There are two main arguments to support censorship. One is that it protects the tender sensibilities of a weak-minded public prone to be led astray into immorality and depravity. The other is that it actually stirs the creative powers of artists to new heights by placing obstacles in their way. While evidence that censorship improves public morals is patchy and inconclusive, there are countless examples throughout history of it unwittingly stimulating genius.

This includes the case of the great Japanese woodblock print artist, Utagawa Kuniyoshi (ca. 1797-1861), now the subject of a major retrospective at the Fuchu Art Museum in Tokyo's western suburbs. Sourced from an anonymous private collection, and subtitled "Woodblock Prints of Eccentricity and Laughter," the exhibition emphasizes the whimsicality, weirdness, and wit found in Kuniyoshi's art, and it makes the case that much of this was spurred by the heavy hand of the censor, following the Tenpo Reforms of 1842.

These reforms, named after the period in which they occurred (1830-1844), were a wide range of measures, ostensibly aimed at revamping Japanese society but which were also partly aimed at curtailing the growing economic and cultural independence of the lower-caste urban population of merchants and craftsmen.