Shunga: Sex and Pleasure in Japanese Art

Product Information

Among the most famous ukiyo-e today is Katsushika Hokusai’s series 36 Views of Mt. Fuji, including The Great Wave off Kanagawa, known to virtually everyone with even the slightest interest in Japan. Shunga Men with the means to afford it often had concubines aside from their wives, and young folks fell in love and ran away with the maid they met in the hostel where they stayed – Japanese literature is awash with such stories. Eishi Chobunsai: Contest of Passion in the Four Seasons (1789-1801) Shunga Styles and Content Lesser known is that the ukiyo-e concept of covering almost all aspects of contemporary life included both the real and the artistically imagined sex life of Edo Japan. Those pictures are known under the name shunga (which translates to “Spring Pictures”). 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:

Illing, Richard (1978). Japanese Erotic Art and the Life of the Courtesan. London: Thames and Hudson. ISBN 978-0-500-53023-8. Shunga were produced by the same artists who also worked in other fields of ukiyo-e. Some of the most famous shunga were drawn for example by Hokusai when he took a break from studying Mount Fuji from all its angles. 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.Furthermore, you will discover the first known shunga master, and more about his great pupil. The similarity between Sugimura Jihei and the Dutch Baroque painter Johannes Vermeer. Answers to the questions about who was the first Japanese artist to depict exaggerated genitals and who was the greatest ukiyo-e artist from the Kyoto area. And who was the biggest networker? This and much more… Join Our Mission 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] The governing Edo shogunate was ambivalent towards shunga. The shogunate knew that the internalization of a set of strict rules by the population was essential for successful government. But the shogunate also knew the mindset of the people it ruled and thus allowed the Yoshiwara and other prostitution outlets to freely operate. That people needed a release every once in a while was understood by the shogunate authorities.

In large part, Edo society was divided between public and private spheres and Shogun-dictated obligations meant that men and women were often separated for extended periods. A prevailing interpretation of these sexual implements seems to be that, sequestered away to inner chambers and rendered abstinent by circumstance, women had little option but to engage in self or mutual pleasuring, and were even encouraged to do so for health benefits. A curatorial note accompanying a shunga album in the British Museum offers the following explanation for the depiction of harigata: Works depicting courtesans have since been criticised for painting an idealised picture of life in the pleasure quarters. It has been argued that they masked the situation of virtual slavery under which sex workers lived. [9] However, Utamaro is just one example of an artist who was sensitive to the inner life of the courtesan, for example showing them wistfully dreaming of escape from Yoshiwara through marriage. [8] Fig.3. ‘ Festival mask‘ (c.1805) from the series ‘ Ehon takara gura (Treasure Room of Love)‘ by Kitagawa Utamaro Shunga: Sex and Pleasure in Japanese Art (Catalogue of the big shunga exhibition at the British Museum in London 2013) That nudity as such was nothing that would arouse much interest in Edo Japan also led the woodcarvers to dress the protagonists in their pictures in dramatically arranged kimonos during their sex acts. Elaborate dressing revealing nothing but the center of the action was their way of presentation.

Discover

By far the majority of shunga depict the sexual relations of the ordinary people, the chōnin, the townsmen, women, merchant class, artisans and farmers. Occasionally there also appear Dutch or Portuguese foreigners. [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. 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 ]

Please note: Throughout this essay, names prior to the end of the Edo period (1868) are noted by family name followed by given name. Names from the beginning of the Meiji period (1868 to present) are noted by given name followed by family name. This essay has created an intertext of a different kind, that between the classical world and Japanese society of 1600–1900, to have us think harder about what we are looking at when we look at erotic artworks from different cultures. Following the Meiji Restoration of 1868, the publication and display of shunga in Japan was strictly forbidden and real bodies controlled by regulations concerning tattoos, mixed bathing and public nakedness. In the wake of the Russo-Japanese war of 1904–05, these strictures became more severe, as though the need to play on an international stage infected Japan with the kinds of moral codes that had corseted Victorian Britain. For most of the 20th century it was nigh on impossible for scholars to study or disseminate shunga: even academic journals published in Japan in the 1960s had to obfuscate the genitals. Although shunga is clearly rooted in the visual culture of China, factors such as China’s Cultural Revolution still make the later history of its erotic imagery difficult.Shunga were produced between the sixteenth century and the nineteenth century by ukiyo-e artists, since they sold more easily and at a higher price than their ordinary work. Shunga prints were produced and sold either as single sheets or—more frequently—in book form, called enpon. These customarily contained twelve images, a tradition with its roots in Chinese shunkyu higa. Shunga was also produced in hand scroll format, called kakemono-e (掛け物絵). This format was also popular, though more expensive as the scrolls had to be individually painted. a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Kielletyt kuvat: Vanhaa eroottista taidetta Japanista / Förbjudna bilder: Gammal erotisk konst från Japan / Forbidden Images: Erotic art from Japan's Edo period (in Finnish, Swedish, and English). Helsinki, Finland: Helsinki City Art Museum. 2002. pp.23–28. ISBN 951-8965-53-6.