journalist gets real yakuza members to play yakuza 3 and asks for their opinions on its authenticity

“What’s with all the fucking gaijin in this area?” “Dude, don’t say that, use gaikokujin, it’s nicer.” “Oh, shit, right. What’s with all the fucking gaikokujin in this area?”

“The breaded pork cutlet bento box is like mega power. More than ramen. That’s accurate.”

all of them start dragging kiryu for his shitty cheap shirt for five minutes

“Shooting people sends a message.” “So does shooting anything.”

Specifically, Articles 13 and 14 are concerned with the freedom of expression, the freedom to seek out, receive, and impart information, and the freedom of thought, conscience, and religion. Article 17 concerns access to mass media of both national and international origin. Article 19 concerns protecting children from abuse and neglect. Article 24 concerns access to healthcare. Article 28 concerns access to education, and Article 29 further stipulates that education should promote tolerance and respect of other people and cultures. Article 32 protects children from economic exploitation.

In the USA, the land of the free, we can't have any of that! If a parent believes the outside world is evil and wants to keep their kids from reading books that aren't about how God will send them to Hell for speaking out of turn, they have that freedom! If a parent believes that medicine is evil and wants to keep their kid from being vaccinated or put their kid on a raw meat diet or use homeopathy to treat an inflamed appendix, they have that freedom! If a parent wants to teach their kid that white people are the master race and that it is their duty to massacre everyone else, they have that freedom! And if a parent wants to take their kids out of school to work on the farm or get into the acting business, they have that freedom!

For a lot of American parents, it is SPECIFICALLY about having the legal right to hit their kids.

It's called "spanking" here, which sounds cutesy, but it actually encompasses everything from a swat on the ass (bare or otherwise) to a full-on beating. It's a big part of American culture, especially for anyone who was a kid before 1980 or so.

When I was growing up in the 90s, people talked about the CRC like it was an Orwellian monster, Big Brother coming to brainwash your children into communism. And the first thing people brought up, since it always got a loud reaction, was, "They wanna outlaw SPANKING! They think SPANKING is CHILD ABUSE!" Cue horrified, derisive laughter. After all, who would want to ban something as wholesome and all-American as spanking?

Well, as it turns out, hitting your kids is still bad for them even if you give it a cute name. It's also terrible parenting. I got spanked as a child, and I can't tell you what it was usually for because I don't remember a single one of my "crimes". I only remember being terrified and confused about why my parents seemingly went back to normal right afterward. I didn't learn a damn thing from it except that my father couldn't be trusted not to hurt me. And that's not a rare experience--studies bear it out as quite common.

If you're American and you'd like some reading on why spanking happens and is not, in fact, cool and normal ... or if you're NOT American and you're trying to understand why the fuck so many Americans make a religious ritual out of hitting their children ... I recommend Talia Lavin's essay series "Ministry of Violence", available in full here: