Journal articles on the topic 'Paint Pouring'

This community service activity was carried out by a team of lecturers from the Bali Design and Business Institute (IDB Bali) together with the Visual Communication Design Department Student Association and also the “Perkamen” Student Activity Unit held at the end of 2020 to be precise starting on November 7, 2020 until handover on 13. December 2020, at the Astagina Field, Padangsambian Klod Village, West Denpasar. This activity received a very good welcome and high enthusiasm from both lecturers, students and also the community in the area, and received sponsorship from Dulux. The purpose of the collaborative mural activity between IDB Bali and Padangsambian Klod Village and sponsored by PT ICI Paints Indonesia or better known as Dulux ™ premium paint manufacturer apart from being a forum for pouring out student talents in the field of images in the realm of developing modern designs in society, as well as a medium in introducing Balinese traditional sports culture to the general public. Some of the supporting factors for these activities include: the enthusiasm of lecturers and students in mural activities, sponsorship support from Dulux in supporting the paint used for murals, and the support of the Padangsambian Klod Village. Some of the obstacles faced during this mural activity include: (1) Erratic weather, especially rain, (2) The Covid 19 outbreak caused the team involved in the work to not work optimally to avoid the crowd.

In this paper, the influence factors of liquid die forging die life are talked about, mainly for example with the key universal parts Squeeze chamber of indirect liquid die forging. In the Premise to guarantee product quality, the mould preheating temperature, pouring temperature, casting alloy type, suitable and reliable cooling methods and effective paint could influence bigger on the peak and variation range of the mold temperature. These factors should be taken into consideration and remembered its effects for mould design in order to improve die life, further a new direction and thinking of liquid forging die life design criterion will be given.

Background: The Registration, Evaluation, Authorization and Restriction of Chemicals (REACH) regulation requires the establishment of Conditions of Use (CoU) for all exposure scenarios to ensure good communication of safe working practices. Setting CoU requires the risk assessment of all relevant Contributing Scenarios (CSs) in the exposure scenario. A new CS has to be created whenever an Operational Condition (OC) is changed, resulting in an excessive number of exposure assessments. An efficient solution is to quantify OC concentrations and to identify reasonable worst-case scenarios with probabilistic exposure modeling. Methods: Here, we appoint CoU for powder pouring during the industrial manufacturing of a paint batch by quantifying OC exposure levels and exposure determinants. The quantification was performed by using stationary measurements and a probabilistic Near-Field/Far-Field (NF/FF) exposure model. Work shift and OC concentration levels were quantified for pouring TiO2 from big bags and small bags, pouring Micro Mica from small bags, and cleaning. The impact of exposure determinants on NF concentration level was quantified by (1) assessing exposure determinants correlation with the NF exposure level and (2) by performing simulations with different OCs. Results: Emission rate, air mixing between NF and FF and local ventilation were the most relevant exposure determinants affecting NF concentrations. Potentially risky OCs were identified by performing Reasonable Worst Case (RWC) simulations and by comparing the exposure 95th percentile distribution with 10% of the occupational exposure limit value (OELV). The CS was shown safe except in RWC scenario (ventilation rate from 0.4 to 1.6 1/h, 100 m3 room, no local ventilation, and NF ventilation of 1.6 m3/min). Conclusions: The CoU assessment was considered to comply with European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) legislation and EN 689 exposure assessment strategy for testing compliance with OEL values. One RWC scenario would require measurements since the exposure level was 12.5% of the OELV.

Pulmonary exposure to micro- and nanoscaled particles has been widely linked to adverse health effects and high concentrations of respirable particles are expected to occur within and around many industrial settings. In this study, a field-measurement campaign was performed at an industrial manufacturer, during the production of paints. Spatial and personal measurements were conducted and results were used to estimate the mass flows in the facility and the airborne particle release to the outdoor environment. Airborne particle number concentration (1 × 103–1.0 × 104 cm−3), respirable mass (0.06–0.6 mg m−3), and PM10 (0.3–6.5 mg m−3) were measured during pouring activities. In overall; emissions from pouring activities were found to be dominated by coarser particles >300 nm. Even though the raw materials were not identified as nanomaterials by the manufacturers, handling of TiO2 and clays resulted in release of nanometric particles to both workplace air and outdoor environment, which was confirmed by TEM analysis of indoor and stack emission samples. During the measurement period, none of the existing exposure limits in force were exceeded. Particle release to the outdoor environment varied from 6 to 20 g ton−1 at concentrations between 0.6 and 9.7 mg m−3 of total suspended dust depending on the powder. The estimated release of TiO2 to outdoors was 0.9 kg per year. Particle release to the environment is not expected to cause any major impact due to atmospheric dilution

Pulmonary exposure to micro- and nanoscaled particles has been widely linked to adverse health effects and high concentrations of respirable particles are expected to occur within and around many industrial settings. In this study, a field-measurement campaign was performed at an industrial manufacturer, during the production of paints. Spatial and personal measurements were conducted and results were used to estimate the mass flows in the facility and the airborne particle release to the outdoor environment. Airborne particle number concentration (1 × 103–1.0 × 104 cm−3), respirable mass (0.06–0.6 mg m−3), and PM10 (0.3–6.5 mg m−3) were measured during pouring activities. In overall; emissions from pouring activities were found to be dominated by coarser particles >300 nm. Even though the raw materials were not identified as nanomaterials by the manufacturers, handling of TiO2 and clays resulted in release of nanometric particles to both workplace air and outdoor environment, which was confirmed by TEM analysis of indoor and stack emission samples. During the measurement period, none of the existing exposure limits in force were exceeded. Particle release to the outdoor environment varied from 6 to 20 g ton−1 at concentrations between 0.6 and 9.7 mg m−3 of total suspended dust depending on the powder. The estimated release of TiO2 to outdoors was 0.9 kg per year. Particle release to the environment is not expected to cause any major impact due to atmospheric dilution

PT. ABC is engaged in metal casting such as drinking water pipe connections and quality drainage components. Existing manufacturing processes involve direct interaction of workers with equipment in production situations that have sufficiently high safety risks. The research aims to identify the type or source of hazard, determine the value of high risk, and appropriate risk control measures. Using the Failure Mode and Effect Analysis (FMEA) method to identify failures from facilities, systems or equipment that have an impact on work accidents. The results of the study found 48 hazards with identifying the risk of work accidents with categories are very low (7), low (48), medium (17), high (10) and there is no risk of work accidents with very high categories. Work accidents that have a high risk in the metal casting process at PT. ABC is at the die-making, smelting and pouring, roughing, and finishing work stations. Potential risks to work safety include dust from mixing, being crushed by solid iron, exposed to sparks, exposed to molten liquids, electrocuted, and exposed to odors from paint. Risk control measures are proposed in the metal casting process at PT. ABC is carried out with engineering control and the use of PPE according to the source of danger.

Lontara is a traditional script of the Bugis-Makassar community, derived from the word lontar, a type of plant in South Sulawesi, which is still used and maintained. Sappo (Bugis): fence used to limit (surround, insulate) land and houses. The Bugis-Makassar community as a whole always has a Sappo / fence to protect themselves, their families, and their nation. Sulapa eppa (four sides) is a mystical form of classical Bugis-Makassar belief that symbolizes the universe’s composition, wind-fire-water-earth. Walasuji is a kind of bamboo fence in a rhombic ritual. Walasuji comes from the word wala, which means separator/fence/guard, and suji means daughter (metaphor of something of value, which must be under protection). The research aims to create three-dimensional paintings with the idea of creation, Sappo: Sulapa eppa walasuji. The symbolic expression concept borrows the Lontara tradition’s idioms, making works of metaphorical Sappo (montage) titles; Posi’ Symbolic expressions are used as research methods to create works. Researchers borrow traditional idioms as a place of expression. Symbolic abstraction works are conceptually a form of modern art by utilizing the Lontara tradition's idiom as a basic element of preparing the work. The contextual use of idioms is no longer intact because there is a degradation in the artists’ processing when interpreting symbolic forms. The expression of tradition is no longer a thematic pouring of ideas, still, as a textual symbol offered by artists to provide freedom of interpretation, Sappo: Sulapa eppa walasuji as the idea of creating paintings. The results of the study explore the elements of form and express the message conveyed through the work of three-dimensional images with the concept of creation, Sappo: Sulapa eppa walasuji, a work of metaphorical painting Sappo (montage) title: Posi, which is essentially God, as the protector of everything from the whole Sappo metaphor. Sappo, an idiom of tradition, is portrayed as a form of the symbolism of reflections on researchers’ lives visualized in the entire artwork. The visual elements used, stone, wood, bamboo, and paint, are at the same time a metaphor for the universe, which is God’s creation.

Dhara is a part of Keraliya Panchkarma which means pouring liquid medium in a thin, continuous, stream over the body or affected area, when it is done all over the body it is known as Sarvanga Dhara. It comes under Parisheka Swedana. Dhara means pouring liquid medium in a thin, continuous, stream over the body or affected area. In this, fermented liquids are poured over the body in streams for a fixed duration of time as is done in any type of Dhara. It has been truly stated that Dhara is good for almost all diseases. The word Janu refers to knee and Dhara means to pour, mainly medicated oil. It is a very unique procedure mentioned as ‘Snehayukta Swedana’ due to the fact that it comprises both Snehana (therapeutic oleation) and Swedana (sudation therapy). The Taila (oil) used for this procedure does the Snehana and due to the Agni Samyoga in this procedure it has the resulting Swedana effect. Janu Dhara is advised in painful conditions caused mainly by Vata Dosha, usually for degenerative diseases, stiffness associated with bone, joint and or musculoskeletal pains, it relieves swelling and inflammation in the knee joint. At the end of the procedure perspiration is noticed and an increased range of motion can be observed. Previous clinical studies also suggest the efficacy of Janu Dhara in knee joint pain. Janu Dhara helps to tone muscles, provides lubrication and improves the working mobility of the joint.

Old resources are a gift from God Almighty so that they can be used as well as possible for the benefit of many people. It is hoped that natural resources can be used for all levels of society, both those who are healthy and those experiencing health problems/deterioration. Likewise, using raw data sources can increase people's income so the economy rises. It is essential to utilize natural resources with various innovations that are needed for the benefit of the surrounding community, ranging from health, recreation, or culinary. Kebakan Hamlet, Metuk Village, has abundant natural water resources that have yet to be used optimally to improve the residents' economy and health. Residents only use natural resources for bathing, washing, and irrigation. The existing natural resources have made swimming pools for therapy for low back pain sufferers so that visitors who come for treatment can have a more positive impact on the surrounding community by opening food stalls, renting out floats or parking so that the existence of the pool can be beneficial from a health perspective. And economic value for local residents

Sand is classified among the low value development minerals, even though it is massively used in the world. The exploitation of that construction mineral at Nkol’Ossananga, around Yaounde, is done by craftsmen in unsafe conditions, such as: the exposure to a wide range of diseases and the destruction of the environment. We carried out a study on occupational health and safety and environmental impacts on the Nkol’ossananga site. Our method consisted firstly of the bibliographic review, sandpit quarry investigations afterwards, and lastly the data analysis. Tabulation of results showed that the population in the site is essentially threatened by diseases such as dysentery (15%), fibromyalgia (25%), typhoid fever (55%), otalgia (10%), ocular pains (15%), and malaria (45%). Craftmen work without any personal protective equipment (PPE) and are often victims of drowning and bacterial infections. The high demand of sand in Yaoundé involves the development of the activity in other sites and, in consequence, there is a deforestation and disappearance of many animals and vegetables species. The soil and water pollution is also noticeable due to pouring of engines waste oil in the site.

Purpose: Experimental investigations assessment and comparison of different classical models and machine learning models employed with Gaussian process regression (GPR) and artificial neural network (ANN) in the estimation of the depth of penetration (Hp) of plunging hollow jets. Design/methodology/approach: In this analysis, a set of data of 72 observations is derived from laboratory tests of plunging hollow jets which impinges into the water pool of tank. The jets parameters like jet length, discharge per unit water depth and volumetric oxygen transfer coefficient (Kla20) are varied corresponding to the depth of penetration (Hp) are estimated. The digital image processing techniques is used to estimate the depth of penetration. The Multiple nonlinear regression is used to establish an empirical relation representing the depth of penetration in terms of jet parameters of the plunging hollow jets which is further compared with the classical equations used in the previous research. The efficiency of MNLR and classical models is compared with the machine learning models (ANN and GPR). Models generated from the training data set (48 observations) are validated on the testing data set (24 observations) for the efficiency comparison. Sensitivity assessment is carried out to evaluate the impact of jet variables on the depth of penetration of the plunging hollow jet. Findings: The experimental performance of machine learning models is far better than classical models however, MNLR for predicting the depth of penetration of the hollow jets. Jet length is the most influential jet variable which affects the Hp. Research limitations/implications: The outcomes of the models efficiency are based on actual laboratory conditions and the evaluation capability of the regression models may vary beyond the availability of the existing data range. Practical implications: The depth of penetration of plunging hollow jets can be used in the industries as well as in environmental situations like pouring and filling containers with liquids (e.g. molten glass, molten plastics, molten metals, paints etc.), chemical and floatation process, wastewater treatment processes and gas absorption in gas liquid reactors. Originality/value: The comprehensive analyses of the depth of penetration through the plunging hollow jet using machine learning and classical models is carried out in this study. In past research, researchers were used the predictive modelling techniques to simulate the depth of penetration for the plunging solid jets only whereas this research simulate the depth of penetration for the plunging hollow jets with different jet variables.

Until now, remains quit high a percentage of unsatisfactory results of amputations. At the same time, a special place is occupiedby the healing of the bone remnant — the main supporting element of the stump. Objective. To study the influence of post-amputationpain syndrome and intraosseous main vessels on the nature of reparative processes in the bone stump. Methods. Three series of 15 experimentswere conducted on 45 rabbits with amputation of the femur in the middle third and muscle plastic surgery. In the 1st and2nd series, d uring a mputation, a p erineural c atheter w as b rought to the stumps of the sciatic nerve. With its help, animals were subjectedto the following daily for 20 days: 1st series — mechanical irritation of the nerve, 20 minutes; 2nd — injection of 0.3 ml of 1 %lidocaine twice a day into the surrounding area of the nerve. Animals of the 3rd series were the control. In 1, 3, 6 months. a histologicalexamination was performed with the pouring of carcass (gelatin mixture) into the vessels. The results. In the 1st series, there was a sharpviolation of the reparative process: a change in the shape and loosening of the cortical diaphyseal plate, fractures and deformationof the stump, a significant expansion of the feeding artery and its branches with perforation of the endosteal regenerate, the absenceof formation of the bone closing plate, a violation of the microcirculation. In the animals of the 2nd series, the stumps mostly kept the shapeand structure characteristic of the diaphysis with normalization of macro- and microcirculation. In the 3rd series, the results of stumpformation were better than in the 1st, but worse than in the 2nd. Conclusions. If the pain syndrome subsides after amputation, a bonestump is formed with an organotypic shape and structure characteristic of the diaphysis, normalization of the state of bone marrowtissues and blood circulation. The rapid and complete formation of the bone closing plate contributes to the reduction of the branchesof the feeding artery and prevents the functional depressurization of the bone marrow cavity. In the presence of post-amputation painsyndrome, there are significant violations of the reparative process with the formation of an inferior bone closing plate, its penetrationby the branches of the feeding artery without the organotypic formation of the stump.

Background: Seizure and electrocardiographic (ECG) abnormalities are of the most common complications of tramadol toxicity.Objective: This study aimed to show the prevalence and predictive value of various factors for ECG findings in patients with tramadol-induced seizures.Method: In a descriptive cross-sectional study, 146 patients with tramadol-induced seizures referred to Poursina Hospital, Guilan, Iran, between June and November 2018 were enrolled. The clinical manifestations, such as blood pressure, respiratory rate, and pulse rate (PR), and ECG parameters, including PR interval, QRS duration, R wave in aVR lead, and corrected QT interval, were assessed. Appropriate statistical tests were used to analyze the data.Results: We showed that tramadol dose was significantly higher in patients with abnormal ECG findings compared with those with normal ECG pattern both upon admission (p = 0.001) and after 6 hours of admission (p = 0.001). The results found the predictive value of tramadol dose for abnormal ECG patterns upon admission (odds ratio (OR) 1.014, 95 percent CI 1.008 to 1.020) and 6 hours later (OR 1.008, 95 percent CI 1.003 to 1.013) in these patients. In addition, it was revealed that PR was a strong predictor of abnormal ECG findings in patients with tramadol-induced seizures upon admission (OR 1.085, 95 percent CI 1.038 to 1.134). Nevertheless, age only predicted abnormal findings 6 hours later (OR 1.104, 95 percent CI 1.019 to 1.195).Conclusion: Tramadol dose, age, PR, and seizures frequency could be used as indicators of abnormal ECG findings in patients with tramadol-induced seizures.Key points: The results of our study showed a high prevalence of sinus tachycardia, terminal S and R waves in aVR lead terminal S wave, and the combination of these abnormalities in this subset of patients.

