From September 4th to 5th, 2022, Masanori Morita, a popular manga artist known for “Rokudenashi BLUES” and “ROOKIES”, questioned the expression of cigarettes in manga on Twitter.
“It’s good to draw a scene where you kill someone, but when you draw a scene where you smoke a cigarette…”
At around 3 a.m. on the 4th, Morita posted a question on Twitter, saying, “It’s okay to draw a scene where you kill someone, but it’s strange that some people complain when you draw a scene where you smoke.”
In the next post, I released a manga frame where a high school girl in a sailor suit puts her hand on her mouth.
“You made a low-quality fix without asking me… If you tell me, I’ll fix it myself!… No, I can’t fix it… What kind of pose is this? Where are your cigarettes going?”
He revealed that he once had his smoking cut cut modified without permission.
After that, at around 14:00, he explained, “By the way, this is a story from when the comic was published 30 years ago. I was told that it was because it was a door… I remember that it was okay when it was published in the magazine.”
On the 5th, he said, “Taison was Lucky Strike, and Genkichi was Marlboro. I was very tolerant, but I mightn’t modify it without permission.Also, I think there are people who started smoking because of this work, so when I think regarding it, I feel a sense of responsibility.” While raising it, he expanded his theory once more.
Regarding the series of posts on self-regulation of cigarettes on social media, there were voices saying, “It’s really strange,” and “Isn’t it useless in the world of comics?” “Is it a problem of hurdles? Killing people is a high hurdle, but smoking a cigarette is a low hurdle.”
