At the end of the Edo period in Japan, there was a marked change in erotic literature. Where formerly acts of lovemaking were depicted with tenderness, delight, sensuality, and gentlemanly decorum they were now depicted with nightmarish horror.
The taste for brutality and blood that made its way into the culture was represented in literature as an eroticised hell complete with cruelty and pain.
At the end of the Edo period in Japan, sadism appeared on the Kabuki stage. Thus sadistic horror and the traditional rigorous theatrical aesthetic became stage partners.