In July 2009 the National Museum in Belgrade received – as a donation – two elements of a funerary assemblage: a fragmented mask and a conjoined collar-breast covering. Although heavily damaged, those ancient Egyptian mummy trappings furnish modern analysts with valuable information about their fabrication and ritual employment. The mask is of helmet-type, made of gessoed linen which had been decorated with paint and gilded upon the face. The front of the mask is in relatively fair condition, but the top and rear have suffered considerably, being reduced to small fragments whose original position is difficult to determine. The mask is heavily affected by staining caused by deliberately over-poured resin, i.e. the traces of a ritual unguent pouring. The collar-breast covering is a conjoined type forming a single rectangular or rather slightly trapezoidal plaque. The collar design consists of a system of schematized floral decoration arranged in seven semicircular bands around a single semi-lunate zone. A decorative grid containing funerary motifs extends below the collar field. It consists of four horizontal registers separated by polychrome bands of colored rectangles. The whole forms a complex tapestry of protective imagery: deities, amuletic symbols and magical vignettes. The mask and the breast cover are datable to the late Ptolemaic Period (ca. 100 – 50 B.C.). The most likely place of origin is site of Hawara at the entrance to the Fayum region.

Given the severity of the consequences of operating room fires, it is recommended that every anaesthesiologist master fire safety protocols and periodically participate in operating room fire drills. The aim of the present study was to evaluate skill retention one year after an airway fire training programme. Anaesthesiology residents were evaluated using an airway fire simulation-based scenario one year after an educational programme that included a one-h long problem-based learning session, a simulation-based airway fire drill with debriefing, and a formal group discussion. The same simulation scenario was used for both the initial training and the one-year assessment. Thirty-eight anaesthesiology residents participated as pairs in the initial training programme. Of these, 36 participated in the evaluation a year later. Performance after one year was better than performance during the initial simulation. Time to removal of tracheal tube was 7.0 (4.0–12.8) s (median (interquartile range)) at the one-year assessment compared with 22.0 (18.5–52.5) s at the time of initial training ( P < 0.001). Performance improvement was also demonstrated by a higher incidence of performance of crucial action items (cessation of airway gases, removal of sponges and pouring of saline), as well as shorter duration of time necessary to perform these tasks. After controlling the fire, the time to re-establish ventilation by bag-mask ventilation or intubation was shorter at one year: 18.0 (11.0–29.0 ) s, compared with initial training 54.0 s (36.2–69.8) s ( P = 0.001). We conclude that skills are effectively retained for a year after an airway fire management training session.

Background: Unwanted postoperative hypothermia is an unpleasant event that can cause various complications. Objectives: As this serious complication and its provoking causes have not been investigated sufficiently, this study was designed and conducted to determine the prevalence of hypothermia and its associated factors in the post-anesthesia care unit after elective surgery. Methods: Four hundred patients undergoing elective surgeries were enrolled in the present cross-sectional research after termination of surgery and at the time of arrival at the post-anesthesia care unit of Poursina Public University Hospital. The tympanic membrane temperature was measured and recorded at the time of arrival at the post-anesthesia care unit and every 30 minutes after arrival. The required data were collected in a researcher-made checklist and analyzed after entering the SPSS software version 25. Results: Considering the 5% error, it can be said that the prevalence of hypothermia in patients undergoing elective surgery ranges from 20 to 28% at the time of arrival at the post-anesthesia care unit and 18.5 to 26% 30 minutes after arrival. Conclusions: More than a quarter of patients experienced hypothermia following elective surgery. Therefore, appropriate treatment and control measures are necessary to manage this complication, particularly in patients with predisposing risk factors and comorbidities.

