While a painting would be an original that could be sold only once at a time, identical wood prints could be made available for a relatively low price to a wide range of the population. Shunga: Sex and Pleasure in Japanese Art (Catalogue of the big shunga exhibition at the British Museum in London 2013) Shunga was heavily influenced by illustrations in Chinese medicine manuals beginning in the Muromachi era (1336 to 1573). Zhou Fang, a notable Tang-dynasty Chinese painter, is also thought to have been influential. He, like many artists of his time, tended to draw genital organs in an oversized manner, similar to a common shunga topos. Besides " shunga" literally meaning a picture of spring (sex), the word is also a contraction of shunkyū-higi-ga (春宮秘戯画), the Japanese pronunciation for a Chinese set of twelve scrolls depicting the twelve sexual acts that the crown prince would perform as an expression of yin yang. [1] But shunga were a popular mainstay and an important part of itinerant book lenders’ business. They would go to a house, show the books available, lend out the ones desired and recollect them after an agreed period of time. At the time, that was most likely the most common way to enjoy shunga. Men and women were both eager customers.

Woodcarvers and printers experimented with new printing inks, and materials like gold, silver, and exclusive pigments were also put to use to create the finest private editions of the images. But if you look closer, a lot of the emotions depicted are not only shown via the sex acts themselves and the way dresses get rearranged through them but also in the faces, the fingers, and the hair of the people in the images. Erotic Japanese art was heavily suppressed in Japan from the 1870s onwards as part of a process of cultural ‘modernisation’ that imported many contemporary western moral values. Only in the last twenty years or so has it been possible to publish unexpurgated examples in Japan and this ground-breaking publication presents this fascinating art in its historical and cultural context for the first time. Since it is our mission to give shunga art a bigger stage, it would be really great if you would join us and share this eBook with your friends and acquaintances! Because the more members, the stronger our movement becomes…!! ReviewOn the other hand, no artists are known today who produced only shunga. Shunga were not the work of specialized pornographers. Sex was considered a natural part of life in Edo Japan and the production of erotic images reflected this point of view. Katsushika Hokusai: Gods of Myriad Conjugal Delights (1821) Sex in Edo Times As diverse as the variety of people depicted, as various was the variety of the sex acts themselves. Heterosexual encounters in all imaginable forms formed the bulk of the pictures. Gay and lesbian encounters were however also present as well as rather fantastic trysts.

Shunga were both sold as rather expensive scrolls as well as in the form of books. The latter typically allowed for a greater variety of genres. Though long scrolls could certainly tell exciting stories, it was books that were able to reprint classic novels like, say, the Tale of Genji, but illustrate them with erotic images. You could also help us a lot by letting us know what you think of the eBook by placing a reaction below. If you’d prefer to remain anonymous you can also add only your initials to the comment..!! Though heterosexual marriage was the expectation during the Edo period, same-sex relations were not explicitly prohibited by Shintoism or Buddhism, the dominant religions of the era, or by Tokugawa law. This was particularly the case for sex and romance between men, which assumed myriad different forms dictated by social factors including class, profession and age. 21 See Chalmers, note 8, ‘Sexual liaisons commonly occurred between priests and their young lovers (chigo/wakashu), samurai (nenja) and youths (chigo), and male kabuki actors or male prostitutes (kagema) and their patrons. Moreover, within this period male sexual relations were not exclusively homosexual but part of broader bisexual practices’, in Sharon Chalmers, ‘Tolerance, form and female disease: the pathologisation of lesbian sexuality in Japanese society’, Intersections: Gender, History and Culture in the Asian Context, issue 6, August 2001. The concept of shūdō (male love; to ‘lay down one’s life’) was a central principle of Edo’s samurai culture, and sex and romance between men is a common subject celebrated in both shunga and historical Japanese literature. 22 See eighteenth-century samurai manual Yamamoto Tsunetomo, Hagakure (Book of the Samurai). As Leupp explains: The people depicted ranged from noblemen to samurai to kabuki actors to just regular people such as merchants and farmers. Very common was the portrayal of prostitutes at their work with their customers. Virtually no stratum of society was excluded.The quality of shunga art varies, and few ukiyo-e painters remained aloof from the genre. Experienced artists found it to their advantage to concentrate on their production. This led to the appearance of shunga by renowned artists, such as the ukiyo-e painter perhaps best known in the Western world, Hokusai (see The Dream of the Fisherman's Wife from the series Kinoe no Komatsu). Ukiyo-e artists owed a stable livelihood to such customs, and producing a piece of shunga for a high-ranking client could bring them sufficient funds to live on for about six months. Among others, the world-famous Japanese artist Hajime Sorayama uses his special hand brush painting technique and hanko stamp signature method in the late 20th and early 21st centuries to create modern day shunga art in the same tradition of the past artists like Hokusai. Timothy Clark et al. (eds). Shunga: sex and pleasure in Japanese art (London: British Museum Press, 2013). ISBN 978-0-714-12476-6. Both painted handscrolls and illustrated erotic books (empon) often presented an unrelated sequence of sexual tableaux, rather than a structured narrative. A whole variety of possibilities are shown—men seduce women, women seduce men; men and women cheat on each other; all ages from virginal teenagers to old married couples; even octopuses were occasionally featured. [1]

