Japanese SAQ

SAQ = Seldom Asked Questions

Q. Why is 'tentacle porn' so popular in Japanese anime? - Question submitted by Seth.
A. Tentacle sex is a bizarre genre of anime and manga in which women are attacked and penetrated by strange creatures with tentacles. Although most people think that tentacle sex is something that could only have come from the mind of a 20th century illustrator, there have been sexual images involving octopi in Japan for almost 200 years. It all goes back to the famous Ukiyo-e artist, Katsushika Hokusai, the same person who gave the world famous paintings such as “36 Views of Mt. Fuji” and “The Wave”. Hokusai, like most ukiyo-e artists, supplemented his income by painting pictures called shunga, ‘pictures of spring’ which were popular as pornography or used in instruction manuals given to newly-weds. His famous book, Kinoe no Komatsu (Young Pine Shoots) featured a print called ‘The Amorous Octopus’, which featured a giant octopus pleasuring a young pearl diver.
Hokusai’s Octopus paintings are said to be the inspiration for modern tentacle sex, but his works were not violent, and the women in the Amorous Octopus seems to be quite enjoying herself, unlike the girls in modern hentai anime. According to Toshio Maeda, the inventor of the modern genre, he did it to skirt Japan's strict censorship laws. Showing intercourse was illegal, and illustrators were always looking for ways to get around the law. Maeda claims that he was just looking for something he could use represent a penis, and came up with the idea of a young girl being attacked by a grotesque monster with tentacles. The genre became popular because it was as close to showing intercourse as anime could get.
Although it is now possible to show scenes that are a lot more graphic, tentacle sex has a strong following today and in the anime world, Maeda’s ‘pioneering’ work, Urotsuki Doji (Legend of the Overfiend) is considered a classic of sorts. This six hour gore-fest concerns an invasion of the planet Earth by demons from another dimension who have come to prevent an ancient prophecy from coming true, and have tentacle sex with as many humans as they can.
To learn everything you ever wanted to know about tentacle porn, visit: http://www.bigempire.com/sake/manga1.html. If you’d like to see the full version of Hokusai’s octopus picture that I can’t show you here, and read an interesting essay on the genre, see: http://www.the-emperor.org/wiki/tentacle_porn/.

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