Sex and the Floating World

Sex and the

Floating World
Erotic Images in Japan, 1700-1820

Timon Screech

REAKTION BOOKS
Published by Reaktion Books Ltd
33 Great Sutton Street
London EC1V ODXx, UK
www.reaktionbooks.co.uk
First published 1999
Second edition 2009
Copyright © Timon Screech 1999, 2009
All rights reserved
No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted,
in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the
prior permission of the publishers.
Printed and bound in Hong Kong
by Toppan Printing Co. Ltd

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Screech, Timon
Sex and the floating world : erotic images in Japan,
1700-1820. — 2nd ed.
1. Art, Japanese — Edo period, 1600-1868 2. Erotic art — Japan
I. Title
709.5'2
ISBN: 978 1 86189 4328
 Contents

Preface to the Second Edition 7

Introduction 9
Erotic Images, Pornography, Shunga and their Use 15
Time and Place in Edo Erotic Images 42
Bodies, Boundaries, Pictures 92

Symbols in Shunga 133

The Scopic Regimes of Shunga 198
Sex and the Outside World 243

nN
NI
VI
Re-engaging with Edo Erotica 296
References 326
Bibliography 350
List of Illustrations 362
Index 371
Preface to the Second Edition

It is now over a decade since Sex and the Floating World first
appeared in Japanese. The English version, here in its second
edition, was first published one year after, in 1999. Much has
changed in the field since then.
In the 1990s, Japanese erotica (paintings and prints) of the
Edo Period (1603-1868) had barely been studied, and it had
only just become legally possible to reproduce them in Japan,
since they had previously been banned, even in scholarly
contexts. Old erotic images began to circulate again, homo-
genized under the rubric of shunga — literally ‘spring pic-
tures’, but in facta Chinese-inspired euphemism devised
largely to disguise what the pictures were really about. The
word ‘shunga’ is occasionally encountered in Edo Period
texts, but mostly to extenuate the genre. In legal writings
such works are called kdshoku-bon (sex books).
Sex and the Floating World was the first serious monograph,
in any language, that sought to put erotica back into their
social and historical contexts, to dispel myths — both those
of the time, and those that have flourished since. I did not
intend to celebrate the beauty of the pictures (though some
certainly are beautiful), much less to use them as evidence of
some putative freer world of sexuality, pre-dating Japan's
encounter with the West. But I did seek to investigate erotica
as image, from an art-historical standpoint. I proposed the
following lines of enquiry: Why are these pictures so num-
erous? Why do they look as they do? And, most importantly,
who used them and how? Such questions had not been asked
before, or were brushed aside with trivial answers — such as
that they were for couples to use together, for education, or
even to ward off fire.
I concluded that the primary purpose of these pictures
was for masturbation. Most erotica is for this, and, prima facie,
there is no reason why shunga should be any different. This is
not to deny that other uses were possible, but they would have
been secondary, as I demonstrate through many period sources.
7
 I use the now-current term ‘shunga’, but also the more
blatant ‘pornography’. Both words are loaded, though in
opposite ways. The division between them, I hope, creates a
space for multiple interpretations. I have, however, found
no reason to retract the claim that these pictures were for
other than the purpose | initially suggested — solitary sex.
I would like to thank those who read and critiqued the first
editions (Japanese and English), especially Paul Berry, Julie
Davis, Drew Gerstle, Robert D. Gill, Allan Hockley, Gene
Phillips, David Pollack, Cecilia Seigle, Paul Schalow, Shira-
kura Yasuhiko, Tanaka Yuko, Ellis Tinios and Chris Uhlen-
beck. I am delighted that Reaktion Books has given me the
chance to look again at the topic. I have corrected minor
errors of fact and infelicities of phrase, added a new chapter
(‘Re-engaging with Edo Erotica’), and brought the list of
further reading up to date. Many readers of the first edition
regretted the absence of an index, which is now supplied.
 Introduction

This book aspires to offer a new interpretation of Japanese

erotic images from the eighteenth century to the middle of the
nineteenth century, that is, the mid-Edo era. During that
period of 120 years there were great social changes, with a
general movement of power and wealth to the shogunal capital
of Edo. There were also specifically pictorial changes in inven-
tion of the technology of the multi-coloured woodblock print.
It is my hope to set erotic images properly into their social
context. To do this I have found it necessary to go beyond the
domain of what are known as shunga, that is, overtly sexual
pictures, and to push farther. All works of painting and print
that participated in the libidinous economy and which
kindled or satisfied cravings for sexual activity are treated. It
is a premise that, like any erotica, the Japanese images of this
period have much to do with private fantasy and would
most often have been used in conditions of solitary pleasure.
The reader will have to tolerate discussion of masturbation,
for it is the central practice that accounts for the genres here
discussed. It is necessary to stress this point, for recent inter-
pretations in Japan and elsewhere have been amazingly
resistant to analyses of just what erotica was for; use remains
the big encompassing silence.
The field is, Ihope, reasonably covered here, but it has not
been possible to address everything by any means. The period-
ization, at least, is justifiable for two reasons. Erotic images
begin to appear in appreciable numbers from about the 1680s,
but it was only in the first decades of the eighteenth century
that production in quantity seems to have begun. What does
exist from the earlier period fits best under a different rubric
from that which I propose as defining my area, and typically
they have to do with humour and parody, and seldom show
couples copulating. This tradition of bawdiness gave way in
the early eighteenth century toa kind of picture that was self-
consciously refined in appearance and produced to illustrate
_ primarily or solely an act of sex. Phallic competitions, farting,
we)
or women inserting mushrooms disappeared as renditions of
elegant bedrooms and fine-clad lovers emerged. Heartiness
is alien to the urbane world of mid-Edo-period erotica, as |
understand it. We see something equivalent to what Peter
Wagner has proposed as occurring at roughly the same time
in Europe with the invention of a pure pornography, which is
‘an aim in itself’.’ This is not to say that sexual practice itself
necessarily changed, although whether it did or not is part
of this book’s project, for the uneven nature of the links
between pornographic images and human behaviour is part
of the necessary field for those who wish to study either.
Erotic images of the mid-Edo period can reasonably be
called pornographic, and [intend to use that term. I shall also
use the term common in Japanese (and cognate with Chinese
and Korean words), shunga, ‘spring pictures’. In Japan, these
formed part of the culture of the ‘Floating World’ (ukiyo), a
cognitive condition of being apart from the ‘fixed’ world of
daily life and duty. The Floating World was a state of mind,
but it had a concrete arm in the licensed brothel areas and
extra-legal ‘hill places’ of entertainment; these locales were
then brought back into the domestic world of duty via the
medium of pictures. The culture of the brothel areas has
been noticed in the West ever since admiration of woodblock
prints began in the nineteenth century. They were not
pleasurable places for those indentured to work in them, but
they nevertheless sent mesmerizing clouds billowing into
the cities on whose peripheries they were built, and their
wilful self-representations as loci of all libidinous delights
were widely consumed and certainly coloured real sexual
aspirations. Central to the mythology was the greatest plea-
sure quarter, set to the north-east of Edo (modern Tokyo), the
Yoshiwara. Erotica were intended for those who as a result of
constraints of time or finance, or their ethical stance, were
unable to go there often. Images were consumed compen-
satorily and were probably used by those who could not
venture into the kinds of places depicted, as of course is the
case with pornography today. The Yoshiwara was the apex of
the Floating World which formed the core structure of most
libidinous pictures.
Around the second decade of the nineteenth century, this
began to collapse. The Yoshiwara itself went into decline and
with it declined a certain kind of representation of sex.
10
Copious comment exists from this period on the decline of
erotic levels, on the frumpiness of modern prostitutes (so
unlike, it was said, the intelligent and beautiful courtesans of
previous generations). What was regretted was the absorp-
tion of a culture of eroticism by sex. Such comments do not
need to be taken as historical fact, but they do evince a shift in
consciousness. Alteration occurred in both male-female
encounters and in the male—male sexuality for which Japan
has always been famous, called nanshoku, literally ‘man
sex’ (I shall leave the term untranslated). Changes in auto-
eroticism probably also occurred, although these are difficult
to gauge. Yet the changes in erotic images are immediately
obvious. Some of the old effete type continue, but a new
impetus is seen towards depiction of coercive, violent
encounters. Despite the prominence of prostitutes in earlier
pictures, with all that this implies of exploitative relations,
equality had been honed into the pictorial norm.
Chapter One wilt attempt to set this scene and to assess
what shunga were for. I have already given my a priori
assumption but, as this is not at all the received view, I shall
attempt to make it impregnable to those who persist in
seeing Japanese shunga as categorically separate from
solitary-use pornography. Chapter Two will investigate
social reactions to the erotic images which proliferated
during the eighteenth century. Fears were expressed for
social health. It is not at all the case that the works so cele-
brated for their beauty today and displayed in museums and
galleries were benignly viewed in their own time, and this
goes for non-overtly sexual pictures of the Floating World as
well as for pornography. Reactions changed over the course
of the 120 years covered by this book, with anxiety peaking in
the 1790s.
Chapters Three and Four will offer close readings of some
images, both overtly sexual and more subtly libidinous, in
order to assess their status as figures of representation within
the larger field of painting and printing, and also within the
field of sexual practice. It is necessary to assess mimetic con-
structions and postulates about the body and gender. The
sexualized body was accorded a particular discursive space
via the pictures, and this must be carefully read. Nothing is
irrelevant here, whether posture, manners of interaction or,
more widely, the ambience of the rooms and the objects
5ie|
disposed within them. Pictures of the Floating World do not
depict actuality: they spin fantasies.
Chapter Five is concerned with the scopic regimes of
shunga, that is, with the politics and mechanics of the gaze.
Both the gaze of the viewer of the picture and the mutuality
of the gazes of the depicted persons are crucial. Many new
systems of vision were introduced during the eighteenth
century, with new methods of seeing which enhanced and
altered vision dramatically. The signification of peering,
peeping, magnifying and shrinking were all implicated.
Lensed equipment was generally imported, and so issues of
foreignness and alterity intrude here. Scopic systems were
also set up and deconstructed within pictures by internal
devices such as ‘pictures within pictures’, stylistic shocks, or
the presence of alter egos that offset the viewer him- or herself.
The final chapter will address the ‘end’ of the Floating
World culture referred to here, with the movement of erotica
out of the pleasure quarters and into the open. The tradition
did not implode suddenly, but it dwindled and lost the
power to engross and convince. Pornography that fails in
this fails in its most crucial test, and users began to search
for other stimulants. I shall maintain that a new contract
between cities (especially Edo) and their rural hinterland
underpinned this refashioning of pornography. After this
change, I feel it appropriate to abandon the term ‘shunga’.
Fears over depopulation of the countryside brought the first
decriers of the pleasure districts as places of sexual waste
(there had always been those who called them financially
ruinous) and, with this, the first condemnations of masturba-
tion. The mythological bastion of shunga and the purpose for
which one owned it were assaulted at the same time.
I must close witha caveat, as well as with words of thanks.
The caveat is that most shunga take the form of books, and
there are very few single-sheet images. A sense of the full
coliectivity of a book is impossible to convey in the selective
reproductions included here. It might have been desirable
to offer one complete book to show how narratives unfolded,
and germanely too, given my claim for masturbation, where
breaks occur for the reader to put the book down. Yet even
when shunga are bound together, they are rarely stories, and
in most instances a page can reasonably stand alone. Many
glossy reproductions of entire books are available for those
12
who wish to use them. More problematic is that many shunga
have texts. This book is rooted in the assessment of images
and the texts are not translated, nor are stories recapped,
except where expressly required. A literary discussion of
shunga writing (called shunpon) is needed, although that
surpasses the brief of the current study and no doubt also my
own abilities.
I began the research presented here many years ago.
Haruko Iwasaki and Howard Hibbett offered initial encour-
agement. Further assistance was generously given by Sumie
Jones, Kobayashi Tadashi, Joshua Mostow, Henry Smith and
Tan’o Yasunori. Several scholars have shared thoughts, books
and photographs, including Timothy Clark, Drew Gerstle,
Fukuda Kazuhiko, Nicolas McConnell, Murayama Kazuhiro,
Gregory Pflugfelder, Nicole Rousmaniere, Shirakura Yoshi-
hiko, Ellis Tinios and many private collectors who prefer not
to be named. I am profoundly grateful to them all. I would
also like to express thanks to the staff at Reaktion Books, who
laboured to make my prose accurate and readable, and the
book appealing.

13
1 Erotic Images, Pornography,
Shunga and their Use

The encounter of foreign countries with Japanese erotica

began a surprisingly long time ago. In 1615, shock was
registered in London when the first imported Japanese
‘lasciuious bookes and pictures’ were briefly seen before
being summarily burned.* At about the same time, moralists
of the Ming dynasty in China were counselling against the
‘extremely detestable custom’ of importing Japanese ‘spring
pictures’, which led to lewdness.? Korean ambassadors were
regular visitors to Japan, and thought the deplorable condi-
tion of sexual ethics, which they believed they saw there,
must surely have been the result of unfettered circulation of
the wrong sort of picture.’
Few works are left from these early periods, and accord-
ingly this book will address primarily those of the eighteenth
and early nineteenth centuries. But there are good reasons
apart from the fortuity of survival for doing this. The growth
of printing vastly expanded the output of all kinds of picture
and text from the 1680s, and massive urbanization concen-
trated and expanded readership for many works. But cities
were demographically artificial, and none more so than the
shogunal capital of Edo (modern Tokyo), also the centre of
printing, which may have been two-thirds male. This had
clear implications for auto-eroticism and hence erotica. Many
men lived in the large garrisons serving the Edo palaces of
the 280 or so regional princes (daimyo) who governed the
Japanese states, and their barrack quarters deprived them of
access to females. The late seventeenth-century fictionalist
Ihara Saikaku referred to Edo as the ‘city of bachelors’.4 Even
those of non-military caste were often living without family
roots and traditional networks of socialization and frater-
nization.
With roughly one million inhabitants, few of whom had
been born there, Edo became a centre for the generation of
disenfranchised urban modes. But it was nota place of laxity
and freedom, sexual or other. The city was disciplined and
15
under tight control. Pictures showed the city as it was not,
or rather, they showed its illusory spaces of pleasure and
momentary enjoyment, adrift from normalcy: that is, they
showed the ‘Floating World’ (ukiyo). The shogun’s chief
minister at the turn of the eighteenth century expressed
horror that future generations might look back at these vain
and eroticized images and conclude that such was how Edo
had really been. He did not seek to ban all libidinous
pictures, but, as we shall see in chapter Two, he did relegate
them back to their proper spheres; some artists were pun-
ished. All art contests the real, but, with erotica, we are
dealing with a sort that sets out, as its objective, to misrepre-
sent. Unlike all other genres, erotica — shunga, pornography
or whatever — triggers a viewer into willing deceptions
which the body’s physiology, aided most often by hands and
fingers, takes further in summoning up fantasies of pleasure.

THE LIBIDINOUS IMAGE

Although I wish to erode the too-easy division made

between erotica as such and ‘normal’ pictures of the Floating
World, it is nevertheless important to establish some terms.
The usual designations for the former were the descriptive
‘pillow pictures’ (makura-e) and the euphemistic ‘laughing
pictures’ (warai-e); the second sounds less coy when we real-
ize that ‘laughter’ also meant masturbation. Another term
was ‘sexual book’ (kdshokubon), which tends to figure in offi-
cial pronouncements, and a vernacular term with the same
meaning (chon). Also known was the blunt ‘dangerous pic-
tures’ (abunae). Here is the crux: these items were for a
purpose that people found hard to talk about, and this natu-
rally clouds the issue. I use these terms where necessary but
have preferred to harmonize them under the label ‘shunga’.
Although already known in the nineteenth century, s/itunga is
the word deployed today to create a distance from the sub-
ject. It is neither antiquarian, nor does it condone a reader-
ship seeking to rekindle the original purposes of publication in
their own bedrooms today. Since I am seeking to delineate a
field for erotic images beyond the overtly sexual, I find shunga
the best term to use. The English ‘pornography’ will do as well,
although it may carry baggage that is not entirely helpful.
16
 Until recently, it was illegal under Japanese law to publish
images of human genitals, pubic hair or anuses (interest-
ingly, though, semen could be shown). The law applied to
modern and historic works, which in a way was heartening
since it at least showed the authorities were taking the
subject-matter at face value and were not ready to consign
pictures to the meaningless void of ‘art’ just because they
were old. An absolute continuum was assumed between
what a modern reader would end up doing with historical
and with modern pornography. It was fraudulent, however,
that this policy was pursued while promoting non-overt
equivalents as if they had no connection with the libido and
with auto-eroticism. The male and female prostitutes and
blatant sex symbols that feature in so many ‘normal’ pictures
of the Floating World were deemed to count for nothing. The
great divide between the two was thoroughly artificial.
Cut off from their larger sustaining pool, and reproduce-
able only with such egregious bowdlerizations as to make
them worthless for art-historical as well as onanistic purposes,
shunga retained a wraithlike existence as supports to sexo-
logical writings on the Edo period, much of which was fine,
but little of which regarded pictures as important in their
own right, much less as having any claim to being a discrete
semiotic system. On the other hand, the few people outside
Japan who investigated the matter beat the censorship laws
obtaining there with the stick of overstatements about the
acceptability of shunga in their original context. We may be
sure that Edo parents, spouses and officials were worried
about the availability of shunga and (a crucial point) about
the pull of the whole panoply of Floating World culture.
The law has recently changed, provoking a surge of
reissuings of and commentaries on shunga, some of it under-
taken by prominent art historians. Much material has come
to light, most of it, notably, by artists already respected for
their achievements in ‘normal’ Floating World imagery. The
choicer pieces of shunga have acceded to the embrace of
‘Japanese art’. This has brought a rather different problem.
While we do now have a better idea of how high shunga can
climb aesthetically, and how oeuvres fit together and develop-
ments occur, the art historians have ousted the sexologists,
and witha few laudable exceptions the issue of use has fallen
further into the abyss. Most art historians are unwilling to
17
make statements about the history of sexuality, and in any
case they seldom concern themselves with use at all, and
when that use is masturbation, they wish to proffer nothing.
Shunga have become ‘art’ and their context has contracted to
that which academe allows for artistic genres, namely posi-
tion in the oeuvre, biography of the maker, developmental
position in the type, etc. I have benefited from recent work
but insist that shunga belong within a configuration of libidi-
nous images that ripple outwards with no clear demarcation
line. Shunga are bound to a context that subsumes the hist-
ories of pictures and of sexual behaviour. Only by treating
them in this way can we see them for what they are: libidinous
representation. It is now commonplace to call the fantasies
fostered by erotica ‘pornotopia’.’ No one has so far attempted
to identify a ‘shungatopia’, or the false salaciousness of images
that substituted for experience in the Edo world.

SHUNGA AND ‘PICTURES OF BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE’

At the forefront of themes depicted by ‘normal’ artists of the

Floating World was a genre with no parallel in Western art:
‘pictures of beautiful people’ (bijin-ga). There were numerous
subdivisions. In the Edo language, both genders were covered,
although with the characteristic twist of the compulsory
heterosexuality that emerged in Japan in the late nineteenth
century, the label is now used to refer only to pictures of beau-
tiful women. Worse, it seems, than masturbation over pictures
of females is that over pictures of males (the gender of the
masturbator is a question that will be addressed below). ‘Pic-
tures of beautiful people’ do not show the sexual act, which
has enabled them to be cleansed and displayed unproblemati-
cally. But in most cases the sitters were people whose sexual
persona defined them, and so sex defines the picture too. Ihara
Saikaku included a story in his Great Mirror of Sexual Matters
(Shoen okagami) of 1684 of a court minister forced to relocate in
the desolate provinces, who took such pictures, referred to as
‘likenesses of courtesans’ (taiyii no sugata-e), to appease him-
self. As Saikaku’s book was illustrated, the reader is given a
rendition of the man, pictures hanging up (seven portraits
and one piece of calligraphy on a fan), with four admirers
who have befriended him and come to view them (illus. 1).
18
1 (below) Anon.,
The Minister
Relocated to the
Northern Provinces,
monochrome wood-
block illustration for
Thara Saikaku, Shoen
okagami (Koshoku
nidai otoko) (1684).

2 (right) Anon.,
Monk Worshipping
a Painting, mono-
chrome woodblock
illustration for
Koshoku tabi nikki
(1687).
 On seeing the set of eight scrolls, their emotions over-
flowed and their words, they found, were unequal. The
minister and his four companions each approached close,
worshipping the images. They could not get enough of
recitations of poetry and extollings of the wondrous
delineations of the women’s likenesses. The friends begged
to be told, for their delight, how the minister had done the
‘fine thing’ with these women long ago, and asked to hear
more and more about what they had been like, since just
looking could never suffice.°

The term ‘worship’ (ogamu) is used to describe their activity

before the paintings. There are other anecdotes of ‘worship-
ping’ ‘beautiful-people’ pictures. The anonymous Sexual
Travel Diary (Koshoku tabi nikki) of 1687, for example, tells of a
sybarite who travelled in search of erotic encounters before
ultimately retiring to a life of solitude as a monk. He left the
company of beautiful men and women (both of which he had
enjoyed) but could not forego sex altogether, and so took a
picture of his favourite partner, treating it as a devotional
icon (honzon) and ‘worshipping it, trusting in its efficacy’
(illus. 2).7 A third, similar story is of aman who commissions
‘Hishikawa’ (that is, the great commoner artist Moronobu) to
do the image of youths for him to ‘worship’, and this he is
said to do all through the night. These sound like covert
references to a quite different activity. Since the anony-
mously authored book is entitled Male and Female Prostitutes
Play the Shamisen Together (Yakei tomo-jamisen), the shamisen
being an instrument associated with the pleasure quarters,
the kind of liaison the man hopes for with the boys is trans-
parent. In the centre he hangs his favourite, with the two
others flanking, in the manner of a sacred triad, where lower
divinities stand beside a Buddha. The man had these ‘always
suspended in the place where he slept’, and he considered
the paintings ‘as equal to the sacred icons of perpetual
invocation (ikko sennen) that are worshipped for their effi-
cacy’. Shunga were also ‘worshipped’, and the joke is that in
Buddhist devotion this was done by rubbing the palms of
the hands together with a rosary in between; for a male, it
looked, and perhaps felt, like masturbation. There is a verse
from the 1740s in the senryil mode which relates to this. (Senryii
are a version of the 5:7:5-syllable poetic genre of haikai
20
3 Anon., Produce,

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(usually referred to as haiku in English) which treat contem-

porary fads and neuroses; they are hugely useful for evidence
of sexual mores and will be cited repeatedly below.) The
anonymous versifier also puns the rod used to jolt the medi-
tating adept with the phallus:

From the hands in prayer

The voice of a beating rod —
The pillow book.?

Inall three stories (though not the verse), the depicted form is
said to be an actual person (within the context of a fictional
narrative), and, moreover, they are the previous or future
sexual partners of their respective ‘worshippers’.
The difference between shunga and ‘normal’ pictures of
the Floating World is obvious to the eye, but the difference
need not have affected use. There is ‘soft’ and ‘hard’ porno-
graphy too. While hanging as a picture properly did, in an
ornamental alcove, someone might come across them and
find themselves provoked. Overtly sexual books encouraged
all
 4 Anon., Man using a
Portrait and an “Edo
shape’, monochrome
woodblock illustra-
tion separated from
an unknown shunga
book (c. 1760).

this type of usage of non-overtly sexual pictures. An illustra-

tion to a book published by the otherwise unknown Teikin,
probably in the 1830s, shows a painting of what is clearly a
prostitute (her clothing is fastened in front, whereas civic
women tied theirs behind), seemingly a top-of-the-range
worker, being used by a man (illus. 3). The book is called
Teikin’s Laughing Pictures (Teikin warai-e sho) and, other than
this, all the illustrations are of copulation (one male—male,
the rest male-female) and, as in the previous cases, the con-
text in which the propositions are advanced is itself porno-
graphic. But insofar as Teikin’s book is for masturbation
(‘laughing’), it acts as a recommendation for this way of treat-
ing ‘beautiful-person’ pictures.
The same picture might have functioned in different
ways on different occasions for different viewers. One
shunga book that has lost the page containing its publication
details (many books evince punishing thumbing) illustrates
an imaginative man who has rolled up a ‘beautiful-person’
picture until it reveals only the face, and has then fashioned a
body out of clothing and tied to it what was called an ‘Edo
shape’. An ‘azumagata’, or artificial vagina, was sometimes
written with characters meaning ‘wife shape’ and was gener-
ally made from leather or velvet and stuffed with boiled kon-
nyaku — the name attests to the frustrated males of that city
(illus. 4)."° In Ihara Saikaku’s Floating World novel of 1682,
Life of a Sex-mad Man (Koéshoku ichidai otoko), the reader hears
how the protagonist keeps forty-four life-sized ‘dressed
models’ of prostitutes he has slept with, seventeen of women
from Keishi (modern Kyoto), eight from Edo and nineteen
from Osaka. ‘Costume, face and loins were individualized
for each one’, although since this was not an overtly erotic
2a
book, Saikaku quickly confirmed, ‘there was nothing lewd
about them’."’ Such stories may derive from a locus classicus
in the first century Bc, where the ruler of the Han had an artist
produce a mural of the woman Li so that he could ‘rub his
body up against the image to find release’. This antique story
was retold in c. 1785 in the preface to the shunga book The
Scrolling Sleeve (Sode no maki), signed with the pseudonym
‘Jikkotsu’ (‘the one who makes love to himself’); the book
was lavishly illustrated by Torii Kiyonaga.** It must be con-
ceded that all ‘beautiful person’ pictures could have been
used for auto-erotic purposes.
To return to our third example of the boy to play the
shamisen with, the picture is said to be a portrait of Arashi
Kiyosabur6. This was the name of areal kabuki actor, a female-
role specialist, who was famous in Osaka before causing a
sensation in Edo in 1707 (the year before the story was writ-
ten) with his performance of the pyromaniac Yaoya Oshichi —
a real person who-had accidentally burned the shogun’s
castle down and most of the city with it in 1682. Kiyosaburo
died young in 1713.7
The inclusion of a factual beauty within the fictional frame
of a story may have been a means of enlisting the attention of
a readership who themselves knew such sentiments as were
attributed to the man. Terminated sexual encounters might
be recalled by a picture, or viewing a likeness might hasten
the time until a repeat meeting. Or they compensated for an
inability to meet in the first place. Kiyosaburo would have
been available for rent as a prostitute, for many kabuki actors
were, especially the female-role specialists (real women could
not appear on stage). But an encounter with someone of his
fame would be expensive, costing less perhaps than a paint-
ing by a famous hand, but more than a woodblock print. The
eighteenth-century printing boom ensured that portraits of
people whose sexual favours were for hire were easily avail-
able; indeed, these were some of the prime printed materials.
When a painting was commissioned, some close contact
would probably already have been formed, but prints circu-
lated easily, including among those who could not afford
access to the actual person. They ‘worshipped’ those they
had never directly touched.
The portrait genre is nothing like as central to any of the
north-east Asian traditions as it is in the West and even those
23
portraits that were produced were kept from promiscuous
display. Nevertheless, the late eighteenth century saw the
rise of a new sort called ‘likeness pictures’ (nigao-e), which
startled viewers with their verisimilitude. This type emerged
from the Floating World and stemmed from the need to
represent the ‘beautiful people’ of the quarters to those who
could only aspire to see them, and who could never pay for
them or hold their attention in conversation. The regenerated
portrait came into existence at the same time as the popular
print began to be produced in full colour, the technology for
which was perfected in 1765. A generation later, Utamaro
simulated a letter to a prostitute by someone who owned an
Utamaro portrait of her, inscribing it on a print of her
likeness:

Ihave gained an understanding of your appearance from

the brush of Utamaro — that artist who shuns replicating
others’ work and style, trusting to his mastery alone. At
moments when I want to be with you, I look at it, and
feel I am there. [The picture] is so like you that my pas-
sions stir.4

The man seems to have seen the woman, Hanazuma, but she
was of the top grade and, while the owner of a painting (note
the word ‘brush’) might have met her, the consumer of a
cheap Utamaro probably had not. The point of the ‘letter’ is
for Utamaro to lay claim to perfection for his works, as even
those who have seen his sitters find his portraits accurate.
The viewer can ‘use’ Utamaro’s oeuvre without qualm,
sure in the knowledge that he was enjoying the real (depic-
tion of) the women. This is rather typical of Utamaro’s self-
promotion, as recently studied by Julie Nelson Davis.'5
Interesting, then, that there is also the senryi verse,

Using a ‘likeness picture’

She aims it in.
The lady’s maid."®

The woman is not often free to leave her mistress’s side so,
using fingers or a dildo, she views a picture, perhaps an Uta-
maro. No sitter’s name is mentioned. A rather later example
by Utagawa Kunimaro shows a nun doing just the same in

24
front of a male portrait, lamenting, ‘this world of ours being
what it is, never gives you what you want, but I’ll get by
thanks to this clever product and a bit of “finger puppetry”.”
Tanobe Tomiz6 has identified the man as the famous actor
Matsumoto Koshiro (illus. 18; see also illus. 157).'7 Sub-
sequent to the appearance of the ‘likeness picture’ came the
close-up, or bust, from the 1780s. These had not been seen
before but offered a further approximation to the genuine
capture of appearance. This is what the nun uses. They were
called ‘big head pictures’ (okubi-e), although wags reclassi-
fied them as ‘big cunt pictures’ (otsubi-e).'®
‘Likeness pictures’ brought portraiture to a level where a
depicted person was genuinely recognizable if subsequently
seen (by no means always the case before this time). Pictures
could serve as advertisements for those whose services
were to be bought, offering a vision that the client could
rely on. Paintings were expensive, but prints allowed
multiple procurement by those trying to decide on whom to
patronize. In such contexts, overt sexual depiction was
counter-productive, since the objective was to titivate only
to the level of prompting a separate transaction. When
women were shown, it was in their best finery (not worn
every day, even by prostitutes), and actors were shown in
ravishing costumes. The daimyo of Koriyama, Yanagisawa
Nobutoki (grandson of the important shogunal advisor
Yoshiyasu), for example, had a vast collection of actor prints,
which many a fan would have bought in all innocence. He
did not need to use them as the lady’s maid or the nun did
(thwarted by finances, vocational constrictions and the over-
riding disadvantage of their gender, they could not act on
their desires): he was rich and powerful enough to be able to
flick through the pictures, make his choice and have the boy
summoned. Nobutoki’s sexual interest in men and his collec-
tion of prints — he was famous for both enthusiasms — were
two sides of the same erotic coin.
These matters were no more open to public discussion
then than now, and the goings-on in a daimyo’s bedchamber
were not general knowledge. But one other fictional context
can be cited to suggest how the common people of the city of
Edo, who did consume prints aplenty, liked to envisage the
great and powerful using the same imagery. In a long,
novel-like work of 1763, Rootless Grasses (Nenashi-gusa),

25
Hiraga Gennai told the story of the infatuation of no less a
panjandarum than Enma, king of Hell, witha print.*? Gennai
was at the forefront of developments in picture-making and
two years later was to change the face of printing by assisting
his friend and neighbour, Harunobu, to devise technology
for multi-colour printing; five years after that, he was to learn
something of European and Chinese representational tech-
niques at first hand on a field trip to Nagasaki, where the
Dutch East India Company and Chinese traders were
stationed. Enma is said to have come across a portrait of a
real person, Segawa Kikunojo (also called Rok6), another
kabuki female-role specialist and one of the heart-throbs of
the age. The print had been brought to Hell in the baggage of
a deceased monk. This would not yet be truly multi-coloured
ora ‘likeness picture’ but was probably printed in just two or
three colours, or hand-tinted over a monochrome impres-
sion. Gennai relates the name of the artist too, Torii Kiyo-
nobu; presumably this was Kiyonobu 1 since Kiyonobu 1
had died in 1729, while Kiyonobu 1 died about the time
Gennai’s book came out.*° No portrait by Kiyonobu 1 of
Segawa Kikunojo is extant, but as the Torii specialized in
kabuki work, it would be odd if he had not depicted one of
the most famous actors of the period, although Kikunojo was
to achieve even greater celebrity after Kiyonobu’s death,
retiring about 1773. A portrait of the juvenile actor by Torii
Kiyomitsu, Kiyonobu’s son and successor, will have to serve
to indicate the general effect. Kikunojd is dressed in the
costume he wore to take the role of Minor Captain Keshozaka
in an as-yet undetermined play (illus. 17).
Enma had not previously ventured into male—maie sex,
and Gennai says he was repulsed by it. But confronted with
the picture, he reconsidered and announced he would sur-
render royal status to ‘swap pillows’ with the boy. Since
Gennai was himself a known aficionado of nanshoku (male—
male love), as well as a person with an interest in the status of
representation, his claim for the power of such pictures to
sway the hearts of even the initially uninterested is signifi-
cant. Enma is not said to have masturbated over the picture
and, in the context of Gennai’s non-pornographic book,
intended for the general reader, such remarks would have
been out of place. Also, as a king, Enma did not need to
content himself with autoeroticism. He sent a servant to find
26
5 Kitao Shigemasa,
Geisha from the
Nishigashi and
Inscription, 1781,
diptych, colour on
silk. Original lost.

Betas
-:
~s
7 An
are
~
SK,
iy
RotYfe
SE
~ T
DEAE
Tt
Vefe£

©.
habe

ereS~
Seok
Bak
oN
maet

onily

>
RRS

Ghee
aioi

CED
HCY
te
ith

SS
mete
SS
w

tt
SX
aie

Kikunojo and fetch him to Hell. The two finally enjoyed a

night of love together.
It might seem preferable to tackle these issues the other
way around and work from surviving pictures rather than
from literary anecdotes, which are fictional and so open to
objections about their validity. It is not often possible to do
this, since extant works mostly lack accompanying docu-
ments. One case, however, can be cited, since the purpose of
its creation is recorded on a second scroll made to hang
beside the first as a pendant. Sadly, both are now only known
through black-and-white photographs taken in the 1930s
(illus. 5). The owner was a man of substance, the 45-year-old
es
daimyo of Shibata, Mizoguchi Naoyasu, but his advanc
2]
 to a woman were rebuffed, he lost his quarry and commis-
sioned the picture as a substitute in 1781 from Kitao Shigemasa,
an established Floating World artist and shunga-maker. In
this instance, Shigemasa signed his name with the scholarly
studio sobriquet ‘Karan’ — possibly in deference to the
daimyo’s status, as ‘Shigemasa’ sounded too much like the
Edoite merchant he was. The woman is a geisha, that is, an
entertainer who did not sleep with clients. This was the nub
of Naoyasu’s chagrin. Although the daimyo invited her to
his residence up to six times per week, no additional services
seemed ever likely to be forthcoming, so after three years he
gave up and called in Shigemasa. Naoyasu wrote these facts
to hang beside the portrait, using archaic man’yd-gana script,
which is virtually indecipherable, unburdening himself in
cryptic prose.*' No more information is given, but the picture
is blatantly a stand-in for the body of the sitter.
The barrier modern scholarship has so studiously erected
between shunga and ‘normal’ pictures of the Floating World
crashes down. All Floating World art is libidinous, and once
the tension of sexual encounter (thwarted, pending or con-
summated) is removed, the whole genre grows flaccid. Por-
traits of known people encouraged attempts to gain access to
the person him- or herself, while unnamed beauties inflamed
the viewer in a more diffuse way. Shunga and non-overt
works might be used in an identical fashion. It was for the
above reasons that in the 1790s, during a government clamp-
down, the representation of all living persons was restricted:
they could still be depicted but they could not be named ona
print and, portraiture still being only loosely linked to a
person’s appearance, this was enough to sever the connec-
tion between picture and sitter and so curtail the capacity of
the image to advertise the person as a sexual commodity.**
Only generic beauties could be shown. Cunning publishers
used rebuses to get around this, thus Hanazuma might be
shown beside cherry blossoms (hana) and a lightning bolt
(zuma), or the sublime Hanaogi (the most expensive pros-
titute of the period) beside cherry blossoms and a fan (ogi).
Generic ‘pictures of beautiful people’ were unaffected by the
ban, aS was overt shunga, which rarely showed named
people anyway.
The movement between shunga and ‘normal’ pictures of
the Floating World is not, however, only the result of (mis)-
28
6 Suzuki Harunobu,
Shared Umbrella,
late 1760s, multi-
coloured wood-
block print.

use of the latter by owners. Artists themselves encouraged it.

One print by Harunobu exists in both forms. Between the
invention of the multi-colour print in 1765 and his death in
1770, Harunobu depicted a beautiful man and woman
lingering under a snowy willow (illus. 6). The image is
referred to as the ‘Shared Umbrella’, or (from the black and
white clothes) ‘Crow and Heron in the Snow’, both latter-day
titles intended to highlight refinement. The long sleeves of
the woman and her unplucked eyebrows reveal that she is
unmarried, while her sash tied at the back suggests she is
bourgeois, not for sale; the man is dressed fashionably, with
jet-black overcoat and sumptuous kimono beneath (very few
men actually dressed this well). The man is a peg for aspira-
tions to wealth, and the woman his ideal civic partner.
Sharing an umbrella was a recognized token of egalitarian
love — rather than the woman walking behind the man, as
would properly happen. This image is not a representation of
real life for a citizen of Edo. Viewers today are not encour-
aged to speculate on where the couple are bound and how
their intimacy could be socially condoned. And yet the
29
 7 Attrib. Isoda
Korytsai, Lovers
under a Willow in the
Snow, late 1760s,
multi-coloured
woodblock print.

image was reissued in a pornographic version (illus. 7).

Behind the willow is a fence and, leaning on it, the woman
hitches up her skirts to allow the man to penetrate her; the
umbrella lies jettisoned, and a clog has fallen off in the
fumbling. Dialogue has been added, and it is of a none-too-
elevated kind: ‘Is it all right if Ilean on the bend in this tree
to do the thing I want?’ ‘No need to ask.’ The creative reissu-
ing is unsigned and may be by Harunobu himself, but it is
also attributed to Isoda Korytsai. The two artists were asso-
ciates, even friends (although Koryisai was of samurai stock
and Harunobu a townsman), so this is not persiflage. Koryaisai
does not debase or humiliate Harunobu’s image but offers a
logical and satisfactory second leg to the event, entirely
reasonable given the Floating World idiom of the original,
and what any viewer would have been thinking of anyway.*3
The migration of a single image (even with different
artists), sometimes back and forth multi-directionally, is also
expressed in the pop-up print, a type that seems to have
begun shortly after Harunobu’s time, in the 1780s, and was
then revived by Utagawa Toyokuni thirty years later.*4 A
‘normal’ picture would be gummed over all or part of
another, leaving the viewer to pull up the flap and see the
unexpected development beneath. Although initially used
to show the twist of theatrical plots, and so called ‘quick-
change pictures’ (hayagawari-e) from the swift on-stage
30
8 Utagawa
Kunifusa, Playing
Sugoroku at a Heated
Table, multicoloured
woodblock page
with pull-up, from
a shunga album,
Tsukushi matsufuji no
shirakami (1830).

g Utagawa
Kunifusa’s Playing
Sugoroku ... with
the pull-up raised.

costume changes of the kabuki theatre, they were soon sub-

sumed into pornography. In kabuki, the technique was used
to strip a character of disguise and reveal their true identity,
as the denouement of aplay. Here, it is the deceitful cladding
of the innocent picture that is pulled away, revealing the
sexual message inherent from the outset. I have argued else-
where that these were probably indebted to the European
medical illustrations called ‘fugitive prints’, in which pictures
of bodily layers were stuck one on top of the other, to be
31
 opened by the armchair anatomist. But it is interesting that,
in Europe too, these were adapted pornographically.~ In the
Edo case, a ‘normal’ Floating World image would be on top,
showing some eroticized, though not overtly sexual scene,
with the hidden truth beneath: a night watchman might pass
a door which could be opened to reveal a scene of copulation,
ora tablecloth might be lifted to show a game of footsie going
on beneath (illus. 8, 9). The permeability of the membrane
between covertly and overtly sexualized pictures of the
Floating World was itself the point of the image, as much as
the immediate role of exciting the viewer.
Again, it is necessary to recall that sunga as pictures were
part of the larger production of Floating World eroticism that
extended into literature. What has been said for the images
holds good for the narratives too, and many shunga are part
of stories. There were also unillustrated books (although the
terminology is unclear, so that when a reference appears toa
lost source it cannot be known whether pictures shared the
space with words or not). One piece of pictorial evidence for
the use of Floating World literature comes from Katsukawa
Shunsh0’s illustrations to Jintaku Sanjin’s book, The Needle
Hole of the Floating World (Ukiyo no itoguchi), which is a loose
parody of the tenth-century classic by the court lady Sei
Shonagon. Sei’s book happened to be known as The Pillow
Book (Makura no soshi), but in her time this only meant a
diary. The book was too difficult for the average eighteenth-
century reader, but its title gave rise to jokes at the expense of

10 Katsukawa
Shunsho, Wet Dream
After Reading a
Pillow Book,
monochrome
woodblock illustra-
tion for Jintaku
Sanjin, Ukiyo no
itoguchi (1780).

ipa
literary endeavours and reading.” Sei’s Pillow Book was not
illustrated and had nothing to do with pornography, but the
ill-informed of the Edo period might wonder. Jintaku begins
with a man who falls asleep over a ‘pillow book’ of the new
sort, which is unillustrated but seems to be a listing of Yoshi-
wara women and their specialities. It provokes a night-time
emission (illus. 10), The text reads: ‘Taking a look at one of
these makes you feel pretty good — these latest edition pillow
books that come out in the early spring. Next thing you know
there’s a wet dream.’ By the man’s mouth is the sound of his
groans, ‘haha mumumu fufufufu aaaaa.” The next page
shows, ina dream bubble, the man embracing a prostitute.*/

MASTURBATION IN THE EDO PERIOD

AND PORNOGRAPHIC DENIAL

The act of masturbation could be discussed, although not in

every setting, and was free from any great policing through
medical or moral directives. It would be odd indeed, given the
social situation of the major cities, and also the profusion of mas-
turbatory equipment that sexologists have brought to selene
if pictures had not played their part in the release of cravings.”
The vocabulary of auto-eroticism was vast. We have seen
ateire (‘aiming it in’) for women, and ategaki (‘stroking it’) for
men was the most common, often implying a specific object
of desire— either imagined or depicted. There was a mock-
erudite spoof ideogram conflated from three characters:
‘hand’ with ‘up’ and ‘down’ beside it. There was senzuri
(‘thousand rubs’, also pronounced chizuri) and manzuri (‘ten
thousand rubs’) for men. We have also encountered the term
‘finger puppetry’ (gonin ningyo), applicable to both genders.
The assumption of most writing is that masturbators are apt
to be male. Whether this grew from Edo’s demography, from
higher levels of male rampancy or from other causes is hard
to determine. A sexual compendium that came out in 1834
reports that ‘masturbation is infallibly performed by males
from about the age of fifteen’. It goes on:

Routinely, there’s what's called the ‘salt-shaker’, ‘stroking

the cat’ and the ‘five-man gang’, but of course there’s
_ more. Old Master Horny once said, ‘If you feel like a bit of
33
 the “five maidservants”, first imagine that lovely woman
you're mad about. Then stick the middle finger of your left
hand up your bottom while playing with yourself in the
right hand; this will feel delicious. All your sensitivity will
congregate in your nether parts. If anything oozes out of
your arse it will spoil the fun. The real freak wanker can
spend half a day working his juices out, and at the end of it
he'll be as tired as if he had done two days’ hard labour.’”?

Stimulation of the anus as a masturbatory practice has

caused alarm to modern heterosexual commentators.?° The
age of fifteen seems arbitrary and is not corroborated else-
where. Maruyama Okyo, for example, who at the time of his
death in 1795 was acclaimed as the best artist in Keishi
(Kyoto), made a sketch of a boy masturbating, interesting in
itself but useful also for its inscription: ‘male child ejaculat-
ing, aged about ten.’ What Okyo intended to do with this
drawing is uncertain, but he added the reminder: ‘pigments
per usual, do the sperm in powdered or chrysaline white.’”>"
Since a child was reckoned as one year old at birth and
became two the following New Year (advancing annually on
that day, not on the day of their birth), this boy may be sub-
stantially under ten by the modern count. Diet and socializa-
tion patterns would have brought different classes of child to
sexual awareness and maturity at different ages, and often
earlier than today.
Issues of privacy and invasion are also relevant. There is
another senryii,

Pillow pictures,
Reading too noisily
Earns you a scolding.?*

The user cannot read silently (most eighteenth-century

people could not) and, perhaps behind a screen or paper
door, is overheard and made to realize he is doing something
that should be hidden. Another verse reads,

Pornographic pictures
Stowed each day
Ina different place.*>

34
11 Terasawa
Masatsugu, Song,
monochrome
woodblock page
from his Aya no
odamaki (1770s).

Family members did not wish to be haphazardly presented

with erotic materials scattered about, and users wished their
fetishes to be left unseen. Still, the typical Edo home was
small and did not have designated rooms for each family
member or for specific functions. Bedrooms did not exist.
Toilets were not sechided. In Keishi and Osaka conditions
were more generous, and in country places even more so,
but sudden intrusion, peeping and the travelling of sound
always had to be taken into account and if necessary guarded
against. The shunga artist Terasawa Masatsugu included a
boy taken by surprise by his parents in an anonymous mid-
century book, A Twist of Figured Cloth (Aya no odamaki); four
pages parody the ‘four accomplishments’ or constituents of
culture, said to be painting, music, calligraphy and board
games. On the music page (inscribed ‘song’ at top right), a
boy called Sukejir6 is supposed to be doing singing practice,
but is using it to hide quite different sounds as he concen-
trates on onanism (illus. 11). Parents quietly abed are not
impressed:

[Man:] Not often he gets out his ‘devil-eyed horn’.

[Woman:] He’s at it again? He never takes his mind off sex.
[Man:] Sukejiro, that wasn’t your singing you were doing
just now, was it? Finished already, have you?
[Sukejiro:] What are you on about? Stop embarrassing me
and let me just go to bed.*4

Frequently, male masturbation is relegated to a time of

infancy, as the discourse-controlling adult expels all thought
of substitutional sexual acts into the zone of the weak. Yet

3h)
shunga themselves may show a masturbating adult male
(since that was the age at which images were often viewed).
But sober and semi-sober writings confine themselves to talk
of boys. By contrast, female masturbation is represented as
the lot of adult women. This may have been to allay the fear
that a man’s own womenfolk took lovers, although the
vision of women stimulating themselves alone offers a recur-
rent thrill, and also one which allows the male the fiction of
entering their depicted space and contributing a real thing to
replace a dildo.
Adult male masturbation was excused as special, not habi-
tual, and pictures aided this. Shunga illustrations of mastur-
bation always form part of larger works in which copulatory
sex is paramount. Shunga ownership might be excused as
only for interim use until the next authentic bout. Images
were flatteringly called ‘Elder Gold and Monkeys’ (kanoe-
zaru), referring to the day when ritual abstinence from inter-
course was observed, falling every other month; the contrac-
tion to kanoe was used as a pun on ‘his pictures’ (ka-no-e).>>
In other words, masturbatory images were tokens of the
man’s scrupulous ethics, not of his failure to find partners.
In contrast to what Craig Clunas has found to be the case
in Ming-period China (1368-1644), pornographic images in
Japan were admitted to be intended for auto-eroticism, albeit
denials hovered in the air.3° But outright mythologies con-
cerning shunga use also abound, some of them identical to
those heard in China, where masturbatory use was never
admitted. Some claims are quite improbable, although
scholars persist in giving them credence. The first claim
(which Clunas calls an ‘old canard’) is prophylaxis, espe-
cially against fire. Anzai Un’en wrote of this in his influential
Famous Modern Painters and Calligraphers (Kinsei meika shoga
dan) of 1830-52, ‘There was once a man with an impressive
library who always placed shunga on top of his book presses.
When asked why, he replied it was to ward off fire...’ Un’en
fixed the myth in the specifics of a particular (unnamed)
person. He then went further, citing the authority of one of
the foremost masters of the Floating World genre, and of
shunga in particular:

According to Tsukioka Settei, when the great conflagra-

tion hit Keishi in the Meiwa period [1764-72], the store-
36
 house of one shop was preserved because it had some
shunga, done by him, in it.?7

Un’en does admit, ‘I wonder if this is a true report,’ and it

sounds more like advertising for Settei and ownership-
extenuation for his patrons. Probably in 1813, the samurai
and doyen of Floating World circles Ota Nanpo wrote gener-
ally, ‘if you collect these types of book, you will save yourself
from destruction by fire.’3” These references are duly taken
note of by scholars, but they are not convincing evidence, and
the last example itself comes from the preface to a shunga book.
Only a predisposition against accepting the obvious usage
will allow this kind of explanation to be considered valid. Of
course, some viewers might have heard the myths so often
that they came to believe them and did place shunga among
their valuables, but the notion cannot account for shunga as a
whole, much less be the inspiration for their production.
Asecond claim is that shunga were used for sex education.
The evidence for this is limited. Hachisuka Toshiko, grand-
daughter of the last shogun, as an old woman told of how she
had been given shunga at the age of fourteen, before her mar-
riage.2? Some hand-painted erotica of exceptional quality
exist, and these may well have been produced for wealthy
daughters. But no amount of looking at shunga will instruct a
girl on how sex is pleasurably or safely performed. Such pic-
tures may have helped the over-protected young come to
terms with the concept of loss of virginity, but more likely
they were for masturbation. It is irrational to expect an
elderly lady like Toshiko to be frank to this extent. Manuals
relating to contraception and sexual hygiene were written in
the Edo period, but they are entirely different from the genre
known as shunga.
Saikaku fed a fetish for the idea of the prim aristocratic girl
in the middle-class readers of his Life of a Sex-mad Man. He
included the observation,

It is rare for them to catch a glimpse of a male, and quite

impossible for them to get up to anything with them, so
right up to the age of twenty-four or five they turn bright
red if they catch sight of a rude pillow book or stumble in
on someone ‘laughing alone’. They stammer out, ‘this
won't do, Ifeel faint.’
of
This is a mythology of the effete virgin. The true facts of the
matter would have been totally unknown to a man of
Saikaku’s ilk. Shunga, albeit hidden, were surely to be found
in a daimyo mansion.
Aneighteenth-century source generally mentioned in this
context is an extract from the puppet play A Syllabary of the
Treasury of Loyal Retainers (Kanadehon chiishingura), which
was first performed in 1748 and became a runaway success.
One of the loyal retainers, Amakawa-ya Gihei, is bound for
Edo with a trunk of military hardware for use by his fellows
in the avenging of their dead master. At the barrier point at
Hakone, Gihei is commanded to open his trunk for inspec-
tion but refuses with the excuse that it contains ‘hand equip-
ment’, ‘laughing books’ and ‘laughing tools’ destined for a
daimyo’s wife, and that her name is written on the order
form.*' This is deemed reasonable, and the trunk passes
unopened. The note to the standard modern edition glibly
states that it was the custom to place shunga in trunks to ward
off fire.“ Under Edo law, daimyo wives were required to
reside permanently in the shogunal capital as surety against
rebellion by their husbands. For long periods wives would
be alone while these husbands were off governing their
home states. Who would need masturbation equipment more
than a daimyo’s wife, dynastically married, sequestered in
the women’s quarters and left behind?
White lies accrue around pornography. If a male buyer
excused himself with talk of ritual abstinence, a wife could
say she purchased it for fire safety in the home, and both
could claim the things were for the instruction of their
carefully raised daughters.
A third myth is also common, namely that soldiers kept
shunga in their helmets or war chests to prevent injury.
Latter-day samurai of the eighteenth century who never
knew danger and seldom drew their swords, pen-pushing
by day and retiring to barracks at night (as most did), seem
an obvious shunga market. They might have wished to claim
warrior-like pedigrees for their frustrated lifestyles and for
their shunga. By virtue of repetition, this myth might have
become fact too. Copious senryi on the placing of shunga
among armaments exist, and Henry Smith has calculated
from Hanasaki Kazuo and Aoki Meiro’s collection of senryii
that around a quarter of all shunga-related verses refer to
38
12 Utagawa
Kunisada, Lovers
Viewing a Shunga
Scroll, multi-
coloured wood-
block page from the
anonymous Shiki no
nagame (c. 1827).

military trunks. But Smith also quotes Hanasaki and Aoki’s

citation of a more credible work of 1717, Correcting Opinion
about Military Men (Buke zokusetsu ben), which condemns the
vanity of contemporary samurai, stating tersely that while
moderns may do this with their shunga, the mixing of
pornography with swords would not have been the wont of
heroes in the past.43 Once again, we have not fact but wishful
self-excusing.
One final ‘canard’ must be dealt with, namely the belief
that shunga were for collective viewing, as erotic arousal
among couples, not as solitary substitution. This myth is also
common in China. It is only maintainable by suppression
of the historical evidence to the contrary presented above,
and it is supported by a woefully naive interpretation of
the nature of the pictorial evidence. True, shunga showing
couples viewing shunga together are scattered through the
tradition: Kunisada’s Recitations for the Four Seasons (Shiki no
nagame) of c. 1827 includes such a scene (illus. 12). But these
are insufficiently common to take as a primary viewing con-
text, even within the fictional systematics of shunga them-
selves. People might occasionally have used shunga together,
but once real sex was initiated pictures would seem to
become rapidly superfluous, with painted genitals losing
appeal when live ones were at hand. Single users of shunga,
conversely, may well have wished to see their private actions
mirrored and expanded on the page they viewed, as if to
39
 support the authenticity of the orgasm they were giving
themselves. The myth of shared viewing is exploded by
Utamaro where he extends it to a myth of shared production.
In his Picture Book: The Laughing Drinker (Ehon warai jogo) of
c. 1803, he claimed that he made the pictures and his wife
coloured them in (the claim is made in the form of a mock
letter said to be written by her to the publisher); it concludes,
‘there is no better conjunction of yin and yang than for a wife
to add the colouring to drawings done by her husband.’44
Some scholars have taken this as proof that Utamaro was
married (something for which there is no other evidence).
But this is a pun: ‘colour’ (iro) also meant sex. Sharing sex was
the objective, but shunga users mostly operated as Jean-Jacques
Rousseau said of consumers of European pornography
(what he called ‘livres dangereux’): they read ‘d’une seule
main’.
Shunga depict private fantasies. The small amount of
evidence available suggests that at moments of prearranged
sexual encounter, or in professional locations (brothels),
shunga were kept well out of the way. It would have eroded
the myth so carefully fostered in the quarters that they were
locales of ethereal elegance. The better class of establishment
in fact had very good pictures on display, intended to repli-
cate what would be seen in a wealthy withdrawing room,
suspended in the formal alcove or painted on screens, and
sometimes by famous artists. Harunobu’s student Shiba
Kokan recorded seeing an Okyo work hanging in a brothel
on the Dotonbori in Osaka (the subject is not stated) in the
autumn of 1788, only months before Okyo was commis-
sioned to produce a series of works for the palace of the shujo
(emperor).4° There is also a senryu telling of a prostitute who
satisfied clients’ expectations for pictorial elegance in her
boudoir with a scroll by Kano Tan’yi, the pillar of academic
art, only, unable to get a real one, she hung up a fake.47 Iknow
of only one instance where pornography is shown as part of
the furnishings of a brothel, and that occurs in the unstable
position of a picture within a shunga picture (illus. 98).
In all situations it is necessary to view with caution the
internal evidence of the mendacious ‘shungatopia’. The
world was not, and could not, be as represented. This was
recognized at the time, and it is necessary to look no further
than senryi to discover jibes at those too foolish to know the
40
difference. Several point to discrepancies by reference to the
shunga pose:

The stupid couple

Try doing it as in shunga
And sprain their hands

Going all out

To copy shunga
They get muscle spasms*®

Pictures yes, but the recumbent person, and the wider social
body, will not bend to answer every sexual whim.

