The Wakayama Prefectural Police revealed on May 8, 2024 that Your Name. movie producer Koichiro Itou has been referred to prosecutors for additional violation of Child Prostitution & Pornography law in Japan, after it came to light that he had paid an underage girl for sexual intercourse.
The latest case involved a 17-year-old high school girl from Yokohama. Investigators believe Itou knew the girl was a minor when he paid her 30,000 yen for having sexual intercourse at his residence in December 2023.
He is also suspected of taking and saving photographs of the act.
One of the early thought experiments in art history is this:
You’re walking through a forest and come open a beautiful arrangement of rocks evoking a sweeping movement, like a bird’s wing in motion. It look’s artificial, but you can see that the rocks could just be there by an accidental result of nature. The effect is captivating, but you can’t tell if it’s man-made or not. Is it art?
The argument Barthes makes is that the meaning of art is always more a function of the interpretation by the viewer than the intention of the artist.