Owner of Tachibana shoten in Akiba arrested
Game director, scenario writer, and AV director Toriyama Jin reports on his blog that:
1) On the 23rd of June, police have done a search on the Akihabara branch of Tachibana shoten. The shop owner is arrested. It is not known exactly the reason he was put under arrest for, but it is likely for distribution of indecent material.
2) Many of the products that were taken as evidence were of the loli genre. The exact titles are not known, but it is likely that they are games by either brand R or brand M.
3) The most likely reason why the police have tried to charge tachibana shoten for distribution of indecent material is because they wanted to have a scenario where somebody was arrested, in time for the meeting on the 26th of June where the Liberal Democratic Party, Komeito, and Democratic Party of Japan are meeting to discuss changing the existing child porn laws. However as tachibana shoten was quite thorough in keeping in line with the law. One likely theory is that they were unable to charge tachibana shoten under child porn laws, and instead are trying to use distribution of indecent material so they would still have a case where somebody has been arrested.
Toriyama Jin says he had already known that the police were stepping up before the meeting on the 26th as there have been an increase in arrests related to the child porn laws over the last week, but did not expect a bookstore would become a victim and that they would use distribution of indecent material to make a case as child porn laws did not cover pseudo-loli.
On top of that, the place where they did a house search was in Akihabara, no matter how you look at it, the police is obviously trying to assist the LDP and the Komeito. When this gets reported, Toriyama suspects there’s a high chance that it will probably be used to mislead viewers that there is a need for stronger child porn laws.
The stuff above contains a little speculation, but Toriyama writes that he has confirmed the information from two different sources, so the main points should be true.
Also the 2ch thread for eroge industry people to post in has become quite depressing over the past days with posts where industry people talk about how they had their projects canceled or a writer who specializes in rape and sexual violence stories wondering how he can possibly find a new job now, and even one report from somebody who claims his friend at a small eroge development house had commited suicide as they were already doing pretty bad and now had to give up their next game project which meant the company had no chance of survival (info cannot be confirmed).
Update: Toriyama has updated his post clarifying that it was the owner of “Energy” in Akihabara, which belongs to the Tachibanashoten group, it was not the actual main Tachibanashoten store in Akiba. That particular shop “Energy” actually deals mainly in photos and goods involving real people, so it probably has nothing to do with eroge or art.