41
 2 Time and Place
in Edo Erotic Images

THE PROBLEM OF TIME

A great danger in art history is the temptation to believe that

an appreciation of images is equivalent to historical analysis.
Too often, a response to a work on an emotional level is
equated with understanding and thus taken as sufficient.
The argument would be that since works were originally
produced to solicit emotions, if we, in the present, are able to
feel something in front of them, then we have transcended
the barrier of time. The danger is particularly strong with
works where the type of response provoked is, as it were,
obvious. Religious art would fit here, as, of course, would
erotica. Modern people may be tempted to think that if they
can read shunga with, as Rousseau putit, ‘just one hand’, they
have also grasped Edo sexuality. But it is not so. Sexual thrill
is one of the most basic, animal, of sensations. But it is cultur-
ally encoded and not static. Reading Edo erotica in the same
way it was read at the time is a problematic undertaking, and
we can never be quite sure we feel what earlier viewers
would have felt. To be sexually stimulated by s/unga today is
to have one’s thrill locked into a vast array of specific external
factors and impulses which will have changed since the eight-
eenth century. It is necessary to stress this point, for while the
purpose of this book is to explain shunga, not to titillate the
reader, I must nevertheless accept that, as I have studied the
subject over many years, one of the most constant barriers |
have encountered is from those who simply wish to let
shunga be, that is, allow it to remain tools for their private
fantasies of Edo sex.
The prominent historian of European sexuality Robert
Darnton wrote of his experience when researching the X-
rated section of the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris. He
found traces of sperm on the books and was tempted, he con-
fided, to add his own stains.' As Darnton well knew, this was
to admit the special ability of erotic pictures and texts to
42
speak across time. But it was also to build a false bridge.
Empathy teaches nothing about the historical moment of
making. Distance is important.
In the first chapter we looked at the uses and consumption
of shunga imagery, including what | have called ‘normal’
pictures of the Floating World. I sought to overturn the
romanticist notion that Edo pictures were somehow different
from what we know similar images are produced for today.
In this chapter we will look more closely at the specific period
of shunga production and at how images were thought about
by people who did think about them, as distinct from those
content only to use them in a passionate craze. The nine-
teenth century dominated in the generation of myths of
shunga use. The eighteenth dominated their production and
their early critiques.
Shunga did not exist throughout Japanese history. Erotic
pictures may have done, but the particular system of images
considered here is specific to one period. Some scholars have
wished to treat the erotic work of all epochs as a single block,
linking images from even as far back as the eighth century
(such as the phallic drawings found in the rafters of the
ancient Temple of the Horya-ji) with paintings and prints of
one thousand years later. Yet even if all such images were
intended to provoke the same one-handed response (and we
cannot be certain they were), that same response would still
be constructed differently in each period. Every thread of the
web that ties gender, power, possession, escape and delight
would be different. Sexuality, we now know, has a history. If
we are to understand, we must keep our time periods as
short as possible.
Shunga were the result of the coming together of a specific
set of conditions. Most basically, of the economic and
libidinous structures of the cities of Edo and Osaka from the
turn of the seventeenth century. The surge of printing, the
spread of basic levels of education, and a highly artificial
demography were core elements. By the mid-nineteenth cen-
tury, the situation had evaporated into something else, and
although pornography continued to be produced, the condi-
tions had mutated sufficiently to require us to draw a line
and to consider a new age to have been entered. It might be
nice to take a smaller slice than the 120-odd years that | am
taking here, but the amount of data that survives and the
43
 stunted state of current scholarship precludes such a reduc-
tion at the present time.
We know little about the real extent of shunga circulation.
Hayashi Yoshikazu has estimated that a total of about 3,000
books would have been produced, each containing some
dozen pictures. The work of Asano Shtig6, Shirakura Yoshi-
hiko and others has resulted in listings of some of the more
sophisticated shunga books.* They have come up with twenty-
four books for Hishikawa Moronobu, five for Torii Kiyonaga,
seventeen for Nishikawa Sukenobu, twenty-two for Okumura
Masanobu, nine for Suzuki Harunobu, twenty-three for
Isoda Koryusai, seventeen for Kitagawa Utamaro and seven
for Utagawa Kunitora, to name only a few, although they do
not claim these to be exhaustive. We only have partial evi-
dence, and our estimates of quantity may be too low. Many
works survive only partially, or indeed just as titles men-
tioned in other contexts. Conversely, reissuings and the assign-
ing of new titles to old books may mislead by exaggeration.
To give figures only for the books illustrated by the great
masters twists our sense of the state of the market, which was
surely saturated by articles of a much cruder kind. Many
shunga books were unsigned, or signed with pen names that
leave the identity of writer and illustrator unclear. Not all
buyers even aimed at obtaining works by the celebrated
artists of the period. For many, expensive pornography was
superfluous.
Mere lists of titles are not particularly helpful in assessing
waves of production. Since much shunga material is undated
as well as unsigned, this matter is never likely to be entirely
sorted out, but no artist would have published at a constant
rate. It has been assessed, for example, that most of
Utamaro’s shunga came from the last ten years of his life,
about 1794-1803.? But outside the oeuvre of one person,
there were shared periods of explosion and repression.
Recent research does enable us to subject the matter to
some analysis. Matthi Forrer has been able to detect a first
surge in shunga in the third quarter of the seventeenth cen-
tury.‘ As is often said, this was when the Kamigata remained
the cultural centre, that is, the area around Osaka and Keishi,
with Edo still something of an outpost. Yoshida Hanbei was
working in Osaka, but Moronobu and Sugimura Jihei were
already active in Edo, and there is not much to choose
44
13 Hishikawa
Moronobu,
Lovers Indoors,
monochrome
woodblock page
from Hana no
katari (modern
title) (1679[?]).

between the two locations in terms of refinement. Edo was a

male-dominated city from the first, and this was exacerbated
by establishment of the system of Alternate Attendance (san-
kin kotai) in 1635, under which regional rulers were obliged to
stand attendance on the shogun intermittently, with retinues
of several hundred men. Edo was jokingly called the ‘city of
bachelors’, and it naturally had a vast capacity for sex-related
purchases. Most of the men lived in barrack conditions.
Some bought sexual partners (the licensed brothel district of
the Yoshiwara was established in 1618 and relocated and
upgraded in 1657). More would have gone for the cheaper
option of sexual fantasy in print. It is not hard to envisage
why shunga served a necessary role. Paintings had to be
treated with care as they were luxury items. Prints were
cheap, stainable and disposable.
Moronobu’s books are perhaps the best examples of these
early shunga. They tend to take the form of a series of un-
related pictures, frequently twelve. The first is anodyne, the
rest erotic, but otherwise there is little discernible progression
(illus. 13). Twelve would allow pictures to fall naturally into
a sequence of one per month, with changes of appropriate
flowers, clothes or furnishings. The genre of paintings of the
cycle of months (fsukinami-zu) was established among acade-
mic artists, and in general seasonality is a governing factor in
many of the Edo arts, so this might account for the twelve ofa
shunga set. But, if so, the potential of the arrangement was not
much explored. There is little seasonal advance, nor, with the
changing of the cast on each page, is there a story.
The figures that appear in these images mirror the aspira-
tions of their users. If pictures were viewed by single men
45
 unable to find a partner, it would not be surprising that
they should include depictions of the kind of person those
men would typically hope their partners to be. High-grade
prostitutes figure, as do maidservants and female function-
aries. The cult of the yijo, or prostitute, as exemplified by
the upper echelons of the women indentured in the Yoshi-
wara, invaded Edo male consciousness and had a notable
effect on manipulating desire, which was in turn inevitably
reflected in imagery. It was easier to spare time and money
to look at a book than to visit a brothel and so, by equipping
shunga with Yoshiwara-like settings, the concrete fantasies
of the constructed reality of the red-light districts could be
recreated on the page. This was far from the actual domestic
experiences of most Edo men, and far even from the pur-
chased sexual encounters of any but the most spendthrift or
wealthy. Pictures offer just enough of the seed of authenticity
for excitement to grow.
A second surge occurred in the 1710s with Nishikawa
Sukenobu, active in Keishi (Kyoto). He became famous enough
to give his name to the pornographic idiom as a whole, as
‘nishikawa-e’. Sukenobu produced shunga into the early 1720s,
but his output diminished. In fact, very few shunga books at
all were produced in the 1720s. Okumura Masanobu was
the only major player, and his pictures often depart from pre-
vious norms by being illustrations to a longer accompanying
text. In 1722 there was an initial attempt to control shunga,
and it may have been this that temporarily interrupted the
genre. The code of control was issued by the Edo magistracy
as a machibure, not a shogunal law.>
The shogun at this point was the eighth in the Tokugawa
line, Yoshimune. He had assumed power in 1716 and held it
for almost thirty years. Immediately on taking office he
embarked on a comprehensive governmental clean-out and
issued a raft of legislation known as the Kydho Reforms.
Among the edicts, which this time did carry the weight of the
central bureaucracy, was one stating in lumpen official prose,

Whereas, among material heretofore published by houses

of edition there have been books on sexual matters some
of which are not conducive to good mores, and all of
which are constantly changing, these are no longer to be
produced.°
46
This law was the first of its kind. It is important to note the
precise terms. Outlawed are kdshokubon that are not con-
ducive to good ftizoku. The first of these terms has been dis-
cussed in Chapter One; it implies books of an overt sexual
nature and is pretty much the same as the later term shunga.
Frizoku is a crucial Edo-period concept that will detain us
below. It is generally translated as ‘manners and customs’,
that is, social behaviour as regulated by disciplining tradi-
tions. Apparently, the shogunate is permitting educational
sex manuals, and possibly also books that offer masturbatory
releases which sublimate upsetting erogenous drives, but it is
ruling out works that aggravate ever-novel sexual encounters.
Is there a difference? Here is one of the chestnuts of porno-
graphic discussion: do pictures dissipate the urge in rapid
hand movements, or do they incline to sexual activity involv-
ing (sometimes unwilling) third parties?
In sum, the main points to make about erotica in the first
half of the eighteenth century relate to its increasing scarcity.
Relatively little was produced until the first half of the 1760s.
This silence is salient for those who see the Edo period as a
time of unmodulated sexual ease. The reasons for so pro-
tracted a lull are difficult to determine, since neither the civic
code nor the Kycho law seems to have been reissued, as they
would have to be to remain in force.
This gradual fading was reversed by a boom that began as
part of a revival of interest stemming from the invention of a
technology of printing in full colour. These so-called ‘brocade
pictures’ (nishiki-e) were the collective achievement of a group
of thinkers and artists, based in Edo, most of whom were
active in the Floating World but who also had interests in the
more general world of visual representation. Several were
involved with imported styles, such as those coming from Ming
China or from Europe, together with their respective systems
of viewing. Hiraga Gennai and his neighbour Harunobu
were pivotal; Harunobu’s pupil, initially called Harushige, was
to become one of the foremost producers of Western-style
imagery, under the name of Shiba Kokan. The first multi-
coloured prints were a series of calendars for 1765, allowing
their dating to be precisely established; the numbers of the long
and short months were hidden within the designs (illus. 18).7
Early eighteenth-century printing was not markedly
different in the Kamigata and Edo, but colour prints brought
47
a change, and were closely enough associated with Edo to be
called ‘eastern brocade pictures’ (azuma-nishiki-e), or simply
‘Edo pictures’ (Edo-e). Other cities were not initially able to
replicate the technology, and in the early nineteenth century
visitors to the Kamigata from Edo were still supercilious
about the efforts of publishers there.®
There was no reason why colour printing could not have
been used to depict the whole range of subjects in the pic-
torial tradition. A few artists, such as Utagawa Toyoharu,
experimented with topographical views or with scenes from
history and legend. But it was not until some three-quarters
of a century after the invention of the technique that colour-
print artists routinely used the medium with anything
approaching a full spectrum of themes. The name of Hokusai
is prominent, but he flourished only in the second quarter of
the nineteenth century, and his work was instrumental in
bringing about the change. Initially, colour prints were
marked as the medium of the Floating World. Perhaps this
was part of what was so ‘Edo’ about them. The Yoshiwara
was celebrated throughout the Japanese states as the sine qua
non of flamboyant entertainment, the best red-light district
by far. Prints were closely linked to its field of entertainment
and that meant also to desire; the other arena was kabuki
theatre, which, again, steamed with the eroticism of its stars.
Although the very first colour print batch of calendars for the
year 1765 was not related to either prostitution or acting, they
were provocative none the less. The arousal of the male
viewer was evidently their point, as is clear in Harunobu’s
calendar showing a woman rushing to gather in her washing
during a shower; her skirts pull open to reveal shapely legs,
her clog falls off, giving the air of confusion beloved of Edo
males, and she is more comely than the average woman
employed in such labour. Throughout the remainder of the
century, the emphasis continued to be on the litheness and
appealing nature of young bodies, whether female or male.
Colour-printed shunga appeared immediately. But they
were expensive. It was one thing to have a coloured calendar
which would function throughout the year; it was another to
buy coloured pictures for incidental private pleasure. It
might be imagined that those who had experienced colour
printing were loath to go back to the more rudimentary
forms of semicolour or hand-tinted pictures (such as tan-e or
48
benizuri-e), much less black-and-white. But it is incorrect to
suppose that Edo suddenly went polychrome across the board.
If anything, as the century drew to a close, the brief flirtation
with colour that can be detected immediately after 1765 came
to an end as users discovered that the improved results did
not justify the greater outlay, or at least not in the case of
pornography. Forrer has calculated that of the thirty-one
erotic books (kdshokubon) known to have been published
between about 1765 and 1771, twenty-three are in colour,
which does indeed suggest an infatuation with the medium.
But then from 1772 to 1788 (a span more than twice as long),
only eighteen colour books were produced out of a total of
86 known.?
This trend away from deluxe shunga has been obscured
by art historians who have been on the ceaseless quest for
‘masterpieces’, or for innovation and progress, to the occlu-
sion of underlying habits. The return to non-colour may be
largely attributable to cost, but it may be that colour prints
were too cumbersome or too embarrassingly visible. Older
shunga were often bound in book format with the design run-
ning across the central gutter, so that the whole was fairly
small, whereas coloured prints were more commonly sewn
together as unfolded sheets. Throughout the Edo period,
most illustrated books in all genres were monochrome, and
so it is not surprising that shunga were too. Is it likely that an
average buyer would spend more on erotica than on erudite
titles? Such questions can only be answered on the level of
assumption, but what can be said with assurance is that,
despite what is often claimed about Edo citizens’ spendthrift
nature and love of splashy sex, they did not seem to spend a
great deal on their pornography, or not on any single item:
collections might have become costly.
The shunga market was not unitary of course, and there are
numerous variant cases. Men and women possibly bought
different things — not only preferring different images, but
also different formats, and in different price brackets. Rich
and poor would not consume the same, and it is also possible
that older and younger spent differently. But for all, overt
pornography came in the form of books, not single or bound
sheet prints. This may have to do with the process of mastur-
bation, wherein the masturbator takes time to pass througha
series of images as he or she builds fantasies. Books were also
49
 easier to hide and store when not in use and did not become
so dogeared or torn. They could be placed anonymously ina
stack, with the contents unexposed. Most prevalent in
shunga books is the koban or ‘small block’ size, measuring
about 23 x 17 cm; this is rarely seen for other sorts of book,
which suggests that, although an erotic work might be
immediately identified by its shape, even if the cover were
closed, it had about it the aura (and also the facts) of secrecy.
Ease of hiding does not seem to have been irrelevant to
purchasers. There is the senryii verse quoted above: ‘Porno-
graphic pictures/Stowed each day/In a different place.’?°
This again runs counter to clichés about Edo acceptance
of the eroticization of the home environment. Booksellers
wrapped works up, exposing a tempting cover to entice,
while leaving the contents unknown until the purchase had
been made. This also kept the pictures out of reach of the
young and innocent. Wrapping was also used as a means of
segregating politically polemic or satirical stories.
The size of shunga books was not static. In fact, it changed
remarkably. Forrer has counted at least fifty sizes, far in
excess of those used for other types of book, and many
indeed peculiar to pornography. There was such constant
alteration that it appears deliberate (the Kyoho law refers to
this), with publishers anxious to give their books a fluid, ever-
novel feel, perhaps to compensate for their falling behind
technologically in the persistent use of old-fashioned mono-
chrome, and often being very carelessly finished to boot.
Lavish shunga made a comeback in the 1780s and ‘gos,
almost two decades after full-colour printing had begun.
Why? Lavishness was seen not only in tonality, but in scale.
The ‘large block’, or oban, was used, which at nearly 40 x 26
cm had virtually twice the dimensions of the koban. These are
probably the kind of pictures that the modern reader associ-
ates with the word shunga.
By this time Harunobu was long dead and his pupil Haru-
shige (later Kokan) was no longer working in the Floating
World idiom. Buta number of fine artists were producing for
an avid market, and this second generation brought colour
printing to its highest levels, and perhaps its prices to their
(then) all-time low. It is recorded that a coloured work cost
about the price of a cheap meal out." Politically this was
when Tanuma Okitsugu controlled the central council,
50
14 Kitagawa
Utamaro, Lovers,
multi-coloured
woodblock page
froma shunga
album, Utamakura
(1788).

under the inept shogun Tokugawa Ieharu. A vast disparity

had opened up between rich and poor, with the former
enjoying unparalleled affluence and the latter starving in
greater numbers than had previously been thought accept-
able. This is not the judgement of the present so much as the
constantly repeated plaint of those alive at the time. This will
be more closely considered below, but arrivism was identi-
fied as a hallmark of the age. If the newly rich hardly needed
prints (they could buy paintings), a host of smaller entre-
preneurs might move up into the colour-print bracket, and
all could upgrade the quality of their ephemera. Floating
World painting (‘normal’ and pornographic) also increased
in quantity and quality; the exemplars are Katsukawa
Shunsho, his pupil Shuncho, Torii Kiyonaga, Chobunsai
Eishi and of course Kitagawa Utamaro. Still, even in this
period, less than half of shunga books were coloured. Uta-
maro’s first effort was monochrome and was probably pub-
lished in 1786, the year of Ieharu’s death and the first
crumbling of Okitsugu’s power, under the title Erotic Book:
Dew on the Chrysanthemum (Ehon kiku no tsuyu). Many erotic
books include the term ‘erotic book’ (ehon) in their title,
which alerts the buyer and stops mistaken purchases. (We
may recall how Samuel Pepys accidentally bought a porno-
graphic work in London in 1668, after being led astray by
the title, Ecole des Filles; he claimed he had bought the book
in all honesty ‘for my wife to translate’ and was so scandal-
ized that when he had finished reading the work — and,
yal
 importantly, masturbating while doing so — he burned it.)'?
Inclusion of the term ‘eon’ removed the useful excuse of
mistaken purchase, but this was a pun, for ehon, if written
with the character e for ‘picture’ (not ‘sex’), means ‘illus-
trated book’; aurally the two could not be distinguished.
Perhaps the finest example of the printed erotica of this
period is Utamaro’s set of 1788, The Pillow of Verses (Utama-
kura), published by Tsuta-ya Jazabur6 as twelve sheets of
oban (illus. 14). Ieharu’s successor Ienari was by this time
installed as the eleventh shogun. The following year saw the
beginning of the Kansei era, with the well-known
repressions that will be considered below. The appearance of
multi-coloured large-block erotica in the Kansei era needs
explaining. Utamaro’s set is not the only one. For example,
Shuncho produced a sensational Thread of Male and Female
Sexual Encounter of the Modern Sort (Imayo irokumi no ito) — also
consisting of twelve leaves of 6ban in full colour — in 1789. It
was perhaps precisely the clamp-down on other forms of
popular cultural expression by the post-Okitsugu regime that
provoked purchase of surrogate imagery for one-handed
reading at home. Semi-secret purchases were the only ones
that could still be extravagant, as limits were placed on the
number of colours and sizes of book that publishers could
issue openly. Frustrations at proscriptions on the brothel
world were relieved by a fetishistic attention to sexually
orientated books, and cash that might have been kept for the
world’s oldest means of stress relief was available for porno-
graphic purchases instead.

REACTIONS

The above appraisal, I think, goes as far as it is possible to do,

given the present state of research. But the baldness of such
data cannot furnish a complete picture. To gauge that, we
would have to know how many times each book was read,
how much it was passed around between readers, what kind
of excitement greeted each new publication and each reread-
ing. It is quite possible, for example, that lavishly produced
books such as those by Utamaro and Shuncho, which form
the basis of the recent boom in shunga studies with its agenda
to insinuate erotica under the umbrella of ‘Japanese art’,
52
actually had the least impact, since owners of expensive
works were more likely to keep them carefully for them-
selves and not show them about too much or risk their get-
ting stained. This would mean that the best shunga has the
least relevance for the study of sexuality.
But even these questions cannot unload the imagery of all
its meaning. We need to know not only how shunga were
enjoyed by those who owned them, but also how those who
did not do so kept them at bay. What did the majority think
about shunga? What would they think if they found some in
the possession of a son, daughter, parent, spouse, sibling,
colleague or neighbour? So much study nowadays is under-
taken by enthusiasts and collectors whose purpose is extenu-
ation and whose judgements laudatory that the situation has
become hard to reconstruct. But actually Edo literature is not
short on characterizations of the good bourgeois outraged by
wastage of time and money in the pleasure quarters. The
belief (held by some today) that the Yoshiwara was somehow
the natural orbit of Edoite culture would have seemed pre-
posterous to the many sober merchants worried about the
impact sex had on their family morals and budgets. Many
figures in the shogunal bureaucracy were concerned at the
snowball effect that had given prostitution a much greater
visibility in Edo than had ever been envisaged when the
Yoshiwara had been set up under shogunal licence. Stories
that tell of wastrel sons being disinherited by abstemious
fathers because of riotous living (which always includes ele-
ments of sexual extravagance in the Yoshiwara) are a staple
of Edo lore and fiction. Rakes’ progresses always end in ruin.
We should not forget either that, if the Yoshiwara had its
sophisticating side, it was also a place of crudity and delete-
riousness. The youth of Edo are praised today as bastions of
refinement and their mutual words of praise, such as tsi
(fashionable) and iki (refined and understated), crop up in
most current scholarly writings. But these words arose from
the requirement of the few to distance themselves from the
many. Brothel areas had an ample numbers of toughs too.
The stock character of the boorish yob (yabo) up from the
country was not the only ugly type on the streets, and in
general, the Edoites’ love of fighting also had a place in their
lore. Fights were not just the outpouring of the energy and
ebullience of the townsman class (as one often reads) but
oy)
could have serious consequences for person and property.
Family ties unravelled during the overheating of Okitsugu
economics, and controlling youthful behaviour became a
matter of concern to the authorities. In 1791 there was the
first shogunal attempt to deal with this, in the issuance of a
law to combat youth (wakamono) delinquency.'+ There is no
necessary link between unmannerliness and the reading of
shunga, except that critics of the time felt sure there was. With
their loosening of sexualized culture from its constraints in
the designated out-of-town districts and its descent into the
cities, pictures of the Floating World (cleaned up, cheap and
attractive) brought brothel norms into the streets.
By the end of the eighteenth century, the Tokugawa
regime was approaching its third century. There was great
unrest. The celebrations for the 150th anniversary of the
death of Tokugawa Ieyasu, founder of the regime, were
scheduled for 1766, but it was recommended that they be
cancelled for fear the citizenry turn them into a mockery
through antigovernment protests.‘> People drew connec-
tions between the various problem areas they detected
around them, from bad harvests to government corruption,
to youth violence, to family decline. As the eleventh shogun
took over, it became clear just how far society had diverged
from the founding principles. It would be absurd for the
modern historian to isolate a single cause of malaise in a
change in the representation of sex. But sex meandered into
so many walks of life that there were plenty of Edoites who
did see it as a cause, whether or not the critic of today con-
curs. The dilemma raised by the world of sex, and specifi-
cally by the pleasure districts (which formed the pillars of
the edifice of sexual myth), was that they encouraged fash-
ion. Fashion meant shift and the need to spend to keep
abreast of it. The Floating World was the natural enemy of
the fixed world, as the Kyoho had already recognized. It was
by shift that society was taken ever further away from its
original structure, as established by the first Tokugawa
rulers, and it was by shift that the poor were outpaced and
fell into moroseness caused by debt and want, while the rich
became extravagant. The pleasure districts had been the
places where such flux was tolerated (they were the
‘Floating Worlds’) as safety valves that enabled greater pres-
sure to be put on normal urban life. Pains had been made to
D4
keep the two worlds distinct: the Yoshiwara was some two
hours journey from central Edo. Through pictures, they
leaked across.
Floating World prints were elaborate in the attention they
gave to interior furnishings, personal accessories and dress.
They egged on buyers and made the (again cleaned-up) life-
style of the epicentres of fashion into something visible in
any bourgeois context. The pace of change and the dictatorial
force of fashion were not even stable increments, but were
said to be increasing. Fashion was growing faster and ever
more extreme. Matsudaira Sadanobu was the shogunal coun-
sellor (r0jfi shiiza) from 1787 and became author of the Kansei
Reforms; the escalation of fashion was one of his themes. He
recorded in his Words Beneath the Eaves (Uge no hitokoto) the
observation that older people dressed more modestly than
the young, not because they discarded fashionable clothes
with advancing age, but because, in the past, such dress had
been fashion enough>

If you look at old women in their seventies, you wil] note

how none of them wears silver hairpins or tortoise-shell
combs; they only use dark shell or ivory, and their orna-
mental pins are just bamboo. But no-one uses such things
today and few even restrict themselves to silver... In
clothing and other appurtenances, materials unknown
just twenty years ago are now everywhere.”

Old fashions had lasted for longer, but when they became
passé it was to make way for more expensive fabrics and orna-
mentation. This is probably what was meant by the senryi,
‘Utamaro’s/ Beautiful women on a screen/Grow old’.’7 You
could not even display a Floating World print for very long
before it had to be replaced with something more up to date.
Ishino Hiromichi, the author of an interesting ramble
through matters related to pictures, written about 1797,
linked change specifically to art. In his Truth in Pictures
(Esoragoto) he wrote that it was the erotica of modern life that
promoted shift, for the bald and ribald depictions of sex of
the traditional sort (which he called toba-e) were remarkably
static over centuries. The Yoshiwara made a commodity of
sex, turned it into the powerhouse of change, and then used
pictures to promote this among the common people.
55
 There are many pictures of prostitutes, entertainers and
actors, and all show them in modern dress; in just five or
ten years there has been a monumental shift . . . What
never change are toba-e . . . Generation after generation
they are passed on identically.*®

The Kyoho Reforms accepted this division of the field when

they banned books that challenged and degraded the stability
of fiizoku. The laws made no mention of other sorts of erotic
works — toba-e for instance — which could still be produced.

SEX AND SOCIETY

The fear that sex might overtake life, and that the erotic
behaviour of male and female prostitutes, as depicted in
ukiyo-e, might infect normal people, had been intermittently
expressed throughout the Edo period. The Yoshiwara, ini-
tially located near Nihonbashi (the ‘Original’ or Moto-
Yoshiwara), was relocated to beyond Asakusa in 1657,
making it considerably further away from Edo proper; the
Shimabara in Keishi and the pleasure districts of several other
cities were similarly sited. There were various reasons for the
(re)locations, such as to safeguard against fire, brothels
necessarily needing artificial lighting at night. But the inten-
tion was also to keep the women there beyond encounter
with the bourgeoisie of the city, to the detriment of the
latter’s ‘manners and customs’. Even when a pleasure dis-
trict was nearer (and the Shimabara was not far from Keishi,
although there was a cordon sanitaire of open fields), prosti-
tutes and other workers were not permitted to leave its
confines. Nagasaki was the only city where sex-workers
were tolerated roaming the city to encounter such ordinary
civilians as might be on the streets after dark (which few civil
women were). Legitimate intermixing was unique to Naga-
saki, and this may be one of the reasons why that place was
always said to have evolved the most vulgar and coarsest
fuizoku — an opinion that was expressed by many, including
the topographical researcher Furukawa Koshoken, later
employed by Sadanobu for his regional knowledge.
(Perhaps unbeknown to Sadanobu, Koshoken was himself a
pornographer, working under the pseudonym Kibi Sanjin.)
56
The German physician Engelbert Kaempfer observed at the
turn of the seventeenth century that the citizens of Nagasaki
were ‘the greatest debauchees and the lewdest people in the
whole Empire’.'? Behaviour in Nagasaki was notoriously
difficult to control because of the presence there of so many
unorthodox entities, not just prostitutes but foreigners. It
was accepted that spillage across systems of body language
would occur there. But it was not condoned elsewhere.
Yet non-licensed brothel districts emerged, and women
did walk the streets. But in Edo, at least, the extra-legal
venues sensibly stuck to the perimeters of town, and so these
were generically known as the ‘hill places’ (oka-basho) and
were at Shinagawa, Naito-Shinjuku and Fukagawa. Later, in
1841, this sequestration of female prostitution was matched
with the removal of theatre boys, who were gathered from
the brothels-cum-kabuki fan centres (around Sakai-cho) and
consolidated in Saruwaka-ch6, far from the centre.
Already during the sixth shogunate, in the early years of
the eighteenth century, fears had been expressed by Arai
Hakuseki, a close shogunal advisor and Confucian expert.
Hakuseki deplored how the manners of the Yoshiwara and
the theatre and prostitution district of Sakai-cho were perme-
ating the rest of the city, and, although he did not cite pictures
(at this time the Floating World medium had not reached its
apogee), some kind of reportage must have been responsible,
since not everyone went to either locale. Hakuseki’s opinion,
offered directly to the shogun, Ienobu, was recorded by the
scholar Muro Kyuso:

Arai said: In the time of the Third Shogun [Iemitsu, r.

1623-51] elite customs flourished, and trickled down to
those below. But in later ages, the elite’s ways deteriorated
and the behaviour of the base people gradually worked
up. Nowadays, in Edo and elsewhere, you notice that
youth hairstyles and clothing patterns are just like those of
the lads (yaro) in Sakai-cho, while domestic maids look
like prostitutes from the Yoshiwara . . . Things are
improper, vulgar and lewd.*°

Hakuseki was known to be something of a crierinthe wilder-

ness, and his fears do not seem to have reflected the majority
thinking. But by the end of the century such claims were
D7,
 routine. Moriyama Takamori was a shogunal retainer much
favoured by Sadanobu, and he wrote of the situation in the
1780s,

Combs were painted red with arched tops, and were made
very long widthways; little girls were given flower[-shaped]
hairpins or ones with flowers fixed onto them. This was
done in imitation of trainee prostitutes in the louche
quarter called the Yoshiwara.*"

First the ordinary townspeople succumbed to the vortex of

the Floating World, then even the senior ranks fell. Daimyo
began to patronize actors and prostitutes, inviting them to
their mansions, and mimicked their slick behaviour by learn-
ing to play brothel instruments (like the three-stringed
shamisen) or by singing in the theatrical mode (kouta).
Takamori told of ‘eldest sons of up-standing families’ who
were now practising such music, and even the shogun’s
senior retainers (hatamoto) were ‘following the behaviour of
female impersonators or kabuki swells’.27 Soon, those
‘kabuki dregs were so deliriously popular they were copied
from house to house, and when night fell, colleagues col-
lected and rushed off’. Class and decency dissolved, ‘there
was no district from [commoner] Shitamachi to [samurai]
Yamanote where any girl with a bit of looks wasn’t getting
herself up as a geisha and setting about learning the shamisen,
and scarcely a soul now plays the biwa, so as to idle about
with cacophonous friends’.*} To him, most people only went
to the theatre ‘in order to have orgies with young men and
women’.*4 Then there was Takenouchi Hachir6, son of the
governor of Bingo. ‘One recoils at the mention of him’,
thought Takamori, who then mentioned him at length:

if he’s staying out somewhere and meets a geisha, or if

some other dubious little girl flounces past, this Hachiro,
who will not, of course, even be wearing his military
trousers and other distinctions, sticks his hands in his
breast, sidles up in his sleek footwear and greets her as if
they were of equal rank and station:

This was not just rumour, for ‘when he once saw me while
doing this he evinced not one iota of shame, but breezed on,

58
although he ought not to have been able to look me in the
face’.*> Pictures served to keep the mind occupied during
moments when duties prevented one meeting Yoshiwara
women or Sakai-cho boys in person (although one shogunal
officer moved his desk to the Yoshiwara to hold his business
meetings there so he need never be without sensualized
company).”°
In 1785 a hatamoto demonstrated the extent to which
brothel culture had undermined proper norms in the gross-
est outrage against the order imaginable: he performed
double love suicide (shinjii) with a prostitute. This conven-
tion of mutually assisted suicide was a last resort when social
rules made a satisfactory liaison impossible. It was the stuff
of many fine plays and stories and was occasionally under-
taken by the desperate throughout the Edo period, although
officially banned.’7 It was bad enough when a townsman did
it, but the new implication that sex professionals could con-
trol the life of a very senior samurai was absolute perversion,
by rights, a samurai’s life was his lord’s, to keep or throw
away as only he deemed fit. The event shocked Edo and left
a legacy in the writings of Sugita Genpaku, an important
physician and compiler of the degradations of the age in a
chronicle called Gleanings in Hindsight (Nochimigusa):

Goodness knows what overcame him, but he had a love

suicide pact with one Ayai, a prostitute from the Obishi-ya
brothel in the New Yoshiwara. When the shogunate heard
of this, they declared it conduct unbecoming of his rank,
and contrary to virtuous behaviour. They had his body
exhumed and mutilated. Nothing like it had ever hap-
pened before.?®

Some years later, the then-shogun Ienari himself became

infected and, yearning to experience the Yoshiwara, which
decorum forbade him to visit, he built the architectural form
of a brothel beside the shogunal residence in the Western
Enceinte of Edo Castle, complete with the latticed front room
in which the women displayed their charms.” All thought,
‘what a thing for him to augustly delight in, and raised their
eyebrows’.
With such examples being set by the elite, it was small
wonder that the lower orders now seemed to be living ina
ao
 permanent state of sexual excitement, with commensurate
obliviousness to higher ideals. Edo was no longer like the
Osaka made famous through Ihara Saikaku’s stories of the
1680s about the occasional sex-mad man or woman (kdshoku-
otoko/onna), or even five sex-mad women ~as appeared in the
titles of his best-selling fiction.°°
To Genpaku, pictures were indeed the instruments of the
spread of evil manners. He went on, ‘And we now have
things called “laughing pictures” depicting contemporary men
and women in the nude and engaged in the most appalling
acts, which they display for sale in the public street.’3!
The shogun Ieharu, who died in 1786, had been a lover of
ukiyo-e and, although he did not go as far as his successor
lenari, in retrospect he appeared culpable. He extensively
patronized Chobunsai Eishi, anomalously both a Floating
World artist and a samurai of rank (he was the first son of the
shogun’s minister of finances). Unlike most of the rest, Eishi
was able to frequent popular circles and purvey his style in
the form of gifts to top people. He had trained in the govern-
ment academies of the Kano School, of which his teacher had
been the most senior master; this was Kano Eisen-in Michi-
nobu, who held a battery of titles and accolades, notably
shogunal ‘Interior Painter’ (the summit of the artistic tree).>2
Fishi ought, many surely felt, to have remained true to
Michinobu’s uplifting sense of theme. But he went on to
produce an unspecified body of work for the shogun, bring-
ing visions of the Yoshiwara, Sakai-ché and other ‘floating’
locales into the corridors of power. In this persona Eishi
blithely fused the academic pedigree onto his new manner,
adopting a name that derived from both his Kano and his
Floating World teachers, Eisen-in Michinobu and B unry sai,
combining these into Chobunsai Eishi.
The lionization of Eishi may be contrasted with the treat-
ment accorded Hanabusa Itcho a century or so earlier. Itcho
had trained under the then senior Kano master, Yasunobu,
but had suffered expulsion in about 1670 for becoming too
involved with trivial styles such as that of the emerging
Floating World. In 1698, Itcho was exiled to a distant island
for taking two members of the shogunal family (Motoatsu
Tadatoshi and Rokkaku Hiroharu, both relations of Keisho-
in, the powerful mother of the fifth shogun, Tsunayoshi) to
the Yoshiwara.** The charge may have been trumped up, but
60
Itcho was only allowed back to Edo in 1709 at the age of
nearly sixty. In short, Itcho was expelled from the senior site
of official Tokugawa representation (the Kano School) for his
engagement with the Floating World, and then from Edo
altogether for bringing the shogunate and the Yoshiwara
together. Eishi, by contrast, was showered with praise and
brought further into the centre of Tokugawa power, being
allotted a lodging within Edo Castle itself.
The shogun Ienari went further in even tempting the
family of the shujo (emperor) to do the same. In 1800 a senior
prince-abbot (monzeki), MyOho-in-no-Miya, happened to be
in Edo, where he was introduced to a scroll commissioned by
the shogun from Eishi.+ The prince-abbot liked it and was
invited to take it back for more leisurely inspection by him-
self and his seniors in Keishi. He did so, showing it to the
retired shujé (emperor) Toshiko (posthumously, Go-Sakura-
machi). The scroll, no longer extant, is described as being
‘pictures of the River Sumida’. This seems to be a subject that
was popularized by Eishi, and several by him, and by his fol-
lowers, survive.2> Notall are identical, but generally they cel-
ebrate the journey up the Sumida from the Willow Bridge in
Edo to the San’ ya Ditch, and then by foot on to the Yoshiwara
(such was the usual route of access) (illus. 15). Many end up
with the travellers who have been depicted as taking this
route relaxing in a brothel (illus. 20). It is less the beauties of
the river bank than the rites of movement of the tremulous
sybarite as he seeks sexual pleasure that are being shown.
Toshiko, famous as a quiet, scholarly type, was also a sober
sixty years old at this point and, moreover, was one of the
infrequent female shujo. Did she really need to see such
things? But, far from being shocked, she let it be known she
had officially viewed the scroll, thereby permitting Eishi to
take the coveted title of tenran (‘viewed by the court’). This
event made its way into the official annals of Edo painting,
the Expanded Record of Old Painting (Zocho koga biko), where it
is stated in a taut tautology,

The reason why Eishi used a tenran seal was that a prince
who was in the East [Edo] saw his picture of the River
Sumida, and offered it to the sento [retired shujo], who
was impressed by it. On his return to Kyoto the prince
made a gift of the River Sumida picture to the sento who
61
 thought its beauty without blemish, and who to the last 15 Chobunsai Eishi,
Life on the River
kept it in her storehouse. Thus it was that he used the Sumida, 1828, pair
tenran seal.>° of six-fold screens,
ink and colour on
paper.
Encroachment of the Yoshiwara into Edo civic life was a
gradual process, but it took a major step in 1771. That year
the Yoshiwara burned down, and owners of the devastated
houses of entertainment petitioned for temporary accom-
modation during the rebuilding work. After debate, they
were granted a site in Edo, albeit enclosed by water: the small
island of Nakazu, in the Sumida between the bridges of
Shin’ohashi and Eitai-bashi.>”7 This was the era of Tanuma
Okitsugu. Policing was lax and, after reconstruction of the
Yoshiwara, the Nakazu district was allowed to remain; it was
still there nearly twenty years later.
The profits gleaned from dealing in boys and women
outdid earnings from many more regular businesses, a fact
that was soon realized by the Edo townspeople presented
with such enterprises operating virtually on their doorsteps.
There were those who reacted by diverting their acumen
towards these industries. In Genpaku’s words,

Recently, the trend has been on the increase, with erection

of make-shift brothels called ‘hells’ on new ground round
the back of normal people’s houses and sometimes quite
near to important residences. Men rent out their own
daughters, and on days when customers are many they
even rent out their wives.>®

It was not only depravity: it was apocalypse. The rule of

Okitsugu came to a calamitous end ina string of bad harvests
with attendant misery for the people, projected onto a cosmic
scale by a collapse of the stable order of life in tidal wave,
earthquake and volcanic eruption. The 1780s was a time of
62
unparalleled geological instability, which, according to the
prevailing thought processes, was attributable to the inade-
quacy of the rulers’ maintenance of the protocols of filzoku.
Shunga was part of the deluge, as a whole cultural system
seemed to be coming to an end.
A vignette of the extent to which social ritual had been
suborned by sex was recorded by Matsura Seizan, daimyo of
Hirado: instead of people exchanging the established pictor-
ial greetings at New Year, with auspicious imagery of cranes,
pines, bamboo ete., they were decorating cards with porno-
graphy.°? Another instance was the daimyo of Matsue, who
took to holding tea ceremonies in the nude.*°

REFORM

Okitsugu, lax though he might have been, was more a sym-

ptom than a cause of the disasters visited on the period.
Matsudaira Sadanobu, though, personally began a process
of villainization of him shortly after himself being selected as
head of the shogunal council, and this continues to colour
historical writing. Sadanobu’s Kansei Reforms were as much
aimed at the rectification of fiizoku as the economic restruc-
turing for which they are famous, and their objective was the
removal of the whole culture of the preceding period.
Everyone thought it a good thing that Ieharu died childless,
allowing a new start, and if Okitsugu initially thought he
could control the incoming Ienari (still a child), he was soon
no longer in a position to do so. Even if not an improvement
in the long run, there was initial enthusiasm for the new
Ienari and Genpaku, for one, was delighted enough to termi-
nate his ledger of acrimony with a paean to the new regime,
which had reformed manners in just three months.*
Sadanobu for his part wrote that,

Manners and customs are not loud and showy any more
and people like what is pure. They have improved to an
excellent degree. Women dislike sashes and other items
made with flamboyant imported gold thread. They just go
about wearing light silk, not showy, but simple . . . Just ten
years ago people were paying vast sums for hairpins of the
greatest intricacy, and a single one sold for significant
63
 sums. They were banned by law, and now are scarcely to
be seen.”

Takamori of course followed suit:

Society at large was subject to immediate change and

those guilty of vice and error and suspicious behaviour
were expelled, while profligate youth, among whom you
could scarcely tell a samurai from a townsman, who up to
the day before had known only riot and feebleness of
mind, realized what they were up against and shortened
their clothes and donned more modest attire, changing
their style. The sight of them going about with looks of
high dudgeon, all those who had never previously givena
thought to education or the fine and martial arts, was
enough to send me into hysterics.

Expensive fabric smacked of luxury and so of prostitution. In

1788, Sadanobu had outlined in a treatise on government
that ‘the correction of manners and customs is the first oblig-
ation of rulers’ and this depended on ‘keeping luxury in
check’.+4 The words were intended both as an indictment of
the old administration and as a statement of his aims. In the
summer of the next year, 1789, Sadanobu sent workers to dig
up Nakazu. The entertainers of various ilks moved back to
the Yoshiwara. This was no doubt greeted with regret by
those who frequented Nakazu and liked its convenience
(which was the whole problem), and it had offered a wide
range of diversions beyond sexual frissons, such as fire-
works, sideshows, food and exhibitions of rarities. But cus-
tomers were now once again obliged to travel up the Sumida
in search of pleasure. It was from about this time that Eishi
began his paintings of the route.
An anonymous poem in the ‘mad-verse’ (kyoka) genre cap-
tured the purging and dulling down of Nakazu in a clever
sequence of words and onomatopoeas that transform them-
selves from the merry to the glum:

From covered vessels and floating restaurants

To government boats.
No more chink-chink-chink,
Only chug-chug-chug.49
64
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19 Tamagawa Senshi, Woman Washing, c. 1795, multi-coloured
woodblock print.
 ) ie6
NA fe} 5
3 a aes Ss = oS >
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the Seven Luc ky Gods ata
Yoshiwara Brothel , late 18th
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from Karasutei Enba 11, Oyo
kari no koe (1822 i.
i cea he OE ih
ORT geeeecienmeetreimearesre
: ate
Res oe, ;
‘ 4;
22 Anon., Mediaeval Lovers, c. 1600, section of an untitled shun ga handscroll,
colour on paper.

23 Attrib. Okumura Masanobu, Sexual Threesome, c. 1740s, section of three-

tone woodblock printed album: Neya no hinagata.
24 Kitagawa Utamaro, Needlework , c. 1797-8, multi-coloured woodblock.
25 Yanagawa Shigenobu, Foreign Couple, Rendered in Imitation of Copperplate,
multi-coloured woodblock page from an album, Yanagi no arashi (1822).
The ostensible reason for abolition was to ease contra-
currents in the river, but it was clear what really lay behind
the move. Earth from the obliterated island was used for the
unexciting purpose of building flood barriers at Honjo and
Fukagawa.
Demolition of Edo’s city-centre emporium of fun was
prefigured the previous year in Keishi, where Sadanobu’s
policies had also taken their toll on commercialized sex.
Sadanobu had made a trip there, and, shocked by conditions,
had ordered the clearing away of all prostitutes from the
streets and their forcible relocation back into the Shimabara.
He was proud of this purifying and noted in his journal that
in no more than two days ‘one thousand, I don’t know how
many many hundred persons’ had been rounded up. al
have discussed Sadanobu’s attitudes to Keishi elsewhere,
but it is worth repeating his objection: people came to see the
historic sights, but within two or three days, all the money
they brought with them from the country, he said, had fallen
into the hands of the managers of brothels.47
Sadanobu did not have much need for sex and counselled
others against indulgence.4® He did not want it dominating
other people. He went beyond regulating commercial sex
and introduced legislation to keep men and women apart in
other contexts where the libido might be easily aroused.
Public bathing had always been mixed and was something of
an urban ritual, but he enforced separation from the first
month of 1791.49 Every person over six years old (by the
inclusive Edo count — in other words, over four or five) could
thereafter bathe only in the presence of their own sex. If a
bathhouse had only one tub, men and women had to enter it
on alternate days, or else the owner might petition the
shogunate for funds to build a second (women’s) tub. The
old erotic and often downright sexual world of the bath
was celebrated in stories and verses and was a common
setting for shunga. One example is a picture of c. 1775 by
another samurai-turned-Floating World artist, Isoda
Koryusai (illus. 16). The third volume of the famous senryi
anthology The Safflower (Suetsumuhana), published in the
year of Sadanobu’s ban, included an earlier poem wistfully
evoking the touchy-feely bath that had become a thing of
the past:

We
 People from the land of the long-arms 26 Isoda Korytsai,
Public Bathhouse,
And the long-legs find their way into
multi-coloured
The public bath.>° woodblock page
from the shunga
album Shikido
The countries of these two mythical peoples were included
torikumi jini awase
on Edo-period maps. Shikitei Sanba’s famous novel, The (c. 1775).
Bathhouse of the Floating World (Ukiyo-buro), published in
instalments from 1809 to 1813, is divided into two sections,
one taking place in the Men’s Bath, and one in the Women’s;
this is entirely a product of Sadanobu’s division. Sadanobu
was so successful in creating a sense of prudishness that,
when Edoites went to Keishi (where bathing remained
unsegregated), they found it disgusting.>* The separation of
bathing led conversely to prying, as another senryi attests:

The screens at
The women’s bath
Riddled with holes.>?

By virtue of the prohibition, the erotic power of bathing

might actually have increased. An image by Utagawa
Toyokuni shows a situation that Sadanobu would have been
unlikely to find preferable to that depicted by Koryusai

74
27 Ishikawa Toyonobu, Wooden Bathtub,
c. 1760, three-tone woodblock print.

