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Shunga
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is a Japanese term for erotic pictures.
Most shunga are a type of ukiyo-e, usually executed in woodblock print format. While rare, there are extant erotic painted handscrolls which predate the Ukiyo-e movement. Translated literally, the Japanese word shunga means picture of spring; "spring" is a common euphemism for sex.
The ukiyo-e movement as a whole sought to express an idealisation of contemporary urban life. Following the aesthetics of everyday life, Edo period shunga sought to express the sexual mores of the chonin in the widest variety of forms possible, and therefore depicted heterosexual and homosexual, old and young alike, as well as a wide range of fetishes. In the Edo period it was enjoyed by rich and poor, men and women, and despite being out of favour with the shogunate, carried very little stigma. Almost all ukiyo-e artists made shunga at some point in their careers, and it didn't affect their prestige as artists. Classifying shunga as a kind of medieval pornography can be misleading in this respect.
History
Shunga has its origins in China. It is thought that shunga were initially inspired by illustrations in Chinese medical manuals, a process which had its origins in the Muromachi era. Zhou Fang, the great T'ang Dynasty Chinese erotic painter, is thought to also have been influential. He, like many erotic artists of his time and place, tended to exaggerate the size of the genital organs, a common shunga topos. While the literal meaning of the word, 'shunga,' is significant, it is in fact a contraction of, 'shunkyu-higa,' the Japanese name for Chinese sets of twelve scrolls depicting the twelve sexual acts that the crown prince had to carry out as an expression of yin-yang.
In Japan, Shunga goes back to the Heian period. At this point it was the reserve of the courtier class. Through the medium of narrative handscrolls, sexual scandals from the imperial court or the monasteries were depicted, and the characters tended to be limited to courtiers and monks.
The style reached its apex in the Edo period. Thanks to woodblock printing techniques, the quantity and quality increased dramatically. There were repeated governmental attempts to suppress shunga, the first of which was an edict issued by the Tokugawa shogunate in 1661 banning, among other things, erotic books known as . While other genres covered by the edict, such as works criticising daimyo or samurai, were driven underground by this edict, Shunga continued to be produced with little difficulty. The 1722 edict was much more strict, banning the production of all new books unless the city commissioner gave permission, and after this edict Shunga went underground. However, since for several decades following this edict publisher's guilds saw fit to send their members repeated reminders not to sell erotica, it seems probable that production and sale continued to flourish.
The art of shunga provided an inspiration for the Showa and Heisei, or modern, period art known in the Western world as hentai, and known (formally) in Japan as 'ju hachi kin' (literally, "18-restricted", or adult-only) anime and manga. Like shunga, hentai is sexually explicit in its imagery.
Shunga finally succumbed to the introduction of erotic photographs at the beginning of the Meiji era.
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 hand scroll format, called kakemono-e (????). This format was also popular, though more expensive as the scrolls had to be individually painted.
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 first rate artists. Ukiyo-e artists owed a stable livelihood to such customs, and it appears that producing a piece of shunga for a high-ranking client brought them enough money to live on for about six months.
Full-colour printing, or nishiki-e, wasn't invented until 1765, and a lot of shunga predates this. Prior to this, colour could be added to monochrome prints by hand, and from 1744 beni-zuri-e allowed the production of prints of limited colours. Even after 1765 a lot of shunga was 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 that 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.
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 enpon entitled, 'Utamakura.')
Content Edo period shunga sought to express a varied world of contemporary sexual possibilities. Many writers on the subject refer to this as the creation of a 'pornotopia,' a world parallel to contemporary urban life, but idealised, eroticised and fantastical.
Characters Possibly the most common character of shunga was the courtesan. Utamaro was particularly revered for his depictions of courtesans, which offered an unmatched level of sensitivity and psychological nuance. Tokugawa courtesans could be described as the celebrities of their day, and Edo's pleasure district, Yoshiwara, is often compared to Hollywood. Men saw them as highly eroticised due to their profession, but at the same time unattainable, since only the wealthiest, most cultured men would have any chance of sexual relations with one. Women saw them as distant, glamorous idols, and the fashions for the whole of Japan were inspired by the fashions of the courtesan. For these reasons the fetish of the courtesan appealed to many.
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 that sex workers lived under. 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.
Similarly, kabuki actors are often depicted, many of whom worked as male gigolos. These carried the same fetish of the sex worker, with the added quality of them often being quite young. They are often shown with samurai. Aside from this were the ordinary chonin, and occasionally Dutch or Portuguese foreigners.
Stories
Unlike the painted handscrolls, enpon did not portray a running storyline. However, more often than not, shunga images portray an interesting situation. 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.
While most shunga was heterosexual many depicted male-on-male trysts. Woman-on-woman was a rare feature but there are extant works depicting this. Masturbation was also depicted. The perception of sexuality differed, of course, 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.
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.
Clothing In almost all 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, ie, the genitalia.
Lack of realism Shunga couples are often shown in unrealistic positions with exaggerated genitalia. Explanations for this include increased visibility of the sexually explicit content, artistic interest and psychological impact: that is, the genitalia is interpreted as a 'second face,' expressing the primal passions that the everyday face is obligated by giri to conceal, and is therefore the same size as the head and placed unnaturally close to it by the awkward position.
Audience 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 kotai system and the merchants' need to travel to obtain and sell goods. It is therefore argued that this superstition was euphemistic in nature, and ownership of shunga was not superstitious, but libidinous in nature.
It was traditional to buy newly married couples shunga. This and records of women obtaining it themselves from booklenders tells us that women were avid consumers of it. Shunga may have served as sexual guidance for the sons and daughters of wealthy families. This has been disputed since the instructional nature of shunga is limited by the impossible positions and lack of description of technique, and there were sexual manuals in circulation that offered clearer guidance, including advice on hygiene.
Shunga varied greatly in quality and price. Some of it was highly elaborate, commissioned by wealthy merchants and daimyo. Some of it was limited in colour, widely circulated, and cost little more than a bowl of noodles. Enpon 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, chonin, samurai and daimyo.
Noted Shunga artists
Genre ClassificationSome dispute exists among scholars regarding how to classify shunga - while its sexually explicit nature leads one to consider it pornography, there are serious problems with this assumption. Specifically, it is difficult to separate shunga from ukiyo-e as a whole. It was produced by the same artists as what might be considered non-sexual ukiyo-e. Bijin-ga, which didn't contain sexually explicit images, were equally erotic, and there are many records of people masturbating over them, implying that if shunga is pornographic, so must this be.
See also
External links
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