Battle Royale at middle school

[Aaron Gerow]

News services report that a middle school teacher in Ota Ward in Tokyo 
showed a DVD of the film Battle Royale to a class of second year 
students (ages 13 to 14), earning the ire of some parents who pointed 
out that the film was rated R-15 in Japan, which prohibits children 
under 15 from seeing it at the theater. After protests, the principal 
and the teacher have apologized.

Apparently the teacher had no polemical intent in showing the film 
(which would have made the case more intense), but just let his 
students choose what they wanted to see.

What I find interesting is that at least the news services, and 
possibly also the discourse among parents and at the school, all seem 
to talk of the R-15 rating as if it bans viewing of such rated films by 
children under 15. It if course doesn't. It has no basis in law and is 
only a means of self-regulation by the film industry. Only theaters are 
prohibited from showing such films to children under 15 (the video 
industry has a similar system regulating rentals and sales). Court 
precedent has previously given Eirin semi-public authority as an 
arbiter of public morals, but no where has the ratings system itself 
been considered law. It's fascinating that some people seem very 
willing to make that error.

Aaron Gerow
KineJapan owner

Assistant Professor
Film Studies Program/East Asian Languages and Literatures
Yale University

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