(illus. 21). The homoeroticism of the bath — never absent and

often depicted, as in Ishikawa Toyonobu’s early print — was
probably heightened too (illus. 27).”
Seeing the opposite sex naked was no longer routine,
which made access to it a special and forbidden act, and
hence one striven for and fetishized. Erotic pictures showing
intrusive gazes at women bathing alone at home, or at Yoshi-
wara women taking baths in their own quarters, had existed
before. But this multiplies as a Floating World construction
after 1791, as non-family women in water became something
that few men any longer saw (illus. 19).
Sadanobu’s policies for Edo may have been modelled on
what was already the situation in other cities. Keishi was under
shogunal control, but the daimyo of Kaga had organized his
capital of Kanazawa quite differently. This was one of the finest
cities, famous for its palaces and gardens. It had no public
baths at all (each family heated their water in a tub at home),
no official red-light district (although there were illegal oka-
basho), nor any kabuki theatres supplying boys.?* Sadanobu
would have been aware that the situation he had inherited in
Edoand Keishi was not the only possible way to order a polity.
Sadanobu knew the situation much further away than
Kanazawa. In 1793 a castaway by the name of Daikoku-ya
75
Kodayut, together with another survivor, returned from St
Petersburg, where they had spent several years, and almost
a decade altogether in the Russias, after shipwreck and
repatriation by one of Catherine the Great’s ships. Kodayt
was interrogated by shogunal officers, and the record was
written up into a gripping account by a scholar of European
matters who was also Ienari’s private physician, Katsura-
gawa Hoshu. The book reported at length on the state of
affairs in the Russian empire and dealt, among many other
things, with city organization, including prostitution. Kodayt
claimed (wrongly in fact) that while prostitution did exist, it
was not allowed to destroy family life because married men
could not go.*? About the same time, the botanist and scholar
Sato Narihiro, who spent many years researching in Kyasha,
wrote that he had been informed by the head of the Dutch
East India Company legation in Nagasaki that he never went
to brothels, but, if he were inclined to, he would first consult
his wife about it.°° Narihiro was impressed by this, not least
because the Dutchman was ‘a good-looking fellow and not
yet twenty’.

DEALING WITH SHUNGA

Matsudaira Sadanobu was a lover of painting. He may have

had some tastes in common with the shogun Ienari, but his
attitude towards the art of the Floating World was diametri-
cally opposed. The shogun took Eishi out of the Kano School
and encouraged him in his study of the eroticized style,
whereas Sadanobu set himself to do the reverse and move
the better sort of samurai Floating World figure in the other
direction, towards official styles. In general, Sadanobu had
no truck with public samurai engagement in the popular
manners. Sakai Tadanao, for example, was a very senior
samurai on account of his brother Tadazane being the
daimyo of Himeji. In the 1780s, then in his mid-twenties, he
became a painter of the Floating World, in which context he
used the name Tory6, and as part of the package he frequent-
ed the pleasure districts. He became highly accomplished at
the depiction of beautiful women (illus. 28). Shortly after
Sadanobu came to power, Tadanao moved away from the
Floating World style and into the classical manner of the
76
28 Sakai Tadanao (Tory6, or Sakai Ee
HOitsu), Courtesan with Attendants, f
late 1780s, colour on silk. '

Cas
Sie
LMR
es

Sotatsu-Korin School stemming from the esteemed Tawaraya

Sotatsu in the 1610s, whose special feature was said to be that
he never painted degraded modern fiizoku themes and
restricted himself to depictions of the past.?” After 1798
Tadanao changed his studio name from Toryo to Hoitsu and
shed his old persona; although he still occasionally made a
Floating World work for his own amusement, he largely dis-
pensed with the idiom, working in the Sotatsu-Korin mode
and devising a hybrid style with which to render Buddhist
icons.
The extent of Sadanobu’s personal role in Hoitsu’s con-
version is uncertain, but a clearer case of the squeezing of
Floating World artists by Sadanobu is to be found in the
life of Kitao Masayoshi (illus. 29). Born in Edo in 1764,
Te,
_Masayoshi had trained under the prolific colour-print 29 Kitao Masayoshi
master Kitao Shigemasa. Shigemasa was also an important (Kuwagata Keisai),
Two Women with a
illustrator of books, including shunga books, and has some Man, 1780s, multi-
twenty titles to his name.5° Unlike Shigemasa (who was a coloured woodblock
print.
townsman), Masayoshi was of samurai stock on his mother’s
side and in 1794 he was suddenly appointed painter-in-
attendance on the daimyo of Tsuyama. Three years later he
was sent to study with Eisen-in Michinobu’s son and succes-
sor, now the leading painter of the Kano School, Ydsen-in
Korenobu. This odd transformation required a cessation of
all work in the Floating World style and a rapid adoption of
academy manners. It cannot be coincidental that the daimyo
of Tsuyama was a relation of Sadanobu, whose notion it
clearly was to reform the able but (to Sadanobu’s mind) mis-
employed artist. Under Korenobu, Masayoshi was given a
new name, Kuwagata Keisai, ‘Kuwagata’ being his lapsed
maternal samurai surname. One of his first commissions
under this new name was to paint a scroll for Sadanobu him-
self, about as serious-minded a commission as could be
imagined, as it was a representation of the legends associated
with the foundation of the shogunal mausoleum in which
Ieyasu was enshrined as a god.°? Later Keisai became famous
for his teach-yourself art books, through which anyone could
take their first steps in orthodox painting, and also for his
introduction of the panoramic view.©°
Late in life, after retirement and the collapse of many of his
hated policies, Sadanobu gathered in his Edo villa a group of
the artists and writers he had in one way or another perse-
cuted for their Floating World involvements, and had them
produce a collective work for him. Masayoshi, recycled as
Keisai, was to make the pictures. Three accompanying por-
tions of text were ordered. One was by Santo Kydden, a
Yoshiwara addict who had redeemed a prostitute by making
her his formal wife and who had also been an erstwhile
fellow-pupil of Masayoshi under Shigemasa (and as such
had illustrated eleven shunga books). Interestingly, Kydden’s
brother was also the first biographer of Itchd. The other
blocks of text were by Hoseido Kisanji, who had lampooned
the Kansei Reforms in several popular novels and who had
written the prefaces to the annual Yoshiwara sex prospectus
(Yoshiwara saiken) until he was stopped in 1790, and Ota
Nanpo, who had done much to enliven the ‘mad-verse’
78
genre and whose most-quoted poem in that genre was a pil-
lory of Sadanobu.®' The theme of the commission was
Workers at their Trades: it is a painting about industriousness.
The reader winds through three scrolls of decent people at
their work and, although there is plenty of humour, with Edo
depicted as a lively place, the imagery attests to the fact that
it is by productive labour, each in his or her allotted task, that
society thrives. In setting these particular men this commis-
sion, Sadanobu was clearly bent on making the punishment
fit the crime.
The final scenes are set in the Yoshiwara (illus. 30). Sada-
nobu was no fool, and he understood the need for relaxation
and even, when absolutely necessary, for sex (in others if not
himself), so long as recreation took its rightful place — last in
the sequence of priorities. He was interested in Yoshiwara
memorabilia and, having brought the quarter under control,
he encouraged the shogunal official Nakamura Butsuan to
chronicle its (terminated) glories; Butsuan bought timbers of
the old Yoshiwara gate (burned in 1824) and fashioned them
into a lantern. The last scenes of the three-scroll set evince
an ambivalence, and perhaps Masayoshi/Keisai and
Kyoden (who wrote the text for this section) had the last
laugh. The penultimate scene is the main street of the
Yoshiwara, with women waiting for customers; this moves
into the final scene, where men begin dalliance, but over the
distancing technique of a bridge. The first person seen in the
last scene has eyes covered; the shamisen player sits across the
doorway, half in and half out, and indeed, everyone exists in
positions athwart the normal division of space, standing or
sitting on the breaks between the fatami mats (which was not
the way one properly sat). The leading guest stares out at the
viewer, interrogatively, as if daring a challenge to be made.
Behind him, a scene of agricultural work — scarcely an image
likely to adorn an actual brothel — counterposes this painted
room with sites of real production. The picture self-con-
sciously jars, although Sadanobu would hardly have wished
it this way. From the blindfolded man on the right to this
figure on the left, the viewer traverses a line from non-seeing
to seeing. But what do we see? That this is all folly? Kydden
signed off with the following ambivalent statement: ‘For me
to do so is like adding unnecessary syllables on the end of a
line of verse, but since we have now come to the close of this
80
) Kuwagata Keisai scroll, let me burst forth in sounds of joy.’°3 The Yoshiwara
‘itao Masayoshi),
Brothel in the
was thus made superfluous (jiamari) to good Edo life.
shiwara, 1822, Again, it was Matsura Seizan who some years later hinted
etail froma at the actual purpose of this famous scroll:
yllaborative
andscroll Edo
tokunin-zukushi, In the extensive painting collection of the Lord of
slour on paper. Shirakawa [Sadanobu] is a picture scroll with text, in three
parts, of workmen at their trades. It is unlike the tradi-
tional sort of work in that genre because it shows them all
in modern guise.°4

The mistrust of the arts of the Floating World, and of shunga,

was based less on the belief that they were bad in themselves
than that they had coerced too much into their purview. They
had not only corrupted ‘manners and customs’ but had
usurped the panoply of representations of modern life and
the means of depicting the present. There was no way to
paint contemporary situations other than via the Floating
World. Old-style genre painting that showed the yearly
round in a non-erotic, placid way had been smothered, and
good ‘fiizoku pictures’ (from which the Floating World man-
ners are said to have emerged) had succumbed. Fiizoku pic-
tures had the important role of preserving the appearance of
rituals for the future and, though Sotatsu might have refused
to make any, they were important referents against which
81
_ change could be rectified and decline reversed. There is an
enormous body of such pictures, showing, for instance, what
cities looked like, how festivals were conducted, how farms
were manned and how leisure was decently enjoyed. Float-
ing World art swamped this under a layer of libido, and to
view it was to gain the impression that no one in Edo did
more than engage in, or prepare for, sex. Sadanobu was dis-
turbed. If future ages looked back at the time of his rule
through the lens of such (mis)representations, he would be a
laughing stock in history. He called for a revision of ftizoku
pictures, which he boldly called ‘pictures of now’ (imaga),
which would be strong enough to claw back what the
Floating World style had arrogated:

There is a mistaken opinion that the only way to make

depictions of contemporary themes (maga) is in the
Floating World manner . . . When painting things of
modern life, such as pleasure boating on the Sumida, or
the Plum Mansion in spring, artists do them in the vulgar-
ity of the Floating World way. Even when they mount
them as full hanging scrolls, their painting will be slap-
dash. And is it right to select these activities as illustrations
for future ages of the kind fizoku we loved?

Sadanobu concluded that ‘the true purpose of picture

making has dwindled to nothing’ and issued the chilling
warning, ‘pictures of the Floating World may be all we leave
to posterity to inform about how our society was’. The horror
of later generations looking at such works — or even shiunga —
and thinking that was how Edoites really lived! And yet here
at the dawn of the twenty-first century, that is just what many
people are doing.
Intellectuals were fearful of the consequences of nurturing
a new generation on libidinous imagery and of letting them
grow up to think such behaviour was normal. Far from erotica
having any educational role, it was an obstacle to the teach-
ing of proper moral messages. Or so thought Moriyama Taka-
mori, who put succinctly what many people must have felt:

Now we have works of eroticized popular fiction (kusa-

zoshi). But in the past, real truths were made into pictures
and children were taught by them — there were the lives of
82
 Kusunoki and Yoshitsune, tales like Princess Pot-head, Old
Man Withered-Branch who Brought Forth Flowers, the
Battle of the Apes and Crabs, and Kinbei, and so on. None
lost touch with the primary principle of encouraging virtue
and chastising vice. Now we have nothing left to offer cor-
rectives with. Children are given things they can’t deal with
and which should be kept for adult amusement only.°°

Erotica were prematurely sexualizing children and was

bringing the Japanese states, as cultural entities, to the brink.

THE PROBLEM OF MANHOOD

Of considerable importance in the eighteenth-century

debate about sexual behaviour was the issue of changes in
masculinity. Femininity had been seen as inherently more
fluid (it was yin, moist,liquid), as was apparently proven by
the more rapid mutability of women’s minds and thoughts.
The male was dubbed resolute and firm. It began to be
observed that men were no longer static. This period is regu-
larly celebrated in history books as the ‘rise of the towns-
man’, but in its own day it was more commonly expressed in
reverse: as the time of sclerosis and enfeeblement of the
Tokugawa ruling class. Samurai were not what they had
been. Eishi, Koryusai, Nanpo, Kisanji and others were all
samurai. A samurai was a swordsman, and until the end of
the Edo period his badge of office was two swords thrust into
the sash. But could such men fight? Many samurai could
barely ride a horse. leharu’s own son and intended successor,
Iemoto, died in a trivial fall from a horse which a competent
equestrian could have avoided, for the second time in the
century terminating direct Tokugawa father-to-son succes-
sion (hence Ienari’s installation).°7
Decline in what might be called ‘samurai values’ was vis-
ible everywhere to those who wished to find it. Symptomatic
was the shogunal retainer’s double love suicide mentioned
above: in the old days, it would have been death in battle or
at worst codified seppuku (‘harakiri’), performed to expunge
shame. But now a senior samurai could sneak off by night for
an ignoble death with a prostitute.
We are talking mythologies. The belief that samurai ever
83
fought to the death does not survive investigation, nor the
claim that they made the sacrifice of disembowelment when
atonement was required. The motto ‘the way of the samurai
is death’ was invented long after death had ceased to be on
most samurai minds or a reality in their lives and, indeed, the
phrase appears in the eighteenth century, precisely when the
samurai as an effective military caste had ceased to be. They
were bureaucrats. Relevant here is the fact that, at this time,
dilemmas about masculinity began to be expressed, and these
locked into discussions of erotic behaviour and erotica.
Seppuku itself had died out as a means of suicide because it
hurt too much: samurai were afraid.® Suicide actually took
the form of a pretended stab carried out with a wooden
sword, or even a paper fan, at which signal an assistant
would sever the head from behind, cleanly and painlessly. So
much for ‘Japanese bushido’. But the romanticized view of the
past took hold as a stick with which to beat the present. Many
thinkers held that vigour among Japanese men was dying
out, and this was seen as part of a sexual and gender trans-
formation for which modern trends (such as the culture of
luxury and ‘floating’) were responsible. The samurai physi-
cian Tachibana Nankei wrote in about 1800,

The Japanese warrior thinks always of the fact that in time

of urgency he must go down before his lord’s horse and
die; his mind is unswayed from the absolute hope of
giving his life for his lord. He concentrates on overcoming
the enemy and prays for the endurance of the state, urging
his lord along the path of righteousness. He acts from a
pure and true love of his master. Just imagine our modern
Confucianists and literary types having a good old laugh
at that! The Japanese warrior, they would say, is a fool
who delights in a dog’s death, unaware of the real mean-
ing of loyalty.”°

Talk of heroism at this late stage provoked ridicule. Men

were embarrassed by the virility of previous ages. The
urbanization of the samurai (they were required to live at
their lord’s castle and did not own land) resulted in a seden-
tary life and — woefully to many — closer contact with women
and an equivalently cosseted lifestyle. Feminization of taste
was said to have ensued. Some daimyo considered the
84
option of returning samurai to the countryside, and a couple
of daimyo enacted laws to this effect in the 1780s.”
Urbanization was the cause of lethargy in many analyses,
and the terms of objection were that men were becoming
womanish. The well-named treatise of 1793, Medicine for the
Lands (Kokui-ron), stated:

Urban people like only the fulsome and wicked pleasures

[associated with] floating and cherry-blossom. This is
gradually spreading to country gentlemen. As a conse-
quence, loyalty and righteousness are thinning out of
their own accord with literature ousting the martial
arts.’

And again, ‘If a provincial samurai with his fine old ways
comes to Edo, within two or three years he will have been
totally turned around in all his manners and will have
become trivial and lax’7?
To Sadanobu it was clear that urban effeteness was the cause
of decline. He came across a napkin belonging to Hideyoshi,
the great warlord of the immediately pre-Tokugawa period,
and he noted how plain it seemed by modern standards:

It is just a half-sheet of thin paper, folded in four, with a

few toothpicks inside. This is how people used to be. Even
one who brandished his strength before barbarians, made
the country rich, and even acquired a reputation for enjoy-
ing the good life, was like this then. Nowadays, common
people would hardly accept a napkin like that.”4

Note that this comment appears not in a diary but in

Sadanobu’s treatise on government.
A sense of enfeeblement was not the subjective opinion of
a few malcontents, for medical discourse propped it up as
fact. Tachibana Nankei, we must remember, was a doctor,
and one given to experimentation in the field and to the
emerging science of anatomy.”? Sadanobu believed the med-
ical men and wrote in his journal that pill and cordial con-
sumption was on the rise, because ‘modern people are weak
and feeble, develop headaches over nothing at all and suffer
from nervous sensitivity, sending them racing immediately
for medicines.’”° This was medically proven:
85
 Many different treatments were established in the past to
suit varying constitutions. There were different sorts of
cure, some just mild solutions in water . . . Doctors who
still use the old methods work according to former stan-
dards, but the ancients were born with a quite different
order of physical strength from us today.

The process of weakening brought the male closer to the

female, for enfeeblement meant an ascendance of yin over
yang. Yamamoto Tsunemoto, an early romanticist and issuer
of samurai jeremiads, in his massive compilation of 1716,
Hidden by Leaves (Hagakure), cited a physician who said,

In medicine, cures are dispensed differently for men and

women because they have to accord with levels of yin and
yang ... But I became aware of something when treating
eye complaints, namely men now respond to medicines
intended for a women, while those properly prescribed
for men have no effect. This indicates the collapse of order
as we know it. In my opinion, masculinity is disappearing
as men assimilate into women. Although my data was
irrefutable, I kept it to myself. But just look at modern
men — many quite palpably have female pulses, and few
are what I would calla real male.77

Possibly this changed the way sex was performed. At least,

it changed the way shunga depicted sexual acts, for gender
shift affected what viewers wanted their pornography to look
like. Early shunga tended to show adult males engaging in
fleeting encounters, during which they would not even
remove their armour, so hot was their attention to the clam-
our of battle (illus. 24). The pictures gave a sense of the con-
tinual presence of fighting in the male mind and the priority
of the battlefield with its all-male solidarity over the boudoir.
Tales of samurai who forsook women altogether and con-
tented themselves with intercourse with other warriors or
page boys, so that they did not need to leave the encamp-
ment, were also rife. Images made to capture those times con-
tinued to be made into the early days of the eighteenth
century, but then they disappear. Later depictions of samurai
or sword-wearing townsmen show them with military hard-
ware removed and the blade placed beside the bed; often
86
clothes are taken off too, so that comfort during sex is now
the main desideratum (see illus. 45). Bodies mingle indistin-
guishably.
We will consider the imagery of the sword more fully in
Chapter Four, but we may note here that swords were
banned in the Yoshiwara. Samurai who went there deposited
their two blades somewhere along the way, usually at the
boathouse of the operator who had poled them up the
Sumida. The pleasure quarter was a zone in which, as it were,
the samurai as a category was visually annulled or rather, by
losing his swords, he was subsumed into the merchant. In the
Yoshiwara, everyone looked non-military. In a humorous
book of 1771, Modern Inconsistencies (Tosei anabanasht), the
author, Sharakusai, wrote of how the route up the Sumida to
the Yoshiwara was a kind of path of deheroization of the
masculine: ‘men turn into women and take the label “female
impersonators” (o0-yama), [samurai] consign their swords at a
boathouse and become townsmen, monks transform into
doctors.’7° He meant Kabuki actor boys took female roles on
stage and in bed, samurai checked weapons to mingle
unnoticed with townsmen, and clerics who were banned
from areas of female prostitution borrowed doctoral robes
(both groups shaved their heads) for disguise. Proper men
were eclipsed from view. Sharakusai likened these changes
to a butterfly emerging from the chrysalis: the result is
prettier, but the armoured outer protection has been shed
and, once hatched, butterflies have a short time to live. Women
were unaffected, but men were slipping into a yin mode.
We must treat the statements made by contemporaries
with caution, but we must also respect their sense of peril.
Whenever people write about the fields of aspiration and
desire, they are apt to fabricate, to twist the facts to suit their
purposes. An interesting feature of pre-Tokugawa sexuality,
often mentioned in later Edo writings, was the prevalence of
homoeroticism, called, as we have seen, nanshoku. Personal-
ities such as Oda Nobunaga’s boy lover Mori Ranmaru were
widely known throughout the Edo period; they appeared in
pictures and plays, and stories were told about them.” Males
having sex only with other males was a means of retaining
yang, and that is how it was often proposed, with Tsunemoto
arguing for nanshoku on these grounds. Nanshoku pertained
to the battlefield, where women had no place and where boys
87
had to be instructed in survival and killing. The influential
Confucian scholar and nanshoku enthusiast Ota Kinjo wrote
in 1827 of the strongman days of the sixteenth century, when
nanshoku was part of a dynastic system:

In the times of civil war, nanshoku was extensively prac-

tised and many was the valiant warrior who emerged
from the ranks of the pretty boys (rando). A good example
is Naoe Kanetsugu, who became governor of Yamashiro.
When he was still called Kasuga Gengoro, he was lover
(koz0) of Kagekatsu (later he was adopted by Choshin
Naoe of Yamato). By brilliant strategy he secured victory
after taking on generals Date Masamune and Mogami
Yoshimitsu as adversaries at the great battle of the entry to
Fuku Island. Kagekatsu then withdrew to the mountains
to live in peace, handing on his standards to Kanetsugu.*°

Kinjo then listed those heroic fighters who ‘had an attendant

noted for his looks’, including the second shogun, Hidetada,
who had Fuwa Mansaku. As warfare came to an end, this
tradition also dwindled, and instead of sex with boys being a
way of avoiding the debilitation of women and of training
future heroes, it began to be presented as a way of males
avoiding any masculine role at all. Boy prostitutes of the Edo
period commonly dressed as girls, as Ranmaru for all his
youthful cuteness certainly had not. Since boy prostitutes
were often associated with actors, whose stage lives required
cross-dressing (kabuki has no actresses), the charge was easy
to lay. Saikaku noted at the close of his Great Mirror of
Nanshoku (Nanshoku okagami) of 1687 that whereas his chosen
form of sexual activity had once been something for tough
men to do, precisely to keep them tough, it was now the
domain of the weak:

In the past the ‘way of boys’ meant something strong and

rugged. Men spoke bluntly and preferred boys who were
forcefully built, and acquired wounds in the course of
things. This was the way it was done, until even actor-
prostitutes slung swords, even if they did not have occa-
sion to use them. Now, you won’t even see any blood
when they manhandle the portable shrines at the Sanno
Festival! This is a time when samurai have no use for
88
 armour, and don’t expect to find anyone drawing a blade
in a brothel — they even have their watermelon sliced for
them before being served it on the plate. Boys today are
just plain ponces (yowa-yowa).*!

As a Kamigata writer, it is possible that Saikaku composed

this book to make inroads into the military world of Edo,
where the samurai presence was more visible than in Osaka.
It may just have worked in 1687. By a century later, nanshoku
had been transformed. Kinjo argued that it had literally
declined in numerical terms and that it had become quite
hard to find a decent rent boy.*? One source from 1833 calcu-
lated that, compared with the 1750s, the number of nanshoku
prostitutes in Edo was down by 90 per cent.*3 Others saw
rather a movement of nanshoku out of the orbit of war and
into the softer ones of normal mercantile life or the all-male
world of monasteries. Saikaku already illustrated this teleo-
logy by carefully structtring his Great Mirror in two parts, the
first on warriors, the second on kabuki actors.
It would truly have been hard to argue that the male
brothels of Yushima, Fukiya-cho or Yoshicho were the breed-
ing grounds of heroism. Encounters there were based on
money, not loyalty. There were atavistic exceptions, such as
that described in a senryi of 1761 telling of clients who hired
boys to dress up as Minamoto no Yoshitsune (‘the noble child
minister’) while they slept together:

On Yoshimachi’s paper screens

Is cast the shape of
The noble child minister.*4

This was a clever choice since the twelfth-century Yoshitsune

was not only a general and brother of the first shogun,
Yoritomo, but also a beautiful youth. He functioned as a sex
symbol, a kind of generic Ranmaru, for much of subsequent
Japanese history.” So at least some clients liked to recapture
the idea of the hero-in-waiting type. But by and large, if it is
true to say that the Yoshiwara fed ona classical mythology of
antique femininity (names and terms from the Tale of Genji
were much used), the nanshoku districts did not feed on an
equivalent folklore of medieval masculinity. Indeed, boy pros-
titutes were said to be best if they came from the Kamigata,
89
since that way they smacked less strongly of the inherent 31 Katsushika
Hokusai, detail from
virility of the ‘eastern male’ (azuma otoko), supposedly defin- Boys’ Festival, 1810s,
ing those bred in the Edo region; Saikaku was appalled that multicoloured
boy prostitutes had taken to using girls’ names extracted woodblock print.
from Genji.°° In shunga this femininity of boy partners is
exaggerated, with swords invisible (i.e., these are not samurai
youths) and the boy’s genitals covered or shown so small as
to be unobtrusive; often anal penetration is the onty proof
(although not conclusive, since male-female anal inter-
course was practised) as to whether a male or female body is
being shown. Of course, in pornography a viewer is unlikely
to want genuine uncertainty about gender, since his or her
own imagination will be inclining to one or the other option
(or to a two-gender threesome, but there too the roles will be
clear). What was wanted was boys who looked like girls.
Portraits of boys attribute to them so much of the feminine,
there can be genuine confusion.
The story of the decline of nanshoku was part of the story of
the rise of the Yoshiwara. I say ‘story’, for these are the
theories of the people of the period and do not fit with our
90
modern interpretations of gender balance. Queer theory
would strongly resist interpretations like that of Kinjo, argu-
ing rather that sexual orientation is something in-born and,
although subject to discipline via social codes, cannot be
eradicated by them. Modern scholars have wished to termi-
nate talk of nanshoku prematurely as a way of clearing space
for the modern Japanese nation state, with its typically
nineteenth-century compulsory regime of heterosexuality.°7
There were also voices stating that the Yoshiwara was no
longer what it had once been.** All sex was going wrong.
A new image was needed for boys, to encourage forceful
and strategic thinking. The practice of celebrating the Boys’
Festival (on the fifth day of the fifth month) by hanging up a
red flag emblazoned with an image of Zhong Kui (the eighth-
century Chinese general, called in Japanese Shoki) seems to
date from this time. I have found no explicit records, and the
image itself was an old one, but a large number of pictures of
Zhong Kui executed in-a vibrant, bloody red seem to date
from after the 1790s (depicted on the flags in illus. 31). Fora
few days a year, Edo would be covered with symbols of this
ancient general and mythical strong-armed queller of demons.
This complemented well the standard yowa-yowa icon of iris
plants also used at the festival, not to mention the limply bil-
lowing (perhaps phallic) carp windsock. By the nineteenth
century, Red Shoki was part of the iconographic celebration
of the Japanese male, just as dolls celebrated the female at the
Girls’ Festival held two months earlier.

O1
3 Bodies, Boundaries, Pictures

In the first two chapters we have considered the specific

historical contexts of Edo pornography, who used it and
how, and the ways in which the imagery fitted into the larger
rhetoric of sex, gender and social norms. In this chapter and
the following one we will look more closely at some of the
pictures themselves and assess, via the evidence that the ima-
gistic space alone supplies, what assumptions were being
constructed and articulated.
Shunga are always compensatory and fanciful, and we
must look at them in full realization of this: they are not an
objective representation of Edo erotic behaviour, nor a trans-
parent vista onto the practice of sex. They are impregnated
with contentions about the human body, governed by con-
ventions of picture-making and the technologies of paint
and print.

SEXUALITY AND DIFFERENCE

It is a general assumption among those who have studied

pornography in the West that it has certain abiding and in-
escapable characteristics. Most prominent is the belief that
an aggressive male stance towards women is inalienable,
with a corresponding self-flattering of male power. Despite
Rousseau’s bon mot (quoted above, and indeed almost always
quoted when discussing this topic), which puts pornography
firmly into the zone of female consumption, the more usual
stance is to see the preponderance of erotica as pertaining to
a male (and heterosexual) gaze. George Steiner several years
ago offered it as a law of pornography that however fine
artistically individual works might be, they were, because of
their genre, ‘banal fantasies of phallic prowess and female
responsiveness’.' Even in cases where violence is not overt
and where women enjoy their roles, the argument continues,
they are still being possessed, made subservient, bought or

g2
controlled, in short, forced into a depictional mode of ‘sex-
ploitation’. Women are rarely envisaged as the originator
of the sexual act, unless as a dominatrix, nymphomaniac,
hussy or whore.
These norms will need some adjusting for the Edo situa-
tion, but in many ways they define shunga reasonably well.
By and large, shunga show women as belonging to a lower,
controlled grade and suppose a controlling gaze that is
male. The greater prevalence of homoerotic imagery does
not challenge this view, since power there also belongs to the
penetrator, who is in all cases the older partner and senior
player in an anal economy that is not reversible. More than is
often accepted for Europe, too, Edo pornography seems to
have been usable by women, although whether this resulted
in the creation of specifically female-oriented imagery, or
whether women and girls consumed pictures destined to
perpetuate male fantasies, is a moot point. Until the end of
the eighteenth century, one of the main publishers of shunga
was Tsutaya Jazaburo (publisher of Utamaro, among others),
whose shop was situated by the entrance to the Yoshiwara —
a place to which female buyers simply could not come. How
then, in eighteenth-century Edo pornography, are bodies
shown and genders differently construed?
To answer this question, we must think more about the
meanings of gender as such in the Edo world. This topic was
broached in the preceding chapter, where I stressed that, in
the Edo period, sexuality was not predicated on the binary
division of homosexuality from heterosexuality. That is not
to say that no difference was seen between male—male sex
(nanshoku), male-female sex (nyoshoku) or female—female sex
(for which there was no word). But the difference was one of
degree, not of absolutes. In Ihara Saikaku’s famous story of
1682, Life of a Sex-mad Man (Koshoku ichidai otoko), the hero
Yonosuke, whose name literally means ‘man of the world’,
sleeps with 3,752 women and 725 men (not including the
uncounted men with whom he had affairs before he reached
adulthood).? Very many figures in the culture of the Edo
period, from the shoguns and their courtiers to the hatkai
master Basho, Edo rakes such as Hiraga Gennai and Ota
Nanpo, scholars such as Ota Kinjo and, of course, Saikaku
himself, routinely slept with other men, as well as (in most
cases) with women.
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There was the phenomenon of the onna-girai, or ‘woman- 32 Criminal, Spy,
avoiding’ males, and Gennai was one such; but there were no ae ne
‘homosexuals’. There were men who were nanshoku-girai, or Terashima Ry6an,
averse to male—male sex; but there were no heterosexuals. Wakan sansai zue

This must have been the case with women too although, frus- (1713).
tratingly, no data have so far come to light. ‘Heterosexual’
and ‘homosexual’ were not fixed, distinct human types,
rather they were understood as activities. Similar findings
have been reported for early modern European history.
There are no personal nouns that could designate the person
who does nyoshoku or nanshoku although, interestingly, the
word nanshoku-ka (‘nanshoku-ist’) has been neologized in
recent Japanese by gay men engaged in a project of implant-
ing their identity back in history.
The most widely consulted household reference work of
the eighteenth century was Terashima Ryoan’s adaptation of
a Ming-period encyclopaedia called in the original San cai tu
hui, or in adapted form Wakan sansai zue, or the Sino-Japanese
Illustrated Compendium of the Three Powers —i.e., heaven, earth
and humankind. It was first published in Osaka in 1713. The
Japanese edition is actually quite different from the Chinese
one and, unlike it, includes an entry and figure under ‘nan-

94
shoku’ (illus. 32). This is placed in the ‘human functions’
(jinrin no yO) section, together with friends, guests, thieves,
assassins etc. — not a wholly honourable crew to be sure, but
the point is that nanshoku is here a taste, or colouring,
overlaying the person, which is dependent on context; it 1s
nota defining characteristic, much less an identity, if the Edo-
period person even had a sense of ‘identity’. Like the human
characteristics that come either side of it, this is a habit, and
like other habits it might come and go. Basho, for example,
claimed at the age of thirty (i.e., in 1673) to have lost interest
in nanshoku, which he had previously practised, only to
recover it twenty years later.’ Another case is that of the
daimyo of Echigo, Nihatta Kaiko, who in 1758 fell in love (as
so many others did, including the King of Hell) with Segawa
Kikunojé, but when the affair did not work out he gave up
nanshoku and thereafter only slept with women.+*
We could say the normal Edo sexuality was bisexual, but
this is not quite accurate either, for there was scant sense of
the binarism which must exist for bisexuality to be able to
cross. A body of writing exists about the two types of inter-
course called, in mock epic fashion, the Way of Women
(nyodo) and the Way of Boys (shiido, or wakashudo) — which are
often structured as debates between those who preferred one
over the other.> They are couched as arguments for winning
converts, as with philosophical and religious ‘ways’,° where
any person is a potential advocate of any one, and where rea-
soned propositions can gain adherents from any pool of
people. The terminology of the two sexual ‘ways’ mirrored
each other so as to be complementary, not oppositional, and
certainly neither was the other’s incommensurable pariah, to
be branded ‘unnatural’ and persecuted out of existence.
The two sets of fairly similar institutions catering for the
two tastes also visibly ran in tandem. The Yoshiwara was lex-
ically similar to the main nanshoku area of Yoshi-cho. The
Yoshiwara was commonly known as the ‘five-block area’
(gocho-machi), from its physical size, and the nanshoku one as
the ‘two-block area’ (nichd-machi) or, including Kobiki-cho,
the ‘three-block area’ (sanchd-machi) — one was smaller, but
neither was substantively different.”
It is important to understand these norms, because they
not only havea bearing on senses of gender but also on senses
of bodily difference and so underpin the representation of
95
bodies, not least in shunga. The extent to which the two sexes
are seen as oppositional and to which sex is thus a confronta-
tion, or a conflation of opposites, is not as strong in Edo
shunga as in modern (Japanese or other) pornography. The
issues of nanshoku, even if marginal in some ways, must
therefore detain us, since this is one of the prime loci of slip-
page adduceable to prove the non-permanence of Edo
gender absolutes.
Recent study of siunga has been undertaken by scholars
rooted in modern sexuality and who have not sought to
remove themselves from it nor to address the Edo context in
the language of alterity. The danger of misunderstanding
pictures by unconsidered application of modern categories
can be shown in a recent commentary on an illustration by
Okumura Masanobu to the Little Bedroom Patternbook (Neya
no hinagata) of about 1738 (illus. 23). Aman penetrates a girl
while licking his finger, seemingly to insert into the anus of a
boy, whose penis he also holds. This is a classic illustration of
Edo sexuality at work, and indeed, as Richard Lane has
shown, Masanobu has borrowed this image from a line of
similar ones in the shunga tradition. An otherwise useful
series of Edo pornographic reproductions published in 1995
has the following caption: ‘A playboy mounts a female pros-
titute from behind as she embraces a boy prostitute —a fitting
revenge for this girl who has seduced the boy. The man and
woman seem happy enough, only the boy is unfortunate.’?
This narrative imposition on the picture is illegitimate (the
book itself is textless) and the caption is misleading: why is
the boy ‘unfortunate’ (fui), and wherein lies this ‘revenge’?
A more likely scenario is that from the first the three have
been together, and the man may have rented both partners.
Our epistemologies of sex must be right for the period being
discussed.
This Edo ability to flow across what we regard as oppos-
ing sexualities, without even noticing them, allowed great
freedom. In eighteenth-century London, for example, the equi-
valent of the Edo nanshoku establishment was the ‘molly-
house’."° There it was common for partnerships to be formed
in which one of the two men assumed a female name (‘molly’
being a common one) and ‘married’ his partner as ‘wife’; the
two would then retain this crypto male/female role perma-
nently, even if they grew old together. In Europe, then, a
96
sexual partnership could not be conceived other than as the
meeting of gender opposites, so that even when union was of
the same sex, this had to be divided into two polar nodes.
Precisely because gender was held to be fixed and non-fluid,
this was in turn relegated to the sphere of perversion and
penalized by church and state. The ‘female’ was defined via
an analogy with heterosexual intercourse as the one who was
penetrated, and that designation was usually followed by
the willing or involuntary adoption of other characteristics
deemed female.
Edo writings include few references to same-sex couples
living for long periods together, such as until they both grew
old, so that the division between penetrator and penetrated
was not a permanent division but was a ‘natural’ extension
of age differentials. A youth was penetrated, but he later
grew up to become a penetrator, and this required separation
from his former partner(s). In Kinjo’s words quoted in Chap-
ter Two, a pretty boy (rando) grew into a hero; had Ranmaru
lived, he would have become a penetrator. The age at which
one moved across from passive to active varied with person-
ality, inclination and appearance. Some put the change at
genpuku, thatis, the ritual ‘putting-on of the trousers’ or cere-
monies of adulthood which, however, were also variable,
coming between about fourteen and eighteen. In some cases,
but notall, this age brought the cessation of nanshoku activity.
At the beginning of Jippensha Ikku’s best-selling novel of
1802, Down the Tokaidd on Shanks’ Pony (Tokaidochu hiza-
kurige), for example, the adult Yajirobei and boy Hananosuke
are lovers living in the country town of Fucht; Hananosuke
then undergoes genpuku, takes the adult name Kitahachi, and
the two move to Edo, where they continue to cohabit,
although nothing further is said about their sleeping habits,
and it appears they desist from intercourse with each other,
although they continue to make nanshoku jokes throughout
the work." This is a fictional setting, but the available evi-
dence suggests that most of the working boys in the ‘two
blocks’ were aged between twelve and seventeen, although
there were exceptions. Some were thus pre-pubescent (again,
we should bear in mind that a child was considered to be one
year old at birth and that everyone changed age not on their
birthday but on New Year’s morning). But a nanshoku treatise
of 1768, Sex in the Foothills (Fumoto no iro), told of a prostitute
O77.
called Ogiya Yashige who was still working at the age of
sixty.'* Saikaku’s Great Mirror mentions a rent ‘boy’ still
being penetrated at the age of thirty-eight, although that was
regarded as too old and provoked laughter upon discovery.”?
No male rented to be penetrated.
To some extent, to penetrate a boy was to treat him as a
woman. But the activities, not to mention the sensations, of
all parties were different. It is within our modern regime of
compulsory heterosexuality that the two are constructed as
the same in order that the one can be the mutant shadow of
the other. In fact, the model used in Edo times to define nan-
shoku partnerships was less that of amale-female union gone
astray than that of master and retainer. Amaster commanded
his retainer and ‘forced’ (cognate with the verb ‘fuck’) him in
sex as in all aspects of his life, and this was not reversible. It
did not mean the retainer took no pleasure in his role, only
that he was obliged to accept it, and he was always debarred
from the commanding position as long as the relationship
endured (which in a real master-vassal one was life, but ina
sexual one was negotiated in a piecemeal way). The third
shogun, lemitsu, provoked hostility among the daimyo by
his nanshoku activities, not because he engaged in them (his
father, Hidetada, had caused no stir) but because he liked to
be penetrated."4 As shogun, Iemitsu ought not to have
referred this prerogative to a subordinate; he upset the
hierarchy as would a master who brought his servant food.

ANATOMICAL DIFFERENCE

Gender is crucial for a consideration of the fields of desire

which are the root themes of shunga. The possibility of a
gender flowing into another, and becoming lost, was bruited
at the end of the eighteenth century. More widely, if less
apocalyptically, voiced was the assumption of an element of
choice in gender. Kabuki actors were the obvious example,
for many permanently played the part of females. Unlike
today’s female-role specialists (onnagata), those of the Edo
period (called o-yama) often dressed:as females even in their
offstage lives and outside the theatre district. Culturally, if
not anatomically, they were women. The passage in Modern
Inconsistencies (Tosei anabanashi) mentioned in Chapter Two
98
may be given fully here; it plays on the word bakemono, ghost,
literally a ‘thing transformed’:

There are some spooky transformations to be seen about

today, such as the larva that sprouts wings and flies off as
a mosquito, or the midge that puts them out and takes off
as a fly; a cocoon transforms into a butterfly, a prostitute
changes into a bourgeois woman and enjoys an outing to
the country, while a man turns into a woman and gets to be
called a ‘female-role specialist’ (o-yama)."°

For a man, other than an actor, to assume female dress — like

wearing male dress if one were a woman — took one transi-
torily into the same area of contestation. Most could or
would not perpetually confuse their gender, but many might
intermittently do so. Kotohito, ex-shujo or ‘emperor’ (post-
humously called Go-Mizunoo), retired in 1629 and thereafter
occasionally dressed as,a woman; this was partly a ruse to
spy on the scheming courtiers that surrounded him, but
partly because he enjoyed it. It was surely an extension of his
musings on the oddity of his condition in the contemporary
world: having been obliged to marry the shogun’s daughter,
he eventually resigned in favour of their child Okiko
(posthumously: Meishd), who became the first female shujo
for nearly 1,000 years.’° Kotohito knew he inhabited an un-
stable environment. Alternatively, the great Keishi (Kyoto)
literati artist Ike Taiga, active at the end of the eighteenth cen-
tury, used to swap clothes with his wife, Gyokuran (also a
painter) — an eccentricity that may have helped his works sell
for huge prices since the act became part of his standard bio-
eraphy.'7 Taiga’s and Gyokuran’s gender anomalies were,
like their art, quirky but strangely perceptive reinterpreta-
tions of human experience.
The end of that century saw the emergence of what is often
regarded as the late twentieth-century phenomenon of
unisex modes. Edo costume was strictly differentiated by
gender and, if the dirt-poor wore uniformly shapeless rags, it
was a priority of the decent to wear clothes that accorded
with their social body and status (had it not been so, there
would have been no meaning to Taiga and Gyokuran’s
switches); it was this fact that made kabuki actors untouch-
able, for they donned costumes, that is, borrowed robes. In
99
1767, Sugita Genpaku recorded the appearance of Edo’s first
unisex haircut, which he thought ‘very charming’ even if
looking ‘lopped off in part by a sword’.’® As a physician
trained in the Sino-Japanese tradition, in which cures were
gender-specific, he was aware of the implications of this
style, ‘identical for male and female’, clouding differences.
Genpaku’s words are pregnant, for shortly before writing
these comments he had been instrumental in the introduc-
tion of the new medical discourse of anatomy and its cura-
tive extension, surgery. Indeed, he claimed that he had
invented the term that remains the modern Japanese word
for anatomy, kaibo.'? These foreign trends were designated
the ‘European way’ (ranpo) and were regarded as episte-
mologically distinct from the previous style, the ‘Continental
way’ of medicine (kanpo). Ihave written about this elsewhere,
but one distinction related to gender is important here:?° in
kanpo, without fixing gender, a patient could not be cured. To
the early modern European anatomist, however, barring the
existence of the womb, males and females were internally
identical. Even the sexual organs, it was intriguingly
believed, were the same, as Thomas Laqueur has written,
with the vagina conceived as an inverted penis, or rather the
penis as a pulled-out vagina.** Doctors made diagrams to
prove this and Vesalius, the ‘father of anatomy’, famously
depicted the vagina as an internalized penis (hence the
later rhyme: ‘Those whose greatest study it has been/Tell us
women are but men turned outside in’). The irrelevance of
gender to analysis and cure was a conception that arrived in
Japan with the ‘European way’.
At the root of developments in mid-Edo-period medicine
was a new problematic of gender. This had its implications
for healing but was also crucial for the ideology of reproduc-
tion, of sex, and so ultimately of libidinous picture-making. It
is intriguing to note how closely linked the followers of the
new medicine were to the persons who have already been
introduced in the preceding pages: artists, writers and
thinkers on sexuality.
The first full translation of an anatomical atlas was under-
taken by Genpaku, and he had various illustrations copied
for inclusion by Odano Naotake, a young samurai from
Akita who was brought to Edo by Hiraga Gennai; Naotake
lived there under his patronage and that of the Edo high
100
commissioner (rusuiyaku) of Akita, Hoseid6 Kisanji; also
involved was Katsurakawa Hoshi, the shogunal physician
(who was later to interview the Russian returnee Daikoku-ya
Kodayi, and whose brother, Morishima Chiuryo, was
Gennai’s pupil and literary successor).** The resulting book
was principally derived from the Anatomische Tabellen (Ana-
tomical plates) of the Danzig doctor Adam Kulm (or Kulmus),
published in German in 1725 but known in Edo in its Dutch
translation of 1734; the Chinese book (it was translated into
scholarly Kanbun, not the vernacular) was published in 1774
as the New Anatomical Atlas (Kaitai shinsho).*? Odano Naotake
expressed anxiety about the quality of his pictures, and with
reason, since he was transferring highly intricate copper-
plate etchings onto woodblock and, moreover, had only
been introduced to European modes of representation some
months before.*4 History has relieved Naotake of the charge
of incompetence, but it is also true that the Atlas pictures
have nothing to offer in matters of gender, for the good
reason that its source books ignore it. An illustration of the
womb (at the very end of the book, on a separate page, as a
kind of afterthought) is alone in distinguishing male and
female bodies, which are otherwise interchangeable, with
only the exteriors differing. The New Anatomical Atlas is
regularly touted as having initiated Japan’s encounter with
modern medicine, but in fact its primary assumption now
appears retrogressive compared with the existing tradition.
Dissections were occasionally carried out, and Genpaku
claimed it was after viewing one with Hoshi and others that
he determined to begin the arduous task of putting Kulm
into Chinese.*? It would have seemed a matter of no impor-
tance whether a female or a male cadaver was used. Corpses
were always those of executed criminals, so males were more
readily available. In Europe it was regarded as indelicate to
dissect females unnecessarily (that is, unless the womb were
being investigated), and there was also the problem of pruri-
ence on the part of spectators of female anatomy; in Holland,
where the costs of medical teaching were defrayed by admit-
ting the public for a fee, it cost more to see a female dissection
than a male (they were still better attended).7° As a rule,
Western medical pictures illustrated males for the same
reasons, and several of those in Kulm found their way into
the Atlas complete with facial or body hair (illus. 33). But the
101
 33 Odano Naotake, Diaphragm,
monochrome woodblock illus-
tration for Sugita Genpaku et al.
(trans.), Kaitai shinsho (1774,
copy after German original of
1725).

dissection that prompted the translation (if Genpaku’s

reconstruction is to be believed) was that of a woman whose
name is recorded as Aocha-baba (‘old Mrs Greentea’).*7
Genpaku, watching and comparing Kulm’s book and the
body being cut up, expressed concern that a north-east Asian
body might differ from a European one but nowhere won-
dered if pictures of males might be misleading when inspect-
ing a female: practitioners of the ‘European way’ confirmed
that gender was immaterial.
This sense of the marginality of gender distinction was
beginning to be challenged in Europe just as Kulm’s book
arrived in Edo. The pioneering work of the Swedish botanist
Carl Linnaeus postulated a fundamental sexual division
within all things, not just animals, fish or birds but also trees,
flowers and grasses. The name of Linnaeus may not yet
have been known there, but a favoured student of the great
scholar from Uppsala University, by name Carl Peter
Thunberg, came to Japan as a doctor with the Dutch East
India Company in 1775.2 Thunberg would have introduced
this model of a totally gendered universe, and it is known
that during the few weeks he spent in Edo in the spring of
1776 he became close to Hoshtiand to another of the Kulm
translators, Nakagawa Jun’an, addressing them as ‘my
beloved pupils’, donating to them his (highly expensive)
top-grade Parisian and Amsterdam medical tools and
102
maintaining a correspondence with them for years after his
return to Sweden (where he was awarded the Order of the
Vasa by King Gustav 111).*? Notions of plants as having
genders were not entirely absent from Japan, and this had
been discussed since before the arrival of European thought.
In China, bamboo was said to be gendered, but this was
regarded as a special case.*° The best Japanese expositions
occur in the writings of Hirata Atsutane in the 1810s, after the
solidification of some Western concepts, even if he specifi-
cally identified his work as indigenous ‘field nativism’ (s6mé
no kokugaku). Japanese plant gender was in any case theoreti-
cal and non-empirical to the eye, and few books were in
agreement on how gender should be assigned, even while
accepting that it had some relevance. Japanese plant and
seed genders were thus like human ones: real, but difficult
to pin down.
In the West, few*people yet took account of the new
Linnaean postulates. Eventually the fully gendered world
model was absorbed and by the nineteenth century had
spawned pornographic extensions, such as stories of women
copulating with ‘male’ plants, or inter-species eroticism in
the floral world.** Most people lagged behind doctors and
continued to regard differences as most saliently external.
Kulm’s book had been a product of pre-Linnaean construc-
tions and was not a forward-thinking book in any respects
(Kulm was not regarded as important in Europe, and the
mediocrity of the book may actually have delayed Japanese
‘advances’).>* Although he ignored internal differences in
the drawings, Kulm’s first two pictures had shown whole,
naked figures from front and back, one male, one female

34 Odana Naotake,
The Body, Front and
Back, from Sugita
Gepaku et al.,
Kaitai shinsho.

103
(illus. 34). These, if anything, exaggerate external sexual
differences, as a preliminary to erasing them inside the body.
The images proclaim sexual difference right across the whole
surface, so that even independently of the genitals (which are
not even shown) the sex is immediately clear. The female is
rounder, plumper, more sloping in the shoulders and larger
in the hips; the male is tauter, broad-backed, narrow at the
waist and hairier. In all genres of depiction, Western atten-
tion to secondary sexual characteristics was highly acute. In
Japan, as in all countries that used the pan-north-east Asian
‘Continental way’, internal differences were enlarged upon
but external ones barely illustrated. The respective pornog-
raphy traditions followed this. In shunga, male and female
bodies appear virtually identical other than in the genitals;
even female breasts are down-played and rarely appear as
sites of sexual interest (the only part of the breast depicted as
erotic in shunga is the nipple itself, that is, the part that is
shared with the male — see illus. 56). In Europe, porno-
graphic, like medical, pictures turned the entire area of the
outside of the body into a map of the sexual.
The lack of secondary sexual characteristics in Edo erotica
is plain enough to see by flipping through the illustrations
contained in the present book. What is also important is to
recognize the way in which the assimilation of the two
bodies made social gender-coding through dress or hairstyle
commensurately more important. If a person dressed her- or
himself in the clothes of a certain gender, they became a true
representative of that gender. To sport a unisex hairstyle was
thus to thwart gender itself. The locus classicus of this way of
thinking is to be found very much further back in a twelfth-
century story, the Tale of Those Who Wished to Change
(Torikaebaya monogatari), in which a brother and sister cross-
dress permanently and in so doing actually become, socially
speaking, if not genitally, members of their new chosen
order.33
Here we encounter a fundamental difference in ways of
construing sex and gender: the Edo sense, and that of its ante-
cedents, was that concerted comportment in a given gender
role will shift the person across into that gender; since sex is
barely encoded on the outside of the body, this new gender
will to all intents and purposes become the person’s new sex.
As we have seen, the fear at the close of the eighteenth cen-
104
35 The Female Body,
monochrome wood-
block illustration for
Morishima Chiiry6,
Komo zatsuwa (1787).

tury was that this process had become involuntary and that
all males, willy-nilly, were sliding into the regiment of
females. By contrast, in the Europe of the same period, cross-
dressing was common in conditions of masquerade (festival
or stage) only as a kimd of temporary gag, always ultimately
futile as real subterfuge, and generally easily unmasked
before any significant error has taken place. The secondary
sexual characteristics were taken as inextinguishable.

