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A Tennessee school district’s decision to ban numerous manga titles as part of a larger purge of nearly 400 books has drawn comparisons to 1930s Germany, where books were systematically banned and burned under the Nazi regime.
The move has ignited debates over censorship, free speech, and the interpretation of Tennessee’s “age-appropriate” school library law.
The banned list includes iconic manga titles such as Gege Akutami’s Jujutsu Kaisen, Hajime Isayama’s Attack on Titan, and Kohei Horikoshi’s My Hero Academia: Vigilantes.
Additional titles, including Rumiko Takahashi’s Inuyasha, Sui Ishida’s Tokyo Ghoul, and Katsuhiro Otomo’s Akira, were also removed.
Interestingly, many of these books were removed from high school libraries across Wilson County.
The Wilson County Schools initiated the removal last month, and neighboring districts, including Clarksville-Montgomery County Schools and Rutherford County Schools, are now reviewing their collections based on the same list.
Rutherford County flagged an additional 150 titles for review, 51 of which overlap with Wilson County’s list.
Notable manga under scrutiny in Rutherford County include Yusei Matsui’s Assassination Classroom and Atsushi Ohkubo’s Fire Force.
Allegations of obscenity and the push for bans
Supporters of the bans claimed that the books violated state obscenity laws and had content inappropriate for minors.
Frances Rosales, a Rutherford County school board member, told Chalkbeat that she compiled her list using Wilson County’s banned books and reviews from the Book Looks website.
“I don’t believe we intentionally have pornography in our schools, but I do believe that some books with questionable content have trickled in,” Rosales said.
Caleb Tidwell, another board member from Rutherford County, echoed these concerns, stating that the books violated school board policies and state laws due to their “sexually explicit” content.
During a September board meeting, members of Tidwell’s church backed the bans, citing concerns over “pornographic material” harming minors.
Comparison to Nazi era book bans
However, not everyone agrees to the move. This includes fellow board members Butch Vaughn and Stan Vaught, who fear the actions could lead to divisive outcomes and costly lawsuits.
Vaught in particular compared the situation to the book bans issued during the Nazi-era.
“It almost reminds me of 1930s Germany just a little bit, where if we pull them out of our libraries, where are we going to pull them out of next?” Vaught told WSMV.
Vaughn, who is a retired principal, criticized the bans as political grandstanding driven by a small vocal minority.
“It’s created so much bitterness, division,” Vaughn said. “If you look at the number of times [the banned books] were checked out over the last years, it is just so minute. I mean, it’s like they’re just really creating dust in a lot of situations.”
The bigger picture
The bans stem from Tennessee’s 2022 “age-appropriate” library law, signed by Governor Bill Lee, which prohibits public school libraries from carrying books that include “nudity, descriptions of sexual excitement, or depictions of excessive violence.”
Sponsors of the law claim it protects children, but critics argue its language is overly broad and has created confusion for school districts tasked with compliance.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is reportedly considering legal action against the districts.
The affected school districts have 60 days to review the flagged titles before deciding whether to return them to shelves or impose permanent bans.
The Tennessee bans follow recent instances of manga censorship in other U.S. school districts. Unico: Awakening manga was recently removed from a North Carolina school district after complaint from a parent.
Before that, Horry County school libraries pulled Assassination Classroom manga, once again due to concerns from parents regarding its content.
Similarly, Sasaki & Miyano, Vol. 1 was banned from Florida School board district libraries, despite the book’s content not violating state statutes.
The sweeping manga ban across multiple U.S states continues to spark wider discussions on the balance between protecting children and preserving intellectual freedom.
Too often these censors seem to try and engage in leveling the difference, enacting censorship while claiming to purely prevent pornography. Pornography is the ad hominem on our books, on our freedom. “objectionable content” is the ad hominem on our books, on our freedom. They don’t care about freedom. They want authoritarianism, and to spit on all of your fresh rights. A parent’s offense that a book is available in the library should NEVER result in that book being pulled. That parent should just be able to issue a single veto to ensure their child doesn’t check out that book, but removing it for all is a blatant violation of view point or content based restrictions and is unconstitutional as a whole.
Too often these censors seem to try and engage in leveling the difference, enacting censorship while claiming to purely prevent pornography. Pornography is the ad hominem on our books, on our freedom. “objectionable content” is the ad hominem on our books, on our freedom. They don’t care about freedom. They want authoritarianism, and to spit on all of your fresh rights. A parent’s offense that a book is available in the library should NEVER result in that book being pulled. That parent should just be able to issue a single veto to ensure their child doesn’t check out that book, but removing it for all is a blatant violation of view point or content based restrictions and is unconstitutional as a whole.