The Rokudenashiko Canoe
Art is subjective. As each person can interpret a piece of art using their own mindset. None of us have the same experience, yet we all use our own individual experience to translate art. This is why sometimes the art community can be so divisive. We all know that there are multiple ways to interpret a piece of art. What one person claims to be arts can be considered to be total trash to someone else. It all depends on the reason behind the artwork, who is creating it, and its purpose. Some people create art to express themselves and their feelings and mindset towards a certain situation. Many people use art to create narratives and viewpoints about certain systems and societal expectations that they have to abide in.
That is why so many female artists create artwork based on their experiences within the patriarchy. One noteworthy female artist is named Rokudenashiko. She is based in Japan, and she caused quite a stir when she built a canoe in the shape of her vagina. The canoe that Rokudenashiko floats in is shaped like her vagina. She paid for the creation of this work with imprisonment.
Sexuality in Japan
Sexuality in Japan, like many other traditions, is unique to the culture. For one, virginity, which is prized throughout most of Asia and the West, never took hold in Japan. In fact, it is begrudgingly accepted that spouses may have a lover or two on the side. This is not just a special privilege for the royal family or high-status people in the past, as the four members of society could also take a lover as well. Before Western Powers forced their way into the country, the body was not seen as something dirty or to be hidden. This openness around the naked body is one of the main reasons why Christianity never took hold in the country.
Christian missionaries would preach to the Japanese people, and at first they liked the teachings of Christ. But then the missionaries would go on to tell them that it is immoral to bathe in the hot springs together. and it was especially sinful for both genders to bath together. Bathing in Hot Springs and mixed-gender bathing are so important to Japanese culture that they would rather reject entire close-minded religions than stop bathing.
Some things have changed in Japanese culture, but bathing is still an accepted practice. However, there is much less mixed-gender bathing unless a person is bathing with a family member. But there are still many hot springs that are exclusively mixed-gender bathing and people can choose to go there or not.
Sex is not considered to be dirty or sinful in Japan all throughout the country there are sex shops where customers can buy all kinds of different condoms, toys, and lube. And they are not hidden away in a back alley somewhere. The shops are situated on Corners, just like a drug store would be in the US.
How are women viewed in Japan?
In Japan, there are only two ways of regarding women; a single unmarried woman and a mother. There is no inbetween; when a woman becomes a mother she is not able to keep her identity as a woman. Also, because she is now a mother, the woman is supposed to be sexless and have no sexual urges. If a man expresses that he wishes to have sex with his own wife, he is seen as someone who cannot control himself and is forcing sexuality onto a mother.
There's no space in Japanese Society where a woman is allowed to be a mother, the children, a wife to a husband, and an independent woman all on her own.
The area around the chest and clavicle are extremely sexualized. A woman is considered loose or easy if she exposes even a small amount of cleavage. Japanese women tend to cover up the entire top part of their body and will only wear short skirts and pants.
Who is Rokudenashiko?
Her name is Megami Igarashi, and she is a Japanese artist who lives in Tokyo, Japan. She was born in 1978. Igarashi started making art when she was a young child, but she did not work with sculptures yet. She spent her childhood and high school years living in a very small rural town. The town only had a few stores, a school, and was surrounded by a massive forest. After graduating from high school, She left her small town and moved to Tokyo.
She went on to study philosophy at the Kokugakuin University in Tokyo. African graduated, she wanted to start her career in the manga industry and set out to work drawing for different artists and comics.
In 1998, she started her own comic, which became so popular she was rewarded with the new artist award from the publisher Kodansha. In spite of her award, the industry she entered is very selective about what they publish and what they want to spend their marketing Budget on. The industry is very dependent on reader surveys and will only fund projects that they absolutely know readers will purchase.
The very first vaginal art she ever created was a sculpture made of plaster of her own vagina. She did this because she wanted to understand her body more. She was also tired of the vagina being treated as something that was dirty and should be hidden away. To her, she saw no difference between her arms and legs and her vulva.
Deco manga
She created her first vaginal sculpture in 2011 and then created a manga about her own body and vagina in 2012.
Her comic book, Called Deco Manga, is a retelling of her adolescence and blooming adulthood as a woman. In the Manga she covers the complex and mysterious relationship that she had with her body and vagina and vulva. The overall theme of the manga is bodily acceptance and exploration. At the very end of the comic, the main character realizes that all women are plagued with shameful feelings about their body and vows to overcome these views as her body is not shameful.
She never thought of using her art as a political statement or as a Counter Culture against modern Japanese society and the way they use the woman's body. She just wanted to create a space where women could celebrate their body and not feel as if it is something to be hidden away. But after she traded her first vulva and vaginal sculptures, she received a lot of criticism. Of course, most of the criticism comes from Men he thinks that she is creating pornography. It was their criticism that showed Igarashi that she should use her art to protest against social norms.
