Courtesy of Maji De, we have learned of a pretty bold snippet that Sega’s Yakuza Boss Toshihiro Nagoshi let slip on the popular Japanese gaming forum 2ch.

When asked about violence in both the Western and Japanese gaming media, Nagoshi posted the following reply:

“I personally don’t think that I can, and will be able to, take the enjoyment of ‘killing’ and ‘committing crimes’ positively. America is pretty open-minded with those kinds of games, but that’s not the case in Japan. This is something Japan should be proud of.”

This naturally garnered lots of responses from other Japanese users, some saying that although Japan is more strict on realistic violence, they have lots of ero themed games. Some users even made the claim that the latest Yakuza games feature acts of realistic violence.

Comparisons were naturally made with America being generally much stricter with sexuality in video games, while sometimes even glorifying violence in all forms. All of the responses are very interesting, you should give them a read.

What do you guys think? Are the Japanese and Western gaming markets that different – and is that a good or a bad thing?