Japan is a country where the Kanamara penis festival (held yesterday) is fine but the depiction of the female genitalia is not.
The two arrests of Rokudenashiko (Megumi Igarashi) have caused a furore around the world — to be accurate, mostly around the world, not in Japan. The overseas press is much more interested in the tale of Igarashi and her arrests for distributing “obscene” materials.
Igarashi calls herself a “vagina artist”. Her artist name means “Good-For-Nothing Girl” and she has proved up to the image, not least in the eyes of the vice squad.
Her “art of the vagina” series consists of figures, models and other artworks based on her genitalia. Most originally she even created a “vagina kayak”.
The 40-something artist has been arrested twice. She displayed a plaster cast of her vagina in an exhibition at an adult shop in Bunkyo Ward, Tokyo, between October 2013 and July 2014. She was eventually charged for this “offense” when she was arrested in December 2014.
Her first arrest was in summer 2014 because she used 3D data of her pussy to create things, and then distributed the data to people who had crowdfunded an exhibition.
Images of genitalia is still “obscene” in Japan and only occasionally permitted (“tasteful” hair nude photo shoots, certain comedic scenes in films).
Igarashi has now written a book about her experiences.
“What is ‘obscenity’? Rokudenashiko, who was called ‘self-proclaimed artist’” (ワイセツって何ですか？-「自称芸術家」と呼ばれた私-ろくでなし子) refers to two main issues in the case.
Firstly, what is “obscene” and why is it only the police get to draw up the arbitrary definitions? Secondly, why did the domestic media belittle Igarashi by always introducing her as a “self-proclaimed artist”? The qualifier is indicative of the suspicion and lack of sympathy the mainstream media had for her plight. So much for freedom of expression.
Proving her critics wrong, Igarashi has even written the book as a manga comic — now is still a “self-proclaimed” artist?
