Kinoe no Komatsu

Kinoe no Komatsu (喜能会之故真通) ('Young Pines' or 'Pine Seedlings on the First Rat Day'[1]), published in three volumes in 1814, is a woodblock-printed book of shunga erotica by Hokusai made within the ukiyo-e genre.

One scene in Volume III, the most famous of Hokusai's erotic paintings, called The Dream of the Fisherman's Wife, is unique in its focus: it depicts a woman, evidently an ama (a shell diver), enveloped in the limbs of two octopuses.

[3] Scholar Danielle Talerico notes that the image would have recalled to the minds of contemporary viewers the story of Princess Tamatori, highly popular in the Edo period.

He identified four typical features of depicted men that show their "evil appearance":[5] a hairy body, a large nose and broad face (or head, and sometimes thick lips), dark skin, and a closed foreskin (phimosis).

The man's evil appearance foretells his failure to have sex with the woman, and that is the outcome, due to her rejection and defiance; for this reason the scene may be considered to fall within the realm humor.