In the early 2000s, the idea of Japan as culturally “cool” captured imaginations. Propelled by a government interested in marketing and selling Japan, products from video games to anime and manga were repackaged as embodying cultural cool. And global audiences were reminded that what they enjoyed consuming, from sushi to Pokémon, were of Japanese origin. The capital of Tokyo, now virtually synonymous with the nation as a whole, was to epitomize this “cool Japan” with its technological sophistication, sleek aesthetics, and cultural creativity as host of the 2020 Olympic Games. Despite disruption by the COVID-19 pandemic, what the games reflected vividly was how the Tokyo metropolitan region, tracing a general trend that dated back centuries, had grown almost inexorably in size and in political, economic, and cultural gravity. Not just in historical patterns but in so many ways – from a city center that remains inviolate to the spiral that radiates outward, from the low-rise wooden buildings in the low city to the names of neighborhoods – the past remains deeply woven into the richly textured pastiche of contemporary Tokyo.

The chapter discusses cultural and legal varieties in the definitions of ‘indecent’ and ‘immoral’ arts, as well as the varieties in our understanding of ‘obscenity’. It questions the existence of a universal standard of morality, pointing to the influence of the Platonic perception of art on UNESCO and other UN bodies and agencies. The chapter discusses two hard cases as case studies: first, extremist contemporary visual arts and performances such as those involving bodily harm and the so-called cadaver art, and second, child pornoraphy, specifically in the Japanese manga tradition and the particular genre of Lolicons. The legal challenges arising therein are largely premised on a discussion of the contextuality of moral considerations (as evidenced for instance in temporal and regional varieties and the variations of the ‘average person’ standard in domestic jurisdictions, including even in the acceptance of the artistic genre of the nude in painting and sculpture ). In international law this debate is translated into a lack of consensus in defining universal standards and an extraordinary variety of domestic standards (for instance, in relation to the ‘average person’ morality standards), which allows for broader State discretion.