Manga: "Unfamiliar Guest"

“Unfamiliar Guest” by Yoji Muku

Yoji Muku is famous as a painter of kinbaku (tight binding) illustrations.

In Japanese art history, particularly in the Ukiyo-e of the Edo period, there was a genre of shunga (erotic art). As a branch of shunga, works by Ukiyo-e artists such as Tsukioka Yoshitoshi and Utagawa Kuniyoshi, known as seme-e (torture pictures) and kyomon-zu (torture illustrations), are well-known. Many of these are sadistic and malicious, depicting alluring, traditionally-dressed women stripped naked and bound with ropes, creating sadistic imagery.

From one perspective, these shunga are a form of sexual assault against women and are immoral. However, from another perspective, they are open, uninhibited, and sensual. There are those who evaluate these expressions as art. For example, there is a private museum called the Ukiyo-e Shunga Museum in Gifu, and the British Museum in London also has a large collection. Serious art magazines such as Bijutsu Techo and Geijutsu Shincho often feature shunga as a theme.

Muku's works can be positioned as contemporary seme-e and kinbaku illustrations. The beginning of this book features numerous pencil drawings of seme-e, and their dense and sadistic works are a sight to behold (all depicting young women in sailor suits being bound, gagged, and violated by middle-aged men in the style of "ero-oyaji" (perverted old men), with the women frowning).

The manga work of the title is a story of explicit sexual crimes, but it is by no means vulgar; it can also be interpreted as the outpouring of dark passions lurking deep within the human heart.