A man who admits cooking and serving his own severed genitals to paying diners in Japan has been handed over to prosecutors on an allegation of indecent exposure, Tokyo police said yesterday.
Criminal papers against the 23-year-old man and three other people who helped organize the event were sent to the Tokyo district public prosecutors’ office, the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) said, without naming them.
However, police did not question the dishing out of the genitals, possibly because there is no law against cannibalism in Japan.
The man had earlier identified himself as Mao Sugiyama and an “asexual” illustrator.
In an e-mail to reporters in May, he confirmed the event had taken place and said it was organized to raise awareness about “sexual minorities, x-gender, asexual people.”
An MPD spokeswoman said that the four people conspired to “openly display the [illustrator’s] severed male genitals to the assembled 71 guests” at a music club from 7pm to 10pm on May 13.
“Every one of them has admitted that they did it,” she said.
If convicted of indecent exposure, a crime known as the display of obscene objects in Japanese, they can be jailed up to two years and/or fined up to ￥2.5 million (US$32,000) each.
In tweets on May 18, the artist said steps were taken so his act met all relevant laws, including a ban on organ sales, processing of medical waste and even food sanitation requirements.
Sugiyama said his penis and testicles had been surgically removed by a physician in March and certified free of infections. They were kept frozen for two months before the event in Suginami, a residential area in western Tokyo.
Diners each paid ￥20,000 for a portion.
The police probe followed a complaint from the mayor of Suginami.
“Many residents of Suginami and elsewhere have expressed a sense of discomfort and feeling of apprehension over this,” Mayor Ryo Tanaka said in a statement.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
Russian hackers last year targeted a Dutch public facility in the first such an attack on the lowlands country’s infrastructure, its military intelligence services said on Monday. The Netherlands remained an “interesting target country” for Moscow due to its ongoing support for Ukraine, its Hague-based international organizations, high-tech industries and harbors such as Rotterdam, the Dutch Military Intelligence and Security Service (MIVD) said in its yearly report. Last year, the MIVD “saw a Russian hacker group carry out a cyberattack against the digital control system of a public facility in the Netherlands,” MIVD Director Vice Admiral Peter Reesink said in the 52-page
RSS