Given that the new advances in technology in the 1980s had a major impact on the carefully constructed myth of authenticity in horror and pornography, ranging from flawless special effects at one extreme to the idea of the handheld voyeur movie at the other, it is rather ironic that the key progenitor to the erotic-grotesque form is a long-established and in some ways basic form: the pen and paper art of manga. This medium can be traced back to pillow books and the illustrated tradition in Japanese culture – a culture where even written language has evolved from drawings rather than alphabetical ciphers. Technological innovation notwithstanding, the 1980s is an extraordinary period for manga and it is perhaps here that we find the most startling hybridisation of porn and horror where, to borrow a phrase from Liz Kotz, “pathology meets pleasure, where what we most fear is what we most desire” (Kotz 188). Many of the most extreme examples of 1980s manga repeatedly confront the reader with tales that intersperse and interlink imagery and narrative sequences of sex, violence and the abject. Suehiro Maruo is in many ways a commercially marginalised but highly renowned manga artist of the erotic-grotesque. His full-length manga novel Mr Arashi’s Amazing Freak Show (1984) is a sweeping tale of carnival freaks redolent with sex and sadism, but in this article I will address his short comic strips from around the same period. The stories collected in Suehiro Maruo’s Ultra-Gash Inferno (2001) present a mortifying vision of sex and horror with stories that draw on the erotically tinged world of classical Japanese theatre and the short fiction of Edogawa Rampo but push them into the domain of extreme pornography. In “Putrid Night” (1981), an abusive man, Todoroki, subjects his teenage wife, Sayoko, to vicious cunnilingus and anal sex. In one sequence, Sayoko gives oral sex while Todoroki runs a samurai sword across her cheek. In her misery, Sayoko finds true love in the teenage boy Michio. Their illicit sexual love is tender and fulfilling and yet the imagery that intersperses it is ominous: when they have sex in a field, their conjoined bodies are juxtaposed with rotting fruit infested with ants and Michio’s erect penis is juxtaposed with a serpent in the grass. Sayoko and Michio plot to murder Todoroki. The result is disastrous, with Todoroki cutting off the arms of his wife and her lover through the elbows, and lancing their eyeballs. In the carnage, Todoroki has sex with Sayoko. The young lovers do not die, and Todoroki keeps them alive in a cell as “pets” (19). In a grotesque triumph of true love, Todoroki, to his horror, spies on his two victims and sees them, their eye sockets and arm stumps pouring blood, tenderly making love. In “Shit Soup” (1982), Maruo produces a comic strip with no story as such and is therefore a highly simplistic pornographic narrative. We witness a menage a trois with a young woman and her two male lovers and the comic presents their various exploits. In their opening bout, the woman squeezes a cow’s eyeball into her vagina and one man sucks it out of her while the other licks her beneath the eyelid. Later, the three excrete onto dinner plates and dine upon their mixed shit. The story ends with the three laughing deliriously as they fall from a cliff, an emblem of their joyful abandon and the intersection of love and death. As epilogue, Maruo describes the taste of excrement and invites us to taste our own. This ending is an ingenious narrative decision, as it turns on the reader and strives to deny us – the viewer/voyeur – any comfortable distance: we are invited, as it were, to eat shit literally and if we refuse, we can eat shit metaphorically. Suehiro Maruo’s work can also be subtle: in what looks like a realistic image at the opening of “A Season in Hell” (1981), a dead teenage girl lies, covered in “gore and faeces” (45), on a grassy path which resembles the hairy opening to female sexual organs. The surrounding field is like a pudenda and the double arch of the nearby bridge resembles breasts. Maruo can thus outwit the censorship tradition in which pubic hair is generally forbidden (it does appear in some of Maruo’s comic strips), although erections, ejaculations and hairless openings and organs would seem to be always graphically permissible. Probably the most excessive vision in Ultra-Gash Inferno is “The Great Masturbator” (1982). In this, Suehiro Maruo presents a family in which the father repeatedly dresses his daughter up as a schoolgirl in order to rape her, even cutting a vagina-sized hole into her abdomen. Eventually, he slices her with numerous openings so that he can penetrate her with his fists as well as his penis. Meanwhile, her brother embarks on an incestuous relationship with his ancient aunt. After her death, he acquires her false teeth and uses them to masturbate. He ejaculates onto her grave, splitting his head open on the tombstone. The excess and debauchery make it a shocking tale, a kind of violent manga reworking of Robert Crumb’s cartoon “The family that lays together, stays together” (91) from Snatch 2 (January 1969). Like Crumb, we could argue that Maruo employs explicit sexual imagery and an ethos of sexual taboo with the same purpose of transgressing and provoking the jargon