Isoda Koryusai - Furyu juniki no eika

Isoda Koryusai Collection

 Furyu juniki no eika

 Prosperous Flowers of the Elegant Twelve Seasons

PRINTS: a set of twelve chuban (mid-size format) designs
DATE: published around 1772-73.
NOTES:

PRINT1 - A young boy rubbing an ink-stick on an ink-stone, while his partner sleeps or is she.
Actually he is touching her body at the back and she is letting him. They haveing a good time so we should not bother them.
Wait!
Someone is looking at them through a hole in the sliding door!!

PRINT2 - A young woman watching a man in a fox-mask making love to his partner under a cherry tree.

PRINT3 - The man takes the woman by surprise as she is about to get into the ofuro (bathtub).

PRINT4 - A man making love to a sleeping woman underneath a mosquito net.

PRINT5 - A father making love to his wife while she and her oldest son practice calligraphy

PRINT6 - An aggressive shunga scene showing the rape of a young girl. A falconer forces the girl down to the ground in the middle of grass and Japanese clover and mishandles her violently. The girl tries to push the man away, but he is obviously too strong for her. The falcon, fastened to the man’s wrist with a rope, watches the scene from the air.

 The haiku poem reads:

Arataka no matataku mo nashi
tama nashi

A miracle
in the blink
of an eye:
the hare in
the moon.

The meaning of the verse is that in the blink of the eye the form of a hare becomes visible on the moon’s surface, just like the falconer who suddenly crosses the path of the lovely young girl.

PRINT7 - A young couple making love while older man sleeps.

PRINT8 - A couple wildly making love in front of a mochi stand.

PRINT9 - A young girl watching couple making love sitting up on the veranda.

PRINT10 - The girl is playing the shamisen (a Japanese traditional instrument with three strings played like a guitar). The boy is accompanying her. Once the singing is done the couple playfully make love on the veranda in winter.