Update on the Hokkaido Board of Education’s bullying post content removal request

The Hokkaido Board of Education has finally written back to me regarding my questions about their attempt to censor my site. It was only after the hard work and efforts of Ponta, a reader of this site who called up the Hokkaido Board of Education and directly asked Mr. Akiyama about his e-mail to Japan Probe, that I got any response at all. After Ponta called them a few times and pressured them to respond, Mr. Akiyama told Ponta that he would send a reply to me today, which he did. The Hokkaido BOE finally posted their response on this site as a comment:

We read the opinion of Mr. James on December 11th. Because we haven’t received an E-mail from you, we cannot answer you. For this reason, we, the Hokkaido Board of Education, are sending our opinion directly to your blog.
Recently, the problem of bullying for students, and the wave of students suicides, is an important matter all over Japan.
In this situation, a bullying movie taken at Hokkaido Sapporo Hakuryo High School can be seen on your web site. We feel that we have to protect this student’s privacy, and are afraid that further bullying could occur. The Hokkaido Board of Education has asked you to delete the movie for this reason. We would like you to delete the bullying movie only, not to delete the site or the content itself.

Haven’t recieved an e-mail from me? What the hell? What about the e-mail I sent to you on November 28th (click to view it as an image capture from my gmail record):

I can only think of 3 reasons why they are claiming they never recieved an e-mail from me:

1) They sent the original complaint e-mail to me from an e-mail address that they do not check.
2) The e-mail address that they sent the original complaint e-mail from was a group e-mail for their office, and somebody did check the mail, but didn’t bother reading my e-mail response and may have deleted it.
3) They are lying, just as school administrators across this country have been lying about not knowing there was a bullying problem at their schools.

Of these possibilities, I think that 1 and 2 are the most likely. But maybe I’m being too optimistic.

The substance of the comment is pretty weak. Did they even read my posts on bullying or bother to check if the videos had been removed from YouTube? It doesn’t appear that they did, since they are still claiming that videos “can be seen on” my site. And what about the fact that the preview images are too blurry to make out the faces of any students? Since their official reply doesn’t mention this, here’s what Ponta wrote about his phone conversation about Mr. Akiyama:

I pointed it out.The image is blurry. What is the problem with that? Is this censorship? what about the freedom of speech? That’s what the bloggers are talking about. “Hmmm I understand” You know how Japanese official’s reaction is.
I guess he is thinking what to write, and asking someone to translate it.
I am sure he will e-mail you,;I told him not only James san but also other bloggers in the world took up this issue.

So basically, Mr. Akiyama and the Hokkaido Board of Education have sent me an official bureaucratic response that doesn’t address anything. The vague nature of the reply even calls into question whether Akiyama or his people read my posts or tried to play the videos in the first place. If they respond to apparent dangers to the human rights of their students in such a half-assed way, I doubt much can be expected from them with regard to actually combating the bullying problem…

[Side note: I guess they didn't bother checking the FAQ page, since that has instructions on how to e-mail me directly. If they were able to track down my blog entry and write a lengthly letter in English requesting that I remove part of my post, you'd think they would have somebody who could understand "If you would like to contact me or suggest a link/story, please write to me: japanprobe at gmail.com."]