The notorious drawings by Kuniyoshi Kaneko (1936-2015), whose ancestors were brothel keepers in the Yoshiwara district, indeed have a similar grotesque vibe as the Night Procession of the Hundred Demons of his namesake. Yet his art also has a rich Western background that is amusing to recognize. The world of Kaneko's paintings is a dream-like place balancing between a nightmare and a fairytale, heavily inspired by the Freudian interpretation of Lewis Carroll's Alice and the aesthetics of Nabokov's Lolita. The peak of his artistic activity fell on the 1970s when huge debates on the age of consent happened among the French intellectuals.
Fig. 1. Kuniyoshi Kaneko with a cat (twitter.com)
Fig. 2. staticflickr.com
Fig. 3. staticflickr.com
Fig. 4. Pluviere (staticflickr.com)
