Japan is known for many things, the good, the bad, and even the most obscure things, one of which is their obsession with tentacles. So where did it all start? This time QooPedia explores Tentacles.
Since a long time ago, Japan has already had tentacle related adult material. Tako to Ama (蛸と海女) is believed to be one of the very first, dating back to 1814. The classic shunga depicts a fisherman’s wife being pleasured by octopuses. whilst tentacles are present, this is still different from the weird tentacle hentai obsession you may know today (or may not know… but seriously, who are you kidding…).
As we previously explored, hentai has gone through many changes in censorship over time, from being oppressed by shoguns to the brief liberation under the Allied Occupation of Japan, censorship still restricted illustrators to draw explicit sexual organs like the male penis in their works. Due to this restriction, many artists and illustrators used different tricks to represent the male penis, and in the mid 80’s, mangaka Toshio Maeda used tentacles as a representation of the male penis. In an attempt to find a loop hole around the Japanese censorship laws, Maeda kick-started a new genre of hentai which developed into what we know as tentacle hentai today.
If you’re interested in reading more on Maeda, there is quite a lot of information on his official website.
As always, if there is anything else you want us to explain, let us know in the comments!