THE NUDE

Morishima Chuiry06, Hiraga Gennai’s successor and Hosht’s

brother, published a popular anthology on Western affairs in
1787 under the title of the European Miscellany (Komo zatsu-
wa).>+ It contained a section on picture-making, both in paint
and copperplate, accompanied by several illustrations culled
from an important early eighteenth-century teach-yourself
guide to art, Het Groot Schilderboek, known in English as The
Art of Painting in All its Branches. The author was Gérard de
Lairesse, a sometime associate of Rembrandt who had gone
blind, and unable to continue in his airy French Baroque
manner, he wrote the book via an amanuensis, in 1707 (the
English version appeared 75 years later).’? Two of the images
Churyo used showed naked bodies, one male, one female,
included to demonstrate ideal (to the European mind) bodily
proportions (illus. 35).
Chiry6 explained that learning to draw the human body
was regarded as the cornerstone of Western art, and grasping
the fundamental differences between male and female was
105
essential. He wrote, ‘European pictures are thus: when
someone is learning to make them, first they consider the
skeletal structure of the male and female, then they practice
drawing naked bodies, and finally ne put clothes on top of
this and produce a complete picture. ae
Chiry6 might have said more: in Europe, drawing naked
bodies was not just the prior spadework for constructing
clothed ones, it was an end in itself. The second most highly-
regarded Western genre (second to history painting) was the
nude, a subject regarded as elite, noble and fine, valued, in
part, because of its prominence in the sculpture of ancient
Greece. The dilemma that these images might provoke erotic
arousal, vitiating high sentiment, though very apparent, was
guarded against by various means, the most extreme being
the addition of fig leaves. These were justified by the biblical
claim that Adam and Eve had worn them in Eden, after
eating the apple of the knowledge of good and evil. The
Church was instrumental in much fig-leafing, particularly in
the Mannerist period, after the vast Renaissance expenditure
of energy on reviving the nude genres. In the 1580s, for exam-
ple, the archbishops of Milan and Bologna undertook an
inspection of the artworks in their respective sees, passing
judgement on which were acceptable and which would give
rise to obscene thoughts and so must be shielded.?”
The nude became one of Europe’s major themes. But, leav-
ing aside the occasional clerical vituperation, it is notable
how deep was the blanket of silence that was piled over the
genre, as people progressively refused to see, or pretended
not to see, or declined to talk about, erotic value. Mention of
sexual charge was turned into something coarse. De-eroti-
cization was of course at variance with the purpose for which
nudes were often created. Although much more could be
said on this, it suffices to consider a painting by Eglon van
der Neer in which a bourgeois Dutch couple stand and sit in
their refined home, tastefully appointed, with a Venus and
Cupid on the wall behind them; the depicted space is not one
in which the sexual implications of this naked female could
decently be discoursed upon (illus. 36). Passage froma naked
painted person to libidinous arousal is not an uncomplicated
one, and there is room for interference along the route.
An intriguing anecdote is useful here. In 1613, John Saris
of the English East India Company recorded a meeting with
106
36 Eglon van der
Neer, Portrait ofa
Man and a Woman in
an Interior, c. 1675,
oil on panel.

some of the ladies of the daimyo of Hirado, Matsura

Takanobu. The daimyo had given Saris a banquet, and he
reciprocated with a tour of his ship. Some of the Hirado elite
were Christian, and when the women came across the paint-
ing of a female in Saris’s cabin, ‘in a great frame’, they fell
down and performed devotions to it, under the impression
that it was the Virgin.2* However, it was actually Venus, by
Saris’s admission ‘verye lasiuiously sett out’, intended for
his private delight at sea. It seems that eroticism can very
easily be chivvied out of view. Saris’s story became famous in
England as proof of the non-transferability of pictorial con-
ventions (Saris did however urge his employers in London to
send more erotica to Japan, where he was sure it could be
sold for up to £8 apiece).*? The repercussions of this anecdote
are worth recording. Saris’s story was picked up in the
famous Green's New Collection of Travels and Voyages, put into
French by Abbé Prevost d’Exiles (the author of Manon
Lescaut), which in turn was put into Dutch in 1747-50 as
Historische beschriving der reizen, in which form it was brought
to Japan. The Dutch version came into the possession of the
Europhile daimyo of Fukuchiyama, Kutsuki Masatsuna, who
showed it to the scholarly minded then-daimyo of Hirado,
Matsura Seizan, who had the relevant bits dealing with his
ancestor translated into Japanese; in this Japanese version, the
107
Venus was referred to as ‘a shunga’. Shiba Kokan publicized
the story for general Edo consumption in 1811, retaining this
loaded term.*°
This tale, which opens a bracket of silence, may be read
along with another which, as it were, closes it. Mishima
Yukio in 1949 wrote in his fictionalized autobiography how
his first act of masturbation came while looking at Guido
Reni’s St Sebastian from the Palazzo Rosso in Genoa, of which
his father owned a lithographic reproduction.** Mishima
was overcome with shame, believing he had desecrated the
work. Research into the history of many such nudes, and
indeed specifically into depictions of St Sebastian, has now
confirmed that Mishima’s response may have been the cor-
rect one in terms of what artist and patron were gearing the
painting towards.**
The pretence that nudes were ever ‘clean’ was finally shat-
tered by Kenneth Clark in his famous book of 1956, The Nude,
which proclaimed that the genre was unavoidably erotic —
the first time an art historian in his position (he was a former
director of the National Gallery in London) had said as
much.*? Before this, a ‘high’ subject from mythology or the
past was enough to deem sex as being outside the equation.

NUDES AND SHUNGA

The emphasis on external bodily differences meant that

seeing any naked body was ipso facto seeing something that
was sexually impregnated and hence something sexual,
which, unless ignorance or wilfulness interposed, could be
liberated to become erotic. Perhaps it was the propensity of
all parts of the body in the West to make sexual statements,
coupled with the tradition of the nude genre, that required
such emphatic policing of the join between the two issues.
There was no equivalent in Japan; for a start there was no
nude genre, and, as we have seen, male and female were not
polarized but were said to hold the majority of their external
traits in common. As the Edo regime of the body attached
scant gender-specificity to external parts, it accorded small
erotic value to the shapes formed by skin (thigh, waist etc.),
so it was not of much use for artists to show them. On the
other hand it was possible for artists to draw nakedness
108
without any equivalent need to drown out sexuality. In the
absence of any sexual tension in nakedness, there was little
need to do so. It is said that shunga pay less attention to naked
forms than European pornography. This is partially true
(although there are shunga showing unclothed bodies), but it
is better to say that shunga dismiss the erotic possibility of
skin. Skin might be good to feel, but since the curves and
indentations of male and female bodies were taken as being
the same, it did not entice the gaze. On the whole, as we shall
see below, it was clothing that made gender (and erotic)
statements powerful, though the nape of the neck was one
fetishized area of specifically female skin.
In Europe, Greek subjects remained the focus of the nude
after its revival in the Renaissance, although Roman (e.g.,
Venus) and Christian (e.g., St Sebastian) subjects were added.
This situation began to break down in the nineteenth cen-
tury. An infamous instance is Manet’s Olympia, completed in
1863 and exhibited two years later, but soon removed from
display owing to public outcry (illus. 37).44 Manet did pay
lip service to classical expectations (the title), but he put the
woman into an obviously modern setting, one that was felt to
bring the eroticism too much to the fore and render the pic-
ture too obviously sexual. This ‘Olympia’ was clearly a pros-
titute and not the lofty classical goddess, and thus Manet’s
work was literally pornography, that is, the representation of
prostitution.
The nude, as a genre, appeared in Japan with the introduc-
tion of Western painting norms at about the time of Manet
(who was himself influenced by Japanese art). The confusion
that had recently infested the genre in Europe, which T. J.
Clark has referred to as the ‘crisis of the nude’, entered Japan
in tandem with the nude itself;? given the absence of any his-
torical assumptions about how the genre was to be inter-
preted and excused, this provoked signal problems.*° Kuroda
Seiki’s Morning Toilette, exhibited in 1895 (but since destroyed),
is said to have been the first Japanese nude, although the
figure coyly seen in back view is a Western woman, not a
Japanese (illus. 38). The use of the mirror (as we shall see in
Chapter Five) was a common erotic device in shunga, and it
revealed the nape, but here it has a mitigating, distancing role.
Other artists experimented with bringing the nude into
the emerging orbit of what was for the first time being called
109
37 Edouard Manet,
Olympia, 1863, oil
on canvas.

38 Kuroda Seiki,
Morning Toilette,
1893, oil on canvas.
Original destroyed
during World War 1.
7 Psa lnt Witeewat Ene'scn Tabincada‘’s CAL
39 Kikuchi 10Sai, £n ya laxasada’s Wife
on =» Se
Léaving ner bain, 1542,Pa
colouraa on silk.
sit

‘Japanese art’. Already at the end of the Edo period, artists

had encountered the nude and tried hooking it into the other
genre arriving from Europe (and equally in crisis), which
was history painting. In 1842 Kikuchi Yosai depicted En’ya
Takasada’s Wife Leaving her Bath, a story that was deliberately
uplifting (depending on one’s politics): Takasada was a
retainer of the fourteenth-century shogun Ashikaga Takauji,
and while he was absent his wife valiantly attempted to
resist seduction by Kono Moronao, her ultimate failure lead-
ing to her death from shame (illus. 39). Yosai is here mixing
genres, rather unsteadily, and seems uncertain how to deal
with the eroticism. Moronao’s loathsome face, bent on
ravishment, peeps from the rear, exactly as the viewer’s
peeps from the front; this is part history-cum-nude, but part
shunga of the ‘exiting the bath’ type (see illus. 19, 21, 26, 27).
Such experimentations with the depiction of nakedness
and the capturing of secondary sexual characteristics in their
erotic power began with Westernist artists, and Shiba Kokan
Hii
 40 Suzuki Harushige
(Shiba Kokan), Foreign
Woman and Child, c. 1790,
colour on paper.

was among the first. He did a (now lost) painting of a foreign

woman, presumably European, with large rounded hips and
thighs, full breasts and stomach, and a soft chin (illus. 40). It
is not a shunga, and the child justifies the exposed breasts,
keeping their voluminousness in the domain of motherhood
rather than sexuality. But eroticism is not absent, and Kokan
must have known that shunga often incorporated children
precisely as an extenuating mechanism. This image is an early
articulation of a bodily surface totalized by irremovable
sexual demarcations.
The Western genre of the nude downplays the genitals.
With so much erotic power inherent in the secondary sexual
characteristics, it could afford to. Genitals, ina sense, are not
really needed (hence the frustration of prelates who feared
that fig leaves might not contain erotic power). Shunga, how-
ever, take the reverse path and, in the absence of secondary
sexual characteristics, necessarily rely on genitals to hold the
viewer. This accounts for the great magnification of them:
there is not much else of a bodily kind for shunga to show.47
Europeans began to look at pictures of the Floating World
during the period of disintegration of the academic nude.
AlatA.
41 Coverillustration {|
to Le Japan artistique, a LE JA PON = i
no. 33 (January, : 4 —

>

Untrained Western viewers could not easily appreciate the

erotic power of Japanese prints with their absence of
depicted skin. A tendency to infantilize the represented adult
personages is repeatedly seen (the term ‘geisha girls’ remains
in service). The recurrent orientalist fantasy of under-aged
sex partners ripe for the plucking is evident, but language
was often that of androgyny, of women of an age before
secondary sexual characteristics have put them into the cate-
gory of fully sexualized existence. Pace the French pick-up
line ‘viens voir mes estampes japonaises’, Japanese prints
were often enjoyed for their exciting compositional arrange-
ment, unexpected draughtsmanship or colouring, and it barely
entered the terms of engagement that the themes were male
and female prostitutes. Indeed, Westerners routinely mistook
the attractive boys (wakushi) for girls, as do many modern
viewers.** Real connoisseurs attempted to inform Western
viewers of the facts and to lock pictures of the Floating World
into sex, and artists of the analogous French demi-monde such
as Toulouse-Lautrec expressed an interest in Japanese prints;
Edouard de Goncourt’s biography of Utamaro was subtitled
‘Peintre des maisons vertes’ (seiro, better rendered as ‘blue

Bo)
towers’, that is, brothels, than ‘green houses’).4? But ordinary
people continued to frame Japanese woodblock prints and
hang them obliviously in their sitting rooms.
A restoration of erotic power to the nude was the aim of
painters, like Manet, who were prepared to shock. In this
Japanese prints were a useful tool, not because of features
inherent in the prints themselves, but because everything
available was being used as grist to the anti-academic mill. It
was shocking enough to propose that Asian art had anything
to teach the French. Concurrent with the comments about
androgyny made by those who recognized the lack of seem-
ingly adult bodies was the selecting for prominence by
members of the avant-garde of the kinds of prints that most
conformed to their ideas of what the nude should now be.
Pictures with relatively clear secondary sexual characteris-
tics, de-accentuated genitals and modern settings were
deployed. One case is an Utamaro print used as the cover for
the January 1891 issue of the magazine Le Japon artistique,
issued just months before Goncourt’s book (illus. 41). The
child is apparently reaching for the breast, and this print
resembles Kokan’s woman with an infant. But the child is
actually reaching for the woman’s skirt as she leans back in
apparent excitement. To a Western viewer the child seems far
too old for breastfeeding, so that the woman proffers her teat
more for the viewer than for him. The picture reads as
entirely erotic, the body of the woman is intensely female,
and although not much nakedness is seen, this woman of the
maisons vertes exists comfortably beside Olympia.

CLOTHES

The Western nude emphasizes the secondary sexual charac-

teristics over the genitals because that is the best way to make
available a palpable, but restrained, eroticism. Pornography,
of course, gives more attention to the genitals and, if a male is
shown, the penis will generally be erect.
Japanese depictions take the opposite path but for exactly
the same reasons. They show figures clothed because that was
considered the best way to make available a palpable, but res-
trained, eroticism. Shunga give more attention to the genitals
and again, ifa male is shown, the penis will generally be erect.
114
42 Marcantonio
Raimondi, First
Position, copper-
plate illustration
for Pietro Aretino,
Sonnetti lussuriosi
(1524).

- ery
=

Teal
In pictures of the Floating World, the clothes themselves
carry sexual weight; in Western pictures, they rarely have
this power. In Western representation, clothes must be made
to show the shape of the body beneath if any erotic charge is
to be effected and so they are made to do so, as Anne
Hollander has pointed out, often in defiance of the logic of
how drapery really falls.*°
Some scholars of shunga have sought to plot a gradual dis-
appearance of nakedness, beginning about the mid-seven-
teenth century.?* I regard this as unprovable. I have less truck
with a statement often heard that the surrender of nakedness
indicates some ‘Japanese’ aesthetic trait, which prefers semi-
concealment to overt display. (In this context, Yoshida Kenk6’s
remark that the moon is most beautiful when occluded by
cloud is cited, or else a generalistic appeal is made to Zen,
and the contemporary Japanese tolerance of highly censored
pornography adduced to bring the observations up to date.)
The statements seem to me to be ideological polemic, not
history. :
Yet there are indeed differences between shunga and much
Western pornography in the relative attention paid to cloth
over skin. Some factors accounting for this are pretty evident.
For one, there is the technological issue. From Renaissance
times right through into the nineteenth century, Western
pornography was predominantly copperplate (illus. 42);
shunga were predominantly woodblock. Different media
115
necessitate different treatments. Woodblock does not allow
much rendition of the roundness of form (breasts or thighs),
and it is not good at providing shading; on the other hand it
excels at patterning on the flat. Copperplate, conversely, can
support a great density of line and encourages multiple
moulding, and it is generally better at showing undulating
surfaces than flat ones. This means that woodblock shunga
tend to produce bodies in outline, enlivened by clothing pat-
terns, while copperplate produces bodies in curves, better
articulated by muscle or fat than pleats of cloth.
Edo-period commentators on Western pictures noted that
a major difference in the treatment of the body was in the use
of moulding and graded shadow. This was stated in the first
Japanese treatise on Western art, written by Satake Yoshiatsu
in 1778. Yoshiatsu (who painted in the Western manner,
using the studio name Shozan) was the daimyo of Akita, and
so overlord of Hdseidé Kisanji and Odano Naotake. He
regretted that ‘something not achieved by any of the painting
schools’ in Japan was the ‘three faces of a rounded object’. He
cited the case of the nose.?* Kokan noted this too, calling the
use of a bright surface, a shadowed one and highlights the
‘three-faced method’.>> Sato Narihiro and numerous others
wrote the same.*+
These commentators discussed the face (typically, as
Yoshiatsu, the nose), and in their chosen contexts they were
hardly able to base their arguments on breasts and buttocks.
But representation of all parts of the body was radically
altered by the ‘three-faced method’, that is, the lit and dark
sides of an object and the dot or line of the highlight, through
which it became possible to demonstrate at what angle
knees were bent, or how fara belly protruded, or whether the
limbs were turned inwards or out. Another of Yoshiatsu’s
examples was architectural: ‘this is the first pictorial style’, he
wrote, ‘that can tell the outside from the inside of a tower’
(that is, the convex from the concave).>> Of course he did not
say so, but this was not so different from depicting a penis. It
would be interesting to know whether Edo audiences would
have found sexual excitement in bodies done in the Western
way. Kokan painted at least two shunga, but neither was done
in the Western manner.>° One page in the shunga album the
Willow Storm (Yanagi no arashi), attributed to Hokusai’s (dis-
owned) son-in-law Yanagawa Shigenobu, shows a Western
116
couple, rendered in an imitation of copperplate (illus. 25) -
an experiment that came late and was not repeated.°” An
anonymous scroll of about the same period shows several
erotic images painted in the Western manner, with
Europeans stationed in Japan engaging with local women
(see illus. 125), although this too is unique and, significantly,
no Japanese males were represented in the idiom.
The medium and the inheritance of style have significant
effects on the appearance of a picture. The prominence of
clothing in shunga, the absence of skin and the enlargement
of the genitals may be accounted for in this way, but the
observation does not end our investigation, for, as images
were consumed, viewers were unwillingly led towards cer-
tain conclusions about the body, and away from others, with
results we must consider.

CLOTILIN THE EDO PERIOD

A sense of the erotic value of cloth is apparent at several

moments in Japanese history. In the eleventh-century Tale of
Genji (Genji monogatari), for example, the way a person (male
or female) selected and matched their fabrics was the subject
of extensive scrutiny. This, of course, is not uniquely
Japanese, for even the most ‘naked’ cultures have their rules
of matching and draping clothes. Cloth culture is not just aes-
thetic but is part of the ritual of attracting and mating.
Greece, though thought of as the birthplace of represented
nakedness, produced far more clothed sculptures than is
generally recognized, and they lose nothing of their erotic
power for being clad. It is obvious that Greece was a society
that knew the sensual power of well-ordered cloth, not least
in women, for the female nude actually appears only after
the male in Greek sculpture. Nevertheless, in the period cov-
ered by this book, cloth in Japan was perhaps abnormally
acutely attended to.
In the days before mass production, good clothing was
often inherited. At the higher levels of dress, where items
were most formal and expensive, clothing changed little over
time. In the 250 years of the Edo period the top echelon of
garments barely evolved, and infrequently worn ceremonial
clothes were able to last for generations. For less formal wear,
#17
less outlay was required, so people could, and did, mutate
their clothes, taking a degree of command over their own
appearance in the knowledge that items would, in the end,
be disposed of. This is how fashion emerged. But, despite the
prominence of fashion in Edo urban life, even fairly casual
garments altered relatively little in shape over time. There
was no change equivalent to the move in Europe over the
same period, from hose and tunic to trousers and frock coat.
The person of the Edo period did not purchase clothing, but
cloth. This was then made up at home. General wear could
not be more intricate than the ordinarily deft person had the
time and skill to sew for themselves. Edo fashion was thus
the fashion for changes in cloth, with only minor shifts in cut.
Pictures of the Floating World contain a significant
number of depictions of the handling and touching of tex-
tiles. There are views of Edo’s main haberdasher’s, Echigo-
ya, the first shop to sell cloth by the length required rather
than by the bolt, and there are scenes of women sewing,
washing and mending. No other household occupation, nor
indeed any other activity at all, outside pure entertainment,
figures half so much (illus. 24). Cloth was appropriate to the
genre not just because it was lovely but because it had erotic
value. Leisure dress was intensely personal, and a person’s
clothes were special to them because they had not only
chosen the cloth, or received it as a specific present, but very
probably had made it up too; this was especially true of
women, not coincidentally the half of humanity that receives
the greater scopic attention. It was a woman who bought and
made her clothes, and who unpicked them to clean the marks
of her body from them when they became dirty, and who
then restitched them. In European art, washerwomen appear
in genre paintings, but they will be servants working on
someone else’s clothes; washing was a trade; in Edo it was
not. When not being worn, Edo clothing might also be used
as ornament and hung up for decorative effect, but it still per-
tained to the person who normally had it on. Worn-out
clothes might be mounted on screens, to retain the aura of a
person, and this genre of collage art (which extends to
painted cloth, mimicking actual mounted fabrics, drawn on
screens) goes by the name of tagasode byobu, literally ‘screens
of whose sleeves’. The question was rhetorical: one was sup-
posed to know whose sleeves they had been, or at least be

118
43 Koikawa Harumachi,
The Road to the Yoshiwara,
monochrome woodblock
page from his Muda iki
(1781 or 1783).
SHH
aD
~~

4
Wer
i
x

able to imagine a human personality, based on the patterns

(not cut) of the fabric (illus. 53). The genre would be impossi-
ble in Western art. Hung-up clothing might attest to a
person’s wealth, but it would indicate little of a sensual
nature about them as individuals; in Europe you could not
meaningfully ask, ‘Whose sleeves?’ The erotic aspect of this
was made abundantly clear in 1770s Edo, when ‘buying a
whose-sleeves’ became slang for hiring a prostitute.??
The dominance of the kimono and of a fairly small
number of other clothing types (uchikake, haort, hakama etc.)
meant that Edo-period clothing had to be multi-functional.
There was much less dressing and redressing for different
activities than was current in Europe. Moreover, the distinc-
tion — an important one in shunga — between daytime and
night-time use was not observed, so that a kimono doubled
as a bedspread, as is commonly represented in shunga.
Koikawa Harumachi lampooned the fashion-conscious-
ness of his time in a comic work entitled Useless Fads (Muda
iki) and in it reveals how only minor changes in cut (length of
hem, width of obi) or wearing practice (degree of exposure of
the neck) matched the attention paid to new types of cloth
and their coordination. In one of the illustrations, which
Harumachi produced himself, we see a pair of young sophis-
ticates heading out for a night of fun (a sign reads ‘left for the
119
Yoshiwara’) in the latest, costly jet-black cloth, but wearing
standard clothing types, only cut too amply (showing
extravagance) ina way that the reader knew was then all the
rage (illus. 43). Over-dressing was the over-use of cloth. (The
hair is also incontinently set, with an absurdly long cue, exag-
gerating the style known as a ‘honda’.) We read:

a fashionable man has a tunic (haori) of 3 shaku 8 sun 5 or 6

bu [c. 120 cm], with the hem trailing at his heels, the lining
of his collar is white, his trousers (hakama) are [pin-striped]
like fishing rods, his sash (obi) resembles the hoop that
binds the planks of a bathtub.

None of the clothing items, or the terms for them, would

have in themselves surprised his great-grand father.
Harumachi’s book was published at a time when people
felt the pursuit of ever more expensive cloth was becoming
excessive — hence the force of his satire (it was published in
either 1781 or 1783). Genpaku wrote in his condemnation of
the age that many spent up to 40 or 50 kin (a colossal sum) on
a single costume and then wore it only five or six times before
buying something new. Different types of cloth appeared,
as fabrics that had not previously been seen outside their
own localities entered the general market as a result of the
improved circulation of goods. Textiles arrived from over-
seas, bringing new patterns and types. The word for stripe
(shima) still used in Japanese is a homophone for ‘island’ and
is first attested at this period, referring to the Dutch East
Indies, or what is now Indonesia. Other parts of South-East
Asia, as well as India, Europe, China and the Ainu lands,
were all supplying cloth for the Edo buyer.
An often-repeated formulation had it that the ideal
woman should be born in Keishi, have Edo guts (hari), live in
an Osaka house (larger and less crowded) and wear Nagasaki
cloth, that is, cloth imported through the only international
port.°! ‘Nagasaki’ cloth was expensive, although prices are
difficult to determine. There are ample stories of merchants
making fortunes in the Nagasaki trade, much of which was
the import of cloth as that (together with sugar) was the chief
item brought in on the two annual East Indiamen. To be the
Nagasaki governor (bugyo) was to cream off some of the most
lucrative takings in the whole Tokugawa bureaucracy.
120
44 Kitagawa
Utamaro, Three
Beauties ofthe
Present Day, c. 1793,
multi-coloured
woodblock print.

As part of the Kansei Reforms, the number of Chinese

ships annually permitted to dock in Nagasaki was cut, and
the Dutch East India Company halved theirs to just one per
annum.°? The shogunate was keen to prevent exhaustion of
copper (the main export item), but limiting also had the effect
of driving up the prices of imports. Foreign cloth became
disproportionately expensive. Whereas previously a whole
kimono might have been made from overseas fabric, after the
1790s only the sashes tended to be, or else imported cloth was
used for such small accessories as tobacco pouches. Import
substitution was also practised. Prints of the Kansei era
reveal women wearing meaner sorts of cloth than those of
the former age (illus. 44). Sumptuary laws were passed to
limit access to these now exorbitantly priced materials.
Normal citizens had to be careful, and even prostitutes and
actors, for whom lavish clothes were professional necessities,
had to watch out. In 1789, just as the reforms were beginning,
2
Segawa Kikunojo was arrested as he walked home, in over-
splendid attire, from the theatre; two years later, all costumes
for a production of the kabuki play Edo Cherry Trees, the
friends of Sukeroku (Sukeroku yukari no Edo-zakura) were con-
fiscated from the Nakamura-za Theatre because of their
lavishness (Ichikawa Yaozo Il was to play Sukeroku, Iwai
Hanshird was Agemaki and Onoe Matsusake was Ikya).©
The official log of the Dutch East India Company records in
exasperation the collapse of demand and cites the example
made of a Nagasaki prostitute who had her wardrobe seized
for its excessiveness, with ‘everything taken away’; someone
else was ‘put in prison for the same reason’.©4

CLOTH AND SHUNGA

Even in the days when ships were less restricted, the high
cost of imported cloth meant that few people wore it much.
Lavish clothes were the preserve of two main groups: the
extremely rich, and those who needed it as work-wear, that
is, actors and prostitutes. The triadic formulation quoted
above for the woman of the three cities referred not just to the
ideal woman, but the ideal prostitute. Other than the rich
(who would not be much encountered in the ordinary towns-
person’s life), then, fine clothes meant the garb of theatrical-
ity or of paying sex. The Edo male would have touched finer
fabrics in the arms of these two categories of provider than
on any other occasion. The sexual power of texture and look
in first-rate cloth was commensurately great; it may very
well have excelled in excitement the feel of skin, since good
cloth was harder to come by than good skin and was more
expensive when one did. Even a session with a prostitute
would cost less than the value of the clothes s/he wore.
There is no reason to assume that people stripped to have
sex. Societies that have easy access to heating and cooling
may well enjoy nakedness, but such was not the Edo case.
The seasons controlled the temperature, with only minor
scope for human intervention by means of braziers or fans.
Those who argue that it is a peculiarity of shunga not to be
interested in nudity tacitly assume that sex was performed
naked, which is not a credible assumption. Even in Europe,
where the sexual power of the bodily surface was strong and
22)
45 Shimokobe the value placed on erotic cloth less, and where both pornog-
Shisui, Lovers,
monochrome raphy and the tradition of the nude made for a high valoriza-
woodblock page tion of nakedness, it still seems that people generally made
from an untitled
love with their clothes on, right up into the twentieth century.
shunga album
he. 0771). Of course clothes were opened, but how many and how far
depended on the time of year or on other factors such as
whether the encounter was rushed and furtive, or with a
designated duration, but the likelihood of copulating totally
undressed was virtually nil.
This connection between cloth and sensuality made it
inevitable that cloth would figure in shunga, although the
type depicted was probably not that routinely experienced,
since in most cases it looks hyperfine and surely exaggerates
what would have been worn by any except the very highest-
ranking sex professionals (whom few could patronize).
Here, imagery is again engaged in myth-making. True, in
pictures made in the Kansei era, the quality of depicted dress
goes down, but this was more likely because the publishers
were being accused of tempting people to overspend. Note
how it is the openly marketed ‘normal’ pictures of the
Floating World that evince this self-censorship of depicted
cloth, while the more covert works of shunga, not seen by the

123
authorities, took the reverse course and compensated for the
declining quality of fabrics by illustrating preternaturally
luxurious ones. Clothing in pictures is never the same as that
in real life, especially in real sex, where clothes and bedding
become deranged and rumpled, damaged by creasing,
stained by sweat or marked by other bodily fluids. Only in
pictures are such considerations irrelevant, so that it is in
pictures that cloth can run riot.
The prevalence of cloth in shunga is not, then, so very hard
to explain. Let us go on to consider how such cloth works, as it
moves and falls to aid in the creation of a specific sexual world.
We may start with an image by Shimokobe Shiasui (illus.
45). The work is a monochrome woodblock print and the
naked bodies look exceedingly whole. Our bodies are full of
disjunctions, with places where bones protrude, or sudden
changes of angle affect the surface. But shunga prefer bodies
without such segmentations. The lumps and nodes seen in
the illustrations to Aretino’s book (which set the norm in
Europe for generations), where limbs are attached to the
trunk, or where tissue protrudes, are simply absent in shunga
and obscured by all-covering bulges of fat (illus. 42). Shisui’s
bodies are whole, Aretino’s a collection of parts.
Shisui and others took advantage of the known features
of their print medium to encode bodies in a certain way, one
that would be disencoded by the viewer. There are no differ-
entiating secondary sexual characteristics, only the primary
genitals, but even there the organs are deeply nested within
each other so as to be almost fused; pubic hair aids a sense of
slide from one body to another, without differentiation. Note
that, unlike in Western pornography, which generally shows
the male as hairier than the female, in shunga the quantity of
pubes is the same for both, which also removes an element of
sexual difference.
The viewer of a work such as Shiisui’s first sees two
wholes, with only minor bodily cuts and folds. But this is not
the end, for segmentation does occur in the picture: the pair
hold each other at the arms and legs; she puts her arms
around his neck, while he raises himself with hands placed to
touch the sides of her chest; the legs twist together at the
shins. This was the so-called ‘fourth position’ (yotsude).°> The
bodies are marked into three distinct parts: head, trunk (fully
half of which consists of the genitals) and shins. The three
124
 [vs
Prete
baat
adr
pen
Sw
A
»*

se
TU
OOS
RY
Sl
cn
a
ee
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ee

ow

46 Katsushika units are separated by arms and thighs. What appears to be

Hokusai, Lovers,
multi-coloured
happening is that, as the two bodies join in sex, they exert a
woodblock page mutually deconstructive power. Coupling brings about a
for Fukuji sou shared loss of integrity. The bodies were whole, but now
(1815).
have broken up ina way that is non-anatomical and entirely
the result of the embrace, unrelated to the body’s natural
creases and curves. Aretino’s couples are in generally the
same position as Shisui’s, but the effect is utterly different.
The strong vertical axis that Shusui gives to the arms cuts the
head from the genitals; the vertical thighs counterpoint this,
while giving a kind of visual antinomy of the intact heads in
the busy tangle of lower limbs. The heads remain apart, the
genitals lock, and the legs collapse into a shared heap. The
viewer must infer from this that sex is something that takes
the body over and quite literally restructures it. The natural
breaks are submerged in new lines, traced reciprocally by the
one person on the other, via the act of sex. The couple are
literally ‘giving themselves’ to each other. We see less two
people than three shared, composite segments.
When clothes are worn, the propensity to deconstruct the
individual and fuse it into the partner is also apparent.
125
Clothes are not only included for the thrill of showing their 47 Kitagawa
Utamaro, Lovers,
patterning or expense, nor to solicit praise for the perfor- multi-coloured
mance of the block-cutter in rendering this: they are also woodblock page
there to divide the body segmentally and then fuse it across from Tama kushige
(1801).
the couple. Huge swathes of cloth, beneath which no physi-
cal shape at all is to be discerned, obliterate the sense of 48 Utagawa
seeing two independent people. There are two heads, two Hiroshige, Lovers
sets of reproductive organs, sometimes two sets of feet and under the Moon,
multi-coloured
hands, but never two bodies. Numerous examples of this woodblock page
manner of depiction occur in shunga; in fact, this is the from a shunga
album, Haru no
normal way that sex is depicted in the genre.
yahan (c. 1851).
Kunisada’s book of about 1820, Recitations for the Four
Seasons (Shiki no nagame), includes an extreme example of the
eradication of the body and its replacement with fused por-
tions (see illus. 12). The cloths (they can hardly be called
clothes) swamp the bodies, and the couple grasp hands in a
sea of fabric that seems likely otherwise to dissolve them into
an indistinguishable mass. The human bodies are not the
source of any of the shapes contained in the picture.
The turbulence of cloth has the effect of softening the
sense that one partner is coming at, or taking over, the other.
The splitting seen in Shiisui is mollified when the mutual
divisions are made not by arms and legs but by clothing,
enhancing the feeling of commonality and the removal of
any adversariality.
Other comparable mechanisms are used by s/unga artists
to weaken the sense of the body, or to lessen its integrity in
favour of cross-fusing parts. Hokusai used cloth in this way
in Long Life and Happiness at the Thorny Eaves (Fukujii sou) of
1815, where he produced a patterned kimono written flat
across the male body, as if to deny it any epistemological
validity (illus. 46). The representation of pattern as flat across
folds and pleats was Hokusai’s choice; he was able to show
how design is effected by bunching where he wished to.
External fabrics and room furnishings contribute to the
same effect. Aretino’s image was full of exterior fabric, but
this did not interfere with, nor even touch, the depicted
bodies. In much shunga, flynets, sliding doors and screens are
used to dismember bodies. Artistic devices are intended to
segment and restructure. Note that in most cases where a fur-
nishing divides the bodies, it does so not just anywhere but
creates a split between head and genitals. Sometimes there
126
are highly sophisticated, multiple splits, such as in an un-
identified loose page from a book illustrated by Rekisen-tei
Eiri in the late eighteenth century (illus. 54). The post of an
open screen bisects the couple’s genital area, partially show-
ing, partially covering a kind of sexual penumbra of pubic
hair — it is impossible to tell what is whose. Next comes the
semi-translucent substance of the screen itself, behind
which only the vaguest notion of body is allowed (one thigh,
two arms), lost amongst equally indistinct swathes of cloth.
Finally, to the left, are the heads. The viewer moves in four
carefully graded steps from the conflated heat of the organs to
the separate coolness of the heads. There are no bodies at all.
Once external accessories have assumed power to define
the body, any kind of manipulation becomes possible, such
as could never be effected in a nude arrangement. Shunga
depict poses that no body could muster but, in doing so, they
send out messages about the body-in-sex. An example is in
Utamaro’s Jewelled Hairpin (Tama kushige) of 1801, where we
see a couple lying obliquely across the page, feet near the
front and to the right, shoulders to the left and rear (illus. 47).
The woman is on her back with head turned to the right; the
man lies between her legs, facing left. The pose is contortion-
istic. But the mass of pulled-up cloth dividing legs and but-
tocks from heads hinders realization of this and discourages
the viewer’s inquisitiveness: the need to ask how bodies can
manage this, or what line must be traced by their backbones,
is deliberately obviated.
Hayashi Yoshikazu has intriguingly revealed the later his-
tory of Utamaro’s picture. Fifty years on, Hiroshige borrowed
it for his Midnight in Spring (Haru no yahan) of about 1851
(illus. 48). The two images are virtually identical except for a
large moon, now appearing to the left, befitting Hiroshige’s
title. The woman also wears more elaborate hairpins, suiting
the prevailing style. The man’s kimono has a new pattern
(though an identical cut). But Hiroshige’s main alteration is to
the heads: the woman faces 90 degrees left of where Utamaro
had shown her, while the man has turned fully 180 degrees.
Why did Hiroshige borrow this picture and why, in bor-
rowing it, did he change it? It seems unlikely, in view of his
enormously prolific output, that Hiroshige was just sparing
himself labour. He was happy enough to fill the rest of the
book with his own compositions (only one other page is

128
taken from Utamaro). I surmise that Hiroshige was deliber-
ately referring back to an original he expected his readers to
know. If so, then (second question): Was he giving his readers
a kind of puzzle to solve, as they remembered having seen
the construction somewhere and went to look for it? Hiro-
shige’s adaptation makes sense as a riddle, coupled with
clues. But at the same time it is also a rationalization of
Utamaro’s original. Hiroshige has given the man’s body
more substance than Utamaro allowed, such that the
chequered lines now bend at the sleeves; both these peoples’
vertebrae look plausibly joined. Why this move towards
anatomical realism? As we shall see in the concluding
chapter of this book, just as the history of Edo shunga has a
beginning, it also has an end, and in the second quarter of the
nineteenth century great changes occurred in the genre.
Bodies were to lose their looseness and become fixed, and the
surrender of self that had defined the earlier pictures disap-
peared in favour of more brutal personal wholes.
What is odd is not that the period of the divided body
came to an end, but that it existed at all, within the field of
pornographic images. Twisting and playing with the body
might not be peculiar in abstract or symbolistic genres, but
this is one that arouses the viewer sexually. It is within the
explicit terms of sex that shunga propose union as being
about the loss of body. Each part will be logically entwined —
head with head, thigh with thigh, and of course loin with
loin — but these do not form wholes. This is not a regime
known to most pornography, either in Japan or elsewhere.
Hiroshige was aware of standing at the end of a shunga tradi-
tion that had reached its peak in the time of Utamaro. In
‘quoting’ the earlier artist, he invited the reader’s meditation
on changes in the nature of the pornographic genre, on the
status of the body as it had once been and as it had become.

SHUNGA BOOKS

Most shunga appeared in book form. The material presence

of the book was an important aspect of how the image
worked and was something that the artist had to be aware of
as he made his imagery. Deluxe albums were bound down
one side, so that a full colour page appeared. The run of
129
pictures, however, were printed on two separate sheets, halt
oneither one, and were bound down the central gap. The two
sections were held within the line of a frame, with a gutter
between. Artists made use of this in the organization of pic-
tures, The book format could be enlisted to aid in decon-
struction of the body and its reassembly on other terms, just
as cloth and furnishings were. In Utamaro’s and Hiroshige’s
images, the naked legs and (partially seen) organs are on
the right-hand side, after which the picture is forced into a
hiatus, only to pick up again on the next page, inside the
ensuing frame. The right side is the first to be read in the north-
east Asian system of viewing, and it contains the nakedness
and the sexual aspect; the left has only the dressed bodies
and faces (with a minute fraction of the woman’s knee).
Pictures were designed whole, but readers who under-
stood book-binding would be aware that they were physi-
cally halved for block carving and remained divided until
they Were sewn together. The bodies literally had to be split
in the process of turning them into pictures in a book. Their
joining at loins and heads is close (Hokusai made it closer by
adding a kiss), but no connecting backbone links the parts
together.
It is necessary to restore the gutter to our consideration of
Edo-period book illustrations. Publishers of modern repro-
ductions sometimes elide the two halves, which may make
the pictures more palatable to today’s viewer but interferes
with the rhetorical stance. In Kunisada’s Recitations, it is as
much the gutter as the clothing that threatens to divide the
pair; in Terasawa Masatsugu’s Twist of Figured Cloth (Aya no
odamaki) the suddenly appearing couple who intrude on the
masturbating Sukejird open a screen almost coterminous
with the page-break (see illus. 11). We will see other examples
in later figures.

THE MEANING OF SEGMENTATION

Segmentation, especially of the head from the genitals, is sus-

tained across such a large amount of s/unga that we are
forced to conclude it was a matter of artistic policy.
Where unsanctioned relationships are shown (such as a
wife copulating with someone other than her husband),
130
77 - "e division may make the immorality of the act less culpable.
Kur ja, Lowe
a ping
Kunisada also used this in a page of his Viewing Forms in the
and, mult Four Seasons (Shiki no sugatami), where the viewer sees a
c rea WOOa woman’s head (and mind) still in bed with her rightful part-
r NWOCK Page i‘ rc
ner, while her genitals — divided by the netting — are outside
4 406?

kK Uugatan

(illus. 49). Although she is aware of what she does, the status
of her sexual act, sectioned off from her head, seems dream-
like, for mental and bodily zones do not match. Pictorially,
she is doing nothing wrong.
There may be more. I have suggested that these divisions
are intended to diminish the power of the picture to present
sex as adversarial. |am also inclined to find a further attempt
to counteract a danger, inherent in pornography, of a battle
emerging between the partners. One person is penetrating
and the other is penetrated. We have seen how Edo society
was alert to the power differentials of the two roles. Since
shunga often show brothel scenes in which one person was
paying and the other being paid, the imbalance of power
could be grotesque. Those who visited prostitutes knew that,
acting aside (and many prostitutes were actors), desire was
131
little felt by the one doing it for money. In most contexts, the
penis had to bribe its way into the vagina or anus. By con-
trast, the head is that part of the body where power is deter-
mined by intelligence and wit. Certainly it was the myth of
the Yoshiwara that a woman’s desirability was indexed by
her sparkle and aplomb (hari), by which she could turn the
tables on the client, for all her lower position. This again was
integral to the Yoshiwara contract. Shunga show an act of sex
in which the penetrator is in control but, at the same time, a
female has the capacity to equal him mentally. The body that
links these two poles is barely given at all.
I do not conclude from any of the above that Edo love-
making was egalitarian. It was not, either in domestic life or
in the ‘five blocks’ or ‘two blocks’. The compensatory urge in
pornography made shunga falsify facts to produce images
that inclined the viewer to think, for just a moment, that all
was well, that sex was never contrary to anyone’s wish, insum,
that everyone was happily available for intercourse and was
not abused and could always have his or her say. The eigh-
teenth-century masturbator seemed to want to feel this. As
we Shall see, in the nineteenth century the situation changed,
and compulsion and rape begin to usurp the pornographic
space and, with them, a pulling apart and a reunification of
the independent bodies that had once configured the pair.
As heads and organs were counterposed across the
couples, note how they were also given equivalent status.
The extraordinary exaggeration of genitals in shunga is often
commented upon. But this is not, in Steiner’s phrase, mere
‘phallic prowess’, for vaginas are exaggerated too. Above I
suggested one reason for distended organs (they are the only
sexual characteristics), but a second can be added: genitals
and heads are matched in size, such that organs are not
merely large, but identical in dimension with the cranium.
Shunga wish to propose an egalitarianism of thought and
sex-drive that was not so in fact.

132
4 Symbols in Shunga

Having looked in the last chapter at the overall construction

of the human body in shunga, we will now turn to a consider-
ation of the ancillary elements contained in pictures. Any
pornographic image is bound to be founded on a represen-
tation of the body, but it will also include enlivening, or
scene-setting, elements from interior or outside space. These
additional elements help the viewer to construct a relation-
ship between sex and the larger world. Different cultures
construe this link differently. That created by shunga is
specific to a time and place.
Shunga are so numerous and appear in so many media,
types and styles that it may seem rash to postulate overall
tendencies within the parerga, that is, the subsidiary ele-
ments of the pictures. But I believe a pattern can be con-
structed. Common elements include, for example, musical
instruments, tea or tobacco utensils, writing equipment or
books; plants may be in the room, while garden or street
scenes may be visible outside; motifs may appear on cloth-
ing. There are also the tertiary representational levels of pic-
tures within pictures, such as images drawn on screens, or
hanging scrolls displayed within the work.
Some elements are consciously introduced as symbols;
sometimes there are more haphazard referents — apparently
chance items included to give the site of sex the feeling of a
real place. But in all cases objects have meaning. The former
category, symbols, must be traced to their roots, which will
lie in earlier pictures or in literature and folklore; the latter
can be read too, for they ripple across fields of signification
which even if ill-defined, created the acceptable purview for
shunga. Together, the two types of extraneous materials
(which actually overlap) go towards building what we might
call a discursive space for sex to occupy.

133
YIN AND YANG SYMBOLS 50 Ishikawa
Toyonobu, Lovers
and Servant Passing,
Sex had one overriding symbol in Edo culture: it was asso- monochrome
ciated with water. The extent to which scenes of erotic woodblock page
froma shunga
encounter are linked to water is striking, and a quick flip album, Iro sunago
through the illustrations in this book will reveal how often (c. 1750).
water is present; significant numbers of pictures within the
picture are of waves. It is hard to know whether brothels
really had such designs on their screens, or whether they
would be brought out in planned sexual contexts (such as
marriage beds). If they were, it would open up an interesting
new line of analysis for the many extant paintings of flowing
water, some of which are proudly displayed in major muse-
ums around the world. Screens of water are known to have
been displayed in rooms at other ‘female’ moments, such as
birthing, and perhaps could refer by extension to copulation.
Water was the element of yin, the feminine, designated as
moist, dark and recessive. Sex was discreetly referred to by
such yin euphemisms as the moment of ‘clouds and rain’
(un‘u). Use of an iconography of water extended to figures
associated with lakes and falls. To anyone remotely know-
ledgeable about the cultural tradition, this would lead at
once to Li Bo, the Tang-period poet whose verse on viewing a
waterfall was famous and who was commonly depicted in
the act of looking at a cascade. A page from Ishikawa
Toyonobu’s shunga book of c. 1760, Sexual Sands (Iro sunago),
implies that a such a screen might have been deliberately
brought out to enhance erotic union (illus. 50). It was only a
small step to imagining the Chinese poet being stimulated by
the activity taking place and, rather than musing on the
waters, separating his skirts and adding his own fluid gush.
134
51 Kitagawa Utamaro, Lovers, monochrome woodblock page from a shunga
album, Ehon hitachi obi (1795).

52 Follower of Keisai Eisen, O-tsuru and Umejir 0, multi-coloured woodblock

page from Shikitei Sanba ( K Otei Shujin’), Nishikigi soshi (c. 1825).
yj
This teasing option was depicted in 1795 by Utamaro in his
Erotic Book: The Hitachi Sash (Ehon hitachi obi), where a stand-
ing screen painted with the poet shows him equipped with
erection; itis punningly inscribed (as his real renditions often
were) ‘Li Bo’s one bottle inspired (literally ‘opened’) a hun-
dred’ — meaning wine inspired his verses. ‘One bottle’ (ippon)
can also mean ‘one rod’, and ‘opened’ can refer to the ‘vagina’
(illus. 51). The pun was copied in the 1830s by an anonymous
artist in the Eisen line, for the Brocade Tree (Nishikigi soshi),
which has the same inscription (illus. 52).*
The term ‘water trade’ (mizu-shobai) is still used to refer to
the entertainment world and specifically to the centres of
commercial sex, which, as we know, were also referred to as
the Floating World, being, as it were, pillowed on water. The
Floating World was opposed to the fixed domain of official-
dom and civic life, which was held to be masculine, or yang,
and pertained to dryness, light and protrusion. Asai Ryoi’s
Tales of the Floating World (Ukiyo monogatari) was published
c. 1661 and did much to popularize the term; Ry6i defined the
mentality of the person who frequented brothels as being
‘like a gourd floating on the water’.* The hub of the Floating
World was Edo’s Yoshiwara, and after it was relocated to
beyond Asakusa (some four years before Rydi wrote) it was
best reached by boat — hence the scrolls of the River Sumida
that Eishi popularized (see illus. 20). The traveller could get
to the Yoshiwara overland, but the most common way was to
be taken by boat, alight at the San’ya Ditch, then walk or be
carried to the Great Gateway along a pathway called the
Nihon Embankment; originally nihon was written to mean
‘two paths’, denoting that it need not be trodden single file,
but this was later rewritten with the meaning ‘Japan’.3 The
embankment was raised above marshland, with water visi-
ble on either side, on clear nights reflecting the moon (the
planet of yin). The traveller then turned left and went downa
hill called Clothing Slope (Emon-zaka) into the lower, wetter
world of the well-clad female, finally crossing into the
moated Yoshiwara across more water. It was conventional to
depict the Nihon Embankment not only in moonlight (which
is how it would have been viewed, since the quarter was only
visited by night) but also in the rain — that is, sodden with the
elementary force of yin. A typical rendition is that of
Harunobu’s pupil Harushige, later famous under the name

136
53 Anon., Whose Sleeves?, late 18th century, left-hand of a pair of six-fold
screens (right screen lost).
=
54 Rekisen-tei Eiri, Lovers behind a Sliding Door, multi-coloured woodblock
page from an untitled snga album (c.1 785),
 j Rohe de aei
aes .,$ a) ie
A

55 Suzuki Harunobu, Autumn Moon of the Mirror Stand, multi-coloured page

from a shunga album, Fury zashiki hakket (c. 1768).
56 Kitagawa Utamaro, Lovers in Summer, multi-coloured woodblock page
from Into-tei no Aruji (Shikitei Sanba?), Negai no itoguchi (1799).
57 Ogata Korin, Rock Azalea, c. 1700, hanging scroll, colour and ink on paper.
58 Suzuki Harunobu, Lovers with Rutting Cats, multi-coloured woodblock
page from Komatsu-ya Hyakki, Firyi enshoku maneemon (1765).
59 Inagaki Tsurujo,
Woman Manipulating
a Glove Puppet,
c. 1770, hanging
scroll, colour on
paper.
60 Kitagawa Utamaro, Lovers with Clam Shell, multi-coloured woodblock
page from a shunga album, Utamakura (1788).
61 Suzuki Harushige (Shiba Kokan), Nihon Embankment, c. 1770, multi-
coloured woodblock print from the series Fiaryi nana-komachi.
Shiba Kokan (illus. 61). Sunrise on the embankment would
have been a possible theme (nihon literally means ‘origin of
the sun’), but this was never attempted, for it would have
made an absurdity of the symbolism of sex taking place with
females within the pleasure zone.
A traveller boarded his boat to begin this trip at the Willow
Bridge near the centre of Edo and ended it at the Looking-
back (Mikaeri) Willow at the Yoshiwara entrance. The route
was bracketed by water-loving (feminine) trees, whose long
branches were also said to resemble a woman’s tousled hair.
In Keishi too, although access to the Shimabara district was
not by water, a large old willow graced the entrance and
linked the site to the feminine; it was also held that the
expression ‘willowy waist’ (yanagi-koshi) to denote lithe
female hips came from this tree; many senryii were written
about this.4
The association of sex with yin was a masculinist notion. It
might as well have been argued that the case was the oppo-
site, since for a woman, sex would mostly mean associating
with yang. Here is just another example of how in Edo art
males controlled the systems of representation, the dominant
modes of expression being phallocratic.
In the early days of Edo, the yin aspect of the Yoshiwara
led to its depiction in autumn and winter, the yin seasons.
This was paired with depiction of the equivalent male dis-
trict of kabuki at the times of yang, i.e., spring and summer.
Other cultural constructions supported this division. The
Girls’ Festival was on the third day of the third month, tech-
nically still winter when the weather was wet and cold, while
the Boys’ Festival on the fifth day of the fifth month fell in
summer after the sun returned. This sense changed during
the late seventeenth century, as the association of female sex-
uality with cherry blossoms brought the pleasure districts
into the orbit of springtime imagery, leaving the nanshoku
parts of town with summer. The spring of the Yoshiwara con-
trasted with the rain of the Nihon Embankment, which
implied autumn, since that season was wet and gloomy, as
was the visitor, in the act of going home to Edo.

