There are enough traditional elements there, such as the rope-bondage, extensive tattooing, and what-have-you (not that its surprising coming from a Japanese artist) for me to able to appreciate where he is coming from. The titles, ‘Secret lives of samurai’ certainly are reinforced by the traditional elements anyways, since certainly some of the affairs depicted were going on behind closed doors in that era. I can’t help it though, they’re well done, and also pretty cool if I could just look at them from an unemotional point of view, but right now I am barely typing this right, and will no proof-read if I can stop snickering like some stupid jockey.

I should print some of these off and show them to some of the contemporary conservative types I know, who like to imagine all traditional warrior societies were asexual, and always fully clothed for ritual and war, and see how extreme their reactions are. Not to say I am much better, of course I know better, but have more or less trained myself, whether I meant to or not, to be incapable of imagining samurai being even partially naked unless they are lying disembowled in the ditches of a fiery battlefield.