Tickling Tentacles

Many people consider tentacle hentai to be one of the most bizarre forms of hentai/ecchi out there. And some people think that's what all hentai is!

But there does seem to be something about tentacle sex that some people do love and that motivates them to see every episode of cult classics like "La Blue Girl" and Injukoshi."

It may surprise you to learn that tentacle porn is not a new thing — it's been around at least since the Edo Period in Japan (1603 to 1867).

Around this time, Katsushika Hokusai, a famous Japanese artist (trust me, you've seen his work), made a woodcut called The Dream of the Fisherman's Wife. " This celebrated piece depicting a woman making out with a small octopus while a bigger one gives her oral sex might seem scary to many Westerners but it is so well loved that in Japan you can buy key chains and other trinkets featuring this image.

There are many factors that led to the production and popularization of tentacle porn in Japan.

Firstly, the Edo period saw an increase in the number of people practising the Shinto religion — Japan's national religion at one point. Shinto is a very friendly religion, involving the worshipping of many gods and spirits connected to nature ", gods and spirits who sometimes had sex with humans in animal or semi-animal form.

A second big factor was the popularity of shunga art, shunga means "pictures of spring" - which is a euphemism for pictures of sex. Hokusai's The Dream of the Fisherman's Wife and his other erotic art were and are still considered beautiful examples of shunga work, though tentacle sex was not destined to be wildly popular until many decades later."

It wasn't until after World War II that tentacle porn resurfaced and soon became extremely popular in Japan. The occupying forces put laws in place banning the representation of genitalia in sex acts. This put a damper on the erotic art being produced at this time — how were people supposed to draw graphic sex acts when they couldn't include any pictures of vaginas or penises?"

If artists couldn't legally draw a penis in their work, what could they possibly use to simulate sex acts? Let's see here, they would need something long and firm and... phallic - hmm, what do we know of that's pretty darn phallic? Hey! How about a tentacle?

That's right, a tentacle — the tentacle could deflower young, horny women and if anyone asked, the artists could safely assert that the tentacle wasn't genitalia, it was just a monster limb that happens to look phallic."

And so tentacle sex took off for the most part because it was the only kind of sex people were allowed to see at the time. Penises were not allowed to be seen in vaginas (or asses or mouths) but the tentacle had free reign. *evil laugh*

Today, even though we now have fairly easy access to "regular"� hentai and porn, many people still enjoy and even prefer images of tentacle sex.

For some it's the power play — the dominant tentacle beast taking the young woman or man and having their way with them.

For others it's the bondage — when you have sex with a tentacled beast, they have enough limbs to hold your arms and legs in any position they want and still penetrate you in every orifice.

For others, it's the multiple penetrations they enjoy. Because of the nature of tentacles, their "victim's" body can be further away. The penetrated characters — what I like to call "fuckees" - can be depicted in ways that would be impossible if the artist had to draw bodies to go with every penetrating tool; thus, there can be more penetrating tentacles than there ever could have been penises.

And for many it's a little of all three of these reasons.

Men and women can look at tentacle sex and see it as symbolic of satisfying and being satisfied by a lover in every possible way and all at once.

In fact, a lot of women do enjoy tentacle hentai because it is a way to indulge in rape fantasies, bondage fantasies, power play fantasies and/or multiple penetration fantasies while staying completely safe — since none of it is or ever can be real.