Where ‘ dan’ and ‘ nanshoku’ mean ‘male love’; that is, between men, ‘ joshoku’ (‘female love’) might be misinterpreted to mean the corresponding term for women. In reality, however, the term refers to the attraction of men to women. Within this male-centric rubric, no fixed term encompassing romantic love, or sex, between women existed in Japan until the 1910s when the term d ō seiai (same-sex love) first appeared. As Peichen Wu asserts, it was not until the existence of this term that discourse around the subject could emerge in any formal sense, or that lesbianism (or bisexuality) could be formally recognised as a legitimate category of sexuality and sexual identity in Japan. 23 Women’s Sexualities and Masculinities in a Globalizing Asia, Palgrave Macmillan, New York, 2007, p. 80. The publication of newsletter Subarashi Onna (Wonderful Women) in 1975, and book Onna wo ai suru onnatachi no monogatari (Stories of women who love women) in 1987 are often referred to as the first first-person accounts of female relationships in Japan – a century and a half later than the NGV’s scroll and some two centuries later than early examples of female sex in shunga.Well aware of the fact that men and women could see each other unclothed at public baths and hot springs without restrictions at any given time, they had to add graphic erotic excitement.

Shunga did find fans in the West, however. Artists such as Auguste Rodin, Aubrey Beardsley, and Pablo Picasso are known to have been inspired by Japanese erotic prints. The protagonists all appear to be enjoying themselves and there is little or no depiction of coercion. Katsushika Hokusai: The Dream of the Fisherman’s Wife (1814) Miyagawa Isshō, c. 1750; Shunga hand scroll (kakemono-e); sumi, color and gofun on silk. Private collection.Seigle, Cecilia Sagawa (1993). Yoshiwara: The Glittering World of the Japanese Courtesan. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. ISBN 978-0-8248-1488-5. While most shunga were heterosexual, many depicted male-on-male trysts. Woman-on-woman images were less common but there are extant works depicting this. [10] Masturbation was also depicted. The perception of sexuality differed in Tokugawa Japan from that in the modern Western world, and people were less likely to associate with one particular sexual preference. For this reason the many sexual pairings depicted were a matter of providing as much variety as possible. [1] After 1722 most artists refrained from signing shunga works. However, between 1761 and 1786 the implementation of printing regulations became more relaxed, and many artists took to concealing their name as a feature of the picture (such as calligraphy on a fan held by a courtesan) or allusions in the work itself (such as Utamaro's empon entitled Utamakura). [1] Content [ edit ]