Japanese artist Megumi Igarashi, 42, was arrested for obscenity charges due to her art that explores female genitalia. The artist vowed to challenge her arrest and declared from behind bars to defy a culture of “discrimination” against openly acknowledging the vagina in Japanese society.

On July 12, Igarashi was arrested for distributing indecent material with a potential sentence of up to two years in prison and a fine of up to $25,000. According to reports from the Kyodo News Agency on Saturday, July 19, Igarashi has been released from jail.

“That was an unjust arrest. I don’t think my genitals are obscene. My body is mine. It’s not acceptable that something is determined to be ‘indecent’ from a purely male point of view,” Igarashi stated upon her release. Although she has been released from jail, the charges still remain a possibility if she is found guilty in court.

via Megumi Igarashi

Igarashi worked under the name “Rokudenashiko,” meaning “good-for-nothing girl.” The artist built a kayak that was shaped like her vagina after she managed to raise around $10,000 through crowdfunding. As a thanks to her donors, Igarashi sent 3D-printer data of her scanned vagina, which had been the digital basis for her kayak project. Igarashi has described her work as a pop-art exploration of the manko, which is Japanese slang for vagina.

Upon her arrest, Igarashi recalled that about 10 police officers appeared at her home. Initially, she thought they would only want to confiscate her work.

From across a plastic security divide in a central Tokyo jail, Igarashi could not help laughing a little during her conversation with officers who she described as “grim-looking.” Igarashi described how shocked she was about the arrest saying, “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.”

Over 17,000 people signed an online petition for Igarashi’s immediate release on the website Change.org, a source for grassroots petitions.

Japan’s definition for “obscenity” is ambiguous. Thereby, the biggest issue in court will be determining if the vagina falls into this definition. According to the artist’s defense lawyer, Kazuyuki Minami, “It will be a difficult battle.” Minami, has also noted, “Igarashi has sparked a debate about women’s rights and the freedom of artistic expression.”

Japan’s pornography industry is regulated by a section of the criminal code dating back to 1907. To avoid obscenity charges, video pornography in Japan frequently applies digital mosaics in order to distort the images of genitalia in sex scenes. The vague description for obscenity was defined by a supreme court case in Japan in 1951. This definition stipulates that obscenity is something that, “stimulates desire and violates an ordinary person’s sense of sexual shame and morality.”

Igarashi’s original intention with her work was to challenge the double standard of female and male genitalia that is prevalent in Japan. On her website, she explained how the vagina has, “been such a taboo in Japanese society. It’s been overly hidden, although it’s just a part of a woman’s body.”