146
NATURAL SYMBOLS

The traditions of sex were old enough to have generated a

wealth of established symbols, shared between picture-
makers and writers. Not only was sexual activity repre-
sented as taking place at the appropriate season, but this
extended to a mapping of extended nature onto the body.
Plants and animals were said to pertain to parts of the human
form or to stand for its tastes and desires. Certain acts of love
might be referred to via vegetal or animal types, with the
flora and fauna then said to enjoy a similar sexual thrill to
that referred to through it. Symbols were used in pictures to
expand the signification of the scene.
Let us be clear though: natural symbols are not the same as
‘nature’. am not proposing a unity of human eroticism with
the natural world. lam proposing that shunga used construc-
tions of nature as part of their political claims. The plants and
animals that figure are in fact notable for being trained and
manipulated, not free and loose. Plants are often in gardens
or in vases, where they are pruned, cut, pinned, tied and
held, and are rarely in ‘states of nature’. To the Edo mind, I
would maintain, nature was only beautiful to the measure
that it was schooled. Wild nature was fearsome. I state this
because it is important not to mistake the prevalence of nat-
ural entities within shunga as somehow indicating an Edo sex
that was specially natural, and what happened later as a
decline from this symbiosis.
By way of reinforcing the warning that Edo nature is about
construction, let us consider a print by Harunobu from the
book Eight Views of the Parlour, Done Elegantly (Farya zashiki
hakkei) of c. 1768 (illus. 55). Each scene parodies (‘makes ele-
gant’) one of the Eight Views of the Xiao and Xang, or the
aspects of that Chinese beauty spot celebrated in painting
and poetry of the Song period (960-1279). This is scene three,
which is properly ‘autumn moon over a ravine’ but has
become, as the inscription indicates, “Autumn Moon of the
Mirror Stand’. It is autumn when the moon is at its best,
although the peony on the screen indoors would suggest
summer; it is warm enough for the couple to sit by the open
door of the verandah, the woman half naked. The room is
tight and compressed: just the sort of reduced space in which
Edoites resided. The half-closed screens increase the sense of
147
constriction, and the couple is pressed into a small upright
gap. The peony too flourishes in a constrained, unpropitious
site. The woman is doing her hair, binding and controlling
her tresses (unlike the natural waving of willow branches).
Control and discipline are essential in this world, and an
unschooled freedom is quite impossible.
A second plant, a rock bamboo (iwatake), or in English a
‘pink’, is seen just outside the screens, closer to the viewer. It
is invisible to the woman, although like her it is upright, and
it is held in place by a frame; its stems try to flop over but
cannot. The man holds the woman in a similar way.
Plant and humanity are trained identically into decorative
modes of behaviour that, precisely, do not come to them
naturally. And it is males who do the training. Harunobu pre-
sents the man as undergoing no equivalent regime of control:
he is relaxed, she is not. This is less a feature of Edo male
socialization (which was as rigid as for the female) than an
aspect of erotic images made for a male gaze. The Edo period
was one of many to regard female sexuality as more rapa-
cious and more dangerous than that of the male (Saikaku’s
stories are full of men reduced to wrecks by their women’s
exorbitant demands) and, accordingly, discipline is shown as
more heavy on the female, to allow the man his dominance.
Having ensured the clipping of her sexuality, Harunobu’s
man is able to arouse her with impunity.

CHERRY AND PLUM

Among standard, recognized symbols, the most famous and

obvious was the cherry blossom. This had been familiar in
antique times but was revived in Edo, not least in the
Yoshiwara where so much historical myth was appropriated
and recycled. The associational relocation of the Yoshiwara
from autumn to spring made it quintessentially cherry-
blossom time. The shift seems to have coincided with the
beginnings of shunga in the career of Hishikawa Moronobu,
so that there are few autumn- or winter-based pornographic
works. The main street of the Yoshiwara, leading from the
Great Gateway to the T-junction at the end of the enclosure,
called Naka-no-ch6, was annually decked with entire trees,
brought in at blossom time from the surrounding hills,
148
making the street alive with cherry. This was one of the hall-
marks of the street and consequently of the whole quarter.
There are many senryii on this theme:

Year on year, age on age

To call the customers in
They plant them out.

The cherries
Pull people together
At the Yoshiwara.

In the Yoshiwara
Cherries too [as well as girls]
Are brought in young.?

The worlds of representation were able to do what the real

world could not and defy the actual cycle of the seasons, so
that the Yoshiwara was turned into a place of permanent
springtime, just as the Nihon Embankment was a place of
perpetual autumn (see illus. 22, 61). In Floating World pic-
tures it is almost unknown for either to appear in any other
season. On the rare occasions when Yoshiwara women were
depicted outside the pale of their district, on a parade to
Mukojima or Ueno, for example, they were shown taking
their season with them, followed on their route by blossoms;
this convention was only interrupted by a truly overriding
reason, such as in a New Year’s picture, or a view of sum-
mery cooling off by the Sumida.
The symbolism of the cherry is too well known to need
much repetition here, and it is repeatedly discussed both in
Japan and elsewhere with reference to what are problemati-
cally called ‘Japanese sensibilities’. The point is, the pretti-
ness of the fine, pure-looking blossoms is short-lived. The
aesthetic is coupled with a sense of brevity on the branches
and hence of the impermanence (muj0) of beauty. Such was
the definition of the loveliness of women.
In early contexts, the bringing of cherry blossom into the
interior of a domestic space was a way of invoking the tran-
sience of beauty; from this grew the indication of love, and
thence of a sexual act. Breaking a branch stood for the culling
of youth and the taking of it into one’s own possession before
149
it fell apart. The more hearty nuance of gathering rosebuds
was already known in classical times, and a standard referent
is in the anthology of Tales of the Embankment Counsellor (Tsut-
sumi chiinagon monogatari), thought to have been composed
about 1100; one episode is entitled ‘The Minor Captain who
Plucked Cherry Blossom’ (Hanazakura o oru shosho). In it, the
plucking, or literally ‘breaking’ (oru), of the cherry blossom
denotes the act of seduction, as the Minor Captain kidnaps a
girl to sleep with (in fact, the attempt is a failure as he mistak-
enly seizes her aged nurse).° This nuance on the aetiolating
cherry blossom was not forgotten in Edo times. Note that
Yoshiwara’s main street, Naka-no-chG, was not planted with
cherry trees, as it easily could have been, but was adorned
instead with trees brought in from outside. This meant that
the visitor there never saw cherry trees that were not in
bloom, but it also ensured that the Yoshiwara became the
consummate site of ‘broken’ (captured) branches.
The bestowing of plants as presents was common practice,
and fitted into the rhetoric of advancing one’s suit, of initiat-
ing communications or of giving thanks for favours already
granted. Plants could cover the fairly basic motivation of
sexual desire with a sugaring of refinement. The Ise Antho-
logy (Ise shit), of the ninth century makes this clear, where the
plant in question is the plum. Lady Ise was shown a painted
screen of ‘a man meeting a woman and making overtures’
and was asked to imagine him ‘using plum blossoms as a
pretext for making advances’ and to invent an exchange of
poems. She wrote for him,

Thinking to meet again

The one I saw,
Not one day passes
When I do not come to where
The plum blossoms bloomed.

Her fictive woman replied,

They are plum blossoms

That you abandoned
After one short visit,
And so you may hear that they have scattered,
But you cannot possibly want to see them now.”
150
62 Kitagawa Since plum is a winter-flowering tree, it suited the chill
Utamaro, Man
Seducing a Young
aspect of this liaison. There is an additional reason for selec-
Woman, 1801-4, tion of the plum, and one that remained alive in Edo times: it
hanging scroll, was considered a male blossom, equivalent to the ‘female’
colour on silk.
cherry. It was noticed that, whereas a young cherry gave the
best blossoms, a gnarled old tree was best for plums. This
equated with the phallocratic pretence that a young girl
afforded the best sex, whereas males improved with age. The
age of the giver of the plum in the Ise verse is left unstated,
but it could be quite advanced without the imagery collaps-
ing; by contrast, an older women giving (or ‘being’) a cherry
was the stuff of humiliation and ridicule (as the Minor
Captain knew whose accidental quarry was the nurse).
Utamaro produced a work of an elderly man with a younger
girl shortly after 1800, backed by a fine, mature, flowering
plum (illus. 62). It was the fantasy of older men to ripen with
age and to satisfy women more than youths could hope to,
and it was natural for them to use pictures (and pictures
within pictures) to sustain this implausible contention. As a
151
 63 Isoda
Koryusai,
Boy Plucking
Plum-blossom
with Girl,
17708, multi-
coloured
woodblock
print.

one-off painting, this may have been commissioned by the

man shown; the origami crane, symbolic of longevity, wel-
comes advancing years. Utamaro has put the plum itself into
the tertiary level of a picture within a picture, as if the man
had brought the screen out prior to engaging with the
woman, or as if she had set it there to indicate her acceptance
of the desirability of older men.
If the plum most often denoted an adult man, this created
the need for a symbol of the younger male. In practice, there-
fore, cherry could also refer to a boy’s childish beauty, since
that too would not last. The male made a symbolic evolution
from this stage to that of the more powerfully libidinous
plum, but the female was condemned after the cherry simply
to fall away, though the uba (‘wet nurse’) cherry was some-
times used to denote an the older woman.
The contrast of the cherry and the plum also occurs in
nanshoku (male-male) contexts, where the partners were

152
conceived of as an adult man and a boy. A haikai (haiku) from
an anthology of 1672, Bearing Shells (Kai 01), has this pairing:

The older man requests a plum,

And for the boy,
A cherry.®

The verse was commented upon unfavourably by the great

Basho, who thought it contrived, but was nevertheless sent
by it into a musing on his own experiences of nanshoku. One
hardly needs a clearer instance of how plant symbols serve to
naturalize a domain of sex which is both polemical and
unequal. Ideological claims are advanced, and then hidden,
to serve those in positions of power. In nanshoku shunga,
plums are held by the younger partner, put on his clothing, or
received and arranged to indicate something similar to the
plum screen in Utamaro’s painting.
Shunga do not often depict older people, preferring to
keep that persona apart, no doubt, for the reader. Thus a
plum can sometimes stand for male sexuality itself, and
attractive youths will ‘break’ it to offer to another man or a
woman (illus. 63); girls can also ‘break’ plum as a signal that
they are open to sexual advances by their male peers.

IRIS AND NARCISSUS

The cherry was predominantly, if not exclusively, the referent

for sexualized women, while the plum was mostly used for
older men. The need for a clearer pointer to young men, as
both active sexual partners or as the desired objects of others,
led to the adoption of two further plants (often conflated and
confused), the iris and the narcissus.? Since these bloom in
the fifth lunar month, the fifth day of which was the Boys’ (or
Youths’) Festival, they had a long association with the allure
of the male sex and indeed were part of the festival decora-
tions. Youths are commonly shown in Floating World con-
texts standing by iris or narcissus ponds, or holding stems of
the plants, or else wearing clothing decorated with them.
A painting by Yamazaki Joryi shows such a scene (illus.
64). The boy is evidently an actor since he wears the hat of
that trade, used to disguise the government-enforced shaven

)
 64 Yamazaki Joryu,
Kabuki Actor
Holding Irises,
c. 1725, hanging
scroll, colour on
paper.

forelock of adult males (this pretended boyhood was mar-

ketable both on and off the stage). The hat should be purple,
but in Joryt’s painting, the pigment has turned brown. The
boy’s kimono is decorated with white plum, while in his
hand he holds a narcissus. He is attractive, certainly sexual,
but his identity is unknown, and there are no crests or other
identifying markings on his clothes or on the painting. This
absence of a clear identity is common in paintings for, unlike
prints, paintings were commissioned, and the person would
be evident enough to the one who had ordered it, without
labelling. In most cases, it is no longer possible to reconstruct
the name or biography.
The flower is inverted, since that is the best way to carry
one before placing it in water. The buyer of this work would
look at a boy bearing his own sexuality as a gift, new-broken,
to be placed in some shared place, probably before bedding.
154
This buyer must have desired, and probably had, sexual
relations with this particular boy and so in every sense had
purchased him, retaining in two dimensions a contract that
Was ongoing, or had terminated, in three. The ‘double buyer’
wants to imagine the boy as a willing partner, not one whose
repugnance is overcome only by financial reward, and so has
directed the artist to show him with his flower, joyfully
given.
The artist is one of the rare female Floating World painters.
This would have been recognizable to anyone who read her
signature, since the jo- of Jorytindicates ‘woman’ (it was cus-
tomary for women interloping into ‘male’ spheres to make
themselves instantly isolatable in this way)."° Little is known
of Jorya. Her seal reads ‘Michinobu’, with the first two sylla-
bles written in characters usually meaning ‘three thousand’
(micht); this suggests a possible link to Tadaoka Michiko, also
a female painter, employed as maid by the wife of the daimyo
of Sendai.** Was the patron also a woman? Pace the plum, do
we here have an example of an all-female production of a
sexualized image of aman? Did women independently com-
mission such pictures? Or did a man commission it? If so,
why should he have had it produced by a female hand?
Regrettably, none of these questions can be answered, and
we must let the matter rest with the frustrating observation
that we do not know where the boy, grasping his sexuality, is
bound.
Iris and narcissus stand for young males in any context,
but in a Floating World context, or in shunga, this will con-
tract to an indication of their sexuality and libidinous value,
and would often mean males whose sex was for sale. Women
were devotees of the kabuki theatre, and there were cele-
brated love affairs, lubricated by transfer of funds, between
senior ladies — even in one instance a lady-in-waiting to the
shogun’s mother —and rentable males employed in the Float-
ing World.'* The more common classes of women could
easily attend kabuki and form links with actors, and famous
in the 1770s was the liaison between Segawa Kikunojo and
the attractive teashop waitress Osen. There are pictures of
women — more often girls than moneyed matrons — ‘break-
ing’ iris stems.

15D
NANSHOKU AND PLANTS

Apportionment of domestic duties put control of cash into

the hands of males more often than of females, so that a
client able to buy male sexual services was more commonly
another male than a female. The employment of actors in
extra-theatrical roles was conceived as primarily for the
benefit of nanshoku enthusiasts and only secondarily for
women. In the commissioning and owning of pictures too,
men rather than women appear to have taken charge, so that
it is reasonable to postulate the representation of eroticized
youths as intended for a male gaze.
There were also specific nanshoku signifiers. The most
famous was the chrysanthemum. The symbolic rationale for
this derived not from anything seasonal but was arrived at
from the flower’s supposed resemblance to an anus, yellow-
to-white, tight, and gathered in a small core, like a boy before
he was blemished by hair or by the perennial problem in nan-
shoku lore (if not fact) - haemorrhoids. The chrysanthemum
was not exactly subtle, indeed it was quite crude. The equa-
tion of the flower with the anus removed the likelihood of its
being much use in signifying females (although it is theoreti-
cally possible, allowing for female anal penetration). Cherry,
plum, iris and narcissus refer to sexuality in general terms
and need not indicate subordination. The crudity of the
chrysanthemum as symbol lies in the fact that it refers to the
boy exclusively as object or gateway to pleasure for another
(usually paying) person. Anal intercourse may bring plea-
sure to the penetrated too, but, in the Edo context, this was
seen as limited temporally, for when the boy came of age or
amassed the financial wherewithal to leave prostitution and
take control of himself, he would no longer seek his sexual
pleasure that way, but would become a penetrator. The
chrysanthemum is thus the symbol of a boy possessed, not
possessing.
Politically, anal and vaginal penetration were different. As
we shall see later in this chapter, shunga regularly adopted
pictorial strategies to give an appearance of equality
between vaginal and penile ecstasy, such that a penetrated
woman and a penetrating man were put on a notional par.
But shunga never tried to give the penetrated boy the status of
the penetrating man. Floating World pictures of boys ‘break-

156
65 Suzuki
Harunobu,
‘Analogue’ of Ju
Citong, c. 1765,
multi-coloured
woodblock print.

ing’ chrysanthemums exist too, where the plucker is accept-

ing his role, providing himself as a gift to a man, but rarely is
his comportment in the sexual act suggestive of bliss (he will
frequently not even be shown erect). An interesting print by
Harunobu shows a girl in the act of plucking a chrysanthe-
mum, and it is one of the rare instances where the anal motif
of this flower enters the sphere of sexualized females; some-
what implausibly, the plants grow on a riverbank (illus. 65).
Closer inspection, however, reveals that this work is a ruse: it
is the genre known today as mitate or ‘analogue’; an old,
male-based story is retold with eroticized girls taking the
parts of the men of yore. Here the story is of Ju Citong, ‘the
beloved chrysanthemum child’, lover of the eleventh-cen-
tury-BC king Mu of the Zhou, who drank the flower’s mois-
ture and retained his youth perpetually.'? The viewer of the
print would grasp the reference and read in it the desire to
retain the possessed in a permanent state of pliant infantility.
Being a natural life form with a seasonal cycle, the chry-
santhemum too appeared in some seasons and not in others.
Nanshoku episodes or stories would appropriately be set at
the end of summer (the ninth lunar month), when the flowers
came out, just as spring was the setting for generic sex with
women. Since ancient times the Chrysanthemum Festival
had been held on the ninth day of the ninth month, and refer-
ences to this could serve to clarify, or augment, the erotic
orientation of a story. Ueda Akinari did as much in a short

5y/!
work entitled the ‘Chrysanthemum Pledge’ (Kikuka no chi-
giri) in his famous supernatural collection, Tales of a Rainy
Moon (Ugetsu monogatari), completed in 1775.“ The tale is set
during the wars of the fifteenth century and centres on two
friends, a scholar called Takebe Samon and a samurai, Akana
Soemon. Neither man’s age is given, but the samurai is said
to be older and is presumably the penetrator — though his
family name, literally ‘red hole’, offers an alternative. The
two men make a pledge to meet at the Chrysanthemum
Festival one year hence, then Sdemon goes off to fight;
imprisoned, he is detained too long to keep the pact, so kills
himself in order to travel the great distance as a ghost.
(Sdemon is not a good soldier, which also suggests he takes
the passive sexual role, which he would have outgrown had
his martial valour matured.) In terms of plot, there is no
reason for the ninth of the ninth to be selected as the time of
reunion, for any day would have done. Akinari does this to
make obvious what was otherwise only alluded to, namely
that this was a story about sexual interest, not just friendship.
The couple is never specifically said to have slept together,
and the wilful reader who wished to think they had not was
able to do so (as still happens), while the more alert reader
knew otherwise.
The problematic question of the mutuality of sexual fulfil-
ment suggested by the chrysanthemum may account for its
substitution in many instances by a second plant, the azalea,
and specifically the ‘rock azalea’ (iwa-tsutsuji). We have
already seen a ‘rock’ peony and a ‘rock’ bamboo (see illus.
56), and a rocky bed generally suggested resilience and
endurance in love or in anything else. Azaleas do flourish in
relatively bleak environments, so they suited the plaintive
lover well. Properly, the rock azalea is a separate genus that
goes by the unpoetic English name of bilberry (Vaccinium
praestans). Its association with male love came from its being
a summer (yang) plant, although there were many of these.
The overtones stem from a famous verse contained in the
first government-sponsored poetic volume, compiled in 905,
the Anthology of Vernacular Verses Ancient and Modern (Kokin
wakashi), in the ‘love’ section:

When my feelings go out,

Like Mt Tokiwa,
158
 On which a rock azalea grows
I speak not to my love."

The poet thinks of love but, like an azalea among hostile rock,
he will say nothing. The plant serves as a seasonal signifer,
which a verse in Japanese (waka) must have to meet the
criteria of the genre, but it also denoted masculine fortitude
via a pun: iwa-tsutsuji is like the word iwaji (‘do not say’) and
the continuative verb ending (-tsutsu), like the English ‘-ing’.
The sound forms an inarticulate sussuration — not quite
speech, more like the rustle of petals. The first line is also
open to plural interpretations, for the toponym Tokiwa can
separate into halves, toki wa, signifying something like
‘when’, and it was used to invoke ‘if only’.
The anthology gave this verse as anonymous, and the
gender of the recipient is also unclear. But conventionally it
was attributed to a monk called Shinga, who was held to
have addressed it to the still-young Ariwara no Narihira, one
of antiquity’s great lovers. Shinga was a disciple of Kobo
Daishi, the prelate said to have introduced nanshoku from
Tang China in 806, for the benefit of Japanese monks who had
never known male—male love before, but took to it avidly for
tantric practices.’° The rock azalea was used by one of Edo’s
foremost literary scholars, Kitamura Kigin, in 1676: three
years after his revolutionary analysis of the Tale of Genji, he
published an anthology of nanshoku verses culled from clas-
sical texts, giving it the title Rock Azalea (Iwa-tsutsuji).'? The
plant thereafter was the chief icon of nanshoku. In 1775 Ota
Nanpo updated Kigin’s selection and republished it. Years
later, in his anthology Thirty Spokes Make One Wheel (Miso-
noya) of 1803, Nanpo also included a dig at the famous
Anthology of Vernacular Verses Ancient and Modern, and its
celebrated preface, with a witty piece of writing taking the
word ‘anthology of vernacular verses’ (wakashii) and rewrit-
ing it with the homophone ‘boys’."®

SWEET FLAG

The plants we have seen thus far appear both in literary

and pictorial manifestations. Pictures, though, are able to
support their own systems of symbolism independently of

159
parallels in writing. Some plants appear in shunga with what 66 Kitagawa
Utamaro, Picture
is clearly asexual meaning but one that cannot be found ana- ofthe Middle Class,
logously in writing. One such is the sweet flag (sekisho). It was multi-coloured
commonly brought indoors for decoration and, although a woodblock print
from the series
summer plant, grows in water and so could have easy sexual Fazoku sandan
nuances of yin. The plant has an obvious similarity to pubic musume, C. 1795.
hair and, through the water, is associated with that of the
67 Kitagawa
female. Utamaro, Suited to
Sweet flag appears in many Floating World contexts. As a Bold Designs Stocked
plant of the heat, it allowed artists to show figures with loose by the Kame-ya,
multi-coloured
and open clothes, revealing breasts and thighs. A print by woodblock print
Utamaro from the series Three Classes of Young Female Beha- from the series
viour (Fizoku sandan musume) shows two languid towns- Natsu isho tosei bijin
(c. 1804-6).
women beside a screen adorned with another natural
symbol (though hardly a shunga one, since paired mandarin
ducks designate the constancy of matrimonial devotion —
anathema to the devotee of the Floating World) (illus. 66).
The crouching person has a fan that seems to be painted with
160
68 Kitagawa
Utamaro, Goldfish,
multi-coloured
woodblock print
from the series
Firyikodakara awase ,

c. 1802.

chrysanthemums. Would these beckon the end of summer,

with its coolness, similar to the breezy effect of the gauze
draped over the screen? They can hardly stand for an anus,
unless it is to suggest a competition with the flag in the basin;
the women look fondly at the flag while wagging the fan, as
if this is a rivalry — vagina or anus — the boy is sure to lose.
The sweet flag appeared in the Utamaro print used on the
cover of Le Japan artistique (see illus. 41). The child’s sexual
precocity in reaching for his mother’s pubic region and not
her teat makes the sweet flag appropriate. The same effect is
to be seen in another Utamaro print, from the series Modern
Beauties in Summer Clothing (Natsu isho tosei bijin) (illus. 67).
The woman seems to be giving the child a lesson less in
botany than in what will be expected of him in adulthood.
Another print shows a mother asleep, overcome by the
summer heat, while a little boy grabs the sweet flags and
wrenches them out of the basin as if determined, before his
time, to understand what lies beneath them (illus. 68).
161
 Any indoor water plant could be turned into a domestic
sex symbol by the Floating World artist, and Utamaro him-
self did this when he depicted an indeterminate weed in a
pornographic book of 1799, Unravelling the Thread of Desire
(Negai no itoguchi) (illus. 56). To make the symbolism clearer,
a clitoral rock rises up to protrude from the root area and
separate the grasses.
Plants exist in the open fields and it is possible that, even
though certain ones are used to symbolize something sexual
on one occasion, they can still denote nothing at all —or some-
thing quite innocent -— on another. Plums and cherries, partic-
ularly, have a wide range of meaning. Japanese symbolism
(unlike that of the West, in my opinion) does not necessarily
or permanently link a signifier to its signified. To claim that
every picture of a sweet flag means a pudendum -— or, even
worse, that every painted plum denotes the power of the
penis — would be a travesty of Japanese art. To paraphrase
Freud, sometimes a plum, sweet flag or even a rock azalea is
only a plum, flag or azalea. Sometimes it is genuinely hard to
tell how far to go, and debate could legitimately flourish
(although in the current state of torpor in shunga studies it
generally doesn’t). Ogata Korin’s early eighteenth-century
Rock Azalea by a Stream (regarded as a masterpiece and
included in many survey histories of Japanese art) cannot
definitely be called either libidinous, or cleared as sexually
unweighted (illus. 57). Of course someone could place sweet
flag in their home without provoking titters. But we are not
talking of the flowers per se but of their inclusion in pictures,
and moreover in pictures in the Floating World genre
(Korin’s is not and is therefore an exception), whose primary
feature was to engage with the erotic. If an artist put a certain
plant in a picture, or was told by a patron to do so, we are
duty bound to ponder its specific meaning.

ANIMALS AND SEX

The scope of many erotic pictures is expanded by inclusion of

animals, often in copulatory poses. The animal symbolism
used in much academic painting (viz. ducks, which symbol-
ized fidelity and were offered as wedding gifts) lingered on
reproduction and the care with which non-human life forms
162
reared their young, so that it was not a large step to move
from the paintings of braces of pheasants or prides of
leopards that adorned formal interior spaces to the copu-
latary ones in shunga. Plant reproduction may not have been
well understood, but that of animals was hardly obscure,
and many mammals engaged in demonstrably similar activ-
ities to humans, sometimes indeed with them. If animals
simply stopped what they were doing to copulate at will,
then why need humans confine themselves to specific times
and places? Animals legitimated a casual, snatched, irregu-
lar sex, but the animals featured were domesticated (i.e.,
valuable, schooled, not brutish) rather than wild. In this,
pornographic images are unlike those of academic paint-
ing, which preferred auspicious or ‘lofty’ beasts. The fauna
around the eighteenth-century city-dweller amplified and
approved the act of sex. Bestiality appears in erotica, but
more often it is the tension of sex radiating from humans that
animals absorb (illuts. 58). Neither science nor observation
can provide evidence for animals reacting to human inter-
course in this way, but if the sight of sex is so irresistible that
spontaneous nature takes the lead from human copulation,
then the reader need feel no qualms about transferring the
book to one hand and beginning auto-amusement. Depic-
tions of animals mating in the spaces of human coupling
rendered desire ‘natural’ and extenuated those cravings
society sought to police.
If animals had sex, did they also have sexualities or tastes?
Writers were inclined to wonder whether their own private
interests were paralleled in the animal world. Was there, for
example, masturbation, cunnilingus or same-sex love in the
animal world? This last was raised by several Edo-period
thinkers, who concluded that some animals did prefer same-
sex relations and, given the dominance of male discourse, this
meant nanshoku (there was no investigation of female—
female animal acts). Folklore had it that some beasts kid-
napped human males for sexual pleasure (the mythical
tengu, or long-nosed, bird-like creatures, and kappa, water-
sprites, were said to do so). Male foxes could turn into
women to copulate with humans. Saikaku stated in the Great
Mirror of Nanshoku (Nanshoku okagamt) that male dragonflies
stimulated each other, and he parodied the origin of sexual
behaviour on earth, which was said to have begun when all

163
unknowing, pre-human divine residents on the Japanese
islands saw a wagtail shake its rear end:

In the first days of the Heaven-shining gods, there was a

bird called a ‘tail-tweaker’ that lived under the Floating
Bridge of Heaven, and it was through him that they first
learned about the Way of Boys, and fell in love with the
divine Little Thousand-Days. Even down to insects,
everything appeared in the form of a tasty young male of
the species.*9

The Confucian expert Kumazawa Banzan went further to

state that male digger-wasps (jigabachi) avoided sex with the
female (‘onnagirai’), while the famously ‘onnagirai’ Hiraga

69 Maruyama Oshin,
Camels, 1824, hanging scroll,
colour and ink on silk.
70 Utagawa Gennai, expanding Banzan, argued for nanshoku among foxes,
Toyoharu, Whale at
Shinagawa (modern
badgers and kappa, though not, he insisted, among canines.*°
censoring), The sexualization of natural history is beyond our concern
monochrome here, which is the use of animals in erotica. There were
woodblock illustra-
tion for the anony-
animal puns. Camels were called rakuda, which sounded like
mous Ehon fubiko the casual expletive ‘raku da!’ (‘feels comfy!’), and so pictures
tori (1798). of camels began to be used to suggest male-female proxim-
ity, sometimes sexual. The shogunate requested that a camel
be imported in 1793, but it was ruled out as too expensive; an
American attempt to import a camel in 1803 was rebuffed
(the usA had no trading rights), but in 1821 a pair were finally
imported by the Dutch East India Company, and paraded
from Nagasaki to Edo (illus. 69).*'
Other uses were one-off and did not join the realm of
established symbols. In 1798, following torrential rains, a
disorientated whale was spotted off Edo Bay; it approached
the city, causing great excitement. Ieharu, the shogun, was
taken to view it from his beach palace on the first day of the
fifth month. Whale memorabilia were produced and, as the
whale was best observed from the Shinagawa, which had a
large (unlicensed) brothel area, some of the ephemera was of
an erotic kind.** Coincidence of the arrival with preparations
165
for the Boys’ Festival (fifth of the fifth) might have nudged
speculation in a certain direction, but spurting is a whale’s
most notable feature. Utagawa Toyomaru included an image
of this in his coyly entitled Picture Book: Illustrations of
Maternal Beauty and Affection (Ehon fubiko tori); boats try to
drive the whale back out to sea (eventually they were suc-
cessful), while a couple in a Shinagawa brothel are a match
for its blowing (illus. 70).
The whale did not survive as a sexual symbol. We may ask
why. There is a certain mechanics about why some items func-
tion and others do not. In Holland, by contrast, the whale was
a symbol of plenty and, with it, of sexual potency and Dutch
pictures of beached whales are well attested. They always
include a person measuring the penis: the whale had been
killed, making man master of the world’s hugest beast, sym-
bolized by adjudication of its penis. But what worked in Hol-
land would not necessarily work in Edo. Perhaps those who
saw the whale off Shinagawa, as they paid their way with the
indentured women there, wished to resist all implication that
male spurting is tied to the cumbersome and the out of control.

-y Win
A ek
& Pe
pe ‘
é

71 Suzuki Harunobu,
Woman Playing the
Shakuhachi, 1765-70,
multi-coloured
woodblock print.

166
PIPES AND BLOWING

I have stressed that the division between pornography and

what I have called ‘normal’ pictures of the Floating World
ought not to be considered absolute. Even pictures that look
innocent may be discovered to have a coded erotic content,
and it is incumbent on this study to examine them. Again, the
point is not to compile a glib list of lost phallic or vaginal
symbols but to discover what kind of world is being pro-
posed by the extraneous materials for the activity of sex. In
many pictures sex is implicitly referred to, even when not
seen. Non-natural symbols can contribute to this sense as
well as natural ones.
We may begin with a print by Harunobu showing a
woman playing the shakuhachi, or upright flute (illus. 71). The
woman is warmly dressed, and her kimono has a design of
snowy branches with white egrets perching on a tree. It is
winter. She has a crest on her sleeve by which she would have
been identified, although this has not been reconstructed.
The term ‘shakuhachi curve’ was used for a large or strong
penis.*3 There was also a senryii,

Erecting like
The upwards curve of a
Threatening shakuhachi.*4

It is impossible to date the appearance of the expression

‘playing the shakuhachi’, used today to mean fellatio, but it
was certainly in use by the mid-nineteenth century. Whether
Harunobu had heard it is unsure. Nevertheless, I think we
are justified in reading the instrument as phallic and this
picture as consciously provocative. The inscription identifies
the woman only as Katsuragi (a prostitute’s, not a towns-
woman’s, name):

In the light of the moon,

Her idle plaything in the bedroom,
Breezy sounds.*?

The woman’s fingers play gently upon the tube; she puts the
end against her lips. A katsuragi is the mythical tree growing
on the moon, a symbol of yin. For the male viewer, it is not
167
 72 Torii Kiyomitsu, Nakamura Tomijuro in the
role of Shirotae, mid-18th century, three-tone
woodblock print.

difficult to imagine more than just sound emerging from his

pipe if he could gain moonlit admission to the bedroom and
be so handled in the instrument’s place.
The shakuhachi was usually played solo. It was associated
with the religious fraternity of komusé, itinerant monks who
wandered in search of alms, piping to solicit donations.
Unlike most monks, who resided in the contemplative space
of temples, komuso wandered through the world, mixing with
the secular and moving along the fringe between holiness
(ku) and profanity (iro). Being monks, they sought to keep
themselves pure as they made these transits, and to do so
they hid their head in a deep hat, keeping sensory contact to
a minimum. The komus0’s eyes, ears, nose and mouth were
invisible, and his face could never be seen.
They were routine members of urban life but, given the
ambivalent manner of their engagement with it, they also
had an aura of mystery. In kabuki, their costume was often
donned by those who needed disguise for some illicit pur-
pose (they would be unmasked to effect a denouement).
Theatrical prints attest to the frequent appearance of komuso
on stage (illus. 72). In real life, there was always speculation
about what might happen if the hat were removed and how
the man might look. There were probably attractive and ugly
168
73 Suzuki
Harunobu, Komuso
with Prostitute and
her Trainee, c. 1766-7,
multi-coloured
woodblock print.

komus@, but in popular myth they were always beautiful, and

those who heard the eerie music imagined themselves sadly
deprived of the pleasant sight of ravishing looks. Some
women tried ruses to gaina look, or at any rate pictures of the
Floating World suggest they did. Harunobu showed the
unlikely encounter of a prostitute and her trainee with a
komus0; the print was first published as a calendar for 1766
and then reissued without date markings (illus. 73). The
monk and child were in fact borrowed from Okumura
Masanobu’s Floating World Picture Book: The Female Bird That
Flies Away (Ukiyo ehon nuku medori) of about twenty years
earlier.*° Is the monk in the pleasure quarter or are the
169
 74 Kitagawa
Utamaro, Umegawa
and Chitbei, multi-
coloured woodblock
print from the series
Ongyoku koi no ayat-
suri, Cc. 1800.

women in the city? The situation is fanciful. But the women

do not much heed the Buddhist message. They are of the
Floating World and only have erotic thoughts in their minds.
Since komusd seemed not to have eyes, mouth, nose or ears,
they were disenfranchised from this world. They came and
went, no one knew exactly how. Their whole identity was
ambiguous. The komuso’s sensory capacity was transferred
to his pipe — it was all that ever touched his lips and its
sound was the only noise he made. The shakuhachi was the
most absolute part of the komuso: his root, as the penis was to
the man.
Sexualization of the komusdis evident in pictures, and not
just those that replicate the kabuki stage. Inagaki Tsurujo
painted a young woman with a komusd glove puppet (illus.
59). The artist is thought to have been a pupil of the cele-
brated Osaka painter Tsukioka Settei, although this not cer-
tain, and the hypothesis is based largely on the similarity of
their styles. But, if it is right, since Settei died in 1787 at the
age of seventy-seven, Tsurujo would probably have been a
170
contemporary of the Edoite Harunobu (this is consistent
with the design on the woman’s kimono).* Interestingly, one
of Settei’s representative paintings shows a woman operat-
ing a puppet, although it lacks erotic content.?>
This idea of depicting women playing with puppets was
picked up by other artists. Koryusai produced one showing
women using puppets representing young males.*? In about
1800 Utamaro produced a set of prints entitled Manipulating
Love to Music (Onkyoku koi no ayatsuri), giving nine images of
mixed-sex couples operating puppets, all but one of which
were of well-known lovers from the stage (illus. 74). The
puppets are not just toys but extensions of the users, and the
male operates the male puppet, the female the female, as
their self-image or alter ego.
The construction of Tsurujo’s picture is rather different.
Firstly, she was a woman (the -jo in her name is the same as
that in Joryt’s). To ‘manipulate’ a puppet (Utamaro’s ‘ayat-
suri’) is to exert a ddminating control over it. Tsurujo turns
the tables on the norms of gender control. But the painted
woman is not actually manipulating the puppet: she merely
holds it. The woman, not the puppet, is the mobile entity as
she twists her head to the side while the puppet remains
stationary. If she turned to face it, she would see right under
the hat. Most of her forearm is inserted into the glove, which
was necessary to keep the puppet upright, and she reaches to
its middle. It is also possible to imagine the woman’s fingers
brushing what, ina real person, would be the genital area. She
seems aware of this, for the look on her face is one of sexual
gaming, even erotic satisfaction, a tickling of her fancy.
I read this painting as every bit as erotic as an overtly
shunga work. I think we can also find in it an articulation of
female sexuality in the genuine voice of a woman. Inside the
puppet, the hand secretly plays with his ‘shakuhachi’ as he,
soundlessly, plays his ‘real’ shakuhachi. But which is more real,
for this is only a puppet ina painting. He has no priority over
his own sex organ, since the multi-layers of representation
deny the shakuhachi a fixed meaning on any level. She has the
look of pleasure, while he lacks all scope for expression and
reveals nothing. Tsurujo’s woman does not take the puppet
of a handsome bourgeois male to be her delight (as Koryt-
sai’s did), nor of a beautiful woman, to suggest the perfection
of herself (as Utamaro’s did); the puppet is neither she as
it
offered to another, nor a male that could be her lover, brother,
father or future husband. Tsurujo has resisted showing a
temporary reversal whereby the woman manipulates the
kinds of man who in reality would control her and also
resists showing the woman adopting socially sanctioned
self-idealizing roles. Rather, the entity of the controlling male
is completely expunged, and the varieties of manhood that
would surround her in life are gone. The woman provides for
herself, in a way that circumvents the social organization of
Edo-period life. Her illicit sexual thrill is enjoyed without the
slightest fear of exposure (komuso blow but do not speak)
with a man built to her own demands. She uses him, and his
pleasure is not germane.
Being a painting, not a print, Tsurujo’s work must have
been made on commission. It is unclear how much freedom
artists had in theme and composition, and so whether the
conception was hers or that of her patron is unknown. It is
also unclear whether the patron was male or female. What
does seem to be the case, though, is that the painting was a
vehicle for working out, within the medium of the pictorial
system of the Floating World that made sexual gratification
for men easier than for women, a means to symbolize the
fulfilment of female sexual appetite on female terms. This
picture seems more suited to a female gaze. Tsurujo’s solu-
tion was successful enough for it to be demanded of her a
second time, and two virtually identical examples of the
painting exist.>°
Tsurujo’s woman (unlike Harunobu’s) does not insert the
shakuhachi into her mouth, and fellatio is not suggested.
There is little actual fellatio in Edo erotic works, and it is
possible that the convention of representing the male organ
as large and the female mouth as small made it difficult to
depict (as Gary Leupp has suggested but Paul Schalow has
denied).?* Some fellatio imagery exists. More overwhelming
is the number of pictures of eroticized women or boys
placing phallic objects in the mouth, the shakuhachi being
only one.
Some objects placed in the mouth of figures in Floating
World pictures are of a kind that, properly primed and
manipulated, will indeed produce an emission: music for the
shakuhachi or, in other cases, more semen-like substances.
There are plentiful pictures of, for example, bubble blowing,
172
75 Suzuki Harushige
(Shiba Kdkan),
Women Blowing
Bubbles with Child,
c. 1780, hanging
scroll, colour on silk.

a game that became popular in the eighteenth century.”

Bubbles were a pastime for children, but there is a surprising
number of pictures of women blowing. Harunobu made one
in the late 1760s; Korytisai did so too, about the same time,
using the ‘pillar-print’ format.?? Shiba Kokan showed a
woman on a verandah blowing bubbles in about 1780, in his
early Harunobu manner, although elements of the Western
style he was later to adopt are already present (illus. 75). All
these women have a child nearby but blow for their own
sake. Or rather, they blow for the titillation of the male viewer.
The inscription on Kokan’s painting acquiesces in this
sexual reading. Although written academically in Chinese
and couched in elegant phrases, the verse is erotic. It is
signed Tankya, which must be Akutagawa Tankyi, a Keishi
Confucian scholar who died in 1785:

173
 The young girl, with her lips
Harunobu, Blow-
Blows through the bamboo tube. pipe Alley, diptych,
One bubbie after another, multi-coloured
Flies dancing on the fragrant breeze. woodblock prints,
The child watches,
His fingers clutching her petticoat.
And then he sees a blush of shyness
Faintly colouring her beautiful cheeks.*4

As with many Floating World children, his sexual awaken-

ing is precocious. But it is not really the child who feels what
he is supposed to feel but the male viewer, as an adult libido
is wished onto him — for example that of Tankya.
Blowing is also seen in depictions of another game: blow-
darts. Stalls where one could play were common in cities,
and it was no doubt unexceptional to enter one and have a
go. The alleys required you to hit a string that would unhook
on impact to release a doll, which was the prize. In Edo these
were the special feature of the Shiba Shinmei, a popular
shrine whose patronal festival lasted for most of the ninth
month and gave rise to considerable festivities.>> But pic-
tures of dart-blowing, like pictures of bubble-blowing, are

174
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77 Kitao Shigemasa, not depictions of the facts of urban recreation but have a
Blow-pipe Alley,
monochrome
deeper status. Consider a diptych of a blow-pipe alley pro-
woodblock page duced by Harunobu (illus. 76). Awoman runs the booth and
for Santo Kyoden, she has three customers, a boy with a shaven head (who
Ningen banji fukiya
no mato (1803).
appears to be a young monk), an older youth and a girl of
similar age. Several scattered darts attest to earlier shooting,
and three of the targets have been hit. The acolyte blows,
while the secular pair only look at each other, the boy prob-
ing the end of his pipe with risque gestures, pushing in an
arrow. His costume is ornamented with a pentagram from
the series known as the ‘Genji fragrances’, fifty in all, one
standing for each chapter in the Tale of Genji; this is the
‘Early Ferns’ (Sawarabi) chapter, which takes place in the
first month. The girl’s dress has a design of morning glories —
she too, like the boy, is at the dawn of sexuality; he, still
unsure if he has mastered his pipe, is fresh and ready. Just
right for a New Year’s picture (lunar new year fell later and
beckoned spring), and this work was originally issued as a
calendar for the year 1765 (then republished without mark-
ings). It is only the young monk (in Edo lore a typical candi-
date for early nanshoku involvement) who is trained to blow
securely.

175
 The prize dolls Harunobu shows are the standard auspi-
cious type: a flower-carriage, the arrow-sharpening scene from
the New Year’s play Yanone, a well-head. But the dolls were
sometimes replaced by more symbolic ones, or at least those
of extrapolatory minds were given to suggesting background
signification for the dolls, which were properly called
‘ghosts’ (bakemono). Santo Kyoden wrote a comic story in 1803
(illustrated by his art teacher Kitao Shigemasa) entitled Blow-
dart Targets: Ten Thousand Things about Human Beings (Ningen
banji fukiya no mato) (illus. 77). Kyoden noted that a trip to the
Shiba Shinmei shrine had prompted him to write the book. In
the author’s preface, he observes that whatever you aimed
for, you always ended up hitting something worse or, at
least, the thing that fell out at the bottom was never very
good, and perhaps showmen were tricking customers by
attaching inferior items to the strings (‘you’re sure you've hit
[the strongboy] Kintoki, but you get a spook; you think [the
giant] Asahina will come out, but it’s just a goblin’). He went
on to attribute profundities of human life to the booth:

You suspect that this difference emerges in the flashing of

the swift arrow. The heart has an arrow too, and calamity
and happiness are the targets; good, bad, falsity and verity
are the dolls won. This is what they mean by the karma of
the Three Worlds. Hit the strings of the twelve karmic
links and real forms will plentifully appear. This is in the
flashing of a human life. The tube of existence is just a six-
mon blowpipe.>°

In the context of a mock-moralizing book, Kydden has no

room for sexual interpretations (he equates winning impres-
sive or trivial prizes with the wages of sin and virtue). But,
himself a Floating World print-maker (under the name
Masanobu), he was alert to the erotic lode that many quo-
tidian actions could sustain.
The motif of blow-pipe as penis crossed male-female and
nanshoku eroticism, as did most sexual symbolism. The nan-
shoku interpretation, however, was strongly felt and appears
in Harunobu’s print. One of Edo’s better-known male
brothels was called Blow-dart Beach (Fukiya-ga-hama),
where, as it were, the customer’s dart shot from his pipe and
came to berth in its target. Fukiya-cho was one of Edo’s two
176
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78 Isoda Koryisai, Lovers in Fukagawa District, multi-coloured woodblock

page from Haikai meoto maneenon (c. 1770).
79 Katsushika Hokusai, Lovers with Mirror, c. 1810, multi-coloured woodblock
page detached from an unknown shunga album.
Rena

80 Okumura Masanobu, Lovers beside Paintings of ‘The Tales of Ise’, handcoloured

woodblock page from a shunga album, Neya no hinagata (c. 1738).
81 Suzuki Harunobu(?), Customer with Osen — ‘Shunga’ Version, 1765-70,
multi-coloured woodblock print.
82 Keisai Eisen, copied from Kaitai shinsho y) multi-coloured woodblock page
from his Makura bunko (1832).
83 Utagawa Kunisada, Vaginal Inspection, multi-coloured woodblock page
from a shunga album, Azuma genji (c. 1837).
 ee
ares

84 Suzuki Harunobu, The Jewel River on Mt K oya, multi-coloured woodblock

print from the series Mu-tamagawa, 1765-70.
 eGR?) |oT
a en ean ~~

$5 Torti Riyomnitsu, Lovers Using a Mirror, multi-coloured woodblock

illustration from an untitled siunga album (ce 1765).
86 Nishikawa Sukenobu,
Samurai Youth with Gun,
monochrome woodblock
page from Nankai Sanjin
(Sukenobu?), Nanshoku
yamaji no tsuyu (1730s).

main nanshoku districts (along with Yoshi-ch6) and, although

the characters used to write this were different (fuki
‘thatched’ + ya ‘house’, not ‘blow’ + ‘arrow’), the homophony
was unmissable. Fukiya-cho had started out as one of the
three licensed kabuki areas, although already by the end of
the seventeenth century it was as well known for boys on
futons as on stage; in 1675 Saikaku wrote the following as
part of his Thousand Haikai Composed Alone in a Single Day
(Haikai dokugin ichinichi senku):

It’s a dream, a dream.

Bring me drink, bring me servant girls,
Bring out entertainers.

In the morning, at the theatre,

We'll go crazy over boys.

Even the winds of sex go

Exactly as you want them —
The Fukiya district.?”

Saikaku used phonetic graphs, not characters (as was

often done), thereby obscuring the difference between the
two ‘fukiya’, and bridging the gap between the place name
and the blow-pipe.
Pipes came in many shapes and sizes and had many func-
tions. One was for real shooting: the gun. From its barrel
came a projectile of lethal power. Guns were not handled by
women, and a female beauty holding one would make for an
odd picture, nor — it may be supposed — would it be success-
ful for erotic purposes. Guns formed part of a male preserve
and so might have been suited to sexual contexts where the
185
 87 Kitagawa
Utamaro, Woman
Blowing a Popin,
multi-coloured
woodblock print
from the series Fujo
jinsd Juppin, c. 1800.

female was not desired. At least one image of this type exists,
made by the great pornographer Nishikawa Sukenobu for
inclusion in his magnum opus, Dew on the Mountain Path of
Nanshoku (Nanshoku yamaji no tsuyu) (illus. 86).3°
A gun is an instrument of violence and too destructive to
exist happily within the codified, non-adversarial regime of
Floating World constructions. Perhaps this is why, apart
from Sukenobu’s image, it was never used. The inherent vio-
lence is mitigated here by the boy ramming powder down
the barrel, not firing, but the sense is different from
Harunobu’s boy who performs a similar task in the dart alley.
And a gun is not for putting in the mouth.
I do not necessarily think it legitimate to go through the
sum of pictures of the Floating World and propose every
long, tubular object as a phallic symbol. Nevertheless, the
above readings are legitimate, and I wish to furnish two
others, and then add a warning. One item is the glass drum
and the other the tobacco pipe. The drum, or popin, is a glass
186
tube, flared at one end and sealed across so as to bend in and
out as one blew, with a clicking sound. It is clearly erotic in
Utamaro’s print of around 1800 from the series Ten
Physiognomic Types of Married Woman (Fujo jinsdjuppin) (illus.
79). Sadly, Utamaro did not write in the cartouche placed
ready for the inscription and we lack information as to which
‘type’ this is — an omission common to several of this series.
But he did sign it ‘Utamaro the Physiognomist Depicted
This after Careful Thought’. Was this the lascivious type???
Trinkets like popins were bought and played with when fun
was in the air, usually at fairgrounds; they were soon aban-
doned. The popin was for off-work moments when drinking
and lovemaking abounded. It matched the erotic space of
‘floating’ very well, although this is a married woman.
Different cultures draw different lines around what is
acceptable and what is obscene, but the practice of putting
objects into the mouth is usually (though variously) con-
trolled. The tobacce pipe was much associated with the
Floating World, and tobacco could be called ‘courtesan grass’
(keisei-s0), referring to top-class prostitutes’ dependence on
its stress-relieving properties.4° The Yoshiwara stalwart
Kydden was a dealer in smoking accessories and often
signed his Floating World fiction with references to this, or
even had his shop depicted in prints.** Yet in the Edo case,
tobacco pipes do not seem to have acquired sexual reso-
nances. Perhaps they were too thin to sustain the interpreta-
tion, or they were just too common. In Europe, however, the
pipe was regarded as phallic (European pipes are shorter and
thicker than Edo ones, and their larger bowls made for con-
centrated, intermittent smoking, not near-permanent puff-
ing). In many parts of Europe women were prohibited from
smoking pipes, or, if they did do so, it was a deterritorializa-
tion of manhood and associated with witchery or lesbianism.
The returnee from Russia, Doi Tstdayt (who had experiences
as remarkable as the more famous Daikoku-ya Kodayi),
stated of the situation he had seen in St Petersburg at the turn
of the eighteenth century, that women did not smoke pipes;
his editor, Otsuki Gentaku, checked the accuracy of this com-
ment with Westerners in Japan and interpolated a note,
‘Dutchmen have confirmed that in no European country do
women smoke.’4* Western heterosexual males seem to have
found the sight of women smoking a kind of castration. The
187
Western pipe is gripped in the teeth, not hand-held at the lips
like an Edo one (European males had long since tortured
themselves with the fetish of the vagina dentata, the vagina
with teeth as well as lips). Cigars (chewed at the end) were
never much smoked by women either, and it was only after
the arrival of the cigarette (with its diminutive feminizing suf-
fix) that Western women began to smoke heavily and openly.

PENISES AND VAGINAS

There are some types of object that will not function symboli-
cally in shunga, either because of the particular social world
that surrounded the object internally, or else because of some
matter relating to the exterior politics of sexual desire. It is
notable that motifs of force are scarce. Not only is the gun
absent but, even among natural forms, flowers and blossoms
are preferred to towering trees; gentle waves are more
common than crashing falls. There is nothing like the consis-
tent use of the oak in European pornography to mean the

88 Aubrey Beardsley, Adoramus, an

unpublished drawing for Lysistrata,
c. 1896.

