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Tentacle erotica (Japanese:触手責め,Hepburn:shokushu zeme;lit. 'tentacle attack') is a type ofpornography most commonly found in Japan that integrates traditional pornography with elements ofbestiality,fantasy,horror, andscience fiction. It is found in somehorror orhentai titles, with tentacled creatures (usually fictional monsters) having sexual intercourse, predominantly with females or, to a lesser extent, males. Tentacle erotica can be consensual but mostly contains elements ofrape.
The genre is well known enough in Japan that it is the subject ofparody. In the 21st century, Japanese films of this genre have become recognized in the United States and Europe, although it remains a small, fetish-oriented part of the adult film industry. While most tentacle erotica is animated, there are also a few live-action films that depict it.
The earliest examples of tentacle erotica werewoodblock prints depicting women being violated byoctopuses, such asKitao Shigemasa'sProgramme of Erotic Noh Plays (1781) andShunshō Katsukawa'sLust of Many Women on One Thousand Nights (1786).[1]
Another early instance is an illustration from the 1814Hokusai bookKinoe no Komatsu, known asThe Dream of the Fisherman's Wife. It is an example ofshunga (Japanese erotic woodblock art) and has been reworked by a number of artists,[2] such asMasami Teraoka, who brought the image up to date with his 2001 work "Sarah and Octopus/Seventh Heaven", which was part of hisWaves and Plagues collection.
While Western audiences in many cases interpret Hokusai's famous design as rape, Japanese audiences of theEdo period would have viewed it as consensual, recognizing the print as depicting the legend of the femaleabalone diver Tamatori.[3] In the story, Tamatori steals a jewel from the Dragon King. During her escape, the Dragon King and his sea-life minions (including octopuses) pursue her. The dialogue in the illustration shows the diver and two octopuses expressing mutual enjoyment.
Contemporarycensorship in Japan dates to theMeiji period. The influence of EuropeanVictorian culture was a catalyst for legislative interest in public sexual practices. AfterWorld War II, theAllies imposed a number of reforms on the Japanese government, including censorship laws. The legal proscriptions against pornography, therefore, derive from the nation's penal code. Presently, "obscenity" is still prohibited. How this term is interpreted, however, has not remained constant. While exposed genitalia (and, until recently, pubic hair) is illegal, the diversity of permissible sexual acts is now fairly wide, relative to other liberal democracies.
Leaders within the tentacle porn industry have stated that much of their work was initially directed at circumventing this policy. According to the mangakaToshio Maeda:
At that time pre-Urotsukidōji, 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.[4]
The earliest animated form of tentacle erotica was in the 1985original video animation (OVA)Dream Hunter Rem, though the scene in question was excised when the OVA was re-released in a form with sexual scenes removed. The first purely non-erotic anime portraying a tentacle assault would be the 1986 anime OVAGuyver: Out of Control, where a female Chronos soldier named Valcuria is enshrouded by the second (damaged) Guyver unit that surrounds her in tentacle form and assaults her.
Numerous animated tentacle erotica films followed in the next couple decades. Popular titles like 1986'sUrotsukidoji, 1992'sLa Blue Girl, and 1995'sDemon Beast Resurrection became common sights in large video store chains in the United States and elsewhere. The volume of films in this genre has slowed since the peak years in the 1990s, but they continue to be produced through the present day.[citation needed]
While manga has featured stories of heroes being attacked by monsters with tentacles since its early days, the earliest examples of tentacle erotica in manga belong to "real life" erotic comedy manga magazines, which predateero-gekiga. Multiple scenes were found in the March 12, 1968 issue ofWeekly Manga Q, where several creatures with tentacles attacked women. Another early example belonged toOsamu Tezuka's sci-fi storyThe Returnees (1973), where a scene depicts a woman being assaulted and impregnated by a space creature.[5]Legend of Lyon: Flair (1986), directed by Yorihisa Uchida, featured scenes of tentacle rape, and is arguably the first known animated hentai title to include it.
Toshio Maeda'sUrotsukidōji was a pioneer in the tentacle rape genre with its mix of sex,bishōjo and tentacles. Maeda's depiction of tentacles was more creature-like and possessed at will, imitating male genitalia. However, six years prior toUrotsukidōji in 1976, Maeda created his first tentacle work in an experimental short story calledSEX Tearing, which is considered the origin forUrotsukidōji as well as the earliest work depicting sex between women and tentacles.[6][7] In 1989, Maeda's mangaDemon Beast Invasion created what could be considered the modern Japanese paradigm of tentacle porn, in which the elements of sexual assault are emphasized. Maeda explained that he invented the practice to get around strict Japanesecensorship regulations, which prohibit the depiction of thepenis but do not prohibit showing sexual penetration by a tentacle or similar appendages.
Go Nagai has also been known for including scenes of tentacle rape in his stories, the most notable examples beingBarabanba andMazinSaga.
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The use of sexualized tentacles in live-action films, while much rarer, started in AmericanB-movie horror films and has since migrated to Japan. B-movie producerRoger Corman used the concept of tentacle rape in a brief scene in his 1970 filmThe Dunwich Horror, a film adaptation of theH. P. Lovecraftshort story of the same name.Vice magazine identifies this as "perhaps cinema history's first tentacle-rape scene".[8]
A decade later, Corman would again use tentacle rape while producingGalaxy of Terror, released in 1980. Corman also directed a scene in which actressTaaffe O'Connell, playing an astronaut on a future space mission, is captured, raped, and killed by a giant, tentacled worm. The film borrows the concept of the "Id Monster" from the 1950s filmForbidden Planet, with the worm being a manifestation of O'Connell's character's fears. The scene was graphic enough that the film's director, B. D. Clark, refused to helm it, and O'Connell refused to do the full nudity required by Corman, so Corman directed the scene himself and used a body double for some of the more graphic shots. Initially given an X-rating by the Motion Picture Association of America, small cuts were made to the scene, which changed the film's rating to "R.".
Sam Raimi'sThe Evil Dead includes a scene where actressEllen Sandweiss' character is attacked by the possessed woods she walks through. The evil spirit inhabiting the woods uses tree limbs and branches to ensnare, strip, and rape her, possessing her through the sexual acts in a way reminiscent of that in which tentacles are depicted in other pieces of media.[9] The scene was repeated in a shorter version in the sequel,Evil Dead II, released in 1987.
The 1981 Japanese filmEdo Porn, about the life of artistKatsushika Hokusai, featured theDream of the Fisherman's Wife painting in a live-action depiction. In the 1981 filmPossession, a woman copulates with a tentacled creature, although the tentacles themselves are never explicitly shown to penetrate her.
The popularity of these films has led to the subsequent production of numerous live-action tentacle films in Japan from the 1990s to the present day. The theme rarely appears in adult American cinema and art; one example is American artistZak Smith, who painted several works featuring octopuses and porn stars in various stages of intercourse.[10] In 2016,Amat Escalante directed the art-house filmThe Untamed, which depicts a live-action scene between the female protagonist and a tentacled space alien.[11]
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