An artist has been arrested on suspicion of breaking Japanese obscenity laws.
Megumi Igarashi was detained after distributing data enabling recipients the capability of making a 3D print of her vagina.
Citing Japanese newspaper Mainichi News, Kotaku writes the artist sent the data to over 30 people.
This is Megumi Igarashi, aka Rokudenashiko. She makes vagina-themed art based on molds of her own genitals
Igarashi, who works under the pseudonym Rokudenashiko, had earlier crowd-funded a project to make a two-meter long kayak shaped like a vagina.
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That boat successfully set sail, but as Rokudenashiko points out following her arrest, she did not send the scanned data in return for money and does not recognise it as obscene.
Here is some of her work, including her famed 'vagina boat'
The 42-year-old has made a name for herself with a series of dioramas based on molds of her vagina.
Writing on her website, she explained: “Why did I start making this kind of art pieces? That was because I had not seen pussy of others and worried too much about mine.
“I did not know what a pussy should look like at the same time I thought mine is just abnormal.”
Here she is showing how she came to make a mold of her vagina
Rokudenashiko’s ‘deko-man’ art (‘deko’ short for decoration and ‘man’ for the Japanese slang word ‘manko’, which translates as ‘pussy’) is as she says, part of her mission to demystify the female form.
She adds: “Pussy has been thought to be obscene because it’s overly hidden although it is just a part of women’s body.”
A Change.org petition calling for the immediate release of Rokudenashiko has been set up and had acquired more than 13,000 signatures at time of press.
Here's some of her other work