188
penis, nor the briarfor the vagina; there is not even an equiv-
alent to the mildly bellicose Ming-period metaphors, such as
that captured in the pornographic book title Variegated Battle
Arrays ofthe Flowery Camp (Hua ying jin zhen) —a work known
in Japan. Occasional rigid or stout motifs do appear (such
as the pillars of a shrine gate, for instance), but this is quite
rare. When, in 1963, Mishima Yukio used the metaphor of the
heavily tiled temple roof for a penis in The Sailor Who Fell
From Grace with the Sea (Gogo no eikio), he was deploying a
nativist idea that seemed to him somehow traditional but
which was alien to Edo thinking.“4
The most famous work of pornographic writing of this
period in English is John Cleland’s Memoires of aWoman of
Pleasure (also known from the protagonist’s name as Fanny
Hill), published in 1748-9. It contains a large number of
phallic symbols, but these are invariably materialistic and
unyielding: ‘instrument’, ‘engine’, ‘nail’, ‘weapon’, ‘trun-
cheon’, ‘battering-ram’, etc. Confrontation is stressed and sex
is a war, not even the flower war of China but a real one. And
all the weaponry is on the male side. Cleland’s metaphors for
the vagina stress its yielding, and its welcome (repulsion is
useless) of the male attack: it is a ‘berth’, a ‘housing’, a ‘room’.
Cleland’s book is unillustrated, but we may note that,
whereas the male imagery gives rise to ready pornographic
visual equivalents, the female images do not, for they are
vacancies waiting to be crammed.
In European pornography, the large penises are such a
mismatch for the virginally tight vaginas that readers can
only wonder how they manage to penetrate at all. The image
accordingly appears in Europe of the all-controlling phallus,
too large to be ever successfully ‘berthed’, and to which
women can only pay homage. One of the illustrations to
Aubrey Beardsley’s unpublished series of c. 1896, Lysistrata,
isa good example, aptly entitled Adoramus (‘we praise thee’),
the woman, whose vagina will never accommodate it, is
reduced to kneeling to kiss the object she can never match
(illus. 88). The camp appearance of the male adds another
layer of misogyny: he has won what he does not even want.
Shunga and other pictures of the Floating World are dif-
ferent from what I take to be the norms of early modern
European pornography in three respects. Firstly, even though
the penis is depicted as large and hard, this is mitigated by its
189
association with soft symbols — indeed, we might say that the
point of much of the symbolism found in shunga is to soften
the penis. Secondly, the vagina is shown as equal in power
and size to the penis, unlike in Cleland where the women are
‘split’ and ‘broken open’. Thirdly, shunga create a visual realm
of vaginal symbols too, so that the female organs are not
merely inert enclosures.
Over-sizing of the organs is a feature of shunga, but they
are not depicted as universally large. More realistically sized
ones appear, mostly on younger people or on the very old
(see illus. 24, 26). Shunga abet the fantasy of the adult male
who wishes to imagine himself larger than a youth to com-
pensate for the latter’s greater potency and stamina and his
still-safe distance from dotage. In point of fact, there is little
real evidence of Edo-period women’s fetishization of penis
size, nor indeed of males’, who never seem to have men-
tioned it as a source of pride; boys were rented on the basis of
their ‘chrysanthemum seat’, more than their phallus. An
anonymous Floating World story of 1755 does comment on
the large penis of the actor/prostitute Minenojo, the dimen-
sions of which were said ‘to match the young actor’s talents’,
but this is almost unique.
One print is worth investigating in more detail for its geni-
tal symbolism. Utamaro’s shunga set of c. 1788, the Pillow of
Verses (Utamakura), includes a couple in an embrace where
the sexual act is barely visible, and all the libidinous aura is
transmuted into the surrounding objects (this is one of the
many pictures that evince the extent of overlap between
pornographic and ‘normal’ Floating World pictures) (illus.
60). The clothing is fine and light and splendidly rendered in
the polka-dot gauze to the left. The couple are pressed up to
the front, and little is seen beyond them. Some items can be
observed, and to the right is a sake flask with two stacked
cups and a bowl. Cups are often included in shunga (see illus.
56) to show the couple has drunk a love vow, and stacking is
the way that they were stored. But there is also a reference to
the mounting of the couple, one upon the other, and the
insertion of a ‘leg’ of one into the ‘basin’ of the other. Bowls of
all kinds are common in eroticized pictures, for the shape can
be made to seem vaginal. Let us consider an example of this
before returning to Utamaro. Koryiisai’s depiction of a
young samurai stopping for tea at a roadside stall and being
190
hy \soda Kory Gsai,
Evening Glow at the a
Teashop, multi- S|
coloured woodblock sf Oe a EOE. EESeee cA !
page from the series Fe
Imayo jinrin hakkei,
1776

served by a modest woman. It includes the handling of a

teacup that suggests a tacit understanding of imminent
progress to another stage of familiarity (illus. 89). The print is
from a set of eight, Eight Views of Morality of the Modern Kind
(Imayo jinrin hakkei); like Harunobu’s Eight Views of the Parlour
(see illus. 56), this set parodies the classic Eight Views of the
Xiao and Xiang, this one being ‘Evening Glow in a Fishing
Village’, the last of the eight. ‘Morality of the modern kind’
includes the possibility of fairly free sex, especially when
evening closes and work has ended — for the man (the
woman is still working) — and in country places the women
can be easily overawed. The man handles the cup gently, but
191
via it he seeks access to the vagina — which in the picture is
gladly offered, her cheeks now in an ‘evening glow’.
Utamaro shows something more than this. The bowl in
front of the nested cups contains a clam shell. The ‘bowl’ now
holds the means of redress if the man maltreats it, as the open
clam warns the male. This is clear from the verse, composed
for the print by Meshimori (poetic name of Ishikawa Masa-
mochi), which is inscribed on the man’s fan:

In the clam,
His bill is firmly
Caught.
The snipe cannot rise up.
Autumn evening.4°

Korytsai suggested a woman freely encouraging a man, the

relation was one of inequality with a samurai exploiting a
low-level waitress. Utamaro shows the woman as having
equal power to the man. The clam can deprive the snipe of
liberty and stop it reaching inside for the flesh. There is a
parity of symbols (if anything with the vagina granted the
greater force). But the shell is open with the snipe allowed to
remain at large. The only object that might serve to balance
the vaginal clam (the snipe is gone) is the paper fan held
more or less where the man’s penis would be.

SLEEVES AND SOFTNESS

A number of pictures show powerful vaginal imagery. The

tendency, however, was not to make the vagina strong but to
effect equality by showing the penis as weak, bringing it
‘down’ to the purported recessiveness of the vagina.
The most common vaginal symbol is not the clam, nor
even the bowl or tea cup, but the more pliant and bending
sleeve. The link of the sleeve to sex was apt, for when a
kimono was cast off the sleeve fell wide, leaving tempting
openings, as is suggested by many shunga (see illus. 13, 45).
Cloth has been discussed above, in Chapter Three, but the
sleeve has a special significance within the rhetoric of fabric.
Since ancient times the sleeve was the recipient of flooding
emotional outbursts, and the expression to ‘wet one’s sleeve’
192
(sode o nurasu) described the culmination of high feeling in
classical tales. Female sleeves trailed out of enclosed court
carriages, as continued to be represented in literature and
painting long after the practice had ended, and often were
the only clues to the identity and taste of the person
ensconced within: one knew a woman by her sleeves. The
painting genre ‘Whose sleeves?’ (tagasode) perpetuated the
myth that these were the most revelatory part — the genre is
not called ‘whose clothes’ (see illus. 53). The masturbator puts
the sleeve of the costume to his face (see illus. 4). It was sleeve
length that indicated a woman’s sexual availability, since
upon marriage the long-sleeved kimono would be put away
in favour of a short one.
Pornographic phallic symbolism matches the sleeve’s
softness. Since medieval times the mushroom was invoked.
It is shaped like a penis with a large glans, but is easily
squashed, and one could not envisage it enjoying viability in
the economy of symbols of eighteenth-century Europe. The
mushroom was rustic and so was little used in the self-con-
sciously elegant dispensation of the Floating World. But it
appears in sexual contexts where it was acceptable to display
a more rude energy and is common on carved toggles (net-
suke) which men inserted into their sashes to suspend hang-
ing pockets (inro). Mushrooms are to be found as phallic
symbols in senryii verses relating to the mushroom-gathering
festivities. This ritual was engaged in by country people but
mimicked by finer ladies, including members of the shogu-
nal harem (the doku), who would scan the confines of Edo
Castle for fungi carefully laid out for them to find. In Keishi,
where the custom originated, the main gathering site was
Mt Inari, hence:

Man Mountain
Might be a better name for
Mt Inari.

Or,

Dear, oh dear,
The bride can’t pull one up;
Mt Inari.

193
or
be
oe
tae
pe
Ok shor
Bro
ode
WY
neeao

Again, in an amusing feminization of the tale of the warlock go Anon., Lovers

at Asukayama
who lost his powers after seeing a woman's well-turned (modern censoring),
thigh, monochrome
woodblock page
from Furukawa
Mt Inari, Koshodken (‘Kibi
Powers evaporate Sanjin’), Edo meisho
For the woman-wizard.4° zue (1794).

Another symbol was the umbrella, which also fits the pre-
diliction for a larger glans than shaft. Umbrellas have erecti-
lity but, like fans, they are very easily broken. Large numbers
are found in shunga. The geographer and pornographer
Furukawa Koshoken (‘Kibi Sanjin’) included one ina parody
guide to Edo, where each site becomes a venue for sex. Asuka-
yama was famous for its cherry trees, and a couple have
taken an umbrella to protect themselves from falling petals;
the man inserts while the woman fondles its form (illus. go).
The only text on the picture is the woman’s voice (‘oh, oh,
thank-you so much!’). The colossalness of the sexual act (the
genitals have been subject to modern censoring) ripples into
the stele and trunks, but this is tenderized in the umbrella. It
does not matter if itis his or hers (this is another aspect of the
shunga egalitarian myth) — and it is not even erect. Certainly,
women fondling, caressing or clinging to open or closed

194
umbrellas are legion both in overt pornography and in
‘normal’ pictures of the Floating World (illus. 91).
Saikaku had a story entitled the ‘Umbrella Oracle’ (Kara-
kasa no go-takusen) contained in Saikaku’s Tales of Many
Countries (Saikaku shokoku-banashi) of 1685. An umbrella is
taken over and possessed by the Sun God (not goddess, as
was proper in Japanese lore), who demands a woman in
offering:

The hale young women shed tears, expressing their reluc-

tance with cries of, ‘we hold dear to our lives’. They were
not unaware of the shape this divinity had chosen to mani-
fest himself in. In the village was a lusty widow, and as
they were lamenting, she said, ‘Since it is the will of the
god, Iam prepared to take the people’s place’.#?

But this unexpectedly brutal umbrella fears the pent-up

sexuality of the widow, so that ‘although she passed a whole
night in the sacred place, nothing came at her, to which she
took exception.’ The widow then storms into the inner sanc-
tuary and grabs the umbrella, yelling, ‘so, your body’s not up
to it, then!?’ and shreds it in frustrated rage, tossing the tat-
ters on the floor. Umbrellas may be weird (Japanese mythol-
ogy has the figure of the ‘umbrella spook’), but they are
incapable of sustained malice and remain defenceless.

SWORDS

I have been arguing that shunga project an image of non-

violent, consensual sex, and I must therefore account for the
prominence of the sword, for like a gun it is an instrument of
violence. It is also exclusively male and class-specific. How
can it fit into the regime of pictures Iam proposing? In earlier
erotic writing, the sword was invoked to signify violent
sexual entry, with a penile thrust likened to a stab. In Fanny
Hill and also, repeatedly, in the Arabic Thousand and One
Nights, this phraseology is used. A verse of 1523, for example,
written by Sdcho, contains this:

The boy Iengaged

Does not reciprocate [my feelings].
195
 g1 Suzuki
Harunobu, [baraki-
ya, c. 1767/8, multi-
coloured woodblock
print.

Clutching him I would like to make a stab,

And have things different.
Even more than I,
[The celestial youth] Cetaka
Grew lonely awaiting boys.
Yet my body also yearns
In the hopelessness of love.°°

Still, there is no reference to a blade. Recently, Leupp has

unhelpfully recycled Donald Keene’s free-wheeling trans-
lation of 1977, rendering the critical lines, ‘I would like to
thrust in my sword/And die from the thrust’.>t Actually,
196
SdchO’s metaphor is weak. As a monk, moreover, he was not
a sword-wearer himself. Certainly there is nothing equiva-
lent to Sheherazade’s call to ‘pierce me with your rapier’.
Shunga that seek to re-create the historic world of civil war
show warriors engaged in sex wearing full battledress, as
noted in Chapter Two, but this is not done when depicting
the contemporary moment (see illus. 22, 45). By Edo times,
the sword was very rarely drawn from the scabbard and had
become ornamental; it was vestigial and barely connoted the
slash. I have discussed the ‘anachronism of the cut’ else-
where, together with the problematic linkage of swords to
peace-time male identity.°* It is not necessary to reiterate my
arguments, but it should be noted that in Edo shunga the
sword is denied the capacity to inflict damage by invariably
being depicted with the pommel, not the blade, towards the
partner. When a sword was worn, the blade would point
behind, away from the interlocutor and out of sight, and only
the hilt would intrude visually. Accordingly, it was the
pommel that bore meaning. The situation was unchanged
when the sword was unslung and when it is depicted as
removed prior to the act of sex. Women hold swords in the
same way they hold umbrellas. A hilt is a grip, pleasant to
touch. It cannot cut, indeed it is there precisely to protect
from cutting. With a bit of help from the artist, it could be
made to point in unison with an erect penis — with the same
vector and size. The sword is no phallic symbol in shunga,
though the hilt might be.

197
5 The Scopic Regimes of Shunga

The common experience for some Edo-period people was

to have servants attend them wherever they went. It was
the common experience of a larger number to be obliged to
follow. The two categories were not mutually exclusive, since
higher servants had their subordinates, and even the word
‘samurai’ comes from the verb saburau, ‘to be in waiting’.
Seeing and being seen was an exchange payable in the
eighteenth century in a different coin from today. Privacy
had also not yet been invented. The more wealthy the
person, the less likely they were to find space out of sight and
sound of others. The rich could have everything in company,
but nothing alone, while the poor shared their pittance in
crowds.

WATCHING AND WAITING

Servants entered a chamber without signalling entry and

expected to see, hear or smell their employer’s most personal
activities. (Hokusai illustrated this ina rare satirical view of a
samurai excreting while his servants wait outside, fingers in
noses.)' Servants were trusted to be loyal enough not to
divulge what might compromise their master’s dignity, but
most bodily functions that we would today wish to perform
in private were not thought prejudicial or embarrassing.
What of sex? What are the politics of seeing, or of peeping?
Who were voyeurs and who ‘voyees’? How do facts of archi-
tecture and locale mesh with the compensatory visual world
set up by pornography?
There was no single, homogeneous ‘life of a servant’, but
there were collective myths. Servants imagined their employ-
ers to be foolish, and this is the stuff of kabuki as much as of
Moliere. Employers imagined their servants loved them. The
truth is that few masters thought about their servants at all,
and the diaries and jottings of Edo literary figures make no
198
mention of servants; the reader is far more likely to learn
about the details of a person’s household furnishings or
works of art than about the names of their underlings. The
significance of these facts and fictions of early modern life
concerns us insofar as they relate to the representation of sex.
The master’s myth of servants happily undergoing hard-
ships for their sake finds expression in sexual contexts, and a
trope is that of the servant waiting resolutely outside while
the master besports himself indoors. For the servant's res-
ponse, I have not found anything as colourful as Leporello’s
aria in Don Giovanni, the premiere of which took place in
Prague, far removed from Japan but identical in time to our
period (1789, first year of the Kansei era):

I work all night and day

For someone who takes no notice of it.
I have to contend with wind and rain,
Eating badly andsleeping rough.
I want to be a man of means
And don’t want to serve any more.
Some fine gentleman!
Inside there with the pretty woman
While [ have to play watchman!*

When recounted from the master’s side, the story emerges

differently, and here there are Japanese examples. Com-
monly a nanshoku ingredient was added to justify the selfless
attendance, such that the master chose to believe his servant
not only happy to wait outside, but happy because he loved
the master physically and transferred his craving onto the
person of the (female) consort. Unlike with Leporello, it was
the master, not his mistress, that the servant was expected to
want to embrace. One often-repeated story was that of a page
to the late sixteenth-century warlord, Hideyoshi, called the
Taiko; the servant was known as Tokichird; he was said to
have waited in the snow while Hideyoshi slept with a woman
and, although himself freezing, expended his dying body’s
heat on keeping his master’s shoes warm by clutching them
to his breast.* Servile devotion and sexual yearning were
conjoined. The eroticized gloss placed on samurai loyalty
remained common throughout the Edo period, and Toki-
chiro appeared in the standard biographies of Hideyoshi,
199
such as the Illustrated Chronicle of the Taiko (Ehon taikd-ki) of 92 Nishikawa
Sukenobu, The
1797-1802 (a book which was to have a major impact on the Maid, monochrome
Floating World and on its policing: see Chapter Six).+ There woodblock page
are other tales of a similar nature in Hidden Among Leaves from Makurabon
taikei-ki (c. 1720).
(Hagakure),; and the Great Mirror of Nanshoku (Nanshoku
okagami). A version of Tokichir6’s sacrifice was told of Sakai
Tadakatsu, the young daimyo of Shimdsa-Oyumi, who
served the third shogun, Iemitsu.> Tadakatsu also warmed
lemitsu’s shoes in his clothes, substituting them for the body
of the master he could not (yet) embrace — (later Tadakatsu
became a friend and advisor of lemitsu and a member of the
Council of Elders, rdjiZ).
The availability of dependent retainers would have led to
sexual abuse. The senryil

The young master

‘Worships’ her by night,
But shouts at her by day®

attests to an expectation of exploitation, funnier to those on

one side than on the other.
Waiting outside did not necessarily mean being out of eve-
sight or earshot since wooden architecture was not sound-
proof and chinks offered opportunities for peeping (Western
architecture, being of brick or stone, offered little more than
the keyhole, which indeed figures as a point of access in
much European pornography). Images of the servant out-
side watching the act of sex within, and responding to it by
masturbating, are current (illus. 92). These might have been
enjoyed in cases where s/unga were used by couples as fore-
play, with voyeuristic pictures flattering them that their
200
93 Hishikawa
Moronobu, Through
the Screens, mono-
chrome woodblock
page from Koi no
mutsugoto shiji-hatte
(1679).

privileged acts were the object of others’ fantasies, not dis-

gust. But it is also possible that Japanese pornography was
made to relieve those habitually kept waiting. It may be for
this reason that the scenario of the door opening and the
attendant being invited to join the play also occurs, or else
that of one party going to sleep and the insatiate partner
beckoning the person outside in for further enjoyment.
Whether or not waiting servants had a book in one hand,
voyeurism is a recurrent theme in shunga, where it is intro-
duced as a stimulant to masturbation.
A sexual position called ‘through the screens’ (shdji-gosht)
appears in Moronobu’s Forty-Eight Positions in the Secrets of
Love (Koi no mutsugoto shijii-hatte) of 1679 (illus. 93). The text
reads, ‘screens are hard and fast to thwart acts of love, so try
this coital position secretly.’ If people really practised this, it
would have been a way of enacting the fantasy of the one
outside wanting to come in, effecting a kind of transgression,
linked to the fetish of voyeurism. The couple come together
while playing at separation, both denied and permitted, both
frustrated and fulfilled. This seems more masturbatory than
copulatory, and it is uncertain whether Moronobu’s book is
offering real instruction in sexual technique or the more
201
normal thrills of pornographic images. The breach in the
screen that was just right for the penis was also just right for
theeye.
The pleasure districts catered for voyeurism too, for
brothel architecture was similar to domestic in offering a
sequence of interiors that were unsealed visually and aurally.
Not much special effort was made to ensure couples were
kept apart. The top establishments had fully private rooms,
and the definition of the highest grade of prostitute was that
she had her own suite (zashiki-mochi), but these were not
really ‘private’ in any modern sense. Plays and fiction are full
of people spotted or overheard while with a prostitute, and it
was a normal part of the representation of the quarters for
this to happen. The belief that one was subject to a prying
gaze was solicited, for it heightened the thrill. All these
possibilities appear in erotic images.
In some of the smaller brothels, or in the unlicensed dis-
tricts, rooms were shared, with just a folding screen set down
the middle. There is no evidence that this was regarded as a
problem. Aroom of this sort is seen in a page from Koryiusai’s
shunga book of about 1770 (illus. 78). It contains a mini female
figure to whom we will return since she has an obvious role
in the construction of voyeurism, but note here the screens.
Normally one screen is adequate to divide a room, and it
would be decorated on only one side to create a hierarchy of
space before and behind. Here, two screens are positioned
back-to-back to allow decorated surfaces to show both ways,
to even up the space. This is necessary because couples are to
right and left, as the pack of tissues and what look like knees
under the bedding reveal. The view outside the window has
a stream and bridge, indicating that this is not the Yoshiwara,
but probably the lower-grade, extra-legal Fukagawa quarter,
and that this is not a top-class place. All the same, it is a two-
storey edifice, which the most modest kind were not, the
screens are good and the double futon has a lavish red cover.
The room-sharing is not the necessary result of economies
but forms part of the couple’s regime of desire, creating a
sense of seeing and being seen and perhaps gaining two part-
ners (or three) for the price of one.

202
THE HISTORICAL ‘THIRD PERSON’

The myths perpetuated in s/iunga constitute encoded ways of

helping the reader deal with the fact that he or she is alone,
with nothing but themselves in hand. These codes play
games with real conditions and graft truths onto unrealities.
By raising the possibility that there was, or might be, some-
thing behind the next screen or that one’s sexual acts might
be the object of arousal to those outside, shunga heightened
sexual tension, which — for a masturbator — often needs
aiding. Shunga equivocate between seeing and being seen,
cleverly refusing to take sides on who is voyeur and who
‘voyee’ and whether the roles are fixed.
Sometimes it is problematic to assess whether viewers of a
shunga image would have identified with the one who sees
another’s act within the space of the picture or with the one
who acts. Male and female viewers might have reacted
differently, and it would have depended on the class and
status of the various parties too. Any one picture might have
been used in many ways. But the various possibilities had to
be identified and negotiated by the artist, who would need to
know what the market for the picture was and to organize
the imagery accordingly, while always leaving room for the
possibility that the book would be passed about among dif-
ferent classes, age-groups and perhaps genders.
One way of dealing with — or circumventing — these issues
was to relocate the third person within the picture not as a
servant but in some surrogate form. By investing the gaze in
some other, non-human or humanoid form, artists could pro-
vide a point of entry into the picture for any viewer. Various
experiments in this were attempted, one interesting case
being Hokusai’s illustration to an unknown book; additional
elements in the picture include a mirror and the man’s per-
sonal effects — pipe, tobacco pouch and a toggle carved in the
shape of the lucky god Putai (illus. 79, 94). These are not so
much discarded as prominently disposed at the lower front
of the picture, at just the point where a reader’s gaze would
catch them. Hokusai shows the couple as exceedingly hand-
some and fashionable, and few viewers would have had the
confidence to see themselves like this. Hokusai gives so ideal
a vision of social and sexual sophistication that the viewer
might be rebuffed. Access is found via the beady peep of
203
Putai. The use of secondary, immobile figures inhabiting a
different level of existence from the copulators, but within
the same field of representation, is used in the pornographic
traditions of many cultures. Something similar is brought
about in the staring, sculpted (penis-less) busts in the illus-
trations to Aretino’s book (see illus. 42). But Hokusai’s pic-
ture warrants closer attention, for it displays clever juggling
with configurations of the gaze.
Putai is placed to look from right to left. This is also the
direction of sight that the viewer would use, as he or she
leafed through the book (this is not a single-sheet print) to
arrive at this page after turning over the previous one (north-
east Asian books go ‘backwards’). But what does Putai see?
His gaze does not alight on the sexual act itself, which seems
to be obscured for him by the woman’s nearer leg: he peeps at
itin the secondary representation of the reflection in a mirror.
There are several levels to the meaning in mirrors, as we shall
see, but note how it is used here to build a parallel between
Putai and the viewer of Hokusai’s picture, who also does not
see ‘real’ sex, only its reflection in a picture. If Putai and the
viewer make do with the reflection, so too does the couple,
who are watching themselves in the mirror. The mirror image
is utterly absorptive, more interesting to the couple than
their real knotted organs. If the reflection is enough to dis-
charge the needs of their sexual thrill, then the viewer of
Hokusai’s book is entitled to feel fulfilment also.

94 Detail from
Hokusai, Lovers with
Mirror (illus. 79).

204
 Shunga make extensive use of such interposed figures, not
quite human but nearly so, who view what is occurring.
Painted screens within the pictures regularly have figures on
them and, as with the use of the pictures within pictures dis-
cussed in Chapter Three, human or humanoid figures are
used to enlarge shunga’s domain, in this case their scopic
complexity. These pictures replicate the facts of genuine
interior decoration and, as such, tend to contain historical
subjects such as the Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove, or Li
Bo, which were common in rooms. But they do not just cap-
ture the realities: they are there to pluralize gazing (see illus.
19, 50-52). Masanobu’s Little Bedroom Pattern-book (Neya no
hinagata) of c. 1738 includes a screen depicting Ariwara no
Narihira, recipient of the ‘Rock-Azalea’ verse, now an adult
and passing by Mt Fuji on his celebrated ‘descent to the East’
recounted in the Tales of Ise (Ise monogatari; illus. 80): exiled
from the capital and forced to wander, Narihira came to
Musashi. Narihira isnot named in the Tales and is just called
‘the man’, but the identification had become traditional. He
was one of classical literature’s great lovers, and pursued
amours of a variety of orientations. By the Edo period, his
wanderings in exile were construed as sexual exercises or a
‘carnal pilgrimage’ (iro shugyd). He and his companions
gazed up at Fuji’s lofty peak on a journey that was of sexual,
not geographical, discovery. The historical figure of Narihira
was central to the valorization of Edo-period sex, not least
because Musashi was where the city of Edo was built.
Masanobu has made the ‘descent to the East’ sit across the
corner of the room, taking up three sliding doors; one panel
is three-quarters open, but despite this, the line of Fuji’s slope
joins up perfectly, as does the coastline. Masanobu gives both
a proper view of Fuji and the lake below, and an opening
through which the ‘real’ space of the next room, with another
screen (subject carefully omitted), is exposed. Typically, in
the next room there will be a lurking peeper or listener, oper-
ating in tandem to us. By having the screen open, Masanobu
breaks the integrity of Narihira’s space so that his gaze cuts
across the open screen; to see Fuji, he must look across a hole,
as a result of which his gaze will tumble into the room where
the couple are having sex. This rip in representation is accen-
tuated by the scene’s depiction across a corner of the room:
although the construction is not very logically arranged, the
205
line of Narihira’s gaze can only take him to Fuji across the
bodies of the prone couple. Like us, that is what he is really
looking at. The Tales of Ise (not to be confused with the Ise
Anthology) was a common source for pictures within shunga.
Another example is a page from an untitled book of about
1684 by Sugimura Jihei, which includes a hanging scroll of
the same episode (illus. 95). The genderless travellers (they
should be male but look female) hang above the head of a
sleeping woman; her skirts are open. (We will suspend ana-
lysis of the role of the approaching male until later.) Watch-
ing her is a courtly figure painted on a folding screen that
seems to divide the room from one to the right; the man is
seated in a palace with a stream running past and is clearly
the man (Narihara) who loved the ‘person who lived in the
West Wing’ who is the subject of one of the Tale’s most haunt-
ing sections, which also contained an exceptional poem:

The moon is here,

And the spring is
The spring of yore.
But my body alone
Is the body it was before.”

The man is the only body at the now-deserted house, the

woman is dead; he wept until morning came. No Edo viewer
would have failed to recognize the two references set out by
Jihei. The two scenes are not only linked by their shared
source but more immediately in the pictorial logic of the
moon: it should be shown above the West Wing but is trans-
posed to the other story — which in terms of the actual Tales is
incorrect, since the troupe pass Fuji in daytime (night is said
to begin to fall at the end of the episode). The moon is pushed
across to frustrate isolation of different representational
spaces. Jihei has ordered these two scenes to forma dialogue
that passes over the body of the sleeping woman. This brings
the viewer in, for this is a world in which ontologies of gaze
can leap each other’s boundaries. The vagina of the sleeping
woman points to the corner of the room, which is bisected by
the frame of the picture, providing a point of entry for the
viewer's peep.
The complexity of this image does not stop here. The
sleeping woman may refer to the person in the West Wing
206
95 Sugimura Jihei,
Erect Man
Approaching
Sleeping Woman,
monochrome wood-
block page from an
untitled shunga
album (c. 1684).

whose body is changed, but she also goes naturally with the
Tales in toto: Narihira was said to have been forced into exile
because of an indiscretion with a shrine maiden, who after
the seduction sent him a poem:

Did you come,

Or was it Iwho went to you?
I cannot imagine.
Was it a dream or not?
Was I asleep or awake?®

He wrote a similarly ambiguous reply. Perhaps this woman

is dreaming of sex, perhaps of sex with Narihira, or perhaps
she is enjoying the excuses that somnolence gives. Narihira
was so famous a lover, anyone might imagine themselves
with him, a truism that was the subject of a painting by Eishi
(existing in more than one copy)? showing a woman dozing
off while reading the Tales of Ise, one volume in her hand, a
box containing the rest beneath her elbow (illus. 96); her
dream is clarified in the bubble, and we see she has wished
herself into the twelfth episode, where Narihira carried off a
lady in the province of Musashi (soldiers with torches are
seen tracking them).'° The Tales of Ise are not explicit, but in
this woman’s dream her libido has run riot and copulates
with Narihira in the long grass. Moronobu had already
established this scene as one of outright sex in his bawdy
207
retelling of Ise (and Genji), possibly published the same year
as Jihei’s work (1684) (illus. 97), and in 1687 Jihei was to do so
in an intriguing illustration to his Pillow of the Sexual Zodiac
(Sansei aisho makura), which also suggests that screens orna-
mented in this way might have been set up in sites of pre-
arranged sex; a woman born under the Water sign couples
with a man of Wood (illus. 98).
We may be in danger of wandering too far from our topic
of voyeurism here. But seeing and being seen can take many
forms. In Sugimara Jihei’s first image, the woman appears
destined for a shock for, as she dreams, a man sneaks up on
her out of nowhere, penis poised for insertion (see illus. 95).
He mimics the sight-line of the lover of the person in the West
Wing, but he may refer rather to the other painting where,
oddly, Narihira’s horse is riderless. Is this a modern Narihira
that the woman has dragged from his mount into the pre-
sent? The two spaces of the Ise pictures are in dialogue but
seem also to have spilled into the picture itself. This legiti-
mates the conceit of the user of this picture, imagining him-
self entering the picture (and the woman) too.
Such play with Ise was current throughout the Edo period,
for it was the perfect work of mediation. Not only was the
whole story the result of a sexual encounter seemingly made
in dreams, but it was also (untypically) written in the present
tense. Ise hung suspended in time and in existential dimen-
sion. Through Ise, history met the present, time became
suddenly synchronic, and the old and the new looked at
each other. Jihei’s second picture, and perhaps Moronobu’s,
appeared in 1684, two years after Saikaku, published his
hugely successful modernization of Ise under the title of Life
of a Sex-mad Man (Koshoku ichidai otoko), At the end of Sai-
kaku’s book, the resurrected Narihira, now called Yonosuke
(‘Man of the World’), leaves Japan to sail to the Isle of
Women, a kind of dream world for the brusque male libido,
just as Ise itself provided a dream world for females. The link
to the Tales was made explicit by Saikaku, for when Yonosuke
sets sail, he takes with him not much besides 300 copies of Ise,
dildos, mopping-up paper and a large selection of shunga."!
In playing with the interior levels of pictures, pornogra-
phers were able to unsettle the division between viewer and
picture itself. Viewers are muddled. A similar conceit has
already been seen in the page from Terasawa Masatsugu’s
208
96 Chobunsai Kishi, Woman Dreaming over
‘The Tales of Ise’, c. 1800, hanging scroll,
colour and gold on silk.

Twist of Figured Cloth (Aya no odamaki), where a play of gazes

caters, I think, to a different taste (see illus. 11). The couple
behind the sliding paper door have heard what the boy is
doing when he was supposed to be practising singing and
have interrupted him. Scurrying off frightenedly into the dis-
tance at the other end of the door is a figure in Chinese guise,
with attendant. He is hard to identify but would seem to be
more than generic, and I suppose him to be one of the Four
Greybeards of Mt Shang (Shozan shiko); the other three are
lost in the opened section (albeit the landscape elements of
tree and rock join up, with nothing lost in the overlap). The
four sages (‘greybeards’) were men who fled the collapse of
the Qin dynasty in 206 Bc and had taken refuge on Mt Shang.
After Qin was replaced by Han, the founder of the dynasty
passed over his rightful successor, Huidi, in favour of the son
of a concubine; Huidi’s mother appealed to the greybeards
209
97 Hishikawa for help and they came down from the mountain to preserve
Moronobu, Shunga
Version of‘Masashi
the birthright. This was a good Confucian theme, inculcating
Plain’ from ‘The Tales the twin duties of fleeing unrighteous regimes and of putting
ofIse’, monochrome oneself at the disposal of those who sought to root out
woodblock page
from Ise genji shikishi
corruption, and it was painted by many artists of the govern-
(modern title) ment’s Kano School (illus. 130).'* An excrescence on the story
(c. 1684). was often told too, emphasizing less the morality of the sages
98 Sugimura Jihei, than their erotic interest in Huidi, said to be a very pretty boy
Woman of Water with and conventionally referred to as the greybeards’ ‘bride’.
Man of Wood, mono-
From this world of history, one of the old men has popped
chrome woodblock
page from the out to take a modern Edo boy as his own (perhaps as the
anonymous Sansei viewer of Masatsugu’s picture wanted to do), only to run off
aisho makura (1687).
guiltily when the parents appear; the solitary greybeard
takes back into the picture’s space (like an inversion of
Narihira leaving his horse and entering the sleeping
woman’s room) a painted boy to sleep with.
One final picture within a picture may detain us. A print
by Harunobu from the close of the 1760s contains a particu-
larly interesting configuration of pictorial realities and imag-
inings (illus. 99). Many works by Harunobu attest to an
enthusiasm for problematizing representation itself, perhaps
stemming from his own work in the invention of multi-
colour printing, by which the world of picture-making was
turned on end. It was Harunobu’s pupil Harushige (later
known as Shiba Kokan) who first introduced copperplate
printing and pioneered the unsettling novel manners hailing
from Europe.
Harunobu parodies and sexualizes the paradigmatic
myth that artistic greatness lay in the ability to paint forms
that lived. This was the mythical power ascribed to Wu Daozi
of the Tang period and subsequently to any artist deemed
superlatively good.’ Wu had painted a dragon that stirred
on the page; in Japan similar feats were ascribed to Sesshi,
Kano Motonobu, Maruyama Okyo and others. The classical
artists painted beasts that lived as noble examples to all who
saw them. But in the modern sex-mad world it is Putai, the
lucky god (with special responsibility for pleasure), who
comes to life, evincing a thorough venality.
The painting hangs in the ornamental alcove, while Putai
(originally a monk from the popularized Zen canon) has
come out of the picture, leaving his iconographic attribute (a
bag) and his shadow behind on the silk. Harunobu jokingly
PAA
 g9 Suzuki
Harunobu, Putai
Exiting a Painting,
1765-70, multi-
coloured wood-
block print.

attributes to himself the stupendous powers of Wu Daozi,

but it is the power of Putai’s lust rather than the skill of the
artist that has transmogrified him into the room, seemingly a
normal home where a young woman has fallen asleep read-
ing a letter (from a lover?). Harunobu’s woman is so desir-
able that anyone seeing her tries to gain entry into her space
and be with her. Putai succeeds in liberating himself, thanks to
the Wu myth, but the viewer tries to do the same: any user of
erotica relies on the picture to kindle fantasies of possession.
Putai and the woman are both the stuff of pictures, and the
barrier between their two worlds is not as absolute as that
PLNPA
between them and the viewer. But erotic thoughts allow the
painted body to become, if not substantial, at least realenough
to provoke reaction in our thoughts and, perhaps, in our bodies.

THIRD PERSON PRESENT

The stake in within-picture figures was increased by Haru-

nobu in 1770 in his first work using the homunculus figure
(see illus. 58, 118). The book was entitled Elegant, Sex-mad
Maneemon (Fuiryi enshoku maneemon) and issued in two vol-
umes with 24 full-colour illustrations. An accompanying text
was probably written by the Floating World author Koma-
tsuya Hyakki. The publisher was the fashionable Nishi-
mura-ya. The result must have been expensive.'* Korytsai
adapted this for a female version, as seen earlier (illus. 78),
and Harunobu himself was working on a sequel based ona
successor called Mamesuke, when he died, leaving only twelve
pictures of the probable twenty-four complete (the truncated
set was published posthumously, with the tentative title of
Mamesuke). Both titles pun on mane (‘imitation’) and mame
(‘bean’ or small-sized); -emon is a male name ending, -suke a
suffix denoting, usually, a younger son. The figures are little
enough to move about undetected and, rather than inspiring
people to higher things, they mimic the sexual foibles of Edo.
Harunobu’s innovation was to leap over the use of porno-
graphic figures painted within pictures (which were inevi-
tably historic) and replace them with an up-to-date, ‘elegant’
(fiiryil) man; this man appears independently, moving from
event to event, as an ambient voyeur. This ‘bean imitator’
cannot be seen or touched by the ‘real’ people in the picture
and his existence is recognized by the reader only, for whom
he forms the crack in the imagistic seal that allows him or
her to enter. Maneemon (and later Mamesuke) is the book’s
glue, for his presence is the narrative link in what is other-
wise a disparate collection of shunga. Normally in shunga
albums it was the viewer who bound the set together, his
hand or eye was the device that made the book’s parts (cast
and story breaking from page to page) cohere. Harunobu
makes readers delegate their role to the homunculus.
Maneemon (along with his derivatives) is both the internal,
eponymous hero and the external, extraneous interloper into
213
 a depicted world in which he has no right to be. He is both in
and out of the scenes, which are all depictions of sex.
Maneemon replicates the viewer’s ambivalent and intrusive
presence. He is never an actor in the story, but he sees every-
thing; he is unable to have any effect on what occurs, but he
himself is affected by it and imitates it. Maneemon can
respond to the sexual stimulation of what he sees, on his
own, privately and unwitnessed, just like the stimulated
viewer. One image shows him with an erection, proportion-
ately as large as any in shunga, but inadequate for anything
but self-indulgence. Maneemon never has a partner, in
which, too, he is like the pornographic viewer left to manage
alone.
A factor that the viewer today is likely to miss is that
Maneemon is not only a modern man, rather thana god, sage
or hero of the past, but he also looks exactly as the viewer
would wish to look; he has no defining characteristics and is
an Edo everyman with whom any eighteenth-century male
reader could aspirationally identify. This copyist of the
actions of florid sex, both repelled and beckoned by the story,
is the reader himself. The pictures in the Maneemon volumes
are not quite as disconnected as those in regular shunga but
form a kind of encyclopaedia of sexual behaviour. Rather
than being a set of loose erotica, they attempt to cover all
bases sequentially and, if this still does not amount toa story,
Hyakki bills it as the erotic education of Maneemon. The
beanman starts as a normal human being who goes to prays
for sexual enlightenment at the Kasamori Inari Shrine, which
was not far from Ueno, on the land route from Edo to the
Yoshiwara (illus. 100). In response to his prayers, two divini-
ties appear and offer him a magic potion, which he drinks,
finding himself suddenly reduced to a tiny size and thereby
able to pass through the world undetected. These ‘divinities’
are real women of Edo — Osen, who was a waitress at The
Wealth, a teashop by the Kasamori shrine, and Ofuji, who
worked at The Willow, a tooth-cleaning goods shop near
Asakusa.’ These are not great courtesans but city women, as
he isa common man. Very likely such townswomen were the
first sex symbols admired by a young Edoite, encountered
long before he had ventured into the Yoshiwara or ‘hill
places’. Edoites would have learned the thrill of voyeurism
(if not actual sex) by watching women like these, and indeed
214
100 Suzuki RRAYIOVCE, S AAOay R NTR
PittiRp +
PENI ES
j
Harunobu, - # . &

Ukiyonosuke’s
Visitation at the
Kasamori Shrine,
multi-coloured
woodblock page
from Komatsu-ya
Hyakki, Fiiryi
enshoku maneemon
(1765).

Harunobu had made something of a speciality of pictures of

these two women, via which he circulated news of their love-
liness (and advertised their shops) (illus. 101). Harunobu’s
student’s view of the Nihon Embankment shows a picture of
Osen being studied in the Yoshiwara itself (see illus. 61). One
such print of Osen was adapted by Harunobu, or by a fol-
lower, to carry a higher erotic content. This must have been
an illicit publication, since making such imagery of an identi-
fiable bourgeois woman could not have been legal; the man
(a rich merchant) ought to be identifiable from his prominent
crest (illus. 81).!° Harunobu made a very similar print of this
cool customer at Ofuji’s shop, although no shunga version of
itis known.
Harunobu and Hyakki referred to the icon of sexualized
liminality, Narihira, in giving Maneemon the pre-shrinkage
name of Ukiyonosuke, a portmanteau of ukiyo (the Floating
World) and -nosuke, another common suffix for male names,
but which refers to Ihara Saikaku’s up-dated Narihira, called
Yonosuke. Saikaku’s work had re-contextualized Narihira in
Osaka at the turn of the seventeenth century, and this is now
further revised to the Edo of a century later. The first page by
Hyakki is also a parody of the opening of the Tales of Ise.
Maneemon learns about love. First he sees a calligraphy
master copulating with his female student: the premise is
that all education leads to sex. Secondly he watches a young
215
 eee 101 Suzuki
Harunobu, Samurai
Customer with Osen,
1765-70, multi-
coloured wood-
block print.

couple making love, while behind them are an old man and
woman, he burning moxa on her back to relieve aches and
pains: the image is of the handing on of sexual activity from
one generation to the next, as the tired bodies of the elderly
make way for the vibrancy of youth. The next picture shows
a pregnant wife (the results of procreative sex), again
suggesting the transfer from one generation to another, here
not yet born; the woman will become a mother, while the
man is not yet ready to relinquish sex without complaint and
has been caught wandering into recreational love with a
servant. The next scene shows non-procreative sex par excel-
lence, that is, one productive only of pleasure, nanshoku.

216
Maneemon has flown up on a kite and looks into an upper
room where a boy and an older man are engaging in inter-
course; the text makes a humorous reference to Harunobu’s
friend, Hiraga Gennai, using his pen name Furai Sanjin, who
was known for his nanshoku writings.'? The other pictures
move through various categories and stages: an old, but still
sexually active couple; a blind monk; sex indoors and out-
doors. By the end of the first volume, the reader has passed
through the sexual life of a civic person in all its variants.
Volume Two takes place in the Yoshiwara. At first, seen
engaged with a courtesan, is a youth referred to in the text as
Roko, that is, Kikunojo; despite his interest in female com-
pany, he has chrysanthemums (kiku) on his costume, partly
for his name but also because, as an actor, he was available
for male sexual blandishment. Maneemon climbs up a tree
and farts — having only just arrived in the Yoshiwara, he vul-
garly behaves as he would in town, as yet unaware of how
effete codes govern the quarter, as blankets to hush its real
economy. Maneemon is then led though the various stages of
procuring a prostitute until he has acquired more aplomb,
and by picture 18 he is able to watch as a client finally meets
one of the women of the ludicrously expensive and rarefied
category called oiran. By picture 21 he witnesses the man pro-
voking her anger by renting another woman, and by picture
23, now getting tired, Maneemon sees the end of a night’s
revelry as a couple have sex outside the gates of a brothel
before the man makes for home.
Harunobu and Hyakki’s book came out in the same year
as another that merits mention in the context of voyeurism.
In 1770 Koikawa Harumachi produced Master Moneypenny’s
Dreams of Glory (Kinkin sensei eiga no yume), said to be the first
work in the kibydshi (‘yellow covers’) genre, a style of short,
amusing books on faddish themes with text written over the
illustrations; kibyoshi were to dominate Floating World fic-
tion for the rest of the century.’® Harunobu was active in the
moves leading up to this kind of book, as two years before he
had illustrated Ota Nanpo’s Dohei the Sweet-seller (Ameuri
Dohei den), the principal kibyoshi precursor. Nanpo had begun
with the magical appearance of Osen to Dohei descending
from the clouds, which was surely the root of Maneemon’s
mystical encounter; Harunobu’s illustration to the opening
of Dohei is very like that to Hyakki’s shunga volume. The
pity,
story of ‘Master Moneypenny’ (Kinkin sense) is like that of
Maneemon in forming a progress from innocence to sexual
sophistication, only Moneypenny is visible, part of the ‘real’
represented world. Rather like the hero of William Hogarth’s
almost coeval Rake’s Progress, he exhausts his good luck and
his friends’ forgiveness and comes to debauchery and ruin.’?
Harumachi ends with Moneypenny being disinherited by
the rich man who had adopted him and made his lifestyle
possible; Hogarth’s rake ends in penury. But whereas
Harumachi’s and Hogarth’s tales counselled against exces-
sive behaviour, Hyakki avoided the sour note and, this being
a pornographic work, the pricking of the bubble of fantasy
does not take place within the story. Maneemon is weary at
the end, but not ruined, and he closes by announcing that
next season he will try going to the ‘hill place’ at Fukagawa.

PEEPING AND DREAMING

The link of Ukiyonosuke via Yonosuke to Narihira is made

explicit by Hyakki in the opening of the Maneemon book, the
first page of which is a spoof of the beginning of Ise: ‘Once
there was a man of the Floating World; on Musashi stirrups
[the strongest kind] he went to the village of Azuma, over-
whelmed by the blossoms, he offered prayers to the moon.’?°
Ise itself begins, ‘Once there was a man; after coming of age,
he left the capital of Nara and went to hunt in the village of
Kasuga, where he owned property.’*' Ancient concerns have
dissolved into modern ones. But the connection brought
Maneemon into the direct lineage of erotic dreaming. The
importance of dreaming had two sources: one was Ise, but
the other was a Chinese story that twisted illusion and
wordly success, known from a nd play, The Pillow of Kantan
(Kantan no makura). Harumachi borrowed his second model
for Moneypenny’s dreams of glory, which were indeed
dreams, for he had only seen his rich adoption and his fall
while asleep (this distances him from Hogarth’s rake). The
Kantan story original told of a country youth who came to
the capital to seek his fortune; on the way he napped while
waiting for a meal of millet to steam, and dreamed of glory
and final ruin; he then awoke, realized the insubstantiality of
success and returned home. Moneypenny’s dream was the
218
same, only modernized, and he falls asleep at a rice-cake
shop in Meguro just outside Edo. The main feature of the
modernization is that the Kantan dreamer had seen himself
assuming the top ranks of government, whereas Money-
penny only wants cash and copulation.
References to Kantan are apparent throughout the Manee-
mon story, and Hyakki wove the two dreaming classics
together. His clue might have been some of several recent
works that told of men who became able to see normally
hidden aspects of the world, thanks to dreamlike states. This
had been used c. 1710 in shunga written by Ejima Kiseki, his
Pocketman’s Kontan Sex Play (Kontan iro asobi futokoro-otoko —
Kontan was a variant of Kantan) — illustrated by Nishikawa
Sukenobu.* The ‘pocketman’, called Mameemon (mame,
‘bean’, + -emon), travels through the country enjoying abnor-
mally free access to all manner of sex (nyoshoku and nan-
shoku), thanks to being so small as to be almost imperceptible.
There is a double aspect of fantasy inherent in these works.
The literal dreaming of the protagonist joins with the self-
delusions of the reader-cum-masturbator, a fact that was
made clear even before Kiseki by the anonymous author of
The Sex-mad Man Born Under This Year's Star Sign (Koshoku
toshiotoko), a work that appeared in 1695; since the zodiac cir-
culated every twelve years, the man is either pubescent or,
more likely, has just turned twenty-four. The ‘man born
under this year’s star sign’, Toshiotoko, is normal-sized and
visible but has undergone a strange transformation by taking
a magic potion offered him in the same way as that received
by Ukiyonosuke (which turned the latter into Maneemon);
Toshiotoko goes to pray at the shrine of Tenjin on Fifth
Avenue in Keishi and is turned into an apparent female,
while retaining male genitalia. This false appearance allows
him access to women-only situations, of which he takes
advantage. Upon being transformed, Toshiotoko takes the
name Osome, a real woman’s name meaning, literally, ‘dyed’:
he is stained female to the view but is still male, as it were, in
the weave. Osome visits various cities, sleeping with other
people’s wives and daughters ‘in great numbers’.*? The
escapades are cut short when he is grabbed by a tengu (a
flying, long-nosed demon) and whisked off into the air. It
looks about to drop him, and in fear Osome closes his eyes
and grabs its nose tightly. The nose of the tengu was a
219
standard phallic symbol and occurred in many situations
where earthy sexual symbolism was in order (such as folk
items or toggles). This tengu is more exactly the embodiment
of Osome’s sexuality. Though looking female, Osome has
been in thrall to the phallus until it has dominated him and
carried him off, looking likely even to cause his death. He
grabs the tengu’s ‘nose’: that is, for the first time he takes con-
trol of his penis. Osome grabs the nose as a sign that he is
bringing his rampant sexuality back under control and that,
instead of searching perpetually for fraudulent and deceitful
access to women, he will approach them in a mature and
open way. As he grabs the ‘nose’, Toshiotoko wakes up, for
here too the whole story has been a dream. He discovers that
what his hands have been holding as he slept was truly his
erect penis.
Slinking beanmen, then, have their pedigree, and it is one
linked more to masturbation than to partnered sex. Hyakki’s
story, and more particularly Harunobu’s pictures, were what
propelled the trope publicly into the Floating World, giving it
the aura of the Yoshiwara. But Maneemon was a work to be
read at home, and it is mistaken to flush out the auto-erotic
musings that from the first permeated the stories of invisible,
non-interactive intruders who forced their way into voyeur-
istic encounters with other peoples’ acts of sex.
The Maneemon publication was a hit, as the aborted
Mamesuke would surely have been had it been finished.
Ironically, in view of the meaning of mane (imitation), copies
ensued. Korytisai changed the protagonist to a female. Why
he did this is not clear, unless, as a samurai (which, unlike
Harunobu, Hyakki et al., he was), he could not identify with
the townsman Maneemon and so went the whole hog and
reset the gender (the publisher would probably not have
seen much future in a Maneemon from the upper class).
Koryusai’s book looked just like Harunobu’s, however, with
twenty-four pictures bound in two volumes with an (uncred-
ited) text. Although aesthetically on a par with Harunobu’s
pictures, the different signification of female peeping was
something that Korytisai could not successfully resolve, and
one is left wondering who would want such a book. The
change in gender radically altered the politics. Koryiisai
equivocated over the extent of this female’s scopic freedom
by referring to her as half of a bean couple (meoto), although
220
the husband is kept scarce. A female reader could not be
expected to be much aroused by (much less identify with) the
beanwoman’s movements through brothel zones in which
all the women having sex were compelled to do so because of
legal contracts signed on their behalf while they were chil-
dren. The book did not relate well either to female masturba-
tion nor indeed to surrogate male lesbian fantasies. The
beanwoman did not survive Koryiisai’s attempt, whereas
beanmen went on and on. Among others to follow Harunobu
and Hyakki was Hoseid6 Kisanji (also a samurai), who pub-
lished a Funny Beanman Who Avoids Girls (Onnagirai hen na
mameotoko) in 1777, illustrated by Koikawa Harumachi (another
samurai); the same year saw a Beanman’s Glorious Springtime
(Mameotoko eiga no haru); in 1782, Ichiba Tstsho wrote Bean-
man Tours Edo (Mameotoko Edo kenbutsu), illustrated by Torii
Kiyonaga, and ten years later Santo Kyoden produced Whose
Heart? A Bean to Hurl at Demons (Tagokoro oni uchimame).*4
These stories work out a whole new system of how to
relate to the pornographic image. Through their play of
seeing and not being seen, of intruding and not intruding
into an erotic picture, they gave shunga a new dimension,
relieving the fantasy-craving mind of the pornographic
reader and legitimating its enraptured entry into the world
of unrealities.

