Erotic Horror, Japanese Style

Copyright 2020 by Gary L. Pullman

Japanese horror films include themes that, foreign to American audiences, seem not only original and daring in concept, but also bizarre in their presentations of such themes.

It may be that, in some cases, the originality of themes and the grotesque imagery in which these themes find expression stem, in part, from Japanese erotica, which is, from a Western standpoint, also seen as being unusually creative and outlandish. Not only does Japanese erotica include “tentacle sex” between sea creatures and women, which is often, but not always, non-consensual in nature and contains an element of bestiality, but sex between men and women is apt to include practices with which Westerners are more or less unfamiliar, the depictions of some of which have resulted in criminal prosecutions in the United States (Violence Against Women in Pornography by Walter DeKeseredy and Marilyn Corsianos, 33).

One Japanese erotic horror film, Empire of the Senses (1976), is based on the “true story of Sada Abe,” whose sadomasochistic relationship with Kichizo Isgida, a married man, reached its climax with “his death and castration during sex.” Perhaps Sada might have gotten away with the murder had she not been so unwise as to carry her victim's severed “penis in her kimono sash,” a practice which resulted in her arrest (Introduction to Japanese Horror Film by Colette Balman, 22).

Paradoxically, although Japanese erotica also excludes any depiction of pubic hair, genitals, or sexual penetration (70), it is much less concerned about the exhibition of semen. According to Balman, Japanese horror films are as likely to feature male victims as these movies are to feature female victims. She offers, as an example, Entrails of a Virgin (1986), in which Asaoka, “pursued by the enraged Kazuyo, is choked to death as a large hook wielded by the monster lifts him into the air and copious amounts of viscous fluid—the monster's semen—gush into the water nearby” (159).

Thematically, tentacled monsters were a theme in painting before they became a theme on film. The Dream of the Fisherman's Wife, an 1814 erotic woodcut by Hokusai, shows a supine woman receiving oral sex from an octopus while one of its tentacles probes her mouth. Text that accompanies the woodcut indicates that the woman enjoys the octopus's aggressive behavior and its use of the suction cups on its eight arms.

The tentacles of a cuttlefish, jellyfish, octopus, squid, and other tentacled creatures of the deep are strange by virtue of their possession of multiple arms, the better with which to please their human lovers. These appendages are long, strong, flexible, and equipped with suckers that are capable of rotating “in any direction”; lengthening, or elongating, “to twice . . . [their] normal length,” experiencing intense “touch sensitivity” and walking “an item along an arm simply by moving the sucker.”

As Hokusai's woodcut clearly shows, tentacles are also capable of probing cavities, oral and otherwise. A tentacled creature, in fact, can perform several sexual acts simultaneously, a fact which might make them desirable partners, despite their hideous appearance.

There is, of course, also the element of taboo. Bestiality is a practice that is generally condemned by most societies. Engaging in sex with a tentacled marine monster violates this taboo, adding the spice of performing a forbidden act to the erotic nature of the behavior itself.

Several American horror movies have also included tentacled menaces:

• It Came from Beneath the Sea (1955) (octopus)
• Tentacles (1977) (octopus)
• The Beast (1996) (squid)
• Octopus (2000) (octopus)
• Octopus 2 (2001) (octopus)
• Kraken: Tentacles of the Deep (2006) (kraken)
• Monster (2008) (octopus)
• Mega Shark Versus Giant Octopus (2009) (octopus)
• Grabbers (2012) (alien)
• The Creature Below (2016) (octopus)

What eliminates the threat posed by these tentacled terrors?

• It Came from Beneath the Sea (1955) (octopus): torpedo (technology)
• Tentacles (1977) (octopus): killer whales (natural predators)
• The Beast (1996) (squid): fuel explosion (technology)
• Octopus (2000) (octopus) (nothing)
• Octopus 2 (2001) (octopus)
• Kraken: Tentacles of the Deep (2006) (kraken) (shot with machine gun) (technology)
• Monster (2008) (octopus) (?)
• Mega Shark Versus Giant Octopus (2009) (octopus) (shark)
• Grabbers (2012) (alien) (explosives) (technology)
• The Creature Below (2016) (octopus)
  
  

Although these films don't have overt sexual imagery, the subtext created by Hokusai's woodcut and by the works of other artists whose work has featured tentacle erotica is certainly a subtext in some of them. Perhaps one reason for the appeal of tentacle monsters, whether in an erotic subtext or otherwise, is their symbolic significance, as phallic symbols.

Félicien Rops

Just as Hokusai's woodcut inspired a theme that appears in Japanese erotic horror films, it also inspired such other artists as Western painters Félicien Rops, Auguste Rodin, Louis Aucoc, Fernand Khnopff, Martin van Maele, and Pablo Picasso “Tentacles of love and death: from Hokusai to Picasso” by Ricard Bru, 55-71).