of particular social norms. The political dimension to Maruo’s work finds its most blatant treatment in “Planet of the Jap” (1985), anthologised in Comics Underground Japan (1996). This manga strip is a devastating historical-political work presented as a history lesson in which Japan won the Second World War, having dropped atomic bombs on Los Angeles and San Francisco. The comic is full of startling iconic imagery such as the Japanese flag being hoisted over the shell-pocked Statue of Liberty and the public execution of General MacArthur. Of course, this being Maruo, there is a pornographic sequence. In a lengthy and graphic episode, an American mother is raped by Japanese soldiers while her son is murdered. As these horrors are committed, the lyrics of a patriotic song about present-day Japan, written by the Ministry of Education, form the textual narrative. Although the story could be seen as a comment on the subjection of Japan at the end of the Second World War – a sustained ironic inversion of history – it seems more likely to be a condemnation of the phase of Japanese history when, tragically, a minority of “atavistic, chauvinistic, racist warmongers” secured for themselves a position of “ideological legitimacy and power” (Lehmann 213). However, Maruo is being deliberately provocative to his contemporary reader: he writes this story in the mid-1980s, the peak of Japan’s post-war prosperity. As Joy Hendry says, Japan’s “tremendous economic success” in this period is not just important for Japan but marks an “important element of world history” (Hendry 18). Maruo ends “Planet of the Jap” with a haunting international message: “Don’t be fooled. Japan is by no means a defeated nation. Japan is still the strongest country in the world” (124). The porn-horror creator Suehiro Maruo follows in the tradition of figures like Octave Mirbeau, Georges Bataille and Robert Crumb who have used explicit pornography and sexual taboo as a forum for political provocation. The sexual horror of Maruo’s erotic-grotesque manga may terrify some readers and titillate others. It may even terrify and titillate at the same time in a disturbing fusion which has social and political implications: all the Maruo works in this essay were produced in the early to mid-1980s, the peak of Japanese economic success. They also coincide with the boom years of the Japanese sex industry, which Akira Suei argues was terminated by the repressive legislation of the New Amusement Business Control and Improvement Act of 1985 (Suei, 10). Suei’s account of the period paints one of frivolity and inventiveness embodied in the phenomenon of “no-panties coffee shops” (10) and the numerous sex clubs which offered extraordinary “role-playing opportunities” (13). The mood is one of triumph for the sexual expression of the customers but also for the extremely well-paid sex workers. Maruo’s stories contemporaneous with this have their own freedom of sexual expression, creating a vision where sexually explicit images comment upon a wide variety of subjects, from the family, scatological taboos, through to national history and Japan’s economic success. At the same time as presenting explicit sex as a feature in his films, Maruo always closely weaves it in with the taboo of death. Martin Heidegger interprets human existence as Sein-zum-Tode (being-towards-death) (Kearney 35): in Maruo’s vision, existence is evidently one of sexual-being-towards-death. Like Suehiro Maruo’s hideously maimed and blind lovers, humanity always returns to the impulse of its sexuality and the desire/will to orgasm: what Maruo calls “the cosmic gash” of physical love, a gash which also reveals, in a Heideggerian sense, the non-being that is the only certainty of existence. And we should remember that even when love is blind, someone will always be watching. References Crumb, Robert. The Complete Crumb, Volume 5: Happy Hippy Comix. Seattle: Fantagraphics, 1990. Hendry, Joy. Understanding Japanese Society. London: Routledge, 1987. Kearney, Richard. Modern Movements in European Philosophy. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1986. Kotz, Liz. “Complicity: Women Artists Investigating Masculinity” in Paula Church Gibson (ed.) More Dirty Looks: Gender, Pornography and Power (Second Edition). London, BFI, 2004, 188-203. Lehmann, Jean-Pierre. The Roots of Modern Japan. London: Macmillan, 1982. Maruo, Suehiro. “Planet of the Jap” in Quigley, Kevin (ed.). Comics Underground Japan. New York: Blast Books, 1992. —-. Mr Arashi’s Amazing Freak Show. New York: Blast, 1992. —-. Ultra-Gash Inferno. London: Creation, 2001 Mizuki, Shigeru. Youkai Gadan. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1992. Rampo, Edogawa. Japanese Tales of Mystery and Imagination. New York: Tuttle, 1956. Suei, Akira “The Lucky Hole as the Black Hole” in Nobuyoshi Araki. Araki: Tokyo Lucky Hole. Köln: Taschen, 1997, 10-15. MLA Style Hand, Richard J. "Dissecting the Gash: Sexual Horror in the 1980s and the Manga of Suehiro Maruo." M/C Journal 7.4 (2004). 10 October 2004 <http://www.media-culture.org.au/0410/05_horror.php>. APA Style Hand, R. (2004 Oct 11). Dissecting the Gash: Sexual Horror in the 1980s and the Manga of Suehiro Maruo, M/C Journal, 7(4). Retrieved Oct 10 2004 from <http://www.media-culture.org.au/05_horror.php>