JAPANESE PUBLISHER APOLOGISES

JAPANESE PUBLISHER APOLOGISES

Shueisha Inc., a Japanese publisher, apologised for “inappropriate scenes’’ in a cartoon series in which the villain is depicted reading a book containing text from the Holy Qur’an, which the publisher said had offended Muslim viewers. Shueisha will stop all DVD and book shipments of the fantasy adventure JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure until the “improper scenes” are deleted, according to a joint statement with animation company A.P.P.P. Co. posted on the publisher’s Web site. The mistake occurred after the staff decided to add Arabic text in a scene set in the Arabic world, the statement said. Shueisha said the original scene published in a magazine comic strip in 1991 didn’t contain text from the Holy Qur’an and the author didn’t know that the text had been added to the animation series. The company’s investigation of both the animated series and original cartoon books also found inappropriate images of buildings used in fight scenes that looked like mosques, the statement said. The JoJo cartoon strip was first published in Shueisha’s Shonen Jump in 1987, which has a circulation of three million. The cartoon currently runs in the company’s Ultra Jump magazine. The comic strip, written by Hirohiko Araki, has also been adapted for games on Sony’s Playstation 2 games console.

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