Two words have been let loose on society by an artist who, for better or worse, may find the rest of her life and career inextricably bound up with them, "vagina" being one and "taboo" the other. The artist herself needs no introduction. She is (or briefly was) the most famous woman in Japan, thanks primarily to an aborted (and almost incredibly stupid) arrest for alleged obscenity.

Whether or not Megumi Igarashi, aka Rokudenashi-ko ("no-good girl"), was the first ever to discover that the vagina is shaped something like a kayak (or vice versa), she certainly broke new ground in building a kayak and calling it art on the basis of that resemblance. (The obscenity charge had nothing to do with the artwork per se; it arose from her fundraising technique of rewarding donors with data enabling a 3-D replication of her vagina.)

Anyway, the word "vagina," along with some less genteel synonyms, is no longer "taboo" in Japan, as numerous commentators here and abroad have hastened to assure us. It was rather silly that it should have been in the first place, and what this episode proves above all is that nothing combats silliness more effectively than silliness, both the artwork in question and the arrest that followed fitting the bill admirably. Perhaps from now on the vagina will be regarded as Rokudenashi-ko says it should be, as simply "part of the body ... no different from arms and legs."