Japan needs to be reminded that they owe their democracy to losing World War 2 to the United States and United Kingdom.
If you want to know the real reason behind the litigations taken by Nintendo and Square Enix against so-called acts of intellectual property piracy, which includes the counterfeiting of copyrighted trademarks that fan games are guilty of, keep in mind that the Japanese government included copyright infringement as one of the serious offences listed in their 2017 anti-terrorism bill. Then again, copyright infringement was already weaponized by terrorists for several years already, so it would make sense to include copyright infringement as one of the serious offences in an anti-terrorism bill. However, this would erode freedom of creativity, which proliferated as a result of the Fair Use Act and its equivalents. This anti-terrorism bill is not the only thing that is endangering the freedom of both Japanese and foreign net users.
Recently, the fury of anti-Olympics protesters in Tokyo was met with police brutality. This is not a good sign for Japanese people's freedoms. As if the current pandemic wasn't bad enough, Japanese people could lose more freedoms in the following days after the end of the Paralympics in Tokyo. Soon, freedom of speech, freedom of expression, freedom of the press, and freedom of creativity in Japan will be no more. The last time this happened was in the 1930s, prior to World War 2. In other words, the sun has set for the Japan that we all grew up with since the later Showa and early Heisei periods, and we will all be witnessing the second death of Japanese democracy...
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