A necessary preface: back in 2022, I published a short article aptly named “A Brief Journey Into The History of Tentacles,” which was meant to be a joke. It had three problems. First, it was written in Russian and not translatable into English, which I use over 80% of the time. Second — it was short since its primary goal was to relay the fact that tentacle porn has its roots in Hokusai’s work and to translate the writings on it into Russian. Third — it is now the most read article on this account. Eventually, I decided I ought to make it a little more exciting and a little more researched (so there’s value to it, in addition to humor), and I needed to make it in English. Hope all the goals were achieved here. Let me know.
It all started with a story.
“Japan loves porn that prude Europeans consider abnormal, perverse even. Therefore, it’s hard to find actors willing and able to act in these perversive porn movies. Simply put, there was a shortage of dicks. This led to the Japanese reverting to drawing the porn. Yet, the demand was high, and supply was low, and there was a shortage of drawn dicks. This, in turn, led the artists to draw monsters with dozens of tentacles to make up for the shortage of drawn dicks. So there’s that.”
For those not in the know… yes, it’s an old joke. But as it is widely known, each joke has an element of a… joke. The rest is history.
Let’s dive in.
Exhibit 1 — the widely known The Dream of the Fisherman’s Wife by Hokusai. However, the picture’s original name is 蛸と海女, which translates to Octopi and Diver.
But wait, there’s more.
Suddenly (or not, if you’re not lazy or have read a Wiki page), it turns out that this is not a priceless work of art by a genius painter. It’s a wooden block illustration that Hokusai did for Kinoe no Komatsu, a three-volume shunga porn comic book. Shocker, I know: porn existed before OnlyFans! Who knew?!
The overarching plot (yes, sometimes porn has a plot, try to keep up!) describes the very active sex life and naughty adventures of a Hanada Umenosuke. The series was published in 1814 and has tickled people’s fantasies ever since.
Most viewers are easily distracted by very erotic imagery of a group sex between a woman diver and two octopi that are very overtly performing sexual activities on her. It’s hard not to. In fact, the first time people see this picture, they don’t even realize there are TWO octopi in it.
But wait, there’s more.
The detail that escapes almost all people (especially uneducated folk like me) is the text that forms the background of the picture. Yes, those hieroglyphs actually mean something!
This text is, in fact, a description of activities that are happening in the picture. If you trust the translation by James Heaton and Toyoshima Mizuho, it goes like this:
LARGE OCTOPUS: My wish comes true at last, this day of days; finally I have you in my grasp! Your “bobo” is ripe and full, how wonderful! Superior to all others! To suck and suck and suck some more. After we do it masterfully, I’ll guide you to the Dragon Palace of the Sea God and envelop you. “Zuu sufu sufu chyu chyu chyu tsu zuu fufufuuu…”
MAIDEN: You hateful octopus! Your sucking at the mouth of my womb makes me gasp for breath! Aah! Yes… it’s… there!!! With the sucker, the sucker!! Inside, squiggle, squiggle, oooh! Oooh, good, oooh good! There, there! Theeeeere! Goood! Whew! Aah! Good, good, aaaaaaaaaah! Not yet! Until now it was I that men called an octopus! An octopus! Ooh! Whew! How are you able…!? Ooh! “Yoyoyooh, saa… hicha hicha gucha gucha, yuchyuu chyu guzu guzu suu suuu…”
LARGE OCTOPUS: All eight limbs to interwine with!! How do you like it this way? Ah, look! The inside has swollen, moistened by the warm waters of lust. “Nura nura doku doku doku…”
MAIDEN: Yes, it tingles now; soon there will be no sensation at all left in my hips. Ooooooh! Boundaries and borders gone! I’ve vanished…!!!!!!
SMALL OCTOPUS: After daddy finishes, I too want to rub and rub my suckers at the ridge of your furry place until you disappear and then I’ll suck some more. “Chyu chyu…”
If you’re still here, let’s move on. There’s more…
This image has had a huge influence on “tentacle erotica” or, as it is called these days, “tentacle porn.” Using modern terms, The Dream of the Fisherman’s Wife (a.k.a. Octopi and Diver) went viral and changed history forever.
This makes it pretty apparent that in the 18th century, Japan was already in a dick deficit state. Research attributes this to Japan’s not being very open to other cultures and other dicks. What’s interesting to note is that there’s never a shortage of female genitals — especially drawn ones — in Japanese art. Science has yet to explain this phenomenon.
To be clear, the previous paragraph is not a joke. There ARE scientists and scholars studying the erotic shunga art — which includes erotica, porn, as well as humor and satire around sexual encounters. Indiana University held a “Sexuality and Edo Culture, 1750–1850” conference in 1995, London University and Ritsumeikan University and others’ efforts in the four-year Shunga Project generated a special issue of Japan Review, an exhibition at the British Museum in 2013–2014, and an exhibition catalog. To keep this to TL;DR levels — Japanese erotica has been influencing European culture for decades!
