Shunga Series - Mother and Baby

Back in the Edo period there was lots of shunga that pictured mothers breastfeeding even when entertaining their partner. It also looks like the the breasts diidnt enjoy the same level as detail by the artists as the genitalia. The nipples were not drawn in or coloured. Yoshihiko Shirakawa an expert of the Edo period and shunga was once askedwhat Japanese men thought of breasts at tat time.

“It appears that men of the Edo period considered breast to be a tool for child rearing,” he says. “They were not a sexualized part of the body. In shunga from the early Edo Period, men and women were depicted with largely similar chests. From the point of view of the artists, breasts really didn’t seem to matter.”

Utamaro in particular had difficulty concealing his fondness for breasts. He often depicted prostitutes boldly baring their chests or Kintaro.
But maybe it’s not as simple as saying that most men during the Edo Period weren’t aware of breasts’ sexual component. In shunga depicting sexual positions where the man is shown eagerly taking a breast in his mouth, the woman is shown with an expression of ecstasy on her face.

Maybe we can take a lesson from these Japanese prints and acknowledge breast feeding as a natural act of child rearing and not a sexual act. 2017 and we are still up in arms about breast feeding, even this week a lady was asked to cover up in the Albert and Victoria Museum, which seemed hypercritical as many of the exhibits were also showing breasts.

Honolulu Museum - Modern Love 20th Century Japanese Erotic Art (Pt3)

Modern Love: 20th-Century Japanese Erotic Art is the third and last in the Honolulu Museum of Art’s exhibition series on the sexual culture of Japan. The series began in 2012 with Arts of the Bedchamber: Japanese Shunga, which featured works from the 17th and 18th centuries, and continued in 2013 with Tongue in Cheek: Erotic Art in 19th-Century Japan.

Enjoy the whole exhibition here

‘Maruo Suehiro & the Art of Erotic Grotesquerie’
Narrated by Stephen Salel, Co-curator, Modern Love

‘The Emergence of Female Artists in the Field of Japanese Erotica’
Narrated by Monique D’Almeida 
 

Honolulu Museum - Tongue in Cheek: Erotic Art in 19th-Century Japan (Pt2)

Tongue in Cheek: Erotic Art in 19th-Century Japan is the second of three exhibitions that explore the development of Japan’s sexual culture through shunga. Similar to last year’s groundbreaking Arts of the Bedchamber: Japanese Shunga, which featured works from the 17th and 18th centuries, this exhibition includes highlights from both the renowned James A. and Mari Michener Collection as well as the recently acquired Richard Lane Collection.
Tongue in Cheek: Erotic Art in 19th-Century Japan is co-curated by Shawn Eichman, the Curator of Asian Art, and Stephen Salel, the Robert F. Lange Foundation Research Associate for Japanese Art.

The full exhibition shown 14th November 2013 can be seen online here
 

Honolulu Museum of Art Japanese Shunga Podcast 1: Greeting by Stephan Jost, Director  

Honolulu Museum of Art Tongue in Cheek Podcast 2: "Sexy Beasts"

Honolulu Museum of Art Tongue in Cheek Podcast 3: "Here Come the Barbarians"

Honolulu Museum- Arts of the Bed Chamber, Japanese Shunga (Pt1)

This first exhibition in the series presents artwork that is clearly erotic in nature side-by-side with texts and images that discuss sexuality in less direct ways. In doing so, it seeks to address three pressing questions about the erotic culture of Edo Japan that have not yet received sufficient scholarly attention. Who was the intended audience of Japanese erotica, and what was the artwork’s intended purpose? How was gender defined in pre-modern and early modern Japan? How did the sex industry of Edo Japan function, and to what extent does mainstream Japanese art validate that industry? We hope that you find the answers offered by this exhibition to be compelling and thought-provoking.

See the whole exhibition shown November 23rd 2012 here

"The Shunga of Nishikawa Sukenobu"
Narrated by Sati

"Japanese Shunga and Concepts of Gender"
Narrated by Kristin Remington


"The Popularity of the Yoshiwara" by Dietra Cordea 


"The Sugimura Jihei Genre Handscroll and the Floating World"
Narrated by Stephen Salel

Shunga Series - Farting Contests

From Japan’s Edo Period (1603-1868), there’s He-Gassen, or, “the fart war.” This centuries-old scroll, dated to approximately the 1840s, depicts an epic battle of gas between booty-baring men and women on horseback and on foot. Even a cat gets caught up in the fray at one point. The powerful gusts of human wind depicted can break through boards and traverse wide battlefields. 

Amazing Images of Classic Japanese Fart Battles

Sex and Laughter with Kyōsai: Shunga from the Israel Goldman Collection

Sex and Laughter with Kyōsai: Shunga from the Israel Goldman Collection
Written by Ishigami Aki and Sadamura Koto
Translated by Alfred Haft

Synopsis:
This book introduces the complete holdings of shunga by Kyōsai in the Israel Goldman collection, the largest private collection of the artist’s work in the world. The twenty-nine works presented here offer a way to approach the circumstances in which the pictures were made and enjoyed, and also allow one to imagine being a part of the boisterous crowds gathered around the pictures.

