The woman in the boat. (via)
Japan has a reputation for being futuristic. They are the birthplace of the high-speed rail and the alarm clock pillow, yet somehow they are still trapped in a time where female genitalia is obscene.
Last week Megumi Igarashi, an artist who works under the alias Rokudenashiko -- which roughly translates to “good-for-nothing girl” -- was arrested for breaking obscenity laws the prohibit the display of genitalia after distributing data that can be used to print out 3-D versions of her vagina, AKA a "vagina selfie."
According to The Guardian, the data was emailed to people who contributed to her crowd-funded project to make a "pussy boat." Literally, a kayak fashioned from a mold of her vagina that can be rowed across an ocean. She calls it "the world's first 3-D scanned peach on the beach," and says that the 3-D data is necessary to make the art anatomically precise, and that, "mold by hand has the limitation. It is extremely difficult to make precise mold. Even when successful, silicone mold will gradually deteriorate, which makes mass production difficult [sic]."
She has also made other artistic pieces with her vagina's likeness, or, as she explains on her crowd-funding website, "I make art pieces with my mold pussy, which I would rather call Manko(MK)."
Yes, I prefer the term Manko to "mold pussy," myself.
Curious language translations aside, what she is doing is an artistic endeavor to make female genitalia more acceptable in a country where male genitalia is hypocritically celebrated and displayed with a yearly parade.
Rokudenashiko explains:
I had not seen pussy of others and worried too much about mine. I did not know what a pussy should look like at the same time I though mine is just abnormal. Manko, pussy, has been such a taboo in the Japanese society. Penis, on the other hand, has been used in illustrations and signed as a part of pop culture. But pussy has never been so cute....I wanted to make pussy more casual and pop. That’s how I came to make a pussy lampshade, a remote-controlled pussy car, a pussy accessary, a pussy smartphone case, and so on.
Poppin' Pussies. (via)
The Japanese are not ready for her to demystify female organs, and have slapped her with obscenity charges that, if convicted, could place her in jail for up to two years, or land her a fine of as much as 2.5 million yen ($24,500). Rokudenashiko claims she has done nothing wrong. She hasn't been selling the images for money, and, importantly, she doesn't see her vagina as obscene.
Hopefully Rokudenashiko can continue to make her vaginal art and free Japan from being trapped in the past, if only so that the rest of the world can continue to free themselves from being trapped in vaginal art.
(by Myka Fox)