Japanese Artist Goes On Trial For Being An Artist

In a country were one can buy manga depicting rape, pedophilia, and other forms of violence, where it took 43 years before birth control pills could be purchased, but where it took a mere 9 months for Viagra to be approved for sale no one who lives here is surprised by this trial. Let's face it Japan is strictly a patriarchal society.  


  

A Japanese artist who made a kayak modelled on her vagina has denied obscenity charges at the start of her trial in a case that has drawn accusations of censorship and double standards.
Megumi Igarashi, who calls herself Rokudenashiko – which roughly translates as good-for-northing girl – was first arrested last July after distributing 3D scans of her genitalia to people in return for donations to her project to create the unusual artwork.


She was released days later following a public campaign supporting her right to freedom of expression. She was rearrested in December, however, and charged with obscenity.
The 43-year-old artist told the Tokyo district court on Wednesday that her “vagina selfies” were not obscene. “I do not dispute the facts [of the charge], but my artwork is not obscene,” Igarashi said, according to the Kyodo news agency.
Defence lawyers will argue that using the penal code to punish obscenity violates Igarashi’s constitutional right to freedom of expression. “Even if it were constitutional, the defendant’s work is not a precise reproduction of the vulva and does not cause sexual arousal,” Kyodo quoted a defence counsel for Igarashi as telling the court.