Hasegawa, born in Japan in 1945 and largely unknown outside the gay subculture in which his illustrations originally circulated, created a world entirely his own. He has sometimes been described as the “Japanese Tom of Finland”, and you can see why the comparison was made. There are certainly plenty of exaggerated physiques and an obvious fascination with masculinity. But it only gets you so far.
Tom of Finland’s men tend to inhabit recognisable fantasies of bikers, uniforms, leather and hyper-masculinity. Hasegawa goes somewhere much more peculiar. His men encounter Hindu gods, mythological creatures, animals and beings that appear to have wandered in from folklore or science fiction. Japanese, Indian, Thai, Tibetan, African and Balinese influences are absorbed and reshaped. Reality is not so much suspended as cheerfully abandoned.
That gives some of these pictures an almost psychedelic quality. You can spend time looking at them simply because there is so much going on.
What also comes through, despite all the muscles and sexual energy, is tenderness. Faces can be dreamy, calm or affectionate. Bodies which at first appear impossibly hard and masculine are treated with considerable delicacy. Hasegawa was clearly fascinated by male physicality, but his interest seems to have gone beyond anatomy or sexual fantasy. The body becomes something mythological and occasionally spiritual.
The exhibition also lets us see how that distinctive style developed. Early pencil sketches and drawings made for physique magazines sit alongside cartoons, magazine layouts and more confident later illustrations. It is useful to see those stages rather than simply being presented with the finished paintings. You get a sense of an artist gradually discovering just how far he could push his own imagination.
There is playfulness here too. Some images are outrageous, some funny, some deliberately excessive. Others are genuinely beautiful.
The exhibition contains graphic depictions of nudity, gay sex, bondage and other fetish practices, including bestiality, so nobody should wander in unaware of what they are going to see. Equally, reducing the exhibition to its explicit content would miss what makes Hasegawa interesting.
His work was published in gay magazines in the United States, Britain and Australia, yet much of it remained in archives after his death in 1999. His family declined to manage his estate, and the preservation of his work by Tokyo’s Gallery Naruyama therefore becomes an important part of the story. Many of the pieces gathered here are being shown in Britain for the first time.
That makes Carnal Desires more than an exhibition of erotic art. It is also an act of recovery.
Hasegawa imagined a universe where desire apparently recognised few boundaries: national, cultural and, at times, even species. You may find parts of that universe beautiful, disturbing, funny or baffling. Quite possibly all four.
What you are unlikely to find it is dull.
Carnal Desires runs as part of Edinburgh Art Festival 2026 from 14–30 August, open daily 10am–5pm.
