Decadence: Japanese Fetish Art
Last week I featured Pink Box, a book of photographs from inside the current Japanese sex industry. But was it always so diverse? So intricate? So different from the clandestine sex industry we know in the west? Fear not, Decadence: Japanese Fetish Art has some answers. A very different book from Pink Box, Decadence focuses on Japanese woodblock art during the Edo period (c. 1600 - 1867), and is a fascinating look at the idealized version of life in the Japanese sex trade during that time (this is what happens when you don’t have cameras to properly document things). The beauty standards of the time are not always what we’re used to today: the elaborate hairstyles, blackened teeth and copious pubic hair might seem novel to a modern observer. There’s an emphasis on the genitals (which are often disproportionately large) and a bit of disturbing violence towards the end, giving validity to the book’s title Decadence. There are even a few modern drawings and photos to show just how far we have (or haven’t, in some cases) come. A truly fascinating glimpse into a very different world.
This entry was posted on Wednesday, 7 March 2007 at 4:39 pm and is filed under Comix. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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