PEEPING AND LENSES

New mechanisms of viewing became available to the voyeur

in the course of the eighteenth century. The import of semi-
scientific optical equipment, from telescopes and micro-
scopes to peep-boxes and prisms, profoundly altered Japanese
constructions of the meaning of sight, as I have argued else-
where.» Harunobu’s pupil Kokan was one of the great
popularizers of the visual sub-branch of the new body of
empirical learning called ‘Dutch studies’ (rangaku). (The
Dutch East India Company had exclusive trading rights with
Japan.) The lensed peep was an artificial peep, marvellous
and uncanny to the Edo-period viewer. But there was noth-
ing magical abouta lens, for it was simply a kind of mechan-
ical eye, as Kokan wrote in his Talks on the Principles ofHeaven
and Earth (Tenchi ridan), completed in 1816:
PAN
 The interior of the eye is dark, and the pupil like a pinhole
in it, sinews covering it like glass. Thin [at the edges] and
fat [in the middle], it is like the lens at the end of a tele-
scope; it is transparent and scratch-resistant. Such are the
workings of the eye. [Terrestrial] telescopes, microscopes,
celestial telescopes and so on, have all been built after the
natural workings of the eye.”°

To use a lens was to see beyond the confines of the self, as

one’s gaze travelled alone, far off into the distance, while
one’s body remained in place.
Saikaku may have been the first to use the then-novel tele-
scope in an erotic context when in Life of a Sex-mad Man he
told of Yonosuke’s first sexual awakening as he watched a
maid entering her bath. (Saikaku was given the name
‘Oranda’ [Holland] Saikaku because his verses were sup-
posed to betray the fiendish cleverness associated with
such imported instruments.) In his ninth year, and signifi-
cantly on the evening of the fourth day of the fifth month
(the eve of the Boys’ Festival), Yonosuke climbed onto the
roof of a pavilion and spied on a maid in the bath; again sig-
nificantly, he hid behind the branches of a willow and
noticed that the woman had dunked fragrant narcissus in the
tub (respectively female and male plants). ‘Perched on the
roof of the hut, he brought out the telescope they kept in it,
and looked at the woman, seeing everything she was
engrossedly doing.’*7 In the picture that accompanied the
story (possibly drawn by Saikaku), the reader sees Yonosuke
peeping and the maid, aware of him, protesting (illus. 102).75
The gaze through the telescope allowed the user to steal
something that ought properly to be hidden. Saikaku’s book
was turned into a kabuki play in the 1730s, with the role of
Yonosuke performed by Ichikawa Masugorod (who later
became famous under the name Danjiir6 111) and Sodesaki
Kikutar6as the maid. A print was made by Okumura Toshi-
nobu in commemoration, enhancing the repute of the story
(illus. 103).
During the following half-century, lenses became quite
commonly available, bringing the experience of hyper-nat-
ural viewing to many people. In 1783 a shogunal employee
with interests in the Floating World, one Suzuki Shonosuke,
wrote a story in which he linked the still popular Maneemon-
Papa)
102 Thara
Saikaku(?), Yonosuke
Watches the Maid
through a Telescope,
monochrome wood-
block illustration for
his Koshoku ichidai
otoko (1682).

103 Okumura
Toshinobu, Sodesaki
Kikutaro in the Role
of the Maid, and
Ichikawa Masugoro
in the Role of
Yonosuke, 1730s,
hand-coloured
monochrome
woodblock print.

type figure with the new world of the lens. Shonosuke pub-
lished under the pen name Namake no Bakahito (‘lazy fool’).
The work was illustrated by Utamaro and came out with the
densely punning title Stolen Away by a Goose — What a Pack of
Lies (Uso shikkari gantori cho).*? A man called Kinjirois taken
off one day by a massive goose, which drops him ina land of
giants. Kinjiird is thus not really bean-sized but only looks
small; he is a regular Edoite male, like the probable reader. It
also becomes clear that this ‘land of giants’ is actually the
Yoshiwara, where Edo’s gigantically trendy and rich passed
their time. Kinjiro enters this as the midget that a real Edo
townsman with scant funds would feel himself to be in the
overawing top brothel that Kinjuro falls into. He is small, but
not invisible, and when the giants discover him they begin an
investigation of his little body in the manner of Dutch Studies
enthusiasts probing their entomological samples. They turn
the lens to Kinjird’s effects, inserting into a microscope the
love letter he is carrying from his lover, Utagiku (illus. 104).
Utagiku’s feelings for Kinjaro are all laid out, as the giants
inspect the emotional life of Edo. This is less love than sexual
desire, for Utagiku is not Kinjuro’s fiancée but a Yoshiwara
prostitute. The probing lens finds more libido than heart, and
Utagiku’s embraces are paid for and not sincere. (The micro-
scope looks like a telescope but is of the eighteenth-century
223
type where an object was pinned between two sheets of glass
and viewed held up to the light.)
An analogous treatment of the lens to procure illicit sights
appears in an anonymous s/iunga book illustrated by Kuni-
sada, the Carnal Pilgrimage to Kamigata (Kamigata iro shugyo)
of c. 1813. The title harps on Narihira again, turning the
sexual journey he had made to the East into one to the West
(Kamigata). The preface plays with the idea of modern tech-
nology, couching it in the characteristic pornographic lan-
guage of denial, and addressing the reader directly:

Everyone likes the Way of Sex, and has daily recourse to

pornographic books (ehon), being most grateful for them. |
myself turn out a number of pictures, taking my ideas of
how to make them from what the market wants, and I
trust I can count on your continued support. Concerning
that thing that you all most like to look at, lam sometimes
uncharitably asked whether when artists make ehon if
they directly inspect the ‘jewelled gateway’. It’s not as if
we take a telescope into the toilets. But, well, what are we
supposed to do? One night, I mustered my acumen and
brandishing my artistic prowess I finally made some life
sketches of a pudendum. Please inspect them in my forth-
coming volume.*°

Naturally, the proclaimed next volume never appeared. This

recalls the senryi, ‘For artists of the Floating World/Even

T
A
NEY
SPAM a3
td
Ae
Wr
ry
at
ee
Phono,
ret
Se
re
8

104 Kitagawa
Utamaro, Kinjiiro's
Letter is Inspected,
monochrome
gb
ne
woodblock page
5
ok R
Xe
from Namake no
o>
Qa Bakahito, Uso
5
{ Al shikkari gantori cho
(1783). ™
looking at pussy/Is called work’.3' But the writer now is
teasing with the new language of precision-viewing and pic-
ture-making. In 1826 Kunisada’s associate Utagawa Kuni-
tora illustrated another anonymous shunga book, the Virgin's
Likeness (Otome sugata), in which an old artist peers at ‘pussy’
(bobo) through spectacles; he claims the work is different
from pornography since it is done by ‘true copying’ (sho-
utsushi), but then puns on the term ‘capturing from life’ (ike-
dori), or sketching, which literally meant ‘taking in hand the
living thing’.?*
Shunga books quite often played a double game with the
tools of discovery and Dutch Studies. Some of Keisai Eisen’s
illustrations to the Pillow Library (Makura bunko), a massive
compendium of erotica of 1824-32, for example, purport to
be copied from the celebrated adaptation of Kulm’s anatom-
ical text published by Sugita Genpaku and his team sixty
years before (see illus. 33, 34). One of the arrantly porno-
graphic pictures offers a medicalized interior view, such as
the scalpel and lens secured, carrying the absurd label
‘copied from the New Anatomical Atlas’ (illus. 82). About five
years later Utagawa Kunisada gave somewhat odd, interior-
ized erotic views in his shunga book Genji of the East (Azuma
genji) (illus. 83). This is a peculiar book in many ways, and the
reader was presented from the first image with unusual con-
tent. Instead of the Edoites that people most shunga, here we
find classical courtiers from the time of Genji. After a few
scenes, this does move into the modern world, matching
what would have been the buyer’s expectations, but then
suddenly the last two figures of volume one (out of three vol-
umes) include lenses. The female subject is lost in the mas-
sive close-up, as the gaze is dramatically forced down. The
lens enlarges but also looks inside the vagina (illogically),
showing an index finger tickling. Kunisada made these two
lensed pictures half the size of the other images in the book.
The field of vision actually constricts. Kunisada sets the
viewer athwart two discourses, the medical and the porno-
graphic, in just the way that his title had prefigured by con-
fusing time and space so that the historic Genji from Keishi
was now part of the present, Edoite east.
The hand-held loupe Kunisada depicted was not a house-
hold instrument and would most often have been encoun-
tered in the contexts of physiognomy, when a master read the
225
hand or face for illumination of character. This was a serious
and credible science. The Floating World was famously a
place of deceit and subterfuge, where all were trying to seem
different from what they were, and above all where the
female contingent of prostitutes lied like truth and swore
bonds of love for money. This is one reason why paintings
and prints of the Floating World expunge all recognized
physiognomic features from depicted people, preferring
unreadability. Ideally, the woman’s face would be read by the
client anxious to forma liaison with her. But in this erotic pic-
ture her vagina is being read, right to its genuine interior,
since that is all the revelation the viewer needs to gain.
Perhaps Kunisada’s interior vaginal analysis refers to the
burgeoning practice of anatomy, since physiognomists did
not invade the body but looked only at its surface. The open-
ing of the vagina seen in both the above illustrations detracts
from their libidinous purpose, and they were not much
emulated. Non-invasive physiognomic parodies, truer to the
practice of how readings were made, also appear in shunga,
such as where the face now reveals not character type but
type of genitals (illus. 105). Utamaro’s signing himself on
some of his ‘normal’ Floating World prints with the sobriquet
‘Utamaro the physiognomist’ may indicate claims to sexual
apercus about women (the series was not of courtesans),
though he shunned all physiognomic indicators in the faces,
making character undetectable (see illus. 87)). About two
years earlier, c. 1800, he had produced the series Five Physio-
gnomic Types of Beautiful Woman (Bijin gosensod), in which a
magnifying glass is drawn in the top corner, with the series
title written in the space of the lens.*?

TELESCOPES

It was the special power of the telescope to allow inspection

of other people at close quarters without oneself being seen.
By the eighteenth century, many cities had special viewing
points where telescopes could be rented for a fee, or where
large-barrelled ones, fixed in place, could be used. In Edo, the
best views were at Atago, Shinagawa and Yushima; in Keishi
it was the Shoboji above the Kiyomizu-dera at Yasaka. Shi-
kitei Sanba included the cry of a telescope renter in his
226
105 Utagawa
Kunisada, Penises
ofIchikawa Danjuro
and Iwai Hanshir6,
multi-coloured
woodblock page
from a shunga
album, Takara awasei
(1826).

Barber’s Shop of the Floating World (Ukiyo-doko), a novel issued

in instalments from 1811, where, perhaps typically, the man
promises more than could really be seen (the cry may be
mixed with that of a peep-box operator):

Now then, everybody, come and have a look! Here’s the

branch factory of the [Dutch East India] Company in
Jakarta. There’s the look-out post where they use their
telescopes, with its two pine trees, and you can see as far
as those three girls over there. All contrived inside this
little box . . . These lenses will give you a ten-league
European stare.*4

It is interesting that Sanba identifies the stolen peep with

foreignness. Europeans in Japan were famous for their love
of telescopes, highly necessary at sea, and so brought in good
numbers. For the most part, even locally made telescopes
(like the one Yonosuke used) were fitted with imported
lenses, although there was a small amount of lens-grinding
performed in Japan. But there is also a sense here, I think, that
the covert gaze, which altered normal vision, was alien in
itself, not just in the material allowing its acquisition. Those
who used rental telescopes did not just look at big trees, or
ships in Shinagawa Bay, but sought out people, as Sanba’s
crier advises, and not only unusual-looking figures but those
227
engaged in unusual acts. Salacious views were hunted down
with the brusque dismissals of propriety available under
telescopic voyeurism. The possibility of seeing into some-
one’s secret room is mentioned in several texts. In 1790
Utamaro and Shunché collaborated on a shunga book that
introduced the idea of a ‘before’ and ‘after’ picture: a two-
page spread showing a group of women sharing a telescope
(text: ‘In the second storey of that house over there are a man
and a woman having a chat — oh, they’re hugging — oh really!
I’m jealous! Their lips are meeting. More!? Oh, now he’s
putting his hands down there. Goodness! Really! Shouldn't
be watching this!’) and then the reader turns over to see the
couple in full swing, watched via the lens, despite the prohi-
bition (illus. 106, 107).*°
Once the instrument had been taken in hand and
extended, it was hard to know what might be seen. A shunga
book by Utei Enba 11, illustrated by Toyokuni, told of a fire
watchman who consistently used his telescope for the pur-
pose of looking into bedrooms as he sat atop his tower.>° The
practice emerged of giving shunga the circular frame of an
optical device, sometimes with a prior page showing the
voyeur. Kunisada tried this in a parody of Takizawa Bakin’s
best-selling novel of 1814-41, the Eight Dogs of the Satomi of
Nanso (Nansod satomi hakkenden). Hayashi Yoshikazu has
argued that Kunisada knew Utamaro and Shunchdss earlier
book.” Bakin’s story included a moment when Satomi
Yoshizane looked down from Mt Toyama and saw his
daughter, Princess Fuse, cavorting with Yatsubusa. In the
parody, Fuse (whose name literally means ‘lying down’) is
engaged in coitus with a dog — justified by Bakin’s title,
although he had not written about real canines but about
men with the character ‘dog’ in their names (illus. 108, 109).3°
In the 1820s Kunisada turned this idea to a more saleable
theme, showing riparian idlers at the holiday house of the
protagonist, Jihei, with Oharu picking out copulation in a
boat (illus. 110, 111).°9
The telescope offered a rather easy domain for sexual
joking because of its phallic shape. Like an umbrella, it
erected then shrunk back, although, better than an umbrella,
it expanded lengthways. Another senryiiseems to play on the
telescope’s shape:

228
 a
yo Ji
—-=s

an
106 Kita 8 awa Utamaro and Katsukawa Shuncho, Three Women in
Upstairs Room y monochrome woodblock page from Shoden-ga-Shirushi,
Ehon hime- hajime (1790).

107 Kitagawa Utamaro and Katsukawa Shuncho, page following illus. 106,
from Shirushi y Ehon hime-hajime.
 108 Utagawa
Kunisada, Yoshizane
Uses a Telescope,
multi-coloured
woodblock page
from Kyokusha
Shijin (Hanakasa
Bunky6), Koi no
yatsubuchi (1837).

109 Utagawa
Kunisada, page
following illus. 108
from Kyokusha
Shijin, Koi no yat-
subuchi.

The telescope
Such bumptiousness!
Then eyes return to normal.*°

The notion of the eyes inflating with pride and then going
back to their former positions seems to play on penile expan-
sion. A telescope would not be folded away until some excit-
ing sight had been seen, like the penis which, once erect,
would not contract until ejaculation.
230
110 Utagawa
Kunisada, Ata
Summer House,
multi-coloured
woodblock page
from the anony-
mous Shunjo gidan
mizuage-cho (1836).

111 Kunisada, page

following illus. 110
from the anony-
mous Shunjo gidan
mizuage-cho.

The brothels in Shinagawa often had telescopes out for

clients to play with, since the view was good, with constant
coming and going of ships. Harunobu depicted the
Yamazakiya brothel there ina print from the series Beauties of
the Floating World — Long Life for Blossoms (Ukiyo bijin hana no
kotobuki); the prostitute Motoura passes time with a trainee
by looking out into the bay (illus. 112). Telescopes made
sense in Shinagawa, but their fit into any sexual context was
snug. The castaway Daikoku-ya Kodayt reported that this
231
 112 Suzuki
Harunobu, Motoura
of the Yamazaki-ya,
multi-coloured
woodblock print
from the series
Ukiyo bijin hana no
kotobuki, 1765-70.

was also so in Russia, where brothels (he claimed) had tele-

scopes out for clients to use.4"
Harunobu’s rationale for depicting Motoura with a tele-
scope is not restricted to the banal reason that such instru-
ments were really used in Shinagawa. Floating World pictures
routinely expand their field with paraphernalia of erotic
overtones. There is a quantity of images of women holding
telescopes in eroticized ways, in or outside brothel settings,
and this observation leads to another: there are rather few
showing males doing so. In a Floating World context, a man
holding a telescope would be open to two interpretations:
masturbation or nanshoku. The latter made sense, for Yushima
Hill was popular both as a look-out place for telescope-users
and asa locale for male prostitution (Yushima was the largest
nanshoku area outside the ‘two blocks’). One senryii reads
simply,

Where we’re heading now —

Yushima
And its telescopes!**
232
Was it the lenses that excited the speaker, or was it the boys’
‘telescopes’? Another senryii makes these double entendres
clear in a verse that must refer to Yushima, although it does
not specify a location:

Pick out the one you want,

And then do it with him
By telescope.

Prayers for sexual knowledge of females might be offered at

the Fifth Avenue Tenjin Shrine or at the Kasamori Inari, with
a response received via Osen or Ofuji. But prayers for knowl-
edge of nanshoku were proper at Yushima where there was
indeed a shrine, also to Tenjin, whose iconic attribute was the
(male) plum. This was discussed in 1787 by Sharakusai
Manri,a male geisha from the Yoshiwara, ina work entitled A
Festival Tray: What a Feast for the Eyes (Shimadai me no shogatsu).
The illustrations were by Manri’s friend Kitao Masanobu
(Kydden), who also supplied the preface:

You can use a Dutch telescope to spy out bits of loose

change that’ve dropped in the road, and finding some-
thing you think to yourself, shall Igo and pick it up or not?
Manri of the Yoshiwara slung together this little three-part
work only devoting to it the time it took him to have a
smoke. Glasses perched on the end of his nose, he peered
at ‘islands’ substantial and insubstantial. Lost somewhere
in the middle is the matter of the sincerity of those elegant
cypress-scented boudoirs on the Central Street. Read it out
with a loud voice!*#

Sharakusai and Kyoden were more men of the nyoshoku than

of the nanshoku districts (Central Street is the Naka-no-cho, or
main street of the Yoshiwara), but the story is of truth and
falsehood in all places of entertainment (‘island’ was slang
for brothel). The tale unfolds as the path to realization by a
wealthy man called Tstisaburo (‘trendy younger son’), who
goes to pray for help at Yushima. One picture shows him
kneeling beside the ritual washbasin on which flags donated
by the local working boys are flying (illus. 113). The one on
the extreme right reads ‘Utagiku from the Takeya’, which is
identical to the name of Kinjird's girl from the giant story, but
233
 113 Kitao Masanobu
(Santo Kyoden),
Boyish God Offers
Tstisaburo a Magical
Telescope, mono-
chrome woodblock
page from Shara-
kusai Manri,
Shimadai me no
shogatsu (1787).

as it means ‘singing chrysanthemum’ it is better suited to a

boy prostitute than to a girl. A god with charming mien then
magically appears, chrysanthemum patterning on his clothes,
and lends Tstisabur6 a telescope which, he tells him, if
properly handled, will allow a thorough investigation and
understanding of the ways of the Floating World. The heuris-
tic language of Dutch Studies is invoked via the telescope,
although the trope is identical to the visitations discussed
above. Tstisaburo will see hearts accurately.

PEEP-BOXES

Another optical instrument was the peep-box, not in fact one

device but several, generically described by Edo writers as
‘Dutch glasses’ (oranda-megane). They were instruments used
to make pictures look three-dimensional and real. Several
sorts had been popular in Europe from the mid-seventeenth
century and they were imported to Japan in the succeeding
decades, where they were circulated and copied. One repre-
sentative device (relatively late and common only from the
1760s) was the optique, a standing vertical lens with a mirror
mounted at 45 degrees to it, which would be placed over a
picture set on a table or floor. The user looked through the
lens at the picture reflected in the mirror. Harunobu showed
one in use in a print from the late 1760s, in his series the Six

234
Rivers with ‘Tama’ in Their Name (Mu-tamagawa) (illus. 84).
Those who used the device were full of praise for its enhance-
ment of realism, which was best when the scene was drawn
in rigorous perspective — a European technique that was
scarce in Japan, so any image would do at a pinch, as
Harunobu suggests. In Europe, optiques were used with
topographical views and had been invented to enliven sights
of far-off places which the user would never visit. Harunobu
suggests this practice also prevailed in Edo, where a view of
Mt Koya is being looked at.
There is little evidence that shunga were placed in peep-
boxes, nor are there any extant shunga drawn in Western per-
spective. But some stray anecdotes do link ‘Dutch glasses’ to
situations of sex. As with the telescope, these seem to be as
much nanshoku as nyoshoku, although it is less clear in this
case why. Kokan stated (frustratingly briefly) in his Diary of a
Pleasurable Journey West (Saiyti nikki), the record of his trip to
Nagasaki, that he toak an optique and a pile of his own per-
spective views to show en route and raise funds to continue
the trip. In the baking eighth month of 1788, he wrote,

Just as I was thinking I would go off to the girls’ brothel I

had been to before, and was beginning to make my way
there, a dozen or more female impersonators (0-yama)
came and formed a group around me, in a circle. I found
this exceedingly annoying. Maybe such is the custom in
these parts, but without even offering me drinks or a
snack, they began importuning me ina forceful manner. In
the end they did bring out sake and something to nibble on,
after which conversation got more relaxed. I brought out
my optique, and showed them views of Ryogoku Bridge
and people cooling off at Nakazu, which really amazed
these o-yama. In the end, we all got on fine, so I told them to
call around the following morning, and went off home.

‘O-yama’ properly meant a kabuki female-role actor, but

Kokan was in the depths of the countryside (Futami-ura)
where bona fide actors would not be found; by extension the
term referred to male prostitutes, which is what Kokan must
mean. He may be making a simple statement of fact. But why
the linking of optiques to nanshoku? The question requires
further research, but the same connection is found in

252
-Harunobu’s print. Harunobu’s two figures have crests on
their clothes, which ought to make them identifiable,
although this had not been done. Both are boys, and we are
upstairs in a male brothel. Mt Koya had a River Tama to
justify inclusion in this series, but it was more significantly
the site of the temple complex founded by the prelate Kobo
Daishi, teacher of the Shinga who wrote the ‘Rock Azalea’
poem to Narihira. Kobo Daishi was said to have introduced
nanshoku from China, and in the Edo mind, he and nanshoku
went hand in hand. For example, the anonymous Seven
Casual Talks on Manners and Customs (Fiazoku shichi yadan) of
1756 included the observation:

It was transmitted to this realm long ago by Kobo Daishi.

When he was still called Kikai, he went to the Tang, and
studied Buddhist esotericism under Huiguo. At that time,
the Way of Boys was very popular in the Tang, and when
Kutkai was not engaged in his learning, he got to the
bottom [sic] of the precepts of that path too. On returning
to this land, he established the Sixty [exercises] of Koya
and the Eighty of Nachi, and expanded the Way.*°

Many senryii picked up this pedigree, and Harunobu was

relying on a tradition.” His print includes an (opaque) verse
by Kobo Daishi in the cloud:

If he should forget,
He scoops up drops to drink,
The traveller
In the depths of Takano
At the River Tama.4®

Takano is Koya. This was a famous verse, although difficult

to untangle. Matsura Seizan offered a learned analysis of it
that hinged on the fact that the River Tama at Koya was poi-
sonous.*? Only one who forgets this would drink. But the for-
getting is also love, lost in the currents of life. Harunobu’s
viewers would have expected some Floating World pun-
ning, and this is easy to find: in the ‘depths’ (literally ‘inner
part’) of Takano was the inner shrine (oku-no-in), which was
code for the anus, and ‘praying at the inner shrine’ a standard
euphemism for anal intercourse; the last two lines can elide
236
to read ‘inner River Tama’, or literally ‘the jewelled [tama]
river [i.e., passage] of the anus’. More readily, fama (‘jewels’)
meant testicles; water (iz) is homophonous with ‘unseen’,
so this could be twisted to mean ‘the unseen passage at the
rear of the testicles’. Further connections of this sort must
wait until we have considered one other optical device.

PEEPING-KARAKURI

Somewhat easier to understand is the device known as a

peeping-karakuri (nozoki-karakuri), where karakuri meant a
mechanical construction or automaton. This is the instrument
that Sanba mixed with the telescope renter’s cry in the Barber's
Shop of the Floating World cited above. It also meant a peep-box
and, although originally inspired by an import, acquired sig-
nificant indigenous adaptations during the eighteenth cen-
tury. Still often referred to as an ‘oranda [Dutch] karakurt’, it
was a large enclosed box containing pictures, viewed through
one or more holes cut in the front, sometimes fitted with a lens.
The user might see several images in sequence as they were
dropped down from above by the showman, who released
them to the accompaniment of music or a chanted story.
Many peeping-karakuri pictures survive, and others are
attested in texts. One of the best depictions is by Kyoden,
included in his Trade Goods You Know All About (Gozonji no
shobaimono) of 1782 (illus. 114). The operator sits on a box
marked ‘perspective pictures’ (ukie), and he bangs a drum to
accompany the act or call up customers; a cyclops has just
sprung from behind a lantern-shade, probably to mark the
beginning of the show. One child crouches at a hole while
another draws up. The wings read ‘Great Dutch Karakuri’
and form a triptych with a European-looking waterfront, in
perspective, behind which is the fly-tower for the additional
scenes. The dropped pictures are lit through the paper roof.?°
Peeping-karakuri had a lighting trick that allowed scenes to
switch from day to night. If the back panel was removed,
light came from the rear, shining through the cut-out win-
dows and lanterns of the depicted buildings.
Kyoden’s picture implies the usual viewers were children
and, if so, pornography was unlikely to have been used, but
there is also evidence that more titillating material was shown.
aD]
 = » sors 114 Kitao Masanobu
fa ;Fagus (Santo Kydoden),
ee 2? D. 44 Peeping-Karakuri,
is%4 © 43 % 4))) pos monochrome
Nai oF d Sy bare woodblock page
EST SERLOD Tip | from his Gozonji no
ish aby \ £ 7s shobaimono (1782).
ae) a a 2
= a 4
é
)

As early as 1730 Hasegawa Mitsunobu, in Osaka, wrote that,

‘The ones looking in are supposed to be young lads. But in
reality you'll find it’s servant girls, eyes popping behind their
hats’.°* The women behave embarrassedly because they are
seeing pictures unfit for children.
The ability to show places of night-time revelry encour-
aged brothel views, especially those of the Yoshiwara. Mori-
shima Chiryo quoted a showman’s cry: ‘If you tarry, we will
change to night-time scenes showing the establishments [of
the Yoshiwara], with the tok-tok of their wooden bells and
the plinky-plonk of brothel tunes — we'll even make light
appear in the lanterns.°* Were the brothels delineated com-
plete with erotic acts going on inside? Possibly there were
different types of show, or seemly pictures alternated with
(or followed by) erotic ones, or maybe the occasional piece of
pornography was slipped in unexpectedly to give a shock.
The real point was that until you had paid the fee and hun-
kered down, you never knew what was inside.
Masuho Zanko included the following in his Mirror of the
Way of Sex (Endo tstigan) of 1715, with reference to some men
using an early-model peeping-karakuri:
238
 Covering their tracks and making out they are the law,
some toughs [use a] peeping-karakuri; [it has] no glass [in
the apertures] so that they see the scenes, drawn as Otsu
pictures, bare.>>

This is a complex web of puns: ‘covering tracks’ (0 0 inshite),

literally ‘hiding their tails’, means anal intercourse; ‘making
out they are the law’ (00 uru) literally, ‘selling the law’, or
‘selling methods’, is prostitution; ‘toughs’ (okamidomo),
literally ‘wolves’, sounds like ‘same-sex orientated males’
(okamadomo); ‘glass’ (biidoro) also means telescope, the estab-
lished phallic symbol; Otsu pictures’ (Otsu-e) are pilgrimage
icons from that city, but here used to pun on ‘big rod’ (0-tsue)
or penis; ‘bare’ (nama) is also ‘naked’ (that pun at least works
in English), and ‘scenes’ (keshiki) separates into ‘hairy’ (ke
shiki).°+ Unpacked, we read,

Having anal intercaurse and engaging in prostitution, the

same-sex orientated males [use a] peeping-karakuri; not
[putting] pricks [in the holes], so you see their penises,
hairy and naked.

Again, nanshoku is to the fore.

Pornography was common in the equivalent European
boxes, and although we cannot necessarily extrapolate that it
was also so in Japan, the privacy of the enclosed peep-box
(compared with the optique) must have encouraged the
showing of explicit views. Peep-boxes containing erotic
pictures became common in the nineteenth century and
may have originated well before. In Europe, the peep-holes
might be made in the shape of keyholes to give a sense of
prying into private spaces, and such boxes came to be called
‘what the butler saw’. It is improbable that the eighteenth-
century peeping-karakuri was primarily a device for viewing
shunga. But it is clear it had associations with scurrilousness.
It was an attribute of sex, offering a kind of peeping that was
always suspect.

239
MIRRORS

The scopic regime of shunga enmeshed one further item of

seeing equipment that may be considered here to terminate
this chapter. The instrument figures widely in pornographic
pictures of the Edo period. We have already seen it in two
works (Harunobu’s Eight Elegant Parlour Views [Fury zashiki
hakkei] and Hokusai’s illustration with the Putai netsuke) (see
illus. 55,79).
The place of mirrors in the pornographic tradition of
shunga is strong. In Chapter Three we examined how seg-
mentation of the body created an effect of non-adversariality
between the partners, their heads and genitals joined in a
process that also detached them from their respective bodies.
Mirrors contributed to this segmentation. The eighteenth-
century mirror was small and could not show both genitals
and heads at the same time, so that artists had to make a
choice. Either desire and the power of the organs were cap-
tured, or else the ratiocinating head. In many illustrations,
the mirror served to enhance divisions already effected in
cloth, furnishings or architecture.
Mirrors were used in erotic contexts, as they still are. The
mirror turns an actor into a voyeur of him- or herself, locked
in an embrace with the partner. Users are both doers and seers.
Asmall Edo mirror showed one’s own genitals detached and
exposed as well as at an angle that could not be achieved
with one’s naked eye. The organs were objectified, even as
sensations were felt in them; it was difficult to appreciate
they were one’s own, even in climax. Whena mirror is shown
in a picture, the implications are different. Inclusion allows
the viewer to see the depicted sexual act froma second angle,
or extra erogenous areas to appear, such as the back of the
woman’s neck where the hairline met the skin (deemed
erotic in the Edo period). A notable feature of shunga is to
show the genitals only in the space of the mirror, thus relegat-
ing them from regular space in the picture; this was so in
Hokusai’s image above. A page by Torii Kiyomitsu works
similarly (illus. 85). Genitals are in fact rarely shown twice. In
Harunobu’s Parlour Views the organs are depicted, so the
mirror is turned away to reveal nothing. The viewer is, then,
not given double exposure of any one part of the body but a
fractured view of the body in multiple sections. Momentarily
240
confusion reigns over ownership of the parts, and the capac-
ity for adversarial encounter, once again, is diminished.
Changes in mirror technology occurred in the later eigh-
teenth century and may account for the extreme porno-
graphic interest that became apparent. Artists include the
traditional sort of mirror in shunga (round and made of a
bronze/zine alloy), and these would have remained the
norm in most homes. But modern-style glass mirrors with
mercury backing had begun to arrive from the middle of the
century, and they figure on all ledgers of imports by the
Dutch East India Company and in local lists of what was
available for purchase.> Carl Peter Thunberg commented on
how many were smuggled in by European sailors for private
sale.>°A well-polished metallic mirror offered a good reflec-
tive surface, and Thunberg phallocratically states, ‘members
of the fairer sex may view their lovely persons in it, as well
as the best looking-glass.’°7 But there were three principal
shortcomings. Firstly, a bronze/zinc mirror distorted an
object placed more than about 30 cm from it; in point of fact,
almost all mirrors shown in shunga offer views that are
impossible to achieve. Secondly, tarnishing was rapid, so
mirrors had to be kept covered when not in use, which meant
they had to be brought out and used as part of a prepared
strategy of looking and could not be to hand in any chance
way (as Thunberg said, ‘mirrors do not decorate their walls’);
often people would stare frustratedly into mirrors that
needed a brisker buffing than they had recently received.
Thirdly, bronze mirrors do not reflect colour well but give a
sepia tint to all objects.
These limitations would not have been noticed until the
arrival of mirrors of the better type. The mercury alternatives
offered users views of themselves from further away, allow-
ing the whole body, not just the face — or organs — to be
shown; they were also permanently bright, as well as faithful
in hue. All of these features enhanced the sense that, when
one looked in a mirror, it was something fundamental and
important that was being seen.
In the late eighteenth century some members of Floating
World artistic circles were advancing the concept that the
mirror was a psychological means of access to a more com-
plete personal awareness. Kyoden wrote of this in a story
illustrated by himself and published in 1788, the year after he
241
had worked on his friend Sharakusai Manri’s book, from
which he may have got the idea. The two works are similar,
only the technology is different, for instead of Tstsabur0’s
insights coming through a telescope, a youth called Kyoya
Denjird gains them through a magic mirror, now referred to
as of the mercury type (unubore-kagami). Rather than using an
everyman character, Kyoden particularized the hero in him-
self, for KyOya Denzo was Kyéden’s real business name, and
-jiro the designation ‘second son’, so that this is the author’s
surrogate or offspring. Further, Kyoden stresses that the magic
mirror was real and ‘could be bought at the Koshigawa-ya
in Ueno’.5* Looked at carelessly, the title of the book is The
Pocket Mercury Mirror (Kaichii unubore kagami), but the first
word is actually kaitsa, a non-existent term decipherable as
‘opening’ (kai) a ‘person of the world’ (tsi). The story is of
how an unimpressive Edoite lad is turned into a person of
prestige and probity. He heads straight for the Yoshiwara
and reflects ‘truths’ (makoto) about the denizens of the
quarter, becoming awakened to deceit through his mirror.
The inclusion of a mirror in an erotic picture is also a way
of playing with the viewer’s (as much as the protagonist’s)
relationship with the world. Figures in the pictorial space
may look at their own bodies with an air of partial detach-
ment, but this is also how the viewer will see them. A mirror
in a pornographic image establishes a level of separation that
beckons viewers in, displaces them from the quotidian sur-
roundings of their sites of viewing, encompassing them in
the painted world. Dislocation is shared across the passe-
partout of the frame, and the viewer can engage with the
reflections (which in shunga are often the genitals) just as the
coupling figures do.

242
6 Sex and the Outside World

We have seen a good number of shunga in the course of the

preceding pages. It is clear that they form a varied, inventive
corpus that is difficult to categorize. Yet there are features
recurring in the structure and arrangement of the works that
have given me the confidence to make certain inferences and
postulates about the group as a whole.
There is one further feature I would like to note, and which
| shall take as the point of departure for this chapter, namely,
the tendency of shunga to confine sexual encounters to
enclosed spaces. Of the scores of figures reproduced in this
book so far, only one ox two are set out of doors, and this is
typical of the ratio within shunga as a whole. We must investi-
gate this insistence on interiority before we proceed to a
special group of shunga that do engage with the outside
world and which, I shall argue, emerge with the breakdown
of the non-adversarial regime of Edo pornography in about
the second decade of the nineteenth century.

JHE INTERIORS OF SHUNGA

Shunga construe sex as something that occurs within walls.

This may have been a fact of life, except that erotic pictures
do more than depict such facts — they also compensate for
them. For the Edo-period male, the chief locales of sexual
fetishization were the brothel areas, of which Edo’s Yoshi-
wara was the summit. All red-light districts were stockaded
and most were surrounded by moats, ostensibly to protect
against fire (since they operated by night) but in practice
formally sealing the space off from its respective city; gates
and bridges across the moats were shut firmly at night (the
objective being to get locked in). Regulations posted at the
entrances commanded removal of aspects of civic clothing
and badges of rank, as well as dismounting from palanquins,
in
sothat men did not enter or leave the Floating World
243
everyday guise.* Women did not go in or out at all. The quar-
ters were capsules that floated outside the normative polities
of the cities and were sometimes quite removed from them
physically: the Yoshiwara was over an hour from Edo proper.
Interactions with the non-floating, or fixed, worlds were
governed by codes.
The artistic genre that we call pictures of the Floating
World were in their own day often called simply ‘Edo pic-
tures’, and although they came to be imitated elsewhere,
they focused on sites in Edo; being an erotic genre, they gave
due attention to the Yoshiwara, with commensurately scant
interest in the larger world outside. The emergence of the
outdoor sex scene in shunga coincides with the peak of wood-
block prints of landscape subjects associated with Hokusai
and Hiroshige from the 1830s, but these are conceptually
removed (if technologically similar) from the libidinous
depictions that initiated the printing boom 150 years before.
Before this transformation, almost the only Floating World
imagery showing outside spaces are of water — literal flota-
tion — in boats, on the cooling banks of the Sumida during
Edo’s sweltering summers, or on bridges over it. The associ-
ation of Edoite relaxation with waterfronts has been exam-
ined by Jinnai Hidenobu, and Asai Ryoi’s epoch-making
Tales of the Floating World (Ukiyo monogatari) likening the
spirit of the person of that mental frame to a gourd bobbing
on a stream has already been cited.* By contrast, sober-
minded people were referred to in the Edo language as pre-
ferrers of fixity. The physician Otsuki Gentaku, for example,
was known as one who despised ‘floatation’ (ukitaru koto).?
Floating World art ruled in what Gentaku ruled out, and it
defined its parameters as that which was in drift. In depicting
again and again the Yoshiwara as the paramount site of
sexual tension, pictures effectively strip sex off the streets of
Edo itself. Pictures cover up the possibility that flirting,
passeggiatas or ‘cruising’ went on in civic environments, and
the flaneur does not appear as an identified type (as he was to
be in the following Meiji period with invention of the activity
known as ginbura).4 The city of shunga is sexually inert.
Pictures of the Floating World, and erotica as such, do not
refuse contact with bourgeois women, and Harunobu made
Osen and Ofuji famous. And yet both those women, once
depicted in the floating genre, passed osmotically into the
244
orbit of erogeny, such that they prefigured Maneemon’s
sexual education, or were admired in the Yoshiwara, or were
actually redrawn pornographically without authorization
(see illus. 81, 100). This also occurred with the underhand
sliding of erotica in and out of theatrical contexts. Women
would not go to the Yoshiwara, so it was irrational to depict
them there, but they are shown dressing their children in
kabuki garb or in clothes with actor’s crests, beckoning the
family into ‘floatation’. Further, when Utamaro depicted
wives (fujo), not prostitutes, in a floating manner, they
appear on the paper with an unashamed eroticism that
would have shocked (see illus. 87).
The depiction of city women was curtailed as part of the
Kansei Reforms. Thereafter, no female other than a prostitute
could be depicted and, even then, their names could not be
given (although, as we have noted, publishers resorted to
rebuses to circumvent this).? The ‘routine’ townsperson was
unbuttoned from sex, which was sealed back in its Yoshi-
wara box.
If sex was largely unrepresented in Edo’s townscape, it
was even less pertinent to representations of the larger
world, or nature as a whole. The wealth of flower, plant and
animal imagery in shunga presents forms dislocated from
their environment, either culled and brought in, or potted
and domesticated. Tertiary depictions on screens positioned

115 Anon.,
Lovers Before a
Screen, mono-
chrome wood-
block page
from Hua ying
jin zhen,
Chinese, Ming
dynasty, early
17th century.
within the pictorial space offer snippets of nature con-
structed for symbolic purposes, contrasting markedly with
Ming-period Chinese paintings where screens back couples
to give the flavour of copulation in the wild, although it
actually takes place indoors (illus. 115). The only Japanese
pictures within pictures of open nature seen among the illus-
trations to the present volume come from images where, pre-
cisely, they create an environment where sex does not overtly
take place (see illus. 8, 9). Unaccommodated nature, in virtu-
ally every case, is debarred.
Harunobu and Hyakki included just three outdoor scenes
among the twenty-four in Maneemon — which, in fact is a high
proportion by most standards, since few books included any.
They can be accounted for by the aspiration to show a full
encyclopaedia of sex, serving as Maneemon’s education, so
that the work aimed at an exhaustiveness that most shunga
did not. In the most thoroughly countrified scene, subterfuge
is included, and the rustic insertor is actually a more urbane
man (note the sword) wearing a grotesque mask; the land-
scape looks like a stage set (illus. 118). Maneemon senses the
abnormality and the text remarks that ‘this strange sort of
love makes you laugh out loud’.° Maneemon is dressed for
travel and will not be staying long in this place called New
Ricefields, which has little to teach. He next goes to a place
called Still Trying for It (Kibakari), signalling hopeless
attempts at sex, where he sees a superannuated couple
making love. Sexual refinement, of the kind shunga viewers
wanted, is incompatible with these locations.
In his other erotic works, Harunobu attempted few similar
settings, and even in Maneemon his inspiration seems not to
have been kindled by the three country episodes which
Hyakki’s text required him to illustrate. The scene with the
mask-wearer (which barely makes sense) is lifted in its
entirety from Sukenobu’s Pillow Book: A Record of a Great
Opening (Makurabon taikai-ki), where it forms part of a reason-
able plot (illus. 116).7 Harunobu was an inveterate borrower
of imagery, but here it seems that his muse could not function
in the production of exterior views.
The authorities wished to instil a sense that sex was best
kept off the streets and confined to the pleasure districts or, if
absolutely necessary, to the ‘hill places’. The more the streets
were cleared, the more people went indoors, and if ‘normal’
246
 i at TT
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116 Nishimura Floating World pictures played along by seldom sexualizing

Sukenobu, Lovers in
markets or roadsides, they could hardly banish eroticism
a Ricefield, mono-
chrome woodblock from the home, since (reproductive) sex at least was a civic
page from the duty. Pictures of the Floating World brought floatation into
anonymous
Makurabon taikai-ki
domestic spaces. The Yoshiwara was expensive and far away,
(c. 1720). and the sexually active young or badly off, financially pru-
dent and busy would not go; the ‘hill places’ offered some
respite from the extortionate Yoshiwara prices, but it was
cheaper and quicker to find something nearer to home or
work. Shunga supply images of this, suggesting that chance
callers, friends, neighbours or, of course, one’s spouse
offered snatched delights. It may be that the prohibition of
erotic streetlife made the home a centre of fantasy, so that
staying put to copulate stoked more passion than travelling
for it. Pornography filled the lacunas between aspiration
and fact.
Shunga adopt systems of space that play with the notion of
inside versus outside. Haga Toru has discussed this as a pref-
erence for ‘awkward’ (kiwadoi) places for sexual encounters;
the Japanese term covers nuances of both restriction and anx-
iety.° Sex, though contained, is in imminent danger of break-
ing out. Its housings are always on the point of falling away.
The very pictures that uphold the belief that sex can be
pinned indoors also exhibit its confinement as susceptible to
collapse: sliding doors are open, and screens are positioned
obliquely so that they fail to shut out views beyond (see illus.
58, 85,90). Paying sex, and possibly most sex, was performed
at night, but shunga show events in daytime; in monochrome
ce, but
renditions it may be argued there is little differen
lamps are infrequently drawn in, so that rooms are not closed
up for the night with shutters pulled across to give a finality
247
 I
~ Ra

|
rs
Pein

to walls; the weather is invariably warm (which is not true of 117 Hayamizu
spring — shunga’s general time frame), and spaces are wide Shungydsai, The
Safflower, mono-
open. Indoors gives readily onto the outside. chrome woodblock
Human figures are pushed near to the openings that punce- page from the
ture their rooms. They do not spread futons in the middle of anonymous Onna
koshoku kyokun
the room, as logically they might, but lay them up against Kagami (1790s).
doors and windows, as householders generally did not.
There is a propensity in shunga to set couplings in parts of
rooms where spaces overflow with each other, as if tumbling
across, such as at the top of stairs or on verandahs (illus. 117).
These are intended as boundaries, or lines of liminality, and
should not be read as factual renditions of Edo-period habits.
Sex is represented as unstable and perennially verging on the
uncontained. Even in the house, it ‘floats’.
This feature of shunga is in marked contrast to many other
pornographic types and genres. Much Ming-period porno-
graphy is set in well-fenced gardens into which access could
not be gained, as any would-be intruder into women’s quar-
ters knew; in equal measure, efflux was impossible. Ming
pictures stress a householder’s rightful enjoyment of his
248
318 Suzuki Harunobu, Lovers in a Riccficld, multi-coloured woodblock page
from Komateu-ya Hyakki, Faryi kshoku maneemon (1765).
A3
x

RR
CN

119 Utagawa Kunisada, Beanman and Beanwoman Prepare to Storm the

Storehouse, multi-coloured woodblock illustration for Naniyori Sanega
Sukinari, Sento shinwa (1827).
120 Maruyama
Okyo, Yang Guifei,
1782, hanging scroll,
colour on silk.
121 Katsushika Hokusai, Maruyama, multi-coloured woodblock print from
the series Nana yiljo, 1801-4.
122 Chobunsai Eisho, A European and a Maruyama Prostitute, c. 1790s,
multi-coloured woodblock print.
123 Kitagawa Utamaro, European Lovers, multi-coloured woodblock page
from Utamakura (1788).
124 Kawahara
Keiga, The Blomhoff
Family, 1817,
standing screen,
colour on paper.

125 Kawahara
Keiga(?), Jan Cock
Blomhoff with a
Japanese Woman,
after 1817, section
of handscroll,
colour on paper.
(multiple) female consorts. In Cleland’s Fanny Hill, Fanny
roams London as a prostitute, in which she is unlike a stock-
aded Yoshiwara woman; but at moments of sex she goes
inside, locks the windows and doors and hermeticizes her
space. Sex leaks out only once in Fanny Hill (via a peep
through the wall of an inn bedroom), and this too is pre-
sented as perversion, since what Fanny witnesses that way
is the book’s only homosexual encounter (other than her
own lesbian initiation into erotic desire).? These are three sys-
tems of dealing with enclosure, but shunga alone offer shut
spaces — and in many cases the consummately enclosed
Yoshiwara — and then breaks the seal, rendering the whole
unit unstoppably porous.

SEX AND HISTORY

The act of sex might be projected onto a larger plane by link-

ing it, not to the surrounding present, but to the surrounding
past. The Yoshiwara fed on mythologies of the glorious
classical time today called the Heian period (the ninth to
twelfth centuries), and its supposed ideals of femininity
were extensively deployed. Sustained attempts were made
in society as a whole to co-opt the aura of the Tale of Genji
(Genji monogatari), composed about 1000 and well-known
from selective representation in many genres of ‘Genji pic-
ture’ (Genji-e), which would be given to young women as
part of their marriage trousseau. Sex is implicit in Genji
throughout, for all that, in the words of an early English com-
mentator, it is ‘astonishingly free of erotic passages’.'° There
was a sexualization of Genji or a ‘Genjization’ of sex in the
Floating World. Use of this myth, however, was controlled as
a Yoshiwara privilege: Yoshiwara women borrowed names
used in the Genji as their professional sobriquets (such as
‘Ko-murasaki’ or ‘Ukifune’) and they wore Genji motifs on
their clothes (like the ‘Genji fragrances’, whereby each of the
fifty chapters was signified by a pentagram — see illus. 76,
117); women in the ‘hill places’ had common names (‘Tama’
or ‘Motoura’ — see illus. 112) and did not borrow from Genji.
In the mid-1750s the ranking prostitute at the top-class
Yoshiwara brothel, the Kadotama-ya, Segawa 11, invented a
system of using Genji chapter titles to refer to common
257
objects, so that cash was called ‘heartvine’ (Ao1), a secret
lover a ‘broom-tree’ (Hahakigi), ‘flares’ (Kagaribi) meant a pro-
curer, and tobacco was ‘sagebrush’ (Sakaki).
Genji myth was the icing over much less pleasant realities,
as was made clear ina bitter verse on the poor health of some
working women, among whom syphilis was endemic. The
verse applied Genji chapter headings ina quite different way:
the surface meaning was bland:

To the village of falling flowers

The son travels in
A boat upon the waters.

‘Village of falling flowers’ (Hanachiru-sato) and ‘Boat upon

the waters’ (Ukifune) are Genji chapters; the verse relies on
the truism that wealthy sons were for ever going upstream to
the bepetalled Yoshiwara. But, cruelly, hana means ‘nose’ as
well as ‘flower’, and syphilis eats away at noses.** Far from
becoming like Genji and his wife Murasaki, people ran the
risk of turning into ghouls, and perhaps it was this that gave
rise to another verse from 1705:

Even Genji
Can be a poison
To young minds."

