So! Disney is finally getting around to adapting the story of that weirdly neglected Grimm Girl Rapunzel! Awesome! I’ve always liked her, and I could see something atmospheric and woozily romantic coming out of a Rapunzel adaptation. The tower! The confinement! And of course, the hair!
Dear Worrywart. I try, as a self-styled “ambassador” for things Japanese, to be selective about what types of “cultural sharing” might qualify as “constructive,” “mutually beneficial,” and/or “enriching.” I turn your attention carefully toward aspects of Japanese culture that will further these goals — toward tentacle porn, toward campy Mishima porn, toward Robogeisha porn.
As surely you must know, every choice to share involves another choice, one of equal, or indeed even greater, importance: the choice *not* to share.
As promised, this week’s column is on one of Japan’s most spectacularized exports, the pornographic genre Wikipedia rather demurely refers to as “tentacle erotica.” But where to start? As any ancient mariner of the cyberseas can tell you, the internets are woven in no small part out of endless, clammy, somewhat salty-smelling threads devoted to the subject, slithering over publication histories, generic boundary confusions, censorship codes and the like with unsettling single-mindedness.
