Ban in Japan: Nudity Rules Anger U.S. Artists

Herb Ritts, the superstar celebrity photographer, can offer a graphic lesson in how censorship in Japan affects the art world to anyone who takes a few steps into the gallery showing his first solo exhibition.

Taking up much of a wall, just opposite the front door of the Fahey-Klein Gallery in Hollywood, is “Male Nude With Bubble,” a mural-sized photograph of a naked model standing behind a large floating soap bubble.

At a nearby counter, the same photo is prominently displayed in the newly published “Herb Ritts: Pictures,” a lavishly produced, $60 book of the exhibition photographs.

But look closer: The nude on the wall and the one in the book are not the same. In the book, the model’s genitals are covered with a small black patch.

“It was censorship and I hated it,” said Ritts, who is based in Los Angeles but telephoned from Milan where he was on assignment for Vogue.

His book was printed in Japan where customs officials seized the bubble man and two other photographs and refused to let them go on to a Tokyo printer.

Ritts said he was infuriated by the Japanese actions but accepted them because he could not have gotten the bubble man photograph printed in his book without having it altered.

He thus joined such stellar photographers as Edward Weston and Paul Outerbridge, whose works also have been rejected by Japanese customs officials, who cite laws they say bar the depiction of full frontal nudity.

The laws may seem--to many outsiders and Japanese alike--vague and erratically enforced. But they pose very real problems for Western art book publishers who increasingly turn to Japan for high-quality printing.

“It’s a terrible dilemma,” said Jack Woody, who co-edited and designed Ritts’ book for Twin Palms Publishing, a local firm that specializes in art photography. “In Japan, they do the best printing in the world today.

“So you’re forced to make a trade-off. You want the best quality, but you also run the risk of certain photographs being stopped.”

The basic law governing imports into Japan is now almost 80 years old and was imposed as part of the Meiji Restoration, when Japanese leaders tried to adjust to the outside world after centuries of isolation.

“They wanted to make Japan presentable for foreigners in that period,” said Masao Miyoshi, a professor of Japanese literature at UC San Diego. “They tried to be almost puritanical.”

As translated by lawyer Junichi Asahi, the import customs law simply states that “articles prohibited from import include those that corrupt good manners or good morals.”

“The law is very vague, very abstract,” Asahi said, speaking from his Tokyo office. “It has been criticized by legal scholars. In one case, a district court declared it in violation of Japanese constitutional law, but a higher court upheld it.”

The Forbidden

As when the law was first written, its interpretation is still left up to customs officials. They generally allow material with frank sexual overtones, unless pubic hair or male genitals are shown. (Several photos in Ritts’ book, for example, show nude bodies intertwined.)

But distinctions are not always made between art and pornography--one of the most famous applications of the law resulted in 24 Picasso prints being banned from a visiting exhibition. Similarly, a show of works by Edward Weston, one of the deans of American photography, had to go on without several of his most famous pictures.

Application of the law also can vary widely among custom officials.

When the Ritts photographs were sent to the Toppan printing plant in Tokyo, three photographs--the man with the bubble and two other male nudes--were rejected. At about same time, duplicate photos went to the Parco department store in Tokyo for an upcoming exhibition in the store’s gallery space. The custom official who checked that shipment rejected seven pictures, including three male and several female nudes.

Others Censored

Several photographers, publishers and gallery owners have had similar experiences.

In 1980, G. Ray Hawkins, owner of a Melrose Avenue photo gallery, sent a shipment of Outerbridge pictures to Dai Nippon printers in Tokyo while preparing a book on the late American photographer for Rizzolli publishers.

“They have great, master printers at Dai Nippon and we wanted the best for this book,” Hawkins said. But six photos, most of which were 1930s studies of women, were rejected. Hawkins arranged for Dai Nippon to print the book at its Hong Kong plant, where the photographs cleared customs without problems.

Robert Heinecken, who heads UCLA’s photo department, recalled that books containing his works were to be sold at a gallery in connection with a 1985 Tokyo exhibition. “The exhibit was planned to not include pictures that might be objectionable to the officials,” Heinecken said, “but the book was another matter. It was stopped.”

Steven Arnold, a Los Angeles photographer who builds elaborate sets and costumes for the baroque fantasies he photographs, also has run afoul of Japanese customs over an overseas printing of two of his books. He believes the constant threat of censorship greatly effects what the world sees of his work.

‘An Awful Situation’

“Jack Woody, who has done my books, likes to print in Japan and because of that, I know he edits out photographs that might be a problem,” Arnold said. “It’s an awful situation for an artist.”

Because the book he is now planning makes heavy use of nudity, Arnold said he wants it printed in Europe or the United States, even if that might mean a loss in quality.

New York art book publisher Harry Abrams Inc. has had only a few problems, most notably with an early 1980s book, “Photo Discovery.”

“We had a historical picture of an African woman that was taken in the 19th Century that they rejected,” said Robert Morton, Abrams’ special projects director. “It took a while but we finally convinced them that this was a historical piece of art, validated by time and they let it through.”

At Abbeville Press in New York, Dana Cole, the production department head, recalled that a work on painter Thomas Wesselmann had several paintings rejected by Japanese censors; these were printed elsewhere, then added to the book with a special process when it was bound. “Because of that,” Cole said, “we are careful to try and not place a book like that in Japan for printing.”

Because the photos planned for Ritts’ book were stylized, with models in shadowy light or covered by bits of material, Woody and Ritts believed they would not encounter customs problems.

”. . . These images are so sculptural I didn’t think about censorship,” said Ritts, who made his name in celebrity and fashion photography and has gone on to work that falls more under the category of art photography.

Mural-Sized

In Hollywood, his exhibition has been highly successful. Gallery co-owner David Fahey said six of the seven available, mural-sized “Male Nude With Bubble” photos sold for $4,500 each. Several smaller editions of the image sold for $1,100.

Woody wanted the Ritts book--to be published in conjunction with the gallery show--printed at Toppan because the Japanese firm excels at the now rare gravure printing process, which he favors because it gives rich black tones to black-and-white photos.

“I was very upset when I found out that we could not use three of the photographs,” Ritts said. “But it was too late to do anything about it. We had a commitment to the printer and a schedule to meet.”

Ritts left out of the book two photos but was unwilling to lose “Male Nude With Bubble.”

“I love that photograph,” he said. “I did it one day in my studio when we were fooling around with a bubble maker I bought for $5 on the Venice boardwalk.”

‘Feeling and Imagery’

He arranged for the black spot to be silk-screened onto the image, which then was returned to the printer, he said, adding: “Obviously, I would have rather not done that. But I don’t think it altered the feeling and imagery of the photograph. I don’t believe it really compromised it.”

There have been isolated incidents in recent years of custom regulators taking a more liberal attitude toward nudity. For the 1985 Tokyo International Film Festival, customs officials allowed several films with full nudity. But the next year they demanded that a BBC film based on the life of Franz Kafka be edited before it could be shown.

“I don’t things are really changing,” said Miyoshi, the Japanese literature professor. “The customary legal interpretation seems very strong and the people don’t seem willing to make much of a fuss about it.”

Ritts is willing to battle officials again. When his show closes in Hollywood, it will be packed and shipped to Tokyo for the Parco exhibition.

“We have a plan,” Ritts said with a laugh. “I think we can get the photographs into the country legally, but also show them unaltered at the exhibition.

“I don’t want to say how we will do this, but I think we just might get away with it.”