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Dream Spectres: Extreme Ukiyo-E: Sex, Blood, and the Supernatural

By Shinbaku Books

This book is completely devoted to some of the darkest artistic images found in Japanese culture and mythology. You will be hard-pressed to find another book that shows an Octopus giving oral sex to a woman or a guy having mad sex with a wild boar, but here it is, beautifully rendered. With unflinching images of weird sex, bloody carnage, and grotesque, demonic ghosts, Dream Spectres is a powerful collection of the extremes of ukiyo-e featuring the work of such artists as Yoshitoshi, Ekin, Kunichika, Yoshiiku, Kunisada, Hokusai, Kuniyoshi, Yoshitsuya, Hiroshige, and Chikanobu. Dream Spectres features over 250 amazing full-colour images, including the complete Eimei Nijuhasshuku (28 Blood Atrocities) of Yoshitoshi and Yoshiiku, and ranging in content from bondage and bestiality to decapitations, demons, dragons, and designs for classic irezumi (body tattoos).

Ukiyo-e images from the floating world were the most popular art-form of 19th century Japan. Like modern-day manga, these prints could be mass-produced and were admired by people from all sectors of society; as in manga, the art of ukiyo-e included significant sub-genres dealing in violence, erotica and horror. This is Japanese art not only at its extremes of imagination, but often at its most highly accomplished and innovative. With text by Jack Hunter, author of the acclaimed and influential Eros In Hell, no comparable collection has previously been published in the English language.

Here are the original images of female ghosts which inspired huge movie hits like The Ring and The Grudge, the gruesome samurai pictures, demons, panoramas of Hell, mythical beasts and dragons, and blood-soaked scenes from kabuki theatre, the most explicit and exaggerated pornographic images of shunga, and the legendary atrocity prints of Yoshitoshi. Many of these amazing designs have been taken up by Japan's Yakuza and now serve as inspiration for tattoo designers worldwide. Dream Spectres is a compendium of some of the most innovative and dazzling works in the history of art.

Softcover. 128 pages. Measures 8 1/2" X 8 1/2"

$29.99 USD

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