On Thursday, this guy, the current governor of Kanagawa prefecture in Japan, wagged his finger at violent video games and said he'd ban them as well if he's elected governor of Tokyo. About 12 hours later, a tsunami smashed into northeast Japan.
As the Tōhoku region is digging out, facing a rising death toll and, oh yeah, a potential reactor meltdown, it's safe to say few people in any part of Japan are reading, watching, talking about or paying attention to anything that isn't directly related to the nation's recovery from this tragedy. So even if a Tokyo violent game ban would have implications for the rest of the country, this isn't what one would consider an important issue right now.
Anyway, here's what Shigefumi Matsuzawa said about violent games:
Games like ‘Grand Theft Auto III' award points and allow advancement for murdering people, and there are cases of these games lowering inhibitions to killing and ultimately stimulating people to murder.
To stop this scourge spreading through the youth of Kanagawa, I reformed youth protection ordinances to ban the sale of these games.
If possible, I'd like to bring restrictions in Tokyo, Kanagawa, Chiba and Saitama into line with each other. It's not right for us to ban these games in Kanagawa only to have youths able to buy them in Tokyo.
How does one write "sound of crickets" in Japanese?
Tokyo Gubernatorial Candidate Promises to Ban Games [Game Politics. Image via]