Her view of the vagina in Japanese society.
Ever since she was a young girl, Megumi noticed how patriarchal Japanese society was. Women's sexuality and their bodies are stigmatized and censored in ways that men's bodies are not. And this is where her feminist vaginal art first began. She's not quite sure when the stigmatization of the female body began in Japan, but she does know that the male body is celebrated all throughout Japanese culture.
Her imprisonment and trial
After she finished experimenting with small sculptures, Rokudenashiko decided she wanted to do something much larger. Using a 3D printing machine, she wanted to make a kayak in the shape of her own vulva. She would name the Man-boat, meaning man for Manko, which is the slang for pussy in Japanese and the word boat.
With the power of crowdfunding, she was able to build a 2 m kayak, which she finished in March of 2014. She then gave digital copies of her 3D scan vulva to 17 of the highest donating crowdfunders as she promised in her campaign. And this is where the Japanese police get involved.
Japan still has conservative-style obscenity laws like the United States had around the 50s and the 60s. It was under these laws that Rokudenashiko was able to be arrested. Whatever the Japanese government and police tried to do with her arrest, it backfired spectacularly. Her arrest made national and then worldwide headlines. Support for Rokudenashiko flooded in from all over the world and from her very own community.
She spent around ten days in the Tokyo women's prison before she was able to have her detention successfully appealed. She was released on July 18th, 2014. After she was released, support for her and her work grew, and she had hundreds of thousands of fans worldwide.
Her anti Japanese comic book
Right after she was released from the women's prison, Rokudenashiko went right to work and created a scathingly negative comic about the Japanese police. This comic book enrages the Japanese police and they follow Rokudenashiko for months in order to find another crime to charge against her and throw her in jail.
Her second arrest came around Christmas time on December 3rd, 2014. She was arrested and exhibited where she showed off her vagina art at a local sex shop. Japanese police charged her with obscenity laws that only apply to her first arrest in July. Her trial began on April 14th, 2015.
She used her trial to challenge the double standard of men's bodies versus women's bodies. Japanese law has a hard time distinguishing pornography from art, so she was brought to trial under the assumption that she purposely created pornography.
If she were to lose her trial and be found guilty of creating regulated digital pornography, she might have had to stay in jail for two years and pay about $25,000 in fees to the Japanese quotes.
Luckily, after a month-long trial, Rokudenashiko was found not guilty of not creating pornography with her Manco kayak. But she did have to pay $3,600 because she was found guilty of creating pornography using 3D data of her vulva boat.
Because of her arrest and trial, many people who were actively fighting censorship laws and the double standards based on female bodies and women's bodies in Japan came out to support her.
In 2018, a Swiss documentarian named Barbara Miller interviewed Rokudenashiko and featured the artist in her documentary: Female Pleasure.
What is Rokudenashiko doing now?
For now, Rokudenashiko is continuing with her art and her growing feminist movement. While she cannot do any public performances right now since there is a worldwide pandemic, she is still active on social media.
She encourages many of her female fans to embrace their sexuality and their vaginas. She has an Instagram account that has over 5,000 followers and her website. Unfortunately, her website, https://6d745.com/, is in Japanese, so you must know the language to read her essays and blogs.
In 2016, Megumi Igarashi debuted her brand new graphic novel books at the Toronto Comic Arts Festival. Her book is titled What is obscenity? The story of a good for nothing artist and her Pussy. Because she was out of Japan and in the more liberal country of Canada, her book was a Smash Hit and received many great reviews. The Huffington Post gave the book a shining review, stating: At times horrifying, outrageous, and inspiring, the artist finds strength and power in the most adorable forms, and never stops smiling at the serious, small men determined to take her down.
Another review by The Comics Beat, said this: Despite the understandable outrage, despite the big issues that her experience tackles, despite corruption and misogyny and incompetence she faced, despite the gloominess of prison and her own emotional traumas, she still puts it together in a form that is extremely personable even as it informs. She is the best possible messenger.
Conclusion
Getting arrested for art is no joke. It is amazing how many countries around the world still have obstinacy and censorship laws that will prevent artists from creating art. The art of an artist does not hurt anyone but does comment on the way society forces us to view certain subjects, and that is an important part of personal expression. We hope that Rokudenashiko can create more empowering feminist vagina art and one day tour around the world. It is great that Miss Igarahi is using her art to help women around the world become familiar with their bodies. She wants women to stop viewing their bodies through the harmful society narrative which says that the female form is shameful.
