How Japanese manga can land international travelers in jail

Imagine this: You’re flying into Canada, a bastion of peace and tolerance, and you’re traveling light -- a carry-on bag, a few magazines, a gift for your Canadian hosts; and your iPad, iPhone and laptop.

Upon arrival, Canadian border officials suddenly seize and search the last of these.

What they discover is not an explosive device or a cache of al-Qaida contacts, but rather items they deem incendiary nonetheless -- a stash of digital manga images, some featuring doujinshi (fan-made) illustrations, others that might be labeled lolicon (lolita complex) manga, showing eroticized renderings of what are clearly fictional, possibly underage if they were real, characters.

Whatever the designation, they are all digital images saved on your personal laptop, and they are all imaginary.

Ruined lives

An American computer programmer in his mid-20s went through this humiliation last year while visiting a friend in Canada. He has since been charged with possession and importation of child pornography and he faces a minimum of one year in prison if convicted -- not to mention a reputation ruined for a lifetime.

I have written before about the growing intolerance of manga and anime on both sides of the Pacific. Last year, 39 year-old American Christopher Handley was convicted of possessing child pornography in Iowa after U.S. postal officials opened parcels of lolicon manga he had ordered from Japan.

Shortly thereafter, Tokyo Governor Shintaro Ishihara rammed through the now notorious bill 156, legislating the morality of socially disruptive manga imagery while ignoring the propagation of live-action child pornography.

• More on CNNGO: Ishihara's manga censorship policy

But the Canadian case takes intolerance into the digital age. Manga is a distinctly Japanese art form with its own set of conventions cultivated over decades, if not centuries -- especially if one traces its origins to Edo-era ukiyo-e woodblock prints, whose most famous practitioner, Katsuhika Hokusai, actually coined the term.

Manga- and anime-related cosplay events are popular across Asia. Not so much in the West.

Artists often thrive on the borders, the distinctions between what’s allowable and what risks censure, in order to reveal or convey truths.

Woodblock prints

Hokusai’s graphically sensual “The Dream of the Fisherman’s Wife,” depicting a young woman being pleasured by octopi, is often cited as an example of the libertarian aesthetic eroticism spanning the centuries between woodblock prints and erotic manga.

What happens when authorities with no experience with Japanese art forms, contemporary or ancient, encounter digital graphics devoid of even a publisher’s most basic print disclaimers and formalities?