TOKYO — The immensely popular Japanese manga industry is reporting increasing pressure from multinational credit card companies — many based in the U.S. and directly targeted by anti-porn crusades by religious conservatives — to censor their contents to maintain their current payment processing arrangements.

A recent report by financial news site Nikkei Asia noted that manga retailers are now being told by payment service providers that they are “infringing the rules” established by American credit card brands.

“An executive from the retailer, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said they were told that if they continued to use that card, they could face a penalty of up to hundreds of thousands of dollars a day,” Nikkei Asia reported.

In a scenario familiar to many adult industry companies and creators, the processor passing on the information did not disclose what the specific infringements were, leaving the retailers to have to guess which of their content was being questioned.

In the end, according to the report, the retailer “had no choice but to stop taking payment by overseas credit card, even though that was how the majority of their online payments were received.”

“We’ll have to reduce our platform’s dependence on adult content,” the executive told Nikkei Asia. “If we want to expand our market, we’d better stick with the global standards.”

Although some sources requested anonymity, Nikkei Asia did identify  popular out-of-print comics online source Manga Library Z as one of the sites that were asked to censor their offerings under penalty of losing their ability to process payments.

Manga Library Z co-founder, manga artist Ken Akamatsu — who is also a legislator — explained that “Japan’s rich creative industry, including manga, anime and games, was born out of its freedom of expression.”

He also noted that non-Japanese credit card companies are actively targeting manga alongside producers and distributors of porn, known locally as AV video.

“The next request from card brands could be to ban novels or violent scenes altogether,” Akamatsu added. “Some say Japan should comply with the global standards. But if Japanese content becomes too globalized and loses its unique charm, it will also lose its appeal and demand from overseas.” 

Much like their U.S. and international counterparts, legal scholars and free speech activists are invoking the “chilling effect” that these business practices can have on free expression about sexuality.

“If a certain genre of expression were to be taken down because of potentially harming card brands’ reputation, that could lead to considerable intimidation in the realm of free expression,” law professor Yoko Shida said.