Utamaro - Negai no itoguchi

Kitagawa Utamaro Collection

Negai no itoguchi ねがいの糸口 

(Threads Leading to Desire)

 FORMAT: E-hon or Ehon (絵本) - Picture book of 13 erotic illustrations (unusual as it is usually 12) each featuring couples making love in various settings. , pages 2 and 3 of three double pages of text, approx 25.6cm x 38.3cm.

DATE: ca1799

NOTE: Negai no itoguchi is the second of the three great sets of shunga prints by Utamaro, published eleven years after his early triumph with Utamakura (Poem of the Pillow; Shunga). In the intervening years the artist’s style matured and became, if anything, even more voluptuous. (The third set would be Ehon Komachi-biki [Picture Book: Pulling Komachi], of 1802.) - coming up in September.

Overview of the original prints;

PREFACE/TEXT

PRINT1
Courtesan with a young man smoking a pipe, maybe relaxing afterwards.

PRINT2
Courtesan kissing a young man

 

PRINT3

Geisha in long-sleeved kimono and her lover

PRINT4
Both are married to other people and meeting in secret

PRINT5
Lovers in front of a screen of red and white plum

PRINT6

Older married couple still enjoying making love

PRINT7
Courtesan with her client

PRINT8
Courtesan and lover in a room by a window/screen

PRINT9
Married man and widow with a smoking set beside them.

PRINT10
Male in purple-blue kimono helps a geisha on top of him. Left, in the background, a green rolled blanket and the bottom of a lantern.

PRINT11
Young married couple enjoying each other on a sleeping mat

PRINT12
The man is eager to make love yet the women who has just finished bathing wants him to wait while she fixes her hair.

PRINT13
The young daughter of a townsman and her lover making love beside a shamisen