Rokude Nashiko, a manga comic book and visual artist based in Tokyo, was arrested in July of this year and detained by police. Her crime? Posting and distributing information pertaining to vaginal art — thinly disguised, sculpted images of her own genitals, to be exact. She faced a possible two years in prison for making such “obscene” images public through her website, which she operates openly and legally.

Thousands of people in Japan, and apparently abroad too, took exception to the heavy-handed Japanese police actions and put a public petition in motion. Within a week Rokude Nashiko (her artistic name and a play on words, loosely translated as “Good-for-Nothing Girl”) was released from custody, the police apparently too embarrassed by the publicity to keep her any longer.

Under her real identity and name of Megumi Igarashi, she had a few words to say upon her release from jail about the hypocrisy of targeting the female sex organ as something bad. “It is contradictory,” she said. “In trains [in Japan], sexual images are presented in ads hanging from the ceiling, and kids and others can see them even though they do not want to. That’s more unpleasant.”

She hit a sensitive nerve of hypocrisy there. Sex and sexual innuendo are advertised and promoted everywhere in Japan — in public transportation, in sports newspapers, on television, in print media, in official advertising campaigns, you name it — and since females are usually the sex objects in those ads and males the target audience, they are deemed to be acceptable to society. But turn the game around and frame a woman’s vagina as art for art’s sake (rather than merely for profit), and it is found to be somehow “obscene” and corrupting of public morals.

But where does the real obscenity lie in Japan? In a country where sexual harassment runs rampant in the Japanese workplace and women are forced to be silent about such abuse or lose their jobs (or worse), is that not morally obscene? Or how about businesses practices like this by a Japanese airline — is this to be considered as a morally acceptable way to make money?

Japan is known as one of the porn capitals of the world, and the average Japanese teenager would have no problem getting access (through vending machines, for example) to printed materials of hard-core pornography, including child porn. It was only this year that Japan banned the possession of child pornography — “finally”, as the headlines of overseas news stories blared — though that child porn ban does not apply to Japan’s mega-profitable manga comic book industry. What’s not obscene about that whole picture?

Laws do exist in Japan against stalking and rape, with a stronger anti-stalking law put in place just about a year ago. But the laws still appear to be loosely enforced by police, and any women wanting to report such crimes will still have to face a demeaning, degrading experience in dealing with law enforcement authorities. (In the case of rape, Japanese police will usually escort the woman back to the scene of the crime and have her “re-enact” the rape for their records.) As a Japanese female friend of mine put it to me some years ago: The police are the last ones in Japan that a woman wants to go to for help after she has been sexually violated. And the list of hypocrisies goes on.

But don’t get me wrong; I’m no prude. I appreciate the art of erotica in Japan as much as anybody else does. After all, Japanese artworks known as shunga from a few centuries ago are today considered classical, highly respectable art forms that are exhibited at museums the world over and that command very high prices on the international art market (viewer discretion advised). Yet these respected artworks are a whole lot more sexually graphic than any of artist Megumi Igarashi’s original deko-man or “decorative pussy” art creations, as she calls them. Why the double standard?

Though Igarashi managed to beat the rap earlier this year, the police in Tokyo weren’t done dealing with her. They arrested her again just last week and charged her once more with violating obscenity laws — and this time, they also charged a Tokyo shop owner with displaying Igarashi’s “obscene” artwork in a store window. The artist now again faces two years in prison and a hefty fine.

To me, that is the real obscene thing in Japan: punishing a genuine artist from expressing herself and, in the process, censoring and silencing a voice like hers that challenges the phony morality we see in all spheres of life in Japan when it comes to the treatment of women.

My earnest hope is that Igarashi fights her case long and hard from here on, and with enough public outrage arising to shame Japan’s self-righteous (and probably sexually repressed) guardians of public morals into backing off once and for all. I’m ready to support her.

The Good-for-Nothing Girl’s only offense may have been that her idea of “art” turned off some conservative Japanese males in positions of authority instead of turning them on. But Megumi Igarashi is no criminal and her work harms no one. Let her, and others like her, express what needs to be expressed about sexual inequality and gender double standards in this society. To do anything less would truly be obscene.