Israel Goldman
Israel Goldman is a leading dealer in the field of Japanese prints, paintings and illustrated books. He has lived in London since receiving his undergraduate degree from Harvard College in 1981. The Goldman Collection of the works of Kawanabe Kyōsai is one of the finest and most comprehensive in the world. Exhibitions of the collection have taken place in Japan in 2002 (Ōta Memorial Museum of Art, Tokyo) and 2017(Bunkamura Museum of Art, Tokyo; Museum of Art, Kōchi; Museum ‘Eki’, Kyoto; and Ishikawa Prefectural Museum of Art, Kanazawa). Significant loans were made to the major Kyōsai exhibitions at the British Museum in 1993 and the Kyoto National Museum in 2008. A selection of the finest animal paintings from the collection was published in A Japanese Menagerie: Animal Pictures by Kawanabe Kyōsai (London: British Museum Press, 2006). In addition to Japanese art, Goldman’s passions include classical music, fine wines and Welsh terriers.

Book Review

sheet size :200×200×20mm
binding : softcover
page : 225 pages
Japanese / English

Special online price:
2,500 yen (JPY) here

To follow........

Utamaro - Embracing Komachi

 Kitagawa Utamaro Collection

Embracing Komachi (絵本小町引)

(Ehon-Picture Book) Komachi-biki)

FORMAT: A very rare book consisting of large format sheets of 12 illustrations with double-page preface; five double-pages of text, originally mounted as a folding album--fine impressions and color, centerfolds with top split. 25.2 x 37.6cm. each sheet approx.

DATE: ca1802

NOTE: Ehon Komachi-biki is the third of the three great sets of shunga prints by Utamaro, published after his early triumph with Utamakura (Poem of the Pillow; Shunga) and the Negai no itoguchi ねがいの糸口 (Threads Leading to Desire or Unravelling the Threads of Desire or Prelude to Desire). In the intervening years the artist’s style matured and became, if anything, even more voluptuous.

Overview of prints;

 

"Susanoo-no-Mikoto Yakujin Taiji no Zu", the lost painting by Hokusai

 Katsushika Hokusai Collection 

Susanoo-no-Mikoto Yakujin Taiji no Zu

Making a pact with the spirits of disease

After almost a century, an "oema" (large wooden votive table) painting by famed ukiyo-e artist Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849) that was destroyed in an earthquake has been recreated in color.

At 86, he created this monumental, 3-meter-wide composition using bold brushstrokes to depict the ancient Japanese deity Susanoo slaying several gods of pestilence. The work was destroyed by fire during the Great Kanto Earthquake in 1923 and the only clue to its original form was a single monochrome photograph. In 2016, experts relied on that photo as a guide as they launched a project to recreate this enormous work in its original dimensions. They used cutting edge technology, but faced many challenges, such as determining the work's original colors. This program follows them as they complete the recreation and unveil the true intentions behind this "Lost Hokusai." The original 1845 artwork, 276 centimeters wide and 126 cm long, was Hokusai's largest piece, according to the museum in Tokyo’s Sumida Ward.

Watch the full video below.

Hokusai - Mampuku wagô jin 万福和合神 Vol 1 of 3

Katsushika Hokusai Collection

Mampuku wagô jin 万福和合神  Vol 1 of 3

The Gods of Myriad Conjugal Delights

( The Gods of Intercourse)

FORMAT: Ehon (Picture book). Oban 9-3/4 X 14-1/2" ( 25 x 37 cm), 12 double-page and 2 single-page colour-printed woodblock illustrations

PUBLISHED BY: Unknown

DATE: c.1821 

NOTES: Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849) produced The Gods of Myriad Conjugal Delights

(Manpuku wagojin) in 1821. It was his last contribution to shunga in book form. The erotic genre to which he had devoted so much energy during the ten years of his Taito period. Hokusai seems to have introduced a kind of reversed, anti-Confucian morality with this last series.

The first print depicts anthropomorphic genitalia representing manifestations of the gods of conjugality [wagojin], personifying the vagina (bobo) and penis (henoko)

This print illustrates a wide range of sex paraphernalia, each named and which are illustrated throughout the story

The beginning of the story, Osane's parents are joined in a number of complicated positions

Otsubi's parents are described as poor and always hungry, however they are always ready to give in to sexual pleasures

At the age of thirteen Osane hears strange noises from her parents room and discovers them making love.

Each night Osane watches her parents making love until she can no more resist and throws herself at a sixteen year old servant.

Meanwhile Otsubi is working for the merry widow, who has a different lover every night. Otsubi was woken by the cries of extasy and watches her from behind the dividing wall and pleasures herself, one night, the widows lover discovers her little game and once the mistress is alseep slips into Otsubi's room.

Osane has been sent to a mans house by her parents under the name of Ikuyo. Here we see her in the arms of a young man. After many encounters Osane's period stops and she discovers she is pregnant. Making up some excuse she leaves the mans house with her lover to the house with the red sign, where she can have an abortion.

The two main characters, Otsubi (left) and Osane (right), both are thirteen years old