Shunga
Shunga (春画) is a type of Japanese erotic art typically executed as a kind of ukiyo-e, often in woodblock print format. While rare, there are also extant erotic painted handscrolls which predate ukiyo-e.[1] Translated literally, the Japanese word shunga means picture of spring; "spring" is a common euphemism for sex.[1]
Shunga, as a subset of ukiyo-e, was enjoyed by all social groups in the
History
Shunga was heavily influenced by illustrations in
The Japanese influences of shunga date back to the
The style reached its height in the
The Kyōhō Reforms, a 1722 edict, were much more strict, banning the production of all new books unless the city commissioner gave permission. After this edict, shunga went underground. However, since for several decades following this edict, publishing guilds saw fit to send their members repeated reminders not to sell erotica, it seems probable that production and sales continued to flourish.[3] Further attempts to prevent the production of shunga were made with the Kansei Reforms under Emperor Kōkaku in the 1790s.[4][failed verification]
According to Monta Hayakawa and C. Andrew Gerstle, westerners during the nineteenth century were less appreciative of shunga because of its erotic nature.[5] In the journal of Francis Hall, an American businessperson who arrived in Yokohama in 1859, he described shunga as "vile pictures executed in the best style Japanese art."[5] Hayakawa stated that Hall was shocked and disgusted when on two occasions his Japanese acquaintances and their wives showed him shunga at their homes.[5] Shunga also faced problems in Western museums in the twentieth century; Peter Webb reported that while engaged in research for a 1975 publication, he was initially informed that no relevant material existed in the British Museum, and when finally allowed access to it, he was told that it "could not possibly be exhibited to the public" and had not been catalogued. In 2014 he revisited the museum, which had an exhibition entirely of shunga "proudly displayed".[6]
The introduction of Western culture and technologies at the beginning of the
The art of shunga provided an inspiration for the
and known formally in Japan as jū hachi kin (adult-only, literally "18-restricted"). Like shunga, hentai is sexually explicit in its imagery.Uses
Shunga was probably enjoyed by both men and women of all classes. Superstitions and customs surrounding shunga suggest as much; in the same way that it was considered a lucky charm against death for a samurai to carry shunga, it was considered a protection against fire in merchant warehouses and the home. From this we can deduce that samurai, chonin, and housewives all owned shunga. All three of these groups would suffer separation from the opposite sex; the samurai lived in barracks for months at a time, and conjugal separation resulted from the sankin-kōtai system and the merchants' need to travel to obtain and sell goods. It is therefore argued that this ownership of shunga was not superstitious, but libidinous.[4]
Records of women obtaining shunga themselves from booklenders show that they were consumers of it.
Shunga varied greatly in quality and price. Some were highly elaborate, commissioned by wealthy merchants and daimyōs, while some were limited in colour, widely available, and cheap.[1] Empon were available through the lending libraries, or kashi-honya, that travelled in rural areas. This tells us that shunga reached all classes of society—peasant, chōnin, samurai and daimyōs.
Production
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
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.
Full-colour printing, or nishiki-e, developed around 1765, but many shunga prints predate this. Prior to this, colour was added to monochrome prints by hand, and from 1744 benizuri-e allowed the production of prints of limited colours. Even after 1765 many shunga prints were produced using older methods. In some cases this was to keep the cost low, but in many cases this was a matter of taste.
Shunga produced in Edo tended to be more richly coloured than those produced in Kyoto and Osaka, mainly owing to a difference in aesthetic taste between these regions—Edo has a taste for novelty and luxury, while the kamigata region preferred a more muted, understated style. This also translates into a greater amount of background detail in Edo Shunga.[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
Edo period shunga sought to express a varied world of contemporary sexual possibilities. Some writers on the subject refer to this as the creation of a world parallel to contemporary urban life, but idealised, eroticised and fantastical.[1][4]
Characters
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]
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]
Similarly, boys of the Wakashū age range were considered erotically attractive and often performed the female parts in kabuki productions. Many of them worked as gigolos. These carried the same fetish of the sex worker, with the added quality of often being quite young. They are often depicted with samurai, since wakashū and older samurai often formed couples with the elder acting as a mentor for the younger.
Stories
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]
While most shunga were
The backstory to shunga prints can be found in accompanying text or dialogue in the picture itself, and in props in the background. Symbolism also featured widely, such as the use of plum blossoms to represent virginity or tissues to symbolise impending ejaculation.[clarification needed]
Clothing
In many of the shunga the characters are fully clothed. This is primarily because nudity was not inherently erotic in Tokugawa Japan – people were used to seeing the opposite sex naked in communal baths. It also served an artistic purpose; it helped the reader identify courtesans and foreigners, the prints often contained symbolic meaning, and it drew attention to the parts of the body that were revealed, i.e., the genitalia.[11]
Non-realism
Shunga couples are often shown in nonrealistic positions with exaggerated genitalia. Explanations for this include increased visibility of the sexually explicit content, artistic interest and psychological impact: that is, the genitalia are interpreted as a "second face", expressing the primal passions that the everyday face is obligated by giri to conceal, and are therefore the same size as the head and placed unnaturally close to it by the awkward positioning.[1]
See also
- Chunhwa: Korean traditional erotic art
- Ero guro
- Hentai
- History of erotic depictions
- Pornography in Japan
References
- ^ ISBN 951-8965-53-6.
- ^ "Heian period". Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved 2007-04-24.
- ISBN 0-8248-2337-0.
- ^ ISBN 1-86189-030-3.
- ^ JSTOR 41959815.
- London Evening Standard. p. 17.
- ISBN 978-1-904989-54-7
- ^ ISBN 978-0-7141-1474-3.
- ISBN 978-0-8248-1488-5.
- Katsushika Hokusai, c. 1814.
- ISBN 978-0-500-53023-8.
Further reading
- Rosina Buckland. Shunga: Erotic Art in Japan (Abrams Press, 2013). ISBN 978-1-468-30698-9.
- Timothy Clark et al. (eds). Shunga: sex and pleasure in Japanese art (London: British Museum Press, 2013). ISBN 978-0-714-12476-6.
External links
- Shunga: Japanese Erotic Art at the Honolulu Museum of Art
- Utagawa Kuniyoshi's shunga
- Picasso and Shunga Prints. Secret Images
- The Tradition of Japanese Shunga Prints
- Androphile Homoerotic Shunga Exhibition
- Erotica: Japanese Shunga and Other Works
- Antique Shunga Woodblock Prints
- "Shunga". Japanese Architecture and Art Net Users System.