Saeki, 55, is the godfather of Japanese erotica -- the one illustrator in the frenetic, oversexed, comics-crazy nation whose imagination outpaces all others. For decades, the art cognoscenti of Japan and elsewhere have hailed him as a psychosexual dream weaver who traverses all taboos with oozing, bloody scenes of insatiable carnality. Now he's being rediscovered by young adults in America and Europe for whom Japanese illustration, anime (animated cartoons) and manga (comic books) are perpetual sources of fascination.

Sexual incontinence is Saeki's overriding theme. In collections of his drawings such as "Chimushi I & II" and "Toshio Saeki: The Early Works" (both published in Japan by Treville Co.), he has navigated the outer limits of sexual obsession with a monomaniacal intensity. In France, his monographs have sold more than 20,000 copies. And Last Gasp, Saeki's distributor in the United States, has difficulty keeping his books in stock. "Chimushi," a two-volume set issued in the mid-1990s, completely sold out its first run here and is now a collector's item.

In Saeki's bestiary, immense turtles, octopuses and slugs ravish ecstatic Japanese maidens. Japanese goblins, known as tengu, poke their crimson, Pinocchio-like proboscises into the vaginas of willing teenage girls. Pockmarked dwarfs with misshapen, encephalitic heads gangbang young virgins. And hideous, hirsute trolls gnaw on umbilical cords that are still attached to mother and child.

Just when you believe Saeki has shown you his most outré image, you turn the page and find additional macabre hallucinations of murder and lust. In one, a Japanese schoolgirl flies down a road on her bike, her haunches lifted in the air and her skirt flapping in the wind. She looks behind her in horror to see that her bicycle seat has morphed into a man's groaning face. In another, a young woman sips green tea as she rubs the freshly decapitated head of a soldier against her genitals, his body still upright beside her. There are drawings of necrophiliacs humping corpses and of crazed onanists sawing limbs off others with which to masturbate.

Unusual sexual fantasies are certainly common in the world of Japanese manga and anime. And popular adult anime (sometimes referred to as hentai) such as "La Blue Girl," "Imma Youjo: Erotic Temptress" and "Twin Angels" can be found on the Web as well as in video stores in major American cities.

In addition, a number of photographers and artists in Japan are renowned for their explorations of fringe sexuality. There's Hajime Sorayama, whose cyberwomen appear regularly in Penthouse; Masaaki Toyoura, whose bondage photos can be viewed in various Larry Flynt publications; Yoshifumi Hayashi, the master of erotic pencil art, whose drawings delve into the nether regions of coprophilia; and Nobuyoshi Araki, the photographer whose book about the Tokyo sex trade, "Tokyo Lucky Hole," is truly a pervert's delight.

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