The Muzan-e, also known as the 'Bloody Prints' or the 'Twenty Famous Eight Murders with Verse', is a collection a of Japanese ukiyo-e

Ukiyo-e

' is a genre of Japanese woodblock prints and paintings produced between the 17th and the 20th centuries, featuring motifs of landscapes, tales from history, the theatre, and pleasure quarters...

 by artist Yoshitoshi

Yoshitoshi

Tsukioka Yoshitoshi was a Japanese artist.He is widely recognized as the last great master of Ukiyo-e, a type of Japanese woodblock printing. He is additionally regarded as one of the form's greatest innovators. His career spanned two eras – the last years of feudal Japan, and the first years of...

 from the 1860s, which depicted several gruesome acts of murder or torture based on historical events or scenes in Kabuki

Kabuki

is classical Japanese dance-drama. Kabuki theatre is known for the stylization of its drama and for the elaborate make-up worn by some of its performers.The individual kanji characters, from left to right, mean sing , dance , and skill...

 plays. Although most of the works are solely violent by nature, it is perhaps the first known example of ero guro or the erotic grotesque in Japanese culture, an art sub-genre which depicts either erotic or extreme images of violence and mutilation. The Muzan-e has influenced many modern day art formats and ero guro can be found in manga

Manga

Manga is the Japanese word for "comics" and consists of comics and print cartoons . In the West, the term "manga" has been appropriated to refer specifically to comics created in Japan, or by Japanese authors, in the Japanese language and conforming to the style developed in Japan in the late 19th...

 with the works of Suehiro Maruo

Suehiro Maruo

, is a Japanese manga artist, illustrator, and painter.-Biography:Maruo graduated from junior high school in March 1972 but dropped out of senior high school. At the age of 15 he moved to Tokyo and began working for a bookbinder...

, Shintaro Kago

Shintaro Kago

, is a Japanese guro manga artist. He debuted in 1988 on the magazine COMIC BOX.-Style:Shintaro Kago's style has been called "fashionable paranoia". He has been published in several adult manga magazines, gaining him considerable popularity...

 or Toshio Maeda

Toshio Maeda

is a controversial erotic manga artist who was most prolific in the 1980s and 90s. Several of Maeda's works have been used as a basis for Original Video Animations including the well known La Blue Girl, Adventure Kid, Demon Beast Invasion, Demon Warrior Koji and his most famous work, Urotsukidōji...

; in many live action films such as the pink film movement and most of the works of director Takashi Miike

Takashi Miike

is a highly prolific and controversial Japanese filmmaker. He has directed over seventy theatrical, video, and television productions since his debut in 1991. In the years 2001 and 2002 alone, Miike is credited with directing fifteen productions...

 and even non-Japanese artists such as Trevor Brown

Trevor Brown

Trevor Brown is an English artist from London presently living in Japan whose work explores paraphilias, such as pedophilia, BDSM, and other fetish themes. Innocence, violence and Japanese popular culture all collide in Brown's art....

.

Muzan translates from Japanese as cruelty or atrocity, and the works were said to spread a general panic amongst the populace at the time of publishing, with the extreme violence depicted in the paintings taken as a sign of social and moral decline.