{"id":19334,"date":"2014-07-17T17:11:12","date_gmt":"2014-07-17T09:11:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=19334"},"modified":"2014-07-17T22:40:51","modified_gmt":"2014-07-17T14:40:51","slug":"vagina-boat-lands-artist-behind-bars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2014\/07\/17\/vagina-boat-lands-artist-behind-bars\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Vagina boat’ lands artist behind bars"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"The<\/a>
The kayak modeled after the artist’s vagina. (Photo from the Facebook page of Roduke Nashiko)<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

TOKYO – A Japanese artist was jailed on charges of obscenity after she built a kayak modeled after her own vagina.<\/p>\n

Megumi Igarashi, 42, who works under the alias Rokude Nashiko<\/a>, which means “good-for-nothing girl” in Japanese, said on Wednesday that she was “outraged” by her arrest.<\/p>\n

The artist, whose body of work includes figures of Lady Gaga, has promised to fight the charges in court, saying that she made the vagina kayak to challenge a culture of “discrimination” surrounding the discussion of the vagina in Japanese society.<\/p>\n

The bright yellow kayak with a vagina-shaped top was built primarily through crowd funding, through which Igarashi raised $10,000.<\/p>\n

As a thank you to donors, she sent 3D printer data of her scanned vagina, which served as the digital basis for the kayak.<\/p>\n

Police arrested her on Saturday for distributing indecent material. If convicted, she faces a maximum of two years in prison and as much as $25,000 in fines.<\/p>\n

According to Igarashi, around10 police officers showed up at her house on Saturday, for what she first thought was a raid on her pop-art exploration of the “manko”, which is the Japanese street term for vagina.<\/p>\n

In an interview with reporters from news agency Reuters, Igarashi recounted : “I couldn’t stop myself from laughing a little as I explained to the grim-looking officers, ‘This is the Lady Gaga ‘manko’ figure.'”<\/p>\n

“I did not expect to get arrested at all. Even as they were confiscating my works, I thought to myself, ‘This will be a good story’. Then they handcuffed and arrested me. Now, I just feel outraged,” she added.<\/p>\n

Already, her arrest has sparked a movement for her immediate release, with more than 17,000 people signing a petition via the Change.org online platform.<\/p>\n

By Japanese law, she can be detained until the end of July before charges are filed.<\/p>\n

From her jail cell, Igarashi explained that she delved into art as a medium to address the double standard that is generally applied\u00a0 to female and male genitalia in the context of Japanese culture.<\/p>\n

The vagina “has been such a taboo in Japanese society”, she wrote on her website. “It’s been overly hidden although it’s just a part of a woman’s body.”<\/p>\n

Kazuyuki Minami, the artist\u2019s lead defense lawyer, said that Igarashi has sparked a debate on the issues of women’s rights and the freedom of artistic expression.<\/p>\n

Minami explained that the legal definition of what is considered obscene is unclear in Japan, and the case rests on deciding whether the vagina itself can be deemed obscene.<\/p>\n

“It will be a difficult battle,” Minami said.<\/p>\n

Igarashi has already started writing about her experiences in jail.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

TOKYO – A Japanese artist was jailed on charges of obscenity after she built a kayak modeled after her own …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":19336,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,1482],"tags":[6732,667,6733,6731],"class_list":["post-19334","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-art-and-culture","category-breaking","tag-double-standards-megumi-igarashi","tag-japan","tag-rokude-nashiko","tag-vagina-kayak","mauthors-angie-duarte","mauthors-philippine-canadian-inquirer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19334","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19334"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19334\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19336"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19334"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19334"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19334"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}