Mapplethorpe: Still Scandalous

Lovers of Japanese pop culture may have already noticed that national standards of decency in the Land of the Rising Sun are very different from mores in the U.S. When gay icon John Waters screened his trash masterpiece Pink Flamingos in Japan, he was delighted to find that the scene with the drag queen munching dog feces was considered perfectly acceptable by the national censors, but any glimpse of pubic hair during, say, the chicken-snuff sex scene would have to be concealed by an eerie blue dot.

Now another queer provocateur is fighting Japanese censors--from beyond the grave. The importing of late, great photographer Robert Mapplethorpe's homoerotic photographs (long a lightning rod for controversy in these United States) has become the subject of a legal battle between customs officials and publisher Takashi Asai. Reuters has the story on how this case has made it all the way to the Japanese Supreme Court:

"It's meaningless to have to cover nude photos in this day and age when images are being freely accessed on the Internet," Asai said in a telephone interview this week.

The book is in the Japanese parliament's library, he said, and copies were offered for sale on the Web.

Ah, censorship in the internet age. Whom are they fooling? Keep fightin' the good fight, Asai-san! I'm confident that someday soon, our friends to the East will be able to import arty penis pix without fear of legal consequences.