‘PIPE’('KISERU'): SUZUKI HARUNOBU
Art & Culture
Art & Culture
Would you call these images obscene? In Japan, shunga is considered so erotic it’s been dubbed ‘Edo porn’. Matt Schley looks at the history of the art form and the new exhibition that’s set to challenge the controversy
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n September 19, the Eisei Bunko Museum in Tokyo bravely unveiled an exhibition of traditional Japanese erotic art called shunga. Despite the historical nature of the pieces, the art show doesn’t come without a fair bit of controversy: shunga is still considered obscene in many circles, and despite a successful showing at the British Museum two years ago, the exhibition was
turned down by over ten Japanese museums before Eisei Bunko bit the bullet. So why is this art form from hundreds of years ago still causing so much hand-wringing in Japan? Here’s the big reveal… What is shunga, actually? Though the earliest shunga (literally ‘spring pictures’, with ‘spring’ being a Japanese euphemism for sex) can be traced back much earlier, the
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art form is most closely associated with the Edo period and its ukiyo-e, woodblock prints that depicted Edo’s hedonistic ‘floating world’ of geisha, kabuki, sumo – and sex. Shunga was painted by some of the best ukiyo-e artists of the day, including Kitagawa Utamaro and Katsushika Hokusai (Hokusai’s most famous shunga, which features some octopus-on-woman action, was the subject of a 1981 film titled
‘Edo Porn’). Shunga was in demand, and one commission from a wealthy buyer would reportedly keep an ukiyo-e artist eating for months. One, ahem, standout element of shunga is the exaggerated genitalia. This flourish was not, in fact, ukiyo-e artists bragging about the size of their, uh, brushes, but rather an expression of the genitalia as a ‘second face’, one that, unlike the face presented to the public every day, represents one’s true primal desires – hence both the similarity in size and often unnatural physical proximity to the noggin’. Another unique shunga element: both partners are usually fully (well, almost fully) clothed. Unlike in the West, where bare flesh was seen as simultaneously tantalising and taboo, men and women of Edo-era Japan saw each other in the nude regularly at mixed baths and the like. If anything, it was more appealing to see men and women in shunga clothed, as it helped to identify the characters’
