Foreign dicks go to the J-Supreme Court

[Taro Toporific]

[floatl][/floatl]

Japan publisher challenges genitals picture ban
TOKYO (Reuters) Nov. 15, 2007 ---A publisher has taken to Japan's top court his eight-year fight over the banning of imported images of male genitals in a book of pictures by the late American photographer Robert Mapplethorpe.....
...Japan's domestic obscenity laws were relaxed in the 1990s to allow pictures of pubic hair, but imported publications are handled by customs and it still bans images of genitals...The [Mapplethorpe] book is in the Japanese parliament's library...and copies were offered for sale on the Web.
In 1992, four of the raunchiest photos in Madonna's book "Sex" were scratched out by Japanese censors. But a Japanese language edition was published untouched a few months later...more..

[Behan]

I remember there being a big controversy about his works in the US in the mid 90s. I was living in Columbus, Ohio at the time and maybe the controversty was about an exhibition.

[xenomorph42]

Wasn`t there a big hoopla in the 90`s with the actress Yoko Shimada?
Didn`t she come out with some kind of a nude art book and showed alot of pubic hair. Can`t quite remember...was so long ago, anyone out there know about that story?

[Greji]

Wasn`t there a big hoopla in the 90`s with the actress Yoko Shimada?
Didn`t she come out with some kind of a nude art book and showed alot of pubic hair. Can`t quite remember...was so long ago, anyone out there know about that story?

That is a not uncommon path for a lot of aging actresses to take, or for the matter, even those younger ones who have lost their public following. They do a series of nude shots, a book, or some even go into AV, in hopes of makiig a come-back.

Yoko's book made the splash, because first, she was a fairly serious actress and also recognized as having had international success in Shogun, plus it came at the time when the public pubic fuzz controversy was on full blast.

Take, if you don't already have it, you can order it for some good wankering material for you right here...... Just scroll down the page!

[Mulboyne]

Another old TIME article:

TIME: The Decline Of Sex (1972)

Not long ago, a small-time Tokyo businessman named Tadao Nakata hit upon an idea that he hoped would bring him, as he later put it, "tons of money for the future." He contracted with a California publisher to import 10,000 copies of a grossly prurient quarterly called Trio, which billed itself rather improbably as "a cultural, scientific and sociological publication." Yet even though Nakata had the printers take an air brush to some of the more explicit photographs, Japanese officialdom was outraged. First, customs authorities forced Nakata to have 37 "undesirable" spots in each copy daubed with ink before they would allow the magazine into the country. Then the Tokyo police confiscated the magazine and indicted Nakata on charges that it was "damaging to the sanctity of decent home life in Japan." He is now on trial. The magazine was blue enough to make a Times Square news dealer wince, but Japanese intellectuals have since made Nakata into a kind of Ginza Ginzburg. Critic Isamu Kurita, writing in the influential Tokyo daily Yomiuri Shimbun, warned that excessive official zeal in enforcing Japan's tough obscenity laws could lead to "the barbarization of our culture and civilization in its crudest form"...more...

[Mulboyne]

Reuters: Japan publisher wins case over Mapplethorpe ban
- A Japanese publisher won a Supreme Court case on Tuesday allowing him to import a book of pictures by late American photographer Robert Mapplethorpe containing images of male genitalia, the court said. Publisher Takashi Asai, who has battled in courts for eight years over the import ban, said he hoped the ruling would clear the way for all art films and books to be shown in Japan uncensored. Asai heads a film distribution company and published a collection of Mapplethorpe's works in Japan in 1994, based on imported negatives that customs did not check. But when Asai carried a copy of his book back from the United States in 1999, it was seized by customs officials and he has been going through the courts ever since to reverse the move. "(The ruling) will change the criteria for obscenity so that films shown at film festivals will not be banned from coming to Japan just because they show private parts, and so that books will not be imported or published with private parts covered or scratched out," Asai said in a statement on the Internet. A Tokyo Customs spokeswoman said the ruling was "regrettable" but that authorities had yet to decide whether to allow other nude images to be imported...more...

From the Mainichi:
...Nineteen pages of the 384-page work showed male genitals prominently, and the government had argued that the work was obscene, saying it blatantly depicted sexual organs. It argued that the Supreme Court had deemed another work carrying the same photographs to be an obscene publication. However, the top court ruled that the percentage of photographs showing male genitals was considerably low, that the work was an overview of all of Mapplethorpe's images, and that the photographs showing genitals were included as representative images from an artistic perspective. It added that the readers of the collection would probably be people with a deep interest in photographic art, and concluded that it was not a work appealing to the erotic interests of readers. The ruling was based on a majority decision by four of the five justices. Justice Yukio Horigome had opposed the publication, saying, "It cannot be denied that it constitutes indecent publication. The majority of opinions placed too much focus on the artistic nature of the photo collection"...more...

[hodensaft]

This reminds me of an old gag in the Onion. It was from a book (Our Dumb Century, I believe), so no link. But it went something like this:

NEA Victory in Washington: Congress Grants Mapplethorpe 'All the Money He Wants'

'I want to see more of these hot, hot cocks,' raves Sen. Jesse Helms (R-NC)
The Onion, Jan 22 1990

[Iraira]

I think that Senator "Foottapper" Craig recently said the same thing.

[amdg]

I ruled in favor of genitalia years ago.

[Mulboyne]

Seeing the eye on the front of that book reminded me of this poster:

[Buraku]

the industry will love this ruling

[xenomorph42]

Call me 'ol fashioned if you wish, but I'm from old school and in my day, genitals were'nt covered up. I hate when Japanese people tell me....
a)It's just gross!
b)It's so much sexier to use your imagination.
c)It's classier

What the??.....I'm sorry, but I don' want to use my imagination when indulging myself in hardcore photography, I use my imagination enough when I'm in at the office

The Japanese should use the Germans as role-models when it come to erotica. You can't get filthier than them...well, hmmm, maybe...I'm not quite sure, but anyway, let's all enjoy porn the way God intended it to be shown without all of the moral and political jargon.

[dimwit]

This picture is just dying for a quote, so let me start off:

Doris, does this mean your going to be busy tonight?

[Visitor K]

dude, twisted sister on vinyl!!!

[Iraira]

dude, twisted sister on vinyl!!!

Ok, now I've changed my mind and I support any laws that would banned such an indecency. Dee Snider is banned by Crysthanenum decree! the guy on the left looks like he has fond memories of either Mapplethorpe penises or of wanting to rock, or a combination of both.

[Greji]

the guy on the left looks like he has fond memories of either Mapplethorpe penises or of wanting to rock, or a combination of both.

Naaa... it's because he's got a date with Noriko tonight!