>>45007837That's not a bad idea, actually.
I'm not sure if I would call it an art movement, more of a genre that stemmed out of ukiyo-e buyer's interest. I'll have to do research on the commercialization because these were sold more like collector's items and their "shocking" nature would often invite interest. Kinda like saying you have a cooler pokemon card because it has people getting ripped apart. This grew out and alongside Shunga, or pornographic ukiyo-e. The popularization of it as mainstream culture within Japan wasn't until perhaps two centuries later in the 1920's. Japan has always had an appreciation for the macabre as a high-art, or elevated position of nihilistic appreciation for things. Given the Buddhist ideology of transient life and our current failing moral era of degenerative dharma permeating the academic writing and perspective of Late Middle Age Japan into the Edo period.
The whole tentacle thing is related more specifically to nautical shunga, many other images and genres relate to this, but the tentacle piece is the only one recognized in the west, regardless of its cultural popularity at the time of its production. The whole diver girl theme is still present within Pinku films of the 70s-80s. There's even classic ukiyo-e of men fucking rays, you know, those flat guys that killed steve Irwin?
You're thinking of the Camellia Girl film adaptation of Suehiro Maruo's work, which wasn't published until 1984, well into the erotic boom of Japan's commercial decadence.
The original story was rather vile and nihilistic, but that was the common style of Showa-era japan, as mentioned above. Told in traveling street performances (which also has roots in a similar Buddhist missionary practice).
