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A picture by eccentric Japanese artist Makoto Aida has provoked violent reactions in Greek society after its appearance in a textbook for the fifth grade.

It depicts a giant blender whirling naked female bodies. The picture is published in the physics textbooks and together with other illustrations it aims to explain mixtures to pupils.

The Hellenic Ministry of Education has announced that the picture will be removed and another image will appear in its place. The authors of the textbook state in turn that they had taken the picture from an official website without paying attention to the contents of the blender. They define their actions as "an inadvertent mistake", explaining that due to the small size of the illustration, it is not clear that the blender whirls people. It is significant that the particular textbook has been used at the Greek primary schools for 10 years now and neither teachers nor students have ever noticed what the illustration actually depicts.

The Greek media comment that the use of the particular picture questions the way in which the compilers of textbooks choose the illustrations and photos to be published in them. In this particular case, the picture by Makoto Aida has been naively selected but the textbook has been approved by both the Ministry of Education and the Pedagogical Institute, without anyone noticing its contents.

Having become clear that the blender in the picture whirls naked female bodies, the Ministry of Education has ordered the removal of the illustration from the online edition of the textbook whereas the paper edition will be reprinted and handed out to schoolchildren.

Makoto Aida is one of the most famous, but also the most controversial, representatives of contemporary Japanese art. His works are often very provocative and give rise to violent reactions because they go beyond the accepted norms. The majority of them depict young women performing sadomasochistic fantasies.

Indicative of this is a work entitled "Dog (Snow)" that depicts a smiling young girl with amputated arms and legs who is tied on a leash. The picture in question and "Blender" are part of Aida’s collection called "Monument for Nothing", which provoked major protests while displayed in the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo in January 2013. The participants in them were led by a group called "People against pornography and sexual violence" and demanded the removal of the works by Makoto Aida, arguing that they preach misogyny.