Don’t believe me? Read on, there’s more…
Japanese shunga appeared in European bookshops early in the 1860s. According to scholars, it influenced European artists such as Rodin, van Gogh, Toulouse-Lautrec, and Picasso. In 1874, the article entitled Japonisme by Phillippe Burty gave this artistic and cultural phenomenon a name and a place. In other words — shunga became mainstream. Picasso Museum Barcelona in 2009–2010 hosted an exhibition of over 60 shunga works personally owned by Picasso, called “Secret Images. Picasso and Japanese Erotic Prints.” Turns out Pablo was a naughty boy. Tsk tsk tsk!
In 1866, Victor Hugo published his Toilers of the Sea (Les Travailleurs de la mer) novel. One of the prominent scenes in it features the protagonist’s fight with a killer octopus. In the novel, the octopus represents both a physical and psychological adversary, embodying the struggles of man against nature as well as his inner demons. Fun fact: the geography (or, rather, oceanography) of the place where Toilers takes place does not list any octopi of any significant sizes. They just weren’t significant enough to be mentioned (unlike whales, for example) in cultural works. Yet, here we are, battling giant killer squid.
Of course, Japonisme was not the only source of information on horny cephalopods for horny Europeans. Myths and lore of southern seas pirates, the stories about a giant Kraken — all contributed to European cultural archetypes. The influx of Japanese art and shunga went up along with Romantic Orientalism of the 18th century and European Realism of the 19th century, creating the mix we know and love today.
In turn, Japan in the 1870s took an interesting twist. Usually, erotic works were considered a norm. Explicit prints, books, and paintings were carried around or prominently featured in homes as decorations. However, in 1872, the Japanese government began issuing and (occasionally) enforcing the Ordinance Relating to Public Morals, which contained a number of articles addressing social norms. This resulted in prohibiting the sale of shunga and declaring them “obscene material” (waisetsu). Since then, dicks — drawn or not — have been and still are — considered somewhat taboo in Japan. I’ve heard stories of people who watched contemporary Japanese-produced porn, and it’s still censored.
Having a long history of considering large sea creatures as spiritual equivalents of gods or mythical beings, Japanese artists used them to represent a fusion of human desires with the mysterious forces of nature. The use of tentacles allowed artists to explore themes of sexuality and pleasure while diving into the mysticism of sex — and occasionally sidestep censorship laws. Drawing dicks — bad and not allowed. Drawing tentacles instead — good and is allowed. Laws are weird, man!
Hold on! With all these talks about tentacles, we’ve really only seen a single image with horny octopi… what is going on, and where is the rest?
The Octopi and Diver do stand out in the series of shunga by being the only depiction of sexual activities that include non-humans. And… there’s a little to unpack here.
The Kinoe no Komatsu book, of which this image is a part, was published during the Edo period, 1603 to 1868. For the audience of that time, the scene in Hokusai’s painting is a clear and direct reference to an ancient tale, Taishokan (The Great Woven Cap), episodes of which include the retrieval of a precious gem stolen by the Dragon King of the Sea. The protagonist, Fujiwara Kamatari (614–669), marries a diver, Tamatori, who retrieves the gem for him but sacrifices her own life. Naturally, there are several variations of the story. Initially, the story had a more philosophical meaning and was a source of Noh drama Ama (Diver), ballad dramas, and kabuki theater performances.
Add to this a sexualization of divers, most of whom were women and did their fishing and diving naked, and you’ve got some ideas going that eventually became the basis of shunga. It is believed that Katsukawa Shunsho (1725–1792) was the first to introduce sexual undertones to the depiction of this scene.
As per Joris-Karl Huysmans, a prominent French novelist of the turn of the century, who wrote in Certains: “Kitao Shigemasa (1739–1820) seems to be the first to directly link sexually explicit diver and octopus imagery to the Tamatori story. His rendition is a sexual parody of the Noh play Ama and a visual pun on early Tamatori-tale imagery.”
Exploring eroticism while dodging government censorship had led Katsukawa Shuncho to think, “Oh, we’re doing this now? Great!” — as he went on to create what most consider a formal precursor of the Dream of Fisherman’s Wife — the “Diver and Octopi.”
As I was writing this story, I think I’ve seen more images rethinking and reimagining Hokusai’s Diver and Octopi than I’ve seen St.Mary’s tits in the National Gallery of Art. It’s been in public consciousness for real!
But at least we’ve got a full picture. Lore and practice, cultural references, parody, erotica, government censorship, and, finally, cultural cross-pollination — all of this has led us to where we are today.
That is all.
