach a verywide audience (Lau, 2007, p. 1).

4 Note that these figures are for internationallysuccessful blockbusters: in such a market,heavily censored lower-budget domestic filmshave even slimmer chances of commercialsuccess.

5 The original Death Note serial manga(Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata) waspublished in Weekly Shonen Jump magazinefrom 2003 to 2006. The franchise wasexpanded by two live-action films in 2006 and a37-episode animated television series in2006-2007, as well as several video games anda third spin-off movie.

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6 Fansubbing is defended by its practitioners onthe grounds that it promotes an otherwiseunattainable product to new audiences andthus creates demand (and therefore sales andprofit for the copyright holder) which would nothave existed without the original act of piracy(R iedemann, 2006; Jenk ins , 2006) .Nonetheless, Japanese copyright holders haveinsisted that fansubbing is still piracy,especially in healthy markets where a demandfor anime already exists, and have taken legalaction against its practitioners (Cintas andSánchez, 2006, pp. 44-5). In principle, fansubproducers encourage users to destroy theirillegal copies as soon as a legal alternativebecomes available in their country, but inpractice many fans have little motivation to doso.

7 Japanese film and television are controversialin China to begin with simply by virtue of beingJapanese. In 2000, nearly all cartoons shown onChinese television were Japanese, and theSARFT began instituting regulations to limitthe amount of screen time of Japanese cartoonsand to promote domestic alternatives (ChinaDaily 2008b). Yet a 2006 survey found that 80per cent of Chinese children still preferredthese foreign cartoons to locally produced ones(Coonan, 2006). Since 2006, all foreigncartoons have been banned from Chineseprime-time television; the ban was extended byan hour per night in February of 2008 (ChinaDaily, 2008b). China’s role in outsourcinganimators for overseas producers has allowedthe government to push for a stronger domesticanimation industry with less violence than inmany popular anime and a “positive socialmessage”, particularly of the continuingrelevance of the CCP (Hewitt, 2007).

Similar controversies have existed over thepopularity of South Korean television dramas inChina. Of particular note are governmentefforts to crack down on historical dramas suchas Taewang Sashingi (aka Legend, 2007),Daejoyeong (2006) and Yeongaesomun (2006),

which challenge both the official Chineseversion of history and the popularity ofdomestic production (Coonan, 2007b). As in thecase of Death Note, piracy has been identifiedas a popular method of circumventing thecensorship of these programs (Chien, 2006).

8 Death Note is not the only media to be bannedin China for its incidental horror themes, norwas it the sole precipitator of the general banon the horror genre in 2008. For example, thesupernatural is a staple of the Hong Kong filmindustry, but supernatural themes areforbidden from CEPA co-productions, evenwhen the films are based on Chinese ghoststories (Hammond, 2004). Among many othercensored western products, the video gameWorld Of Warcraft and the films in the PiratesOf The Caribbean series (2003, 2006, 2007)were heavily censored for their release inChina by removing depictions of magicallyanimated human skeletons (and Chow Yun Fat),although consumers of these products, too,have illegal ways of reintroducing the cutcontent (Slashdot, 2008; Coonan, 2007a;Guardian, 2006; BBC News, 2007).

9 Similarly mocked censorship decisions includethe 2006 ban on live-action television programswith animated characters, in the style of SpaceJam (1996) or Who Framed Roger Rabbit(1988), when SARFT demanded that channelsdevoted to animation “rid themselves ofinappropriate live-action” (Landreth, 2006;Schwankert, 2006). Variety and Asia Timeshave claimed that Babe (1995) was banned inChina on the basis that “animals can’t talk andsome viewers would be confused” (Hammond,2004; Schwankert, 2006).

10 Names appearing in single quotations arepseudonyms.

11 Subsequent investigation showed that DeathNote products were still accessible viaBitTorrent links on Chinese websites, but werenoticeably absent from the extensive manga

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archives of dm.idler-et.com and the infamousvideo sharing site tudou.com (even though thelatter was found to host Chinese-subtitledvideos of contemporary US and Japanesetelevision series) (BTChina, 2008; Idler, 2008;Tudou, 2008).

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