If you are easily offended, please don't read this column because it's about obscenity laws in Japan and that in itself may be obscene. If my editor will let me, we'll even put up a possibly obscene image! (Don't worry, I won't — Ed.)

If you read it and are still offended, then I suggest that you take this column and mail it to the police in an envelope. For your own sake, however, make sure you don't email them a copy. If you do, you could be arrested and held in custody on "obscene electromagnetic record distribution charges."

Conceptual artist and manga writer Megumi Igarashi, aka Rokudenashi-ko ("no-good girl"), was arrested on July 12 on those charges. The charges that were filed related to the distribution of 3-D schematics of her vagina to supporters so they could make replicas with their own 3-D printer.