Ero guro

is an artistic genre that puts its focus on eroticism, sexual corruption, and decadence. As a term, it is used to denote something that is both erotic and grotesque. The term itself is an example of wasei-eigo, a Japanese combination of English words or abbreviated words: ero from erotic and guro from grotesque. The "grotesqueness" implied in the term refers to things that are malformed, unnatural, or horrific. Items that are pornographic and bloody are not necessarily ero guro, and vice versa. The term is often mistaken by Western audiences to mean "gore" – depictions of horror, blood, and guts. Ero guro art experienced a boom when ero guro nansensu, a subculture characterized as a "prewar, bourgeois cultural phenomenon that devoted itself to explorations of the deviant, the bizarre, and the ridiculous", manifested in the popular culture of Taishō Tokyo during the 1920s. Writer Ian Buruma describes the social atmosphere of the time as "a skittish, sometimes nihilistic hedonism that brings Weimar Berlin to mind." Its roots go back to artists such as Tsukioka Yoshitoshi, who, besides erotic shunga, also produced woodblock prints showing decapitations and acts of violence from Japanese history. Ukiyo-e artists such as Utagawa Kuniyoshi presented similar themes with bondage, rape and erotic crucifixion. Ero guro nansensu's first distinct appearance began in 1920s and 1930s Japanese literature. The Sada Abe Incident of 1936, where a woman strangled her lover to death and castrated his corpse, struck a chord with the ero guro nansensu movement but shortly led to the censorship of related media. Other similar activities and movements were generally suppressed in Japan during World War II, but re-emerged in the postwar period, especially in manga and music. Over time, the ero guro nansensu movement's influence expanded into parts of Japanese theatre, art, manga, and eventually into film and music. Ero guro is also an element of many Japanese horror films and pink films, particularly of the 1960s and 1970s.