this is a pretty common point of contention with hayami, and it's why he commonly gets lumped in with "ero-guro" artists. he rarely speaks publicly about his own work but what he has said about it is that he envisions the women he draws as true heroines in his stories, not just some vapid walking corpses like he criticizes even the mainstream anime and manga world for doing. he is very abrasive towards many other contemporary artists and is known, much like Shintaro Kago, just as much for his spite towards the anime/manga industry as he is for his actual work itself.

so it's hard to say what his intent is, but if you ask me, i think he is primarily exploring the nature of victimhood, trauma and cruelty. what does it mean to be a victim, and can people be victims of themselves? is there something endearing, or even comforting, about being a victim? how do we process trauma in the moments it occurs, and how does it change us? and is there a type of longing so desperate it only occurs in the face of immeasurable cruelty?

take (this painting by him)[http://www.akatako.net/japanese-art/jun-hayami-dying-play-original] for example. it's a very clever subversion of his own artistic tropes, but it also is a great example of why his art style is so admired.

beyond the technical aspects, his art is never designed to bring your focus to the body, but instead the face and eyes - the draw of the picture is undoubtedly the complex feelings being portrayed, not the chest or crotch even though they are center-stage. what initially appears as distraught, dazed or even pained when you first view the picture changes to lurid, playful and teasing after you spot the paintbrushes. there is emotional depth and even a strange (and exceedingly dark) kind of humor present.

and i think that alone is a huge part of why he is not considered a full-on H artist, and why he gets plenty of space in museums all around the world despite his subject matter. he plays with expectations and personal projections, he understands how to defy composition and in that way he is working on a totally different level than your average murder-rape guro artist.

i guess it's also worth mentioning he was one of the originators of the choukyou genre (commonly called "mind-break" in the west but honestly that is a terrible translation - the literal "tuning" better translates the fact that it's meant to depict an intentional, violent process of mental deterioration) and is considered historically important for that fact alone. people had done gritty, realistic manga about sex and violence for a long time before him, but his unique focus on the themes of trauma and victimhood (with the stories primarily being told from first-person perspective of the victim) especially were shocking for the time, and went on to influence so many artists that it's now something many readers take for granted as an aspect of contemporary extreme manga.

wow lol that turned into a wall of text. but yeah, you could also just say this is all pretentious fluff and he's just a sick bastard, it's just the fact that he has had his work displayed all over the globe and has won several awards for alternative manga inside of Japan (including a lifetime achievement award recently) says to me that there is a little more to it. really my understanding is so limited simply because i live in the west. hope that gives at least some insight into what his whole deal is though.