Artist says her vagina creations confront a Japanese taboo
Megumi Igarashi's 'vagina art' appears playful, but Japan's prosecutors and fuming feminists aren't laughing. It's because only men are allowed to express sexual desire, academic says
Megumi Igarashi introduces herself with a pink business card in the shape of her vagina. It gets better: before the interview begins, the artist, who goes by the name "Rokudenashiko", roughly meaning "bad girl", places plastic figurines of her genitalia on the table in her lawyer's office. "It's my pussy art," she says, smiling sweetly.
In a country where first meetings are often deeply formal, the opener suggests a playful, subversive sense of humour - but Japan's prosecutors seem to have missed the joke. Igarashi is fighting obscenity charges in a trial playing like a digital rerun of the 1960 controversy over D.H. Lawrence's novel . Igarashi sculpts and illustrates her genitals to mock what she says are outdated social and legal taboos. The authorities proved her point by arresting her last year after she emailed 3D data of a kayak in the shape of her vagina to financial supporters. Ten police officers confiscated her belongings and marched her away in handcuffs. She was later interrogated for 23 days.
"I had no idea what was wrong when the police came," she recalls. "They told me I was a criminal. They searched my room and confiscated a lot of stuff. I was very angry."
Igarashi says police were sent across the country to interview her supporters. "They didn't seem to understand what crowdfunding was." (The police have declined to comment for this article.)
The arrest raised eyebrows and has triggered a lively debate about censorship and women's rights. Japan's media is crowded with sexual imagery: mass-market magazines contain images of incest, underage sex and gang rapes; a popular annual fertility festival near Tokyo features giant wooden phalluses and penis-shaped candy; and possession of child pornography was only made illegal this year.
