Amazing woodblock by Utagawa Kuniyoshi. As the story goes, Hatsuhana was a very virtuous woman. Here she is doing penance under the Tonozawa waterfall for the cure of her son's knee - but the hardship of the penance proved too much for her and she died. However, her son was miraculously cured. He sought revenge, and kills his arch-enemy near the waterfall.
You've got your thick-rimmed glasses, your manga books, your expensive jeans and a couple of t-shirts made of really really nice cotton, but do you have a farting scroll?
The database for Japanese and Chinese classics at Waseda University Library has digitised a rare scroll showing a he-gassen (屁合戦), or 'farting competition' (see it here in full).
Apparently, similar drawings were used to ridicule westerners towards the end of the Edo period, with images depicting the westerners blown away by Japanese farts.
Personally, I happen to know first hand that English ones are bad enough, so I'm not sure the Japanese guffs would have worked. My friend Max's divine wind would have made short work of them.
I also once read a book about a dude who travelled the world learning weird local martial arts (pressure points, wrestling, iron jacket, all that stuff), and the weirdest of all was a guy who had deliberately developed halitosis so bad he could knock you out by burping in your face.
These amazing posters come from a selection by Monster Brains - well worth looking at the whole series.
"Godzilla" (Toho, 1957) Polish
"Monster from a Prehistoric Planet" (Nikkatsu, 1986) Czech
"King Kong Escapes" (Toho, 1967) Polish King Kong Escapes (Toho, 1967) Polish
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