We stumbled upon this great Twitter feed detailing a report by Shinbunka, the publishing industry trade journal in Japan, about the decline of the much-loved porn magazine vending machine. It also cites from an interview with the photographer Tetsuya Kurosawa, who has documented the vending machines (visiting some 500 locations along the way!).
It's true, we haven't seen one for many a moon. Here's why.
At the peak of the adult vending machine boom, there were some 50,000 machines nationwide in the 1970s. That lofty number has been reduced to a mere fraction now.
What are left are often ...
Just when you think the bureaucrats couldn't get any sillier, along come some to prove you wrong.
Activists and ero-manga (adult manga) fans in Japan have been shocked by the recent designation by Hokkaido and Shiga prefectures of two reference books as "harmful" to youngsters.
Zenkoku-ban Anohino Erohon Jihanki Tanbouki (Nationwide Study of Pornography Vending Machine of Yesterdays) and Ero Manga Hyogenshi (The Expression History of Ero-manga) by Yusuke Kato are about adult manga but are not adult manga themselves. But this distinction means nothing to Shiga and Hokkaido: the former ...
Tokyo police arrested the female president and four others for operating an online chat room on FC2 Live.
The operator, OK, had a pay-to-view chat room where women would masturbate or perform other sexual acts on camera for the pleasure of viewers. The charges are, perhaps not surprisingly, public indecency or obscenity.
Based out of a condo in Roppongi, OK was led by Kaori Okada (30), who is alleged to have appeared in the online videos herself. We have made some screen grabs of such a video, though we cannot confirm if this is Okada masturbating in front of a webcam. She has amazing ...
The "hair nude" is a curious Japanese-English term. It refers not just to naked flesh; it's naked flesh specifically with genital hair.
What is "shocking" here is the display of pubic hair, the line by which art and entertainment is usually fettered in Japan. It is fine to have plenty of nudity in films and print publications, but to avoid the century-old ambiguous obscenity laws, people censored or did not show actual pubic hair.
The hair nude set out to deliberately show this bush taboo was something to be challenged, both legally and artistically.
While the likes of Nobuyoshi Araki ...
So-called "vagina artist" Rokudenashiko has been found guilty and convicted of a charge of obscenity, and ordered to pay a fee of ¥400,000 (around $3,700).
Rokudenashiko ("good-for-nothing girl"), whose real name is Megumi Igarashi and whose first manga book has just been released in English, was first arrested in July 2014 for distributing data that enabled recipients to make 3D prints of her vagina.
She was arrested again in December of that year for making a plaster mold of a kayak based on her genitals, which was displayed at an adult shop.
Her defence argues that her work ...
The start of the shunga exhibition in Tokyo, the first major public event of historical erotic prints, has, not surprisingly, tested the boundaries of what is legally permitted and what is "morally" acceptable.
While the September issue of venerable art magazine Bijutsu Techo featured shunga, as well as a dialogue between two women who really know about sex and censorship ("vagina artist" Rokudenashiko/Megumi Igarashi and former porn star turned manga-ka Nayuka Mine), not to mention some mildly sexy Edo-era-inspired photos of Mitsu Dan by Mika Ninagawa, it stopped short of printing the ...
Rokudenashiko (Megumi Igarashi), the Japanese "vagina artist" accused of obscenity, has always been very business-savvy.
She has released plenty of artworks as cheap and accessible merchandise, not to mention manga, books, and even a "rental service" and sex toy. (She needs the money not least to pay for her legal fees!)
Now we are delighted that one of her books has been translated and will be published in English by Koyama Press in 2016.
What Is Obscenity? The Story Of A Good For Nothing Artist And Her Pussy is written by Rokudenashiko (Megumi Igarashi), translated by Anne Ishii, ...
Police are cracking down on "obscene" video sites.
Asiajin reports that at the end of April, Kyoto and other police forces arrested the president of Home Page System, which is meant to be a PR company acting for Japanese web service FC2.
FC2 is the fourth most popular Japanese web service, after Yahoo! Japan, Google Japan and Amazon Japan.
FC2 is well known by claiming to be an American company based in Las Vegas, therefore the contents are not restricted by Japanese law. The Las Vegas address is a rental address and it has been suspected years that the Home Page System is the ...
Japan is a country where the Kanamara penis festival (held yesterday) is fine but the depiction of the female genitalia is not.
The two arrests of Rokudenashiko (Megumi Igarashi) have caused a furore around the world -- to be accurate, mostly around the world, not in Japan. The overseas press is much more interested in the tale of Igarashi and her arrests for distributing "obscene" materials.
Igarashi calls herself a "vagina artist". Her artist name means “Good-For-Nothing Girl” and she has proved up to the image, not least in the eyes of the vice squad.
Her "art of the ...
Artist Rokudenashiko (or Rokudenashi-ko), popularly known as the "vagina artist", has been charged following her arrest earlier this month.
While writer Minori Watanabe was recently released for displaying the model of female genitalia in her adult shop in Bunkyo Ward, Tokyo, Rokudenashiko (Megumi Igarashi), who was arrested at the same time, has now been indicted by the police after 21 (!) days being held without charge.
This means her case will go to trial, which is always a long process here. Whether she is found guilty or innocent (Japan has a 99% conviction rate!), at the very ...
