Amenda Steels' Original Blog
Tentacle erotica is a type of pornography that integrates traditional pornography with some elements of bestiality. They come under hentai titles with tentacle creatures having sexual intercourse with female characters. Fantasy, horror, or science-fiction themes were used to provide the storyline. Creatures with tentacles in erotic setting existed before animated pornography. The famous woodblock print by Hokusai Katsushika appeared in 1920. It was entitled “the Dream of the Fisherman's Wife”.
Shunga or erotic art were seen as sexual guidance for young couple during Hokusai’s times. It was the Japanese Karma Sutra enjoyed by men and women of all classes and superstitions and customs supports this claim. Samurai used shunga as an amulet against death. Merchant treat them as talisman to protect their warehouse from fire. [Source Wikipedia]. Shunga is literally translated as spring art. For Japanese spring refer to the blossom period and it was traditional to present a bride with ukiyo-e depicting erotic scenes from the Tale of Genji.
The picture was rated third sexiest works of art ever by the Guardian. Pablo Picasso was took second place in the Guardian's rating.Ironically Picasso was greatly influence by Hokusai. Picasso painted his own version in 1903 that has been shown next to Hokusai's original in exhibits on the influence of 19th-century Japanese art on Picasso's work [Source Wikipedia].
Western critics such as Edmond de Goncourt and Jack Hillier interpreted the work as a rape scene. Based on the text above the image, the woman and the creatures express their mutual sexual pleasure from the encounter. Scholar Danielle Talerico is in the opinion that de Goncourt and Hillier would have seen it apart from the Kinoe no Komatsu collection and without understanding the text and visual references, depriving it of its original context.
Guerrilla Gamblers' Comments
Fascinating, Shunga is the Japanese Karma Sutra. It’s a pity that Shunga was not complied and treasure like the Karma Sutra. It seem to me like every author gets to express their piece without a chief editor to compile them. With contemporary players, Shunga was gradually transformed into Hentai.
From this picture alone, I conclude that Shunga is imaginative while Karma Sutra is specific. Since this is a sex manual for couples, I believe Hokusai is telling his audience to image that their man had the hands of an octopus so that he can be all over you. Likewise he is telling the male readers to pleasure their partners as if they had the hands of an octopus. In contrast, the Karma Sutra draws out specifically the position of the male and female accompanied by written instruction on movements.
My Comments
I like Guerrilla Gamblers’ comment on Shunga to Hentai. I makes me wonder about Japanese shift from accepting erotic images in the Edo era to rejecting pornography in the present day. I look up Wikipedia and found that post World War II had been a catalyst in imposing European Victorian value on the Japanese. Here are some interesting quotes from the Wikipedia page.
“At present, ‘obscenity’ is still prohibited. How this term is interpreted has not remained constant. While exposed genitalia (and until recently pubic hair) are illegal…Leaders within the tentacle porn industry have stated that much of their work was initially directed at circumventing this policy. The animator Toshio Maeda stated: “At that time pre-Urotsuki Doji, it was illegal to create a sensual scene in bed. I thought I should do something to avoid drawing such a normal sensual scene. So I just created a creature. His tentacle is not a penis as a pretext. I could say, as an excuse, this is not a penis; this is just a part of the creature. You know, the creatures, they don't have a gender. A creature is a creature. So it is not obscene - not illegal.”
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