Scarlet Dream (Rêve écarlate)

An artist with a veritable cult following, Toshio Saeki is the inventor of a unique style, in a field he completely transformed: eroguro - which can be translated as erotic-grotesque scenes. This genre, whose paternity is attributed to the writer Edogawa Ranpo, finds its source in the origins of classical Japanese drawing, feeding monsters and nightmarish scenes into numerous prints throughout time. Saeki, by declining traditional motifs and mixing them with his own obsessions, echoed the anxieties of his generation, the youth of the 1970s, who believed they could free themselves from the conventions of a paternalistic society only to experience disillusionment.

Human society, its violence and its defects are the support of scenes whose cruelty provokes fear or laughter, pushing the mechanics of fantasy to its limits. Sadomasochism here covers no reality, drawing from dreamlikeness a form of macabre poetry. Stimulated by the censorship that prevails in Japan - it is forbidden to show the genitals - Saeki makes the forbidden an artistic constraint and deports the oldest subject in the world towards the absurd and dreamlike. His precise style, which reminds Europeans of the famous clear line of Herg and Joost Swarte, remains strange for the Japanese reader as well as for the Western reader, each finding in this trait of perfect simplicity a form of unprecedented exoticism. This perception can only be explained by the absolute originality of an extravagant imagery, straight from the pen of an artist who has devoted his life to tracing as closely as possible what happens in his head when he closes his eyes. 

Scarlet Dream is based essentially on the original drawings preserved by the author, and inaugurates a multi-volume anthology that will chronologically present a hypnotic work.

Author/Artist: Toshio Saeki
Publisher: Cornelius Publishing 
Page Count: 208pp
Size: 6.75 x 9.5
Notes: hardcover, color, dust jacket, French edition
Date of Publication: February 11, 2016
ISBN: 978-2360811069