6 Comments

Godzilla was a gateway drug.

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I haven't perused the links (yet), but I feel obligated to note that, as strange as Japanese culture can be, it produced Toshiro Mifune. Consider this trailer to "Mifune" as an eyewash to shokushu goukan: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZT_54ZbpXI Then again, I think in some ways Mifune and Kurosawa were more "American" than most Americans.

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On the other hand, they officially consider themselves literal aliens as in from a planet far, far away.

And I see no reason to dispute that.

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A Western male can consider himself worldly and experienced with nothing more than champagne slippers, but nothing debases the psyche like Japanese porn. Once seen, it cannot be unseen. One almost wonders if it is better to stick with Juarez dog and pony shows, than to venture into the Japanese libido. I think it is the ritualistic nature of it that disturbs the mind the most.

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Two related points: 1. They come by tentacle porn honestly, in that it's got a storied history, and one of Japan's most famous and valuable artworks, "The Dream of the Fisherman's Wife", is a 200-year old woodcut of a giant octopus having its way with a woman, made by Hokusai, the artist known for "The Great Wave", and 2. if you think bizarre fetish porn reached its pinnacle in Japan, I challenge you to watch the movie "Re-Animator", where you wil be treated to a headless body holding its head by the hair between the legs of a bound, screaming woman so that the disembodied, dripping head can perform cunnilingus on the squirming victim. It's as bizarre, twisted and yes, funny, as anything the Japanese have come up with.

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I've spent a lot of time there and I love to characterize the strangest of places for a Westerner, Japan, as "a cartoon that's real".

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