In the wake of Hallowe’en (pun intended), my wanderings have brought me to some suitably macabre illustration from Takato Yamamoto.

Aside from the deliberately unsettling sepia-like tone that evokes faded photographs from a lost era and beautifully fine detail throughout, I’m drawn to the surreal, misformed and disconnected body parts, which on second look appear to be tied in the Japanese erotic bondage style of kinbaku.

The bizarre scene is further twisted by the distored figure’s bisection with a decaying structure that incorporates or brings to mind the patterns, textures and materials one might find in an Edo home.

His works (of which this is a tame and sophisticated example) belong to the muzan-e genre - an erotic and brutal subset of Japanese ukiyo-e, the widely circulated 17th century prints, typically woodcut, that earned huge popularity amongst all levels of society.

Extreme ‘guro’ (erotic gore) illustration is hugely popular - see the work of Suehiro Maruo I posted a few months ago if you can stomach it.

Via Juxtapoz and escapeintolife