Simpsons Censored in Japan

We all know the iconic series The Simpsons, which has been running on Fox since Christmas of 1989. But if you live in Japan, there is one episode that you will likely never see. The episode is called, "Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo," and if you've never seen it, let me give you a quick description: Homer and the rest of the Simpsons win free plane tickets to anywhere in the world. The only problem is, they don't know what country they're going to. Once they get bored, they just steal the Flanders' tickets to Japan. As you can imagine, even Japan is not safe from the zany antics of the Simpsons. One of the most controversial scenes is, due to Homer not understanding the difference between traditional sumo wrestling, and WWF style American wrestling, he throws the emperor of the country into a pile of the wrestlers' underwear. Once in jail, they are seen doing many stereotypically Japanese things, like making origami and dressing like geishas. But once out of jail, they find that their passports have expired, and they have to go on a Japanese game show to get plane tickets home.

 Now, if you've ever seen a Japanese game show, they are very different and much more extreme than ours, and the clever writers of The Simpsons seem to have exaggerated this for comedic effect. But apparently the Japanese government was not happy with the mocking of their culture by the American cartoon. To this day, the episode has never aired in Japan, and was even removed from the DVD version of the show's 10th anniversary box set. Censorship is nothing new. I can't tell you how many episodes of Pokemon have been drastically altered or never seen in the U.S. due to their sexual content or violence. My question to you is this: do you think that countries should have the right to ban or cut whole episodes due to their differing cultural norms, or if it might seem offensive to a foreign audience, or do you think people just need to lighten up?