What I learnt after discovering Tentacle Porn

“You, too, have such a monster inside of you.” — Toshio Maeda

It was another day at work when my phone went abuzz with a hoard of Telegram messages. It was a Wednesday mid-afternoon, and I figured no working adult would chatter away like that at that time.

What could they be discussing about?

For the rest of the busy day, I left the messages mostly untouched and could only guess what it was about. The Australian fires? The US-Iran tensions? The recent coronavirus? Little did I know, someone had shared a new video to a group and everyone was raving. That evening after work, I discovered Tentacle Porn.

Okay, I admit: I am not entirely new to cartoon erotica. Some occasionally pop up now and then as I browse the internet, usually in the form of rampant fan arts-turned-nasty in both anime and animation. But I have to say Tentacle Porn was unexpectedly unknown to me.

The video piqued my interest in the topic and began my journey down the nasty rabbit hole — I studied about its creation, history, and impact on society as scholarly as possible. Now, I am intrigued and have decided to share what I learnt from the research so that you don’t have to.

Who would have thought porn could be this deep?

Often, there is a painfully normal explanation behind something outwardly evil

As a self-respecting person, I was initially disgusted by the genre. It ranks close to those illicit sexual deviances such as beastiality. It is easy to dismiss it as evil, something far-removed from our understanding of the world, void of morality and meaning.

However, upon closing inspection, there was a perfectly logical explanation for its creation. It was to defeat strict censorship.

Japan, the country of origin, strictly forbids any explicit illustration or display of the:

• 1. human genitalia; and/or
• 2. sexual intercourse in works of art, film, and porn.

If there were any such scenes necessary, they have to be self-censored or run the risk of breaking the law.

The ingenuity of Tentacle monsters is in that there was no need for covering sheets, clever view obstruction, or blatant black or white-outs; the monsters technically have no human genitalia, and they were never positioned closer to another being than 5 meters to engage in sexual acts. There was no problem in their illustration — a loophole in the censorship law.

Toshio Maeda, the creator of Tentacle porn, was neither a pervert or a fanatic, but an average artist trying to avert censorship laws.

Although it’s a bit of a stretch, it reminded me that most seemingly unthinkable deeds that people think must be attributed to evil could be explained logically. Hannah Arendt, a philosopher and political theorist, wrote this about Eichmann in her book Eichmann in Jerusalem:

“The trouble with Eichmann was precisely that so many were like him, and that the many were neither perverted nor sadistic, that they were, and still are, terribly and terrifyingly normal.” ― Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil

Ah, the banality of evil.

Trust humans to keep things interesting — historically proven

Yes, even Tentacle porn.

It would be a long-shot to call the 66-year old Japanese man the original creator of Tentacle Erotica (or shokushu goukan, 触手強姦, in Japanese). More accurately, Maeda is considered the creator of the modern sub-genre of the same name that is more recognisable as this:

…than this:

Maeda created what might be called the modern Japanese paradigm of tentacle porn.

The latter image shows the page of an 18th-century erotic artwork by the name The Dream of the Fisherman’s Wife (蛸と海女, Tako to ama, Octopus(es) and shell diver), also known as Girl Diver and Octopuses, Diver and Two Octopuses. It is a woodblock-printed design by the Japanese artist Hokusai. It is included in Kinoe no Komatsu (English: Young Pines), a three-volume book of shunga erotica first published in 1814, and has become Hokusai’s most famous shunga design. Playing with themes popular in Japanese art, it depicts a young ama diver entwined sexually with a pair of octopi.

One would err to believe that the modern man were any special or different from the past, even in porn. Take heart though, for you can trust that humanity to reinvent and keep things interesting.

People blame porn irrationally

For something as primordial as sex, porn has had a bad rep.

There is much ado with porn in the internet age. The common adage goes like this: there is nothing inherently wrong with consuming erotica; watching, reading, looking at, or listening to porn. If there is a basic need, it will be satisfied. Natural.

In the same vein, when asked in an interview if Maeda sees American as a possible audience, he has this to say.

Do you see America as profitable for hentai manga?

Just a little. American journalists have come to me and told me that my hentai scenes will corrupt American youth. Yet, you still have very little gun control in America, and kids have access to this all the time. You see in Japan, nothing happens, you can walk on the street in the middle of the night with a skimpy T-shirt or a mini-skirt on and nothing happens, but, in American, seems like you really care about the human rights of the anime and manga world. You don’t give a sh*t about human rights, but you do all you can to judge or put down Japanese culture.

- Toshio Maeda, (+18)INTERVIEW: Creator of ‘Demon Beast Invasion’ Toshio Maeda on Hentai, Tentacles, and “Not Giving a S**t”

The assertion that pornography corrupts youth and cause crimes rings close to home. It reminds me of another assertion, that video games cause gun violence. Both are touchy topics that are as perennial as they are frustrating. Ultimately, they conclude in the all-too-familiar avoidance fashion, that there is no evidence supporting the claim.

If you are not harming anyone, including yourself, then I say go ahead with your personal preference! Be it to play video games or watch some tentacle porn.

Who knows, perhaps you may even learn some things about human nature along the way.

People sweep this under the carpet: Humans are the monsters [with tentacles]

What I find most difficult to swallow was one biggest most contentious problem with the sub-genre, in which the elements of sexual assault are emphasised.

Sexual abuse. Objectification of women. Violence against women. They are heavy stuff rife in the porn industry that no one wants to talk about. And when people do, discussions are often susceptible to cherry-picking where results are skewed, rendering them unreliable and inconclusive. Lines are blurred too on what constitutes violence.

In animation though, no actual person is hurt. More than anything, the monsters on paper represent the possibilities; the alternate realm that resembles more our inner hearts that our physical bodies.

At the risk of sounding absurd, I highlight the intricate relationship between pleasure and the individual psyche by mentioning, albeit cursorily, psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud and his work in Fetishism. He said the fetish(an object) is a sort of a substitute for “the woman’s (mother’s) phallus which the little boy [sic] once believed in and does not wish to forego”. Fetishes, in all its glorious forms, appear to stem from the single desire to fulfill a penis substitute. Freud may sound far-fetched, but my point is one can see that fetish is intricately tied to the mind.

Freud aside, the popularity of this unique fetish alone is proof, if not a sign of something lurking under the general psyche.

“You, too, have such a monster inside of you.” Maeda quips.

Fair. Also, an offending monster is not enough, it must have tentacles.

“It is a man’s dream to have a bigger, thick thing in their crotch.”

I couldn’t have said it better myself.

Disclaimer: I do not endorse or remotely recommend people to develop an interest in porn or fetishes. Still, I have decided to share this because, well, what do you know, a porn documentary left me quite inspired.