Outside the pleasure quarters, Genji erotica circulated, as it

had from within two centuries of composition. Early sexual-
ized renditions were collected and copied in the seventeenth
century, sometimes for publication, and Yoshida Hanbei’s
Genji's Sexual Play (Genji o-iro asobi) of 1681 is a famous
example. Hatakeyama Kizan’s Great Sexual Mirror (Shikido
okagami) of three years earlier billed itself as a ‘sequel’
(zokuhen) to Genji." Genji-related works might be pretty tan-
gential, and more and more distant references appeared,
such as Hayamizu Shungyosai’s book of the 1780s, where a
series of loose modern-day encounters were captioned by a
Genji chapter title and with the appropriate ‘Genji fragrance’;
a page has already appeared here (see illus. 117). The use of
Genji was part of Shungyosai’s attempt to extenuate the con-
tents of his book (as also evinced in his title, Sex Education for
Women (Onna koshoku kyoiku kagami)), but his mind was not
258
 ‘oicOe
IN
neal
NK \
‘it

126 Suzuki on it and he was so slipshod that, in the page reproduced

Harunobu,
‘Analogue’ of
here, the captioning reads ‘Safflower’ (Suetsumuhana, or
‘Evening Faces’, Chapter Six), while the fragrance is for ‘Heartvine’ (Aoi,
1776, diptych, Chapter Nine).** Books might seek generally to outline the
multi-coloured
woodblock print.
sexual positions possibly adopted by Genji with his (many)
lovers, although this was entirely hypothetical, since none
are stated in the text. Master Teikin (who occasionally signed
his name with characters meaning ‘testicles’), in his collec-
tion of ‘laughing pictures’ of the 1820s, discussed making
love ona covered verandah spanning a stream (wataridono —
avery ‘awkward’ location), recommending it to the reader as
the position tried by Genji when he slept with Oborotsukiyo,
daughter of the Minister of the Right, at the Small Villa in
Kokiden’s mansion.'® Perhaps this prompted emulation,
although few Edoite homes had a wataridono.
A major sub-genre of pictures of the Floating World was
the rescripting of classical themes in the present. These were
called by various names (imayo/tosei/furya) but in modern
scholarship are referred to as mitate-e and in English as
‘parody’ or ‘analogue’.'” Dragging literature into the Float-
ing World necessarily eroticized it, and there was a tendency
to do this to eleventh-century subjects, often from Genji.
z99
- Harunobu produced a diptych as a calendar for the year
1776, ‘analogizing’ the Genji chapter ‘Evening Faces’ (Yigao),
where the hero goes to visit a woman of that name (illus. 126).
Genji is now a wealthy son and Yugao a modern girl; his ox-
cart conveyance has become an insect box, while her name-
sake flower (properly in English, moonflower) covers the
gate, alerting viewers to the allusion; the waves on the boy’s
kimono provide water imagery of the sort common in erotic
settings. The buyer of Harunobu’s twin sheets brings the
couple together. The end of the eighteenth century marked
one of the first intensive bursts of scholarship on Genji,
particularly in the work of the nativist Motoori Norinaga,
whose Little Jewelled Comb for the “Tale of Genji’ (Genji mono-
gatari tama no ogushi) of 1796 was influential in defining an
aesthetic of unfulfilled love and melancholia (mono no aware)
as the central theme; the great critic Hagiwara Hiromichi
wrote with retrospective admiration in 1854,

There has never been anything like it. The way he picks
out those passages where the author hints obliquely at her
intentions, then brings them all together and explicates
their significance — this in particular is an unprecedented
piece of scholarship. His [conclusion] too — that under-
standing mono no aware is the whole point of the novel — is
not to be found in any previous commentary.*®

This had been prefigured by Kitamura Kigin, whose Moon on

the Lake Summary of the ‘Tale of Genji’ (Genji monogatari koget-
susho) of 1673 was a landmark attempt to render the text itself
comprehensible. But both writers stripped Genji of the
sexual overlay (both Yoshiwara-related and marital) that
had accrued to it over the last centuries; Kigin balanced the
blatantly heterosexual Genji (who sleeps with only one man
in the book, and then by default)'? with the compilation of
his anthology of male—male love, Rock Azalea, while Motoori
Norinaga turned the whole into something evocative and
resonant of loss, and so not very libidinous.
Genji was difficult and long, and few read it. There were
other period works, and the Tales of Ise (Ise monogatari) was
perhaps the softest option since it comprised only short sec-
tions of text and poems. Ise had a strong whiff of sex because
of the association of the unnamed protagonist (called ‘the
260
man’) with the Narihira who had committed an indiscretion
with the shrine maiden and been exiled. The Edo construc-
tion of Narihira’s subsequent wanderings as a ‘carnal pil-
grimage’ (iro-shugyo) implied that he had not learned his
lesson and still very much enjoyed himself.*° Moreover, the
wilderness through which he travelled (Musashi Plain) was
to become Edo, so that by the latter part of the seventeenth
century people were loath to consider his exile morbid, nor
with Edo then among the world’s most vibrant cities could
they readily conceive it so.*" Ise also had the advantage over
Genji that Narihira was not so aggressively masculinist in his
sexual behaviour. The text did not require a counterposing
with nanshoku such as Kigin provided. Ise has some seven nan-
shoku episodes which, although constituting under 5 per cent
of the total (125 sections), form a prominent string from the
82nd to the 85th parts.** Fifteen years after Kigin’s commen-
tary, Saikaku was to announce that Narihira was not really in
love with the shrine maiden at all, but with her brother
Daimon, with whont he had conducted a five-year affair (the
historical Narihira had indeed sent Daimon love poems).*
The duality of Narihira could be appropriated to legitimate
bipolar Edo sexuality as Genji could not, and Saikaku
analysed (anal-ised) Ise’s first verse to provide a twin reading:

At Kasuga moor
The young violets
[Seem to account for] the prints upon my robe,
While the wildness of my longing
Knows no boundaries at all.*4

Saikaku insisted that the young violet flowers that printed

their pattern onto the clothing referred proleptically to the
violet headcloths worn by kabuki actors; this allowed him to
make the transhistorical claim that Narihira had known nan-
shoku and was the spiritual father of its modern commercial
purveyors.*?
No attempt to strip Ise of sexual nuance was made, and
Narihira’s entry into what became the Edo region (his
‘descent to the East’) remained part of the iconography of
Edo sex. We have encountered it in more than one shunga
context in the 1660s and, if a print by Utamaro is to be
believed, it continued to adorn imaginary feminine spaces
261
and sites of paying sexual encounter at least up to the begin- 127 Kitagawa
Utamaro, Group of
ning of the nineteenth century (see illus. 80, 95-8, 127).?° By Women around a
having passed Mt Fuji, Narihira literally put Edo on the Screen of “The Tales
erotic map. Since many Edo residents were not indigenous of
Ise’, 1800, multi-
coloured wood-
but had made their own ‘descents’ from the Osaka-Keishi block print.
region, he was the template for the present. Narihira might
be referred to generically as ‘the gentleman’ (on-kata), which
was a homophone with a common word for dildo, and which
certainly brought the ancient courtier into the sphere of
modern living and especially of female compensatory
solace.*7 Genji had less import. Narihira’s travelling life
made hima model for the modern male, who moved through
the safety of the shogun’s realm making money and having
pleasure. Koikawa Shozan made this explicit in a book on the
theme of travel, A Travel Pillow for the Fifty-three Stations
(Tabimakura gojisan tsugi), whose title refers to the stops on
the Edo-Keishi highway, the Tokaido:

Alljourneys in all directions begin from the centre of Great

Edo - this place here. As far as Third Avenue Bridge in Kyo
[Keishi] it is 12477, 15cho; there are fifty-three stations. This
is what is called the Tokaido. The standards of the many
lords go forth, devout confraternities go to the Ise Shrine,
others go up to Ky6 to see the sights, or those of Osaka;
they travel around Yamato. From whatever direction, they
make what they call their ‘descent to the East’ as that
superlative gentleman long, long ago went down on his
carnal pilgrimage. Many are those who make their own
ascents or descents, and hordes of the populace move
round and about.?®
262
Ise provided myths for the sequestered female and for the
dynamic, mobile male, for female—male and male—male love.

SEXUAL HISTORY PAINTING

Writing from the Korean and Chinese kingdoms was the

source of much historical lore in Japan, and anecdotes and
pictures of Continentals (karabito) were well known. The
erotic life of this erudite history was represented even in
official painting through the generic figure of the
‘Continental beauty’ (kara-bijin). Among individuals from
the past known for their appeal, first and foremost was Yang
Guifei. Guifei lived in the eighth century and was the lover of
the founder of the Tang dynasty, Taizong, but depictions of
her abound throughout the Edo period (she is recognizable
by her phoenix tiara), such as one by the Keishi artist
Maruyama Okyo, dated to 1782 (illus. 120). As a concubine,
not a wife, she had’a sexual not a dynastic persona, and
indeed indulgence with her cost Taizong his state, and she
was executed. Like Helen, whose face ‘launched a thousand
ships’, Yang Guifei was a femme fatale whose sexual presence
interrupted peace and perverted politics. The myth was
embedded in the world of modern sex, since Guifei’s desig-
nation ‘gingzhong’, she who ‘made the castle tip’ (keisei
inJapanese), was in use throughout the Edo period to
designate high-class prostitutes; red-light districts were
called ‘keisei-blocks’ (keisei-machi). (These words found their
way into the argot of the Dutch empire as keesjes and kei-
seimatz.)°9
The power of sensuous women did not change over his-
tory. It constituted a recurrent flaw in the phallocratic regime
of control. As was said in Edo parlance, women could even
lead an elephant by a single one of their hairs (this was also
made into a subject of pictures).*° But, as to be expected of
Edo sex badinage, the nyoshoku comment was paralleled by a
nanshoku one, and attractive boys were humorously called
ones who ‘made the temple tip’ (keiji), as monks who were
forbidden intercourse with women were thought disposed
to lose self-control over youths.** Note that Guifei’s recog-
nizable tiara is worn by the boy prostitute-god in Manri’s
story (see illus. 113).
263
 dt ¥ ce 128 Kitagawa Utamaro,
4S a3, Emperor Xuanzong and Yang
as - dl Guifei, multi-coloured wood-
es Pa block print from the series
4% “ft & Jitsu kurabe iro no minakami,
ie 1799.

25,
Gade
—

The paradigmatic nature of Guifei ensured her frequent

depiction, but when made for a Japanese audience one thou-
sand years removed in time she had to be adapted to remain
plausible and attractive. This had to do with pictorial style
but also with sexual taste. Overtly erotic versions produced
as ‘analogues’ revealed the danger of the antique beauty
losing her charge for the modern person, if not updated.
Utamaro placed Guifei and her royal lover in their frequent
posture of ‘blowing the flute together’ in his Comparisons of
Sincerity: The Eroticism of Famous Beauties (Jitsu kurabe iro no
minakami). All other members of the series showed contem-
poraries, so it was vital to ensure the antique figures enjoyed
the same erotic level; both are given faces thought lovely by
the new standards of the time of publication (about 1798)
(illus. 128).3*
Okyo (who was not a pornographer) was celebrated for
his ability to transcend time and instilled genuine emotion in
viewers of paintings on even obstruse themes. An admirer
recorded that his practice was to use normal people as
models for historical or foreign personages and then ‘add an
overlay of Chineseness’ afterwards, as culled from scholarly
reference books.*?
264
 Writing in the 1850s, Kitagawa Morisada observed the
following of all pictures of past persons, citing as examples
the great Tang beauty Xishi, as well as Komachi of ninth-
century Japan:

The appearance of men and women is not the same in past

and present, for it changes with the time. Fashions come
and go. We do not know how Komachi and Xishi were in
olden days, but the beauties seen in historic pictures look
pretty different from people now, in their features, right
down to their nose and eyes... Probably the kind of people
we call beauties today will not seem so in the future.*#

The responsibility of maintaining conviction in figural sub-

jects lay with the painter.
Artists of the shogunal academy, or Kano School, painted
plentiful historical themes, which might include Guifei, for it
was one of the purposes of their art to offer moral lessons
taken from the past*for ornamentation of formal spaces in

i,aS =

i
WN"
1

129 Anon., The

Forest of Meats and
Lake of Sake, mono-
chrome woodblock
illustration for
Zhang Juzhen,
Teikan-zusetsu, 1606
(copy after a Ming
original of 1573).
castles and halls. Their subject-matter necessarily included 130 Kano
Mitsunobu
lessons in sexual restraint. A source book was the Mirror for (d. 1608), The
Rulers, Illustrated and Explained (Teikan-zusetsu), originally Geomantic Cave and
published in the Ming period but brought to Japan in the six- The Four Greybeards
of Mt Shang, pair
teenth century and printed for Hideyoshi.*? The small wood- of six-fold screens,
block illustrations were expanded over walls and screens, colour and gold
on paper.
impressing on viewers the danger of corruption and empha-
sizing that the libido was an impulse that all too easily
became history’s main dynamic. One episode was ‘Sisters of
the Concubines Ruining Government’ (wheedling on behalf
of unworthy family members), which might be twinned
with the horrendous gluttony of ‘the Forest of Meats and the
Lake of Sake’ with which bad kings regaled their mistresses
(illus. 129).
Good kings are included (they are more numerous),?° and
the Mirror showed both the evil of excess and the civilizing
value of pleasures taken modestly. Non-conjugal sexual rela-
tions were assumed among the elite, and these could be
inspirational as well as deleterious, as the Mirror shows.
All rulers in the Mirror are male, and the book assumed
female temptresses. This was only half the story for Edo, and
in 1623 when Kano Ikkei compiled a list of ‘Continental’
figural themes to be used in his school, he included a section
on the male—male liaisons that had left models for later his-
tory.” Seventeen themes were given, and although not all
appear in extant Kano painting, a frequently rendered story
was that of the Chinese government minister Su Dongpo
(also called Su Shi), an amateur poet, who met the official Li
Jieqiao (also called Li Bi) for sessions of love and writing in
the secluded Geomantic Cave; without such relaxation and
renewal, both careers would have floundered, to general
detriment. Some years before Ikkei compiled this list, his
teacher Kano Mitsunobu (d. 1608) produced a pair of screens
twinning the Geomantic Cave with a nanshoku theme omit-
266
ted by Ikkei, the ‘Four Greybeards of Mt Shang’ (illus. 130).
This pair could well sit in a palace hall to suggest the
ennobling power of restrained male—male sexual activity.
Unlike on the Continent, Japan had a (truncated) history
of female rulership, and the role that sex had played in this
was not forgotten. Most famous was the shujo Abe (posthu-
mously: Kokan), who almost ruined the state as completely
as ever the Tang ruler did, through her infatuation with a
handsome monk called Doky6; this resulted in her deposi-
tion, after which no woman ruled for 900 years, until the
practice was revived, as mentioned above, in the person of
Okiko (posthumously: Meish6) in 1629. Whatever the histor-
ical facts, it was believed that what Abe had really liked
about Doky6 was his penis, said to be mammoth. This scur-
rilous insinuation, already current in the thirteenth century,
was popularized in the eighteenth.?* As a senryii writer put it:

‘Dokya,
Is that your arm?’ ~
Quoth she!??

All rulers influenced the course of history through fond-

nesses and favouritism as much as through policy. The two
could not be kept apart. It was pointed out by another senryi
writer that this also had relevance for the one-handed
pornography enthusiast too: an anonymous verse of 1780
noted that the shogunal regents of the Hojo dynasty, who
assumed power late in the twelfth century, abdicated in their
early teens:

First wank
And the Hojo are
Due for a change.*°

Not only love but masturbation forced the hand of history.

A re-sexualization of even the quite recent past was a spin-
off from the Floating World and many of its media partici-
pated — senryil, shunga, prints and paintings. Sex was
adduced as valid explanation for inconsistencies in history,
and totally fictitious amours were invented to breathe life into
the names of the dead, especially when their acts had been
unpredictable. The true history of the forty-seven avengers,
267
known as the Treasury of Loyal Retainers (Chtishingura), con- 131 Kitagawa
Utamaro, Hideyoshi
tained no adequate explanation as to why the insult that and his Five Wives
began the vendetta had been made, and so the story was Viewing Cherry-
retold as stemming from an act of non-consensual inter- blossom at Higashi-
yama, c. 1803-4,
course between KO no Moronao and Kogogawa Honzo.*' triptych, multi-
Saikaku did a lot of mythical matchmaking ex post facto and coloured woodblock
bound time onto the grid of his own agenda that made no prints.

objective sense, claiming, for example, that the great

medieval diarist and cleric Yoshida Kenko had been the lover
of the centuries-earlier lady Sei ShOnagon’s brother.
Tales of rulers bore on the elite and so had to be treated
sensitively in any popular context. Like the puppet and
kabuki enactments of the Treasury story, which were guaran-
teed to pack houses for many decades, it was prudent for
authors and artists to transpose political works into different
historical moments (the Treasury was based on real eight-
eenth-century events, but was reset temporaily). This was
the reverse of the Floating World’s preferred tendency to
contemporize via ‘analogues’. If a historicized setting of a
268
‘
i

ae
lens
~e
ee

132 (right) recent event helped diminish the severity of any punishment
Kiyagawa Utamaro,
Machiba Hisayoshi,
due the publisher, the modernization of history could bring
c. 1803-4, multi- swift penalties. Shunga on court themes were absolutely fOr=
coloured woodblock bidden (though occasionally encountered). Genji or Ise did
print from a series
based on the anony-
not impinge on real political people, but where a treatment
mous Ehon taiko-ki. of a member of an actual governing elite, even if deceased,
was insufficiently discreet, artists were called to account.
Notorious was Utamaro’s creation of a print or prints in
1803-4 showing Hideyoshi in an eroticized light. It /they
were taken from a fictionalized biography of Hideyoshi,
written anonymously and published without censure per-
haps that year; in 1803 there is some other evidence of a Hide-
yoshi fad, and both Jippensha Ikku and Ota Nanpo put out
versions, probably stimulated by the biography. Utamaro’s
offending work cannot satisfactorily be traced, since there
are no accounts dating back to the period, but two titles con-
tend: the triptych Hideyoshi and His Five Wives Viewing Cherry-
blossom at Higashiyama (a true event that occurred in 1 598),
put out by the famous publishing house, the Kaga-ya; and an
269
 133 Yanagawa
Shigenobu, Gods on
the Floating Bridge
of Heaven Watch
a Wagtail, multi-
coloured wood-
block page from
Detara-b6, Ama no
ukihashi (c. 1825).

untitled set of five large-size portraits of persons prominent

in the biography of Hideyoshi (thinly disguised under the
name of Hisayoshi), published by another celebrated press,
the Moriya (illus. 131, 132).44 What could be ignored when
lost in the pages of a long book could not be tolerated as
sumptuous single-sheet prints, and the biography had also
been published in Osaka, where controls were weaker. Worse,
the triptych showed Hideyoshi’s wives dressed as modern
prostitutes.” Whether preferable or not cannot be said, but
the Mori-ya set showed Hideyoshi with his hand fondling
the wrist of a pageboy (an older warrior addresses a woman
at the rear). The Osaka book was then banned, and Utamaro,
Ikku and some others put in manacles for fifty days.

SEXUAL BEGINNINGS

Japanese traditions established an immediate link between

the world’s creation and human sexuality. The canonical
story told of Izanagi and Izamami in the eighth generation of
gods. They were the first to be visible and the first to pro-
270
134 Keisei Eisen, create by sexual union. The narrative appears in the eighth-
Gods on the Floating
century Chronicles of Japan (Nihon-gi), where it states how
Bridge of Heaven
Watch a Wagtail, Izanagi stood on the Floating Bridge of Heaven and dipped
multi-coloured his ‘jewelled spear’ (uobatsura) into the formless water, shook
woodblock page
from his Makura it and withdrew, the falling drops coagulating into Ono
bunko (1822-32). Gorojima, that is, the Japanese archipelago — the first land. It
had always been accepted that the ‘spear’ was his phallus.
Importantly, although the female Izamami was beside him,
Izanagi did not create land through intercourse (which he
was still ignorant of) but by masturbation. The god only then
sees a wagtail’s rear movements and understands how to
copulate. Much could be written on this, but our concern is
pornography, so we may note only how germane the story is
to the solitary male. So ingrained had this validation of mas-
turbation become that some suggested that Izanagi knew all
along how to copulate but preferred to act alone, and further
Edo-period eroticizations of the myths often proceeded
along those lines.4° Saikaku tried to insinuate a nanshoku ele-
ment here too, proposing that what Izanagi learned from the
wagging of a bird’s rear would have more to do with anal
than vaginal intercourse.*”
271
 Dipping of the ‘spear’ and watching the bird were sequen-
tially separate in the narratives but came to be depicted
synchronically in the pictorial tradition (illus. 133). This con-
joined masturbation and copulation temporally, removing
any sense that one preceded the other or that the discovery of
the latter had devalued the former. Eisen suggested this at
the front of his massive pornographic compilation, the Pillow
Library (Makura bunko), where the gods clasp each other on
the bank of clouds, wagtail already to the left, as Izanagi
points his spear (illus. 134); two elemental peaks called Male
Mountain and Female Mountain rise behind.
During the decade it took to bring Eisen’s work to fruition,
Yanagawa Shigenobu illustrated a set of three shunga vol-
umes with the telling title The Floating Bridge of Heaven (Ama
no ukihashi). He included a picture of two gods on the bridge
watching the bird, with Izanagi holding the spear. It is identi-
cal to the way that any serious artist would depict the scene,
indeed, it is the image seen already here (illus. 133). It needed
no eroticizing, for the story concerned sex at its very root. The
preface to the book traces all of history from this first sexual
event right up to the present and to the very gates of Edo’s
sexual enclave, the Yoshiwara. The dual lure of sex with others
and with oneself governs all that has ever happened. We read,

Wherefore, at the beginning of the world, the two gods

stood on the Floating Bridge of Heaven and dropped in
the celestial spear, and probed with it in the blue seas. The
drips formed Ono Gorojima. The two gods descended to
this island and looking at a wagtail understood how to
make union of male and female. They opened the path-
way of husband and wife and procreated lands, earth,
mountains, rivers, grasses and trees. ... Later, people grew
foolish and . . . sex confused such intelligence as they had.
In ancient China, King Zhong lost his lands through
infatuation with a courtesan, and [in Japan, Taira no]
Kiyomori found no self-control before Tokiwazu, leading
to the eradication of his line. The prelate Mongaku became
a monk after falling in love with the Cassock Courtesan
... 90, in the later times, everything that has occurred can
be put down to sex, and we should not laugh at those who
act from a craving for it. . . So let’s all head out then, ‘hey,
palanquin man! this way!’4*
272
SEX ON THE ROAD

As pornography sought a larger space to occupy and the

world of the pleasure districts came to seem insufficient, sex
moved increasingly rapaciously through space as sex and
shunga moved outwards. This book has drawn on pictures
up to the second quarter of the nineteenth century to sub-
stantiate its points about non-adversariality and balance.
The truth is that pictures supporting that ideological stance
dwindled severely and had all but disappeared by about
1840. In their place were images of aggression and struggle,
often set in a landscape outside the confines of brothels or of
Edo itself. To consider this change (which marks the end of
shunga as [have been defining it), we must isolate some prior
shifts in the Edo topography of desire.
Edo-period Japan, called ‘the Tenka’, or ‘that which lay
beneath heaven’, was highly diverse — more a collective of
cultures than a nation state. From the later eighteenth cen-
tury, travel increased and places known only by hearsay
entered the realm of actual experience. The old ‘stories of the
unseen capital’ (minu kyo monogatari), meaning tall stories,
literally far-fetched, were replaced by first-hand reportage.
The shogunal official Kimuro Boun travelled to Keishi (the
‘Capital’) on business in 1780 and returned to write a book
aimed at dispelling myth by accurate statement; he gave the
work the emblematic title Stories of the Seen Capital (Mita kyo
monogatari).49 Travellers noticed how aspects of life differed
according to region, from family habits to diet, from work to
the taking of leisure. Sexual behaviour was not the same
everywhere.
The two basic orbits of the Tenka were the Edo region (the
Kanto) and that of Keishi-Osaka (the Kamigata). Even in the
days before much empirical travel was undertaken, the fun-
damental distinction between these two places was recog-
nized and, importantly, was constructed as an alterity rooted
in gender dynamics. Shogunally enforced demography, with
daimyo entourages stationed in Edo for long periods, made
that region predominantly male, and it was said in cliché that
Kanto men were tougher and more military. As Shiba Kokan,
an Edoite, wrote after visiting Keishi in 1813, ‘they are weak
and cold and lack heroic temperament, and that is why they
make poor soldiers’, whereas ‘the Eastern male [azuma-otoko,
273
or Edoite] is an excellent fighter’.°° This sense extended to
Edo women too, who were said to display a characteristic
quality of ‘guts’ (hari) that was missing in the Kamigata.
Boun was unable to find any sexual tension in Keishi, not
only on the street (where it was disciplined in Edo too) but
even in the pleasure quarters; he described the Shimabara
brothel district as ‘utterly forlorn’ (hanahada sabishiki).?* Boun
was amazed that young women walked alone in the streets
at night without the least fear of sexual harassment — as was
quite impossible in Edo — and he saw weakness in the way
the men walked hand-in-hand with women, not asserting
the prerogative, as they did in Edo, of having the women
walk behind. Edo was homosocial and predatory towards
the opposite sex, Keishi heterosocial and unmolesting, and
Boun was shocked by monks consorting with women and
sleeping with them (not with each other or with boys as in
Edo).°? It was as if a constant tap of femininity was required
to keep the Keishi male operative. If Kanto women tended
towards the masculine, Kamigata men showed the opposite
tendency.
The insipidity of men in Keishi had widely felt effects on
the population, for it was noted that the city had impercep-
tibly drifted into being 60 per cent female. A yin-dominated
society gave birth to female children, a yang one to male. Edo
was initially male-dominated because of shogunal policy,
but this became self-perpetuating, as so many samurai and
attendants resulted in more births of boys.°? This conclusion
was sometimes reached in the West too (although on an
individual, nota collective level), as in when Macbeth says to
his courageous wife, ‘thy undaunted mettle should compose
nothing but males’.
The Edo = hard, Keishi = soft split was a trivializing one,
for the situation was far more complex. In any case, the
Kamigata had two major cities, both mightily different in
flavour. The binarism was sometimes supplemented so as to
allow for this truth, with a division into what were called the
Three Capitals (santo) or Three Ports (santsu or sanganotsu),
including Osaka. This was found to be inadequate with wider
travel. The Tenka was huge and pretty nearly infinitely varied.
Guides to the mores of different places were produced and
these might cover issues of sex or be dedicated solely to
them. In the 1750s the anonymous Opening the Treasure of
274
Female Delights (Onna tairaku takarabako) included a supple-
ment ‘Appendix of Red-light Districts in the Three Ports’
(Sangatsu irosato chokufu), which despite its atavistic title
included twenty-four locales all across the Tenka, from Aizu
to Nagasaki. It appeared as an insert ina pornographic work
and was intended to give assistance to actual travellers.*4
Around a decade later Hiraga Gennai provided an equiva-
lent for the nanshoku-orientated traveller, prefaced by Kappa
Sanjin. Gennai covered the Three Ports and then apologized,
‘beyond these, there are places of nanshoku in China, India,
Holland, Jakarta, among the Four Barbarians and Eight
Primitives and elsewhere, which ought to have been dealt
with too’.*?
The road network was one of the great achievements of the
Tokugawa administration, and travel was easy and generally
safe as long as one stuck to the designated Five Highways
(gokaidd), foremost among them the Tokaido. Conquering
powers (of which the shogunate was one) need roads to bind
seized lands together, and the Tokugawa (like the Romans)
roaded wherever they could. Official agents (like Boun) had
priority and, when top members of the elite travelled, some
roads could be entirely shut to other traffic (like the
Nakasendo -— called the ‘Princess Highway’ for this reason).>°
The chance of officials abusing power and demanding
special favours on the road was great, and this included
additional sexual provision as well as pack-horses and
porterage. A shogunal directive of the mid-century enjoined
travelling officials to show basic forbearance, ordering “absti-
nence from intercourse with males and females’.?” Fifty
years earlier Engelbert Kaempfer encountered one who had
not taken the lesson to heart and who stopped the retinue
escorting the East India Company to Edo to commandeer
sex: the official’s ‘affected gravity never permitted him to
quit his Norimon [palanquin], till we came to our Inns’, but
when they got to Okitsu on the Tokaido, where ‘two or three
young boys, of ten or twelve years of age, well dress’d, with
their faces painted, and feminine gestures, kept by their
lew’d and cruel masters for the secret pleasure and entertain-
ment of rich travellers, the Japanese being much addicted to
this vice’, the official suddenly ‘could not forebear to step out
at this place, and to spend half an hour in company with
these boys’.>®
=]
 Travellers, whatever their status, cut off from the bonds of
family and friends, may well compensate for the isolation of
foreign places through sex. The deeper psychological need to
indulge could not be suppressed. The anonymity of the road
and the small likelihood of partners re-entering one’s life,
coupled with a desire to sample local produce in people, as
well as food or drink, all militated against the exercise of con-
trol. For commoners sex seems to have been quite openly
touted as a delight of transit, and even a motivation fori
and the precedent of Narihira’s carnal pilgrimage loomed
large. Kaempfer was startled by the superfluity of supply:
‘numberless wenches, the great and small inns, tea-booths,
and coop-shops, chiefly in villages and hamlets, in the great
island of Nipon are abundantly and at all times furnsh’d
withal.°9 These women were called ‘waitresses’ (meshimor1),
but their activities did not cease at the termination of meals.
Shunga treatments of the road begin in the latter part of the
eighteenth century. They replicate the triple division of non-
pornographic thought and also emulate its final collapse. In
c. 1775, for example, Katsukawa Shuncho illustrated an
anonymous work, Sexual Pathways of the Three Ports (Iromichi
santsu den), where ‘Santsuemon’ (whose name is santsu,
‘three ports’ + -emon, the male suffix) goes on his own ‘carnal
pilgrimage’.
The Yoshiwara lay to the north-east of Edo and was largely
irrelevant to long-haul travel, Kamigata being to the west. By
contrast, the ‘hill places’ at Naitd-Shinjuku and Shinagawa
were nodes where highways emptied into the city.
Shinagawa was where the Tokaido entered Edo, and its
sexual aura was like a ball-and-socket joint of transit and
stillness. The air was impregnated with movement, and
depictions in word and image treat it in that way. The sound
of straw travelling shoes, not the clogs worn in town, were
heard and, instead of birdsong, dreams were shattered by
horses’ neighs.°!
The definitive text of Edo commoner travel was published
in 1802 by Jippensha Ikku, previously a little-known writer,
under the slangy title Down the Tokaidé on Shanks’s Pony
(Tokaidochu hizakurige) —in other words, on foot. Immediately
Ikku became one of Edo’s most famous men, and his portrait
was placed on the book’s inside cover (illus. 135). The story is
not pornographic, but its premise is sex: the two heroes,
276
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_ Yajirdbei and Kitahachi (‘Yaji’ and ‘Kita’), are lovers from the
old shogunal bastion of Sunpu who come up to Edo and
make it their home together before embarking on travels.
The entire preface to the book is a series of sexual puns, in this
case nanshoku ones, all related to the word ‘bottom’ (shiri) —
particularly Kita’s, as Yaji is the penetrator; their home is in
Edo’s Hatcho-bori (bori coincidentally meaning anal inter-
course).°* This runaway success was probably the inspira-
tion for Hokusai’s equally famous print series, The Fifty-three
Stations of the Tokaido (Tokaido gojiisan tsugi), which, although
avoiding all lewdness, does include ‘waitresses’ with invit-
ing features, such as one at the 37th station, Akasaka (illus.
136). Ikku began with travel to the Kamigata (that is where
the Tokaido led), but he did not end there and, as if in proof
that binary divisions were now defunct, he continued writ-
ing sequels for almost twenty years as the pair went all over
the landscape. The last volume appeared in 1821.
The healthy picaresqueness of Shanks’s Pony was carried
further in arrantly sexual spin-offs. They were slow in
coming but eventually rose to a flood. The first example
appeared in 1812 under the title of In the Vagina through Slippy
Thighs (Keichit hizasurige), where the sound of the title almost
exactly doubles Ikku’s. The main characters are ‘Kujirdbei’,
or ‘Ikku 2nd’ (ku of Ikku + -jirdbei, ‘second son’), and ‘Shita-
hachi’ (shita meaning ‘tongue’). The unknown author signed
himself Azumaotoko Itch6, or ‘One Serving for the Man of
the East’ (i.e., the Edoite). This book was actually even longer-
selling than its model, for its sequels did not die until 1851, by
which time the author was ‘ItchO3rd’.°3 This too spawned its
imitators, and an undated Diary of Slippy Thighs (Hizasuri
nikki) appeared, illustrated by Utamaro m (illus. 137).°4
But it was Koikawa Shozan who became the prime topo-
grapher of sex. He published numerous books from the
18208, using various pen names, and illustrated the stories
himself.°° The most sumptuous effort was Shozan’s Travel
Pillow for the Fifty-three Stations (Gojiisan tsugi tabimakura) of
the 1850s, a splendid work of no less than fifty-four multi-
coloured pages, one for each station of the Tokaidé, plus a
flyleaf. Each picture showed an Edoite copulating with
another traveller, a ‘waitress’ or some country girl. The series
culminated in a trend exemplified by Tamenaga Shunsui in
his Comparisons of Sex on the Flowery Road to the Capital
278
37 Kitagawa
: oe
oS hye

|| ‘4
Jtamaro II,
cagegawa, multi- %$ —<s

ner
oloured wood-
lock page from
shunga album, ; Dire
S29

lizasuri nikki
1820s).
5 v8)
u Paes

38 Utagawa
<unisada, Odawara,
nulti-coloured
woodblock page
rom Tamenaga
Shunsui, Irokurabe
jana no miyakojt
late 1838).

139 Utagawa
Kunisada, multi-
soloured wood-
block wrapper for
a shunga album,
Shunga gojtisan tsuji
(c. 1820).

140 Utagawa
Kunisada, Oiso,
multi-coloured
woodblock page
from a shunga
album, Shunga
gojisan tsuji
(c. 1820).
(Irokurabe hana no miyakoji), equally lavish, although this time
in smaller format, perhaps to give the appearance of being a
real pocket road guide; the illustrations were by Kunisada
(illus. 138). Sh6zan also produced a succinctly named Fifty-
three Stations of the Tokaido (Tokaido gojiisan tsugi), unifying the
shogun’s chief highway and the libido. Kunisada alone pro-
duced a similarly unequivocally named Shunga Fifty-three
Stations (Shunga gojiisan tsugi), the wrapper of which was a
real map of the road, with the stations marked, overlaid with
places of note, selected for their possibility for sexual puns:
the river Insui (semen), the temple of Ikezu-Kannon (‘can’t
ejaculate’) and tellingly, when the job is done, the ‘the bell of
casting aside’ (muen-no-kane) (illus. 139): these are not rela-
tionships based on responsibility.°” Inside, the pictures
depicted a sexual act with the locale prominently marked
and then illustrated in its own right (illus. 140). The sex
which had been banished from the streets of Edo, and had
never been much in evidence in those of Keishi, now stalked
the highways.
The shift to the outdoors was political. In all cases, the
sequence goes from Edo to the outside, reversing Narihira’s
vector and also the normal parlance by which Keishi had pri-
ority and one went ‘down’ to Edo. Edo is now the origin, and
somebody from there passes through the countryside ending
at Keishi which, however, no longer constitutes an objective
for travel, since the person may as well continue without a
halt. Edo’s privileged position is that it is the shogun’s lap
(hizamoto), as the saying went; from the 1770s the sense of
being an ‘Edoite’ (Edokko) began to emerge, and 1791 marked
the earliest shogunal attempt to define and delimit the city of
Edo, constructing for the first time an outside. Thanks to
the shogunal highways, the Edoite can ‘slip’ (suri) into the
cordoned land, the whole country seen as ‘thighs’ to be
pushed apart, not as sites of higher norms. This Edo traveller
is always male. He takes possession of the locales he visits,
notches up a conquest and moves on. His partners survive
only as souvenirs or statistics. Narihira took love as he found
it, his wandering poetic as well as sexual, and not lecherous.
The term ‘pilgrimage’ (shugyd) meant schooling for a final
purpose, that is, a discipline of betterment, even if his ‘pil-
grimage’ was carnal. But the Edoite traveller is a single-
minded quantifier of sex — one ‘serving’ at each station until,
280
at the end of the fortnight that it took to walk the Tokaido, he
could answer for fifty-three encounters; this averages one
sexual act per 10 km. This traveller bears comparison with
Don Giovanni, whose ledger, read by Leporello to the weep-
ing Donna Elvira, is 640 in Italy, 230 in Germany, 100 in
France, ninety-nine in Turkey and 1003 in Spain. Similar lists
occur in nineteenth-century shunga, where they parody the
literary genre of notional travels conducted via punning
associations of place names; the puns become sexual not
ethereal.°? By 1820 geography was implicated in the coinci-
dence of this kind of pornography with real travel and guide-
book writing. The foremost geographer of the turn of the
century was Furukawa Koshoken and, as we have seen, he
was also a pornographer, one of whose fullest shunga works
was a mock guide-book.”°
The Edoite moved out to cull his women -— Don Giovanni's
greatest head-count was in his home country — and the books
treat sex as exclusive to the hinterland, like guide-books
which are not necessary in one’s local place. Shozan began
the Travel Pillow with copulation at Nihon-bashi, the hub of
Edo, but this was presented as a farewell, not a new experi-
ence, and it occurs like a ritual of leave-taking the night
before the trip. Other books evince protagonists unable to get
out of Edo fast enough. Ikku’s stage-setting tale bears exami-
nation on this point: he did not even include an Edo scene but
had Yaji and Kita directly in Shinagawa. Once they leave
Edo, moreover, they cease to be lovers and switch their
amorous attentions to locals of the places they visit.
Ikku’s construction of the personas of Yaji and Kita
includes a second and important element. On leaving Edo
they discard nanshoku for nyoshoku. Although jokes relating
to bottoms and anuses continue throughout the book, Edoite
sex on the road is about taking women. Once the shogunal
city has been defined and the outside identified, it becomes
the site of need which must be provisioned; Edo is a place of
non-yield. Production and reproduction stand against un-
fecundity. The eradication of nanshoku is a feature of the early
nineteenth century, much harped on by writers of the time
and also by more recent scholars who have sought to explain
it. [would doubt the solidity of arguments for eradication in
fact but agree that there was a thorough purging of its repre-
sentation. The Travel Pillow contains only one nanshoku scene,
281
which would have seemed insufficient fifty years earlier, and
significantly that encounter is with an Edoite boy on pilgrim-
age, nota local: the embrace takes place in a within-city con-
text, and the boy’s motivations for journeying are of the old
religious, not the modern acquisitive type, and he is anyway
too young to breed.7" Local people must produce, or rather,
lay their productive capacity out, for Edo, and concomitantly
it is the duty of the Edoite to take it.
Country matters. The women in travel shunga are pre-
sented as coterminous with their landscape, part of its agri-
cultural, mercantile or service economies. Sexual acts are
imposed on views similar to Hokusai’s and later Hiroshige’s
famous landscapes of the fifty-three stations. Utamaro I
divided his pictures into three, the top left section showing
the location, the top right giving a description of the local
women and the lower half depicting the sex act itself.
Kunisada’s Shunga Fifty-three Stations had the local element
like a framed picture on the wall (illus. 140). Ikku researched
the places he wrote about, even persuading his publisher
that this was essential enough for his travel expenses to be
reimbursed.”* Later shunga reveal nothing of the factual con-
dition of the countryside, for they are not about realities of
place but the arrogation of it. Notwithstanding the general
rise in travel, the topographical pictures within pictures in
shunga suggest no site inspections. Ikku himself had been
born in Sunpu and was therefore no Edoite, and his boister-
ous humour at the expense of regional habitats was not pred-
icated on any desire to rape them. But Azumaotoko ItchO is
all and only phallus, as the opening page of his In the Vagina,
parodying the portrait of Ikku, makes clear (illus. 141). Once
he leaves Edo, he becomes one with his organ.
Tokugawa legislation stressed the fundamental obligation
on peasants to produce, and it was stated that, if they failed,
they would not be able to fulfil tax quotas, leaving their only
recourse to sell their women into prostitution.7? Sexual
exploitation of rural areas had always been kept back as the
city’s privilege of last resort. As the Edo period progressed,
villages were depopulated, not only from people entering
into urban prostitution, but from the more general demands
for labour. Government policy did not so much seek to stem
the flight as stimulate the rural birthrate. In 1800, 10 per cent
of the entire shogunal expenditure on rural areas went on
282
41 Anon., Portrait
f the Author, mono-
hrome woodblock
lustration for
.zumaotoko Itch,
ceichtt hizasurige
1812).

assistance to increase childbirth.74+ With the fears of

depopulation came changes to the acceptability of masturba-
tion, which newly became an instance of waste. The author
Teikin was one of the first to note this when he referred to
auto-eroticism as ‘profitless’ (muekt); another author,
Tokasai, referred to it in 1834 as a ‘poison’ (doku), albeit one
practised by all males.”
Large families had long been regarded as an absolute
good, but masturbation had not been imagined as a retardant
to procreation. This changed. Masturbation was pushed into
the domain of the pubescent and the aged. Under the title of
‘Production’ (sakugyo), Teikin wrote, ‘every drop of semen is
the seed of a child, and you must sow it in the good furrow of
women to reap a bountiful reward of offspring.’”° The words
are all the more startling because they appear in a shunga
book. It may well be that the mythology of erotica as an
instrument to encourage sex between men and women (and
of limited interest for any other gender combination or for
independent personal use) begins at this time, as a means of
defending the genre against attack.
Teikin was the first author to integrate agricultural termi-
nology into a shunga book. His one-page vignettes are headed
by a label punning on crop terminology: trimming the pubes
is called ‘clearing the field’ (kaisaku), first-love is ‘early
stooks’ (hayase), and all these experiences are garnered into
283
life’s rich ‘granary’ (doz6), illustrated on the final page. The 142 Utagawa
Kunisada, Lovers,
marriage age at this time was going down, which might have multi-coloured
saved the losing of too many seeds but which also provoked woodblock page
anxiety of a ‘herbaceous’ kind. Shiba Kokan, circulating from a shunga
album, Azuma genji
popular medical lore, wrote that, whereas marriage used to
(c. 1837).
occur at about thirty for men and twenty for women — ‘which
is roughly the same as on the Continent and in Holland’ — 143 Utagawa
and was natural, in Japan it had dropped. People were mar- Kunimaro, Woman
Resisting Intercourse,
rying in their teens and producing children too young, which multi-coloured
put the Japanese at a racial disadvantage: ‘children born to woodblock page
from Koikawa
the under-twenties will not grow up intelligent, whereas Shozan, Keichii
those born to maturer people will infallibly be clever.’ okarakuri (c. 1835).
Herbology then takes over as a new governing metaphor:
procreation is ‘as with plants, where the fruit is good when
ripe, but not before’.7”
At the moment that the deliverability of the after-effects of
sex becomes a concern, the motif of violence against those
who will not supply it begins to appear. Eighteenth-century
shunga seldom entertained the possibility that a partner
might be unwilling; no one was forced. As sex moves out-
doors, a gap opens up between men and women, everyone
stands to one side or the other, and the taking begins.
Depicted partners pull away from each other and the fusing
of bodies that we noted before is lost (illus. 142). The figures
gain firmer and more integrated bodies, resist mutual
absorption, and neither clothing nor additional elements can
fuse them into each other any more. Actual rape becomes a
shunga fetish, either by friends and relatives or by burglars
and cut-throats. Awoman cries out at her employer, ‘Why do
you keep doing this? I hate you! Stop it and let go or I'll
scream and bring everyone in’ (illus. 143). While a wife calls
‘Robbers!’, the intruder comes back with ‘Oh my spud!
Keep on calling and we'll have some real potato skewers!’;
not only has the country tuber become a metaphor for penis,
but the terminology of stabbing has entered the language
too and swords, twisted or unsheathed, point their blade
towards the victim (illus. 144). Even Beanman turns nasty, his
world becoming a place of slash and burn in which he
cannot progress by sentimental education but only by
killing. In Kunisada’s use of the homunculus in his New Tale
of the Welling Waters (Sento shinwa) of 1827, Beanman must
draw his sword to fight off a monster vagina that threatens
284
 144 Keisai Eisen,
Rape, multi-
coloured wood-
block page from
Waka murasaki
(1830s).

to engulf him until, quelled, it surrenders to his bidding

(illus. 119).7°

FOREIGNERS

In 1741, London experienced a pornographic hit in A Voyage

to Lethe by Captain Samuel Cock, Sometime Commander of the
Good Ship Charming Polly — a barely disguised parody of
Cook’s voyages.’”? Tales of discovery bred natural counter-
parts in tales of eroticism, and discovery, linked to empire-
building, was also linked to sex. Fourteen years later, Samuel
Johnson was to designate ‘ambassador’ (the career traveller)
in his path-breaking Dictionary of the English Language pun-
ningly as ‘a man sent to lie abroad for his country’.
Few Japanese of the period travelled abroad and fewer
returned, so that an encounter with foreigners meant meet-
ing on home turf. Nagasaki had a fairly international feel,
286
with its contingent of Chinese and a small group of
Europeans and their enslaved Indonesian workers; of the
latter two, all were male. Shunga viewers were interested in
these communities, and all appear (though not with equal
frequency) in images and stories.
The Indonesians have left the smallest impression on the
historical record; they were housed in conditions deplored
by the Japanese (so Thunberg claimed) and were allowed
little chance for fraternization with the local community,
sexual or otherwise. The problematic officer Jan-Baptist
Ricard (whom we shall meet below) tried to ban the frus-
trated ‘slaves’ from the Company’s garden because they took
advantage of its location for ‘gesturing’ to people across in
the city.°° The shogunate made repeated attempts to have
one of these men sent to Edo to be viewed, although the wish
was never met; more prurient scopophilia is also apparent.*!
A carved toggle has been preserved which offers what was
perhaps a rare, and certainly rarely represented, sexual
encounter between ar Indonesian and a Japanese.
As many as one in five Nagasakiites may have been
Chinese.*? Furukawa Koshoken went there to see things for
himself and enquired specifically as to their sex life. Kosho-
ken took as his data the passage of prostitutes from Naga-
saki’s brothel district, the Maruyama, to the Chinese quarter;
apparently, a limit of thirty-five at a time was set.53 Chinese
must also have accounted for a proportion of the clients who
went to the district (as distinct from summoning women
home), and shunga show this. The Chinese tradition of
shunga seems not to have affected Japanese depictions,
although surely Chinese in Nagasaki possessed items (see
Chapter 7). There were some famous love affairs between
Japanese and Chinese, and the biographies of some mixed-
race children were recorded (semi-fictionally), such as the
Ming general Coxinga and the ‘Indian’ Tokubei.*4 Chinese
mixed with Japanese until the fringes of the division between
them blurred.
Different in every way were the Europeans, referred to as
‘Dutch’ since they came as members of the Dutch East India
Company (known by the initials of its name — Vereenigde
Oostindische Compannie — as the voc), although from many
European countries. They numbered about a dozen for most
of the year, but when the two annual ships were in port, this
287
swelled to over two hundred.®5 The voc went bankrupt at the
end of the century and sailings to Japan became more ad hoc
and also more mixed, with American ships often being used
(it was remarked how American ‘blacks’ — kuronbo — looked
different from European ones).*°
The all-male situation in the voc compound increased the
need for interaction with the host society, and the men had a
huge impact on Edo-period life in many respects, including
on its sexual pictures. These men may have brought Western
pornography, of which Amsterdam was the centre of
production. At least one illustrated book certainly entered
the country, and was written about by Matsura Seizan —
Voltaire’s La Pucelle d’Orléans (Maid of Orléans) which had
scandalized Europe after its publication in 175 5.97 Stories cir-
culated in the European East Indies that Japan was a pleasant
place for making quick liaisons (although venereal disease
was rife), and sailors formed bonds with Nagasaki women;
importantly for us in this study, they also had portraits made
to take home with them. Sato Narihiro, who visited
Nagasaki, told of one example:

While I was there, the Europeans summoned artists and

had them make portraits exactly as in life of the features of
the prostitutes they had been with. These were for taking
home with them so that they would always remember
what the women looked like.*®

Of course, these would not have been pornographic, but they

were surely eroticized to some degree, with sitters posed in
alluring ways. No such pictures seem to survive, but as they
were commissioned from local artists they would have had
an impact on Nagasaki painting as a whole. Portraiture was
widely believed to be the preeminent Western genre (it
was practised though rarely displayed in north-east Asia).
Shunga were also taken out, and an episode in the diary of the
supervisor of the Chinese compound for the summer of 1779
tells of his finding a pornographic painting done on glass,
prepared for export on a voc ship; this caused a stir until the
Nagasaki governor ruled there was no law prohibiting the
export of shunga. Japanese shunga existed on the Asian conti-
nent in large quantities, presumably openly exported.*
Some of the first pieces of Japanese art brought to Europe
288
were s/iunga, when in 1613 John Saris bought ‘certaine lis-
ciuious bookes and pictures’, as was quoted above.?°
‘Normal’ pictures of the Floating World were collected over-
seas too.?!
More relevant than the foreign history of shunga collecting
is the effect of European men on Japanese pornography. Most
Western sailors, who had spent many weeks at sea during
which they only had each other for sexual partners (which
was forbidden), wanted female company. Koshoken wrote
that the Nagasaki women were often seen hanging around
the voc compound and, when the Europeans appeared, ‘the
wives and children of the locality who were loitering at the
gate, all began to amuse themselves by calling out sexual
innuendos (ekoto)’.9* Bourgeois women were unlikely to get
any closer than this, but prostitutes had access to the com-
pound and were permitted up to three consecutive nights
there.23 Nagasaki’s two brothel areas (the Maruyama and the
smaller Yoriai-machi) were patronized by the Europeans as
by the Chinese, but the special feature of Nagasaki was that
women were able to go out to their clients, which made for
visible toing and froing in the streets. Some Europeans knew
a little Japanese and some Nagasakiites Dutch, although the
lingua franca of the South China Seas was Malay. Isaac
Titsingh, head of the Nagasaki station in the early 1780s,
spoke some Japanese and perhaps because of that became
the first European to successfully woo a woman of tayii rank
(the top grade of courtesan, which had died out in Edo
through over-pricing, and who had the — perhaps only theo-
retical — right to deny unwelcome customers); the woman
was fifteen and called Ukine.%4 The difficulties of interna-
tional communication can be exaggerated, for those who
speak the ‘language of love’.
The three senior members of the voc in Japan visited Edo
annually, and the trip there and back took about a quarter of
every year. They provoked interest, not least it was claimed
from women, and persons as high as the wife of the daimyo
of Satsuma (one of the most senior warrior-class ladies)
requested in 1769 that the men parade before her; seven
years later, Thunberg claimed in Shinagawa the women
‘made up to us in shoals’ and ‘formed around us, shut up as
it were in our Norimons, a kind of encampment’.”? Physical
encounters would have often been paying ones, and Kokan
289
patronized a brothel in Osaka which had as its claim to fame
that a Dutchman had once stayed there.”
It was only the Maruyama that was defined by its inter-
nationalism, and for which multi-ethnic copulation was its
badge of difference. The illustration of the Maruyama in the
supplementary guide to Opening the Treasure showed a
woman with a Dutch client; this was the book’s only picture
to have a woman accompanied and it was surely made for
emblematic purposes, since Dutch clients must have been
infinitely fewer than Japanese (or Chinese) (illus. 145). This
was the Maruyama’s image. When Hokusai produced a
series of prints of the seven best quarters in 1801-4, it was
again the Maruyama alone that he showed with a client pre-
sent, again a Dutchman, and he included an inscription in
the ‘mad-verse’ (kydka) style (illus. 121):

The foreigners too,

Drawn lovingly to these lands,
In soft springtime
Meet the pleasure ladies.%”

There are also many senryii (less high-flown in idiom than

kyoka), for example:

The Maruyama woman

Receives a letter
She cannot read.

He brings his interpreter along

The Maruyama
Client.

145 Tsukioka Settei,

Maruyama, mono-
chrome woodblock
illustration for his
Onna tairaku
takarabako: shokoku
irosato chokufu
(c. 1780s).
 Maruyama clients —
13,000
Leagues.?°

Phallic rivalry is apparent, with local males unhappy at

‘their’ women being taken. Koshoken reported the belief that
women always slept with Europeans unwillingly.?? But the
limitation of the Europeans to paying for sex coloured the
way their sexuality was imagined. The role of prostitutes in
disseminating information about the men prejudiced the
kind of facts that circulated.
There is a sub-genre of explicitly European-related shunga.
Kokan painted one, as did the shogunal official and Western-
style artist Ishikawa Tairo.*°° They had never witnessed any-
thing like the events portrayed. The Edo market was avid,
and mass-produced printed pornographic images were
issued. In all cases the male is European and the female
Japanese — which was the only kind of encounter to openly
occur. Chobunsai EishO's print of the 1790s includes a dia-
logue for the amusement of the viewer (illus. 122). The
woman states, ‘I can’t understand what you are saying at all.
Push! Do it harder!’ To which the man replies in gibberish,
‘oken kera kera kenkera tou yoka yoka yoka yoka.’
Difference, in general, was the theme, whether of bodies,
sexual habits or, ultimately, the language in which desires
were expressed. Instances of weirdness found their way
rapidly into print, as in the supposedly European custom of
having a bowl to hand to catch vaginal secretions for medici-
nal use. Eisen referred to this in his Pillow Library, announc-
ing a ‘Method for Producing the European Life-Prolonging
Ointment’. The cost of ingredients was about five small
coins. He wrote: ‘smear it onto the glans about one hour
before intercourse; certainly apply it when becoming flaccid;
works miracles.”*°*
There is also a senryilof 1791:

The foreigner
Plants a vase
By the woman’s behind.'°?

I know of no evidence to support this endlessly repeated

notion, but a sense of how the proceedings went were often
291
 146 Nagahide,
Europeans Collecting
—
Vaginal Juices, mono-
ms
~~
Ite
wD chrome woodblock
24
Aiea
nati
Tad
oh
andl page from the
el
netack
Pe
rit oreh
PRAMAS
Nene
anonymous Rakuto
aw
>
wer
we B furyt sugatakurabe
; (c. 1810).
15
sa
7
r
147 Yanagawa
Shigenobu, A
Continental Couple
Collecting Vaginal
Juices, multi-
coloured page from
Kotei Shijin
(Shikitei Sanba?),
Yanagi no arashi
(1822).

drawn; one instance is in the anonymous Comparisons of Ele-

gances in West Raku (Rakuto farya sugatakurabe) of c. 1810, illus-
trated by an artist known only as Nagahide and unusual in
being published in Keishi (the city he refers to by its old poetic
name of ‘Raku’) (illus. 146). Yanagawa Shigenobu showed a
Continental couple trying the same experiment (illus. 147).
An undated shunga book illustrated by Hokusai suggests the
practice was emulated in Japan itself, for he shows two
Japanese involved; the woman’s gasps make it clear this was
not irksome, while the man announces ‘Recently I’ve been
going in for a bit of European studies’ (illus. 148).*°
292
 Utamaro might have been one of the first to move to a con-
sideration of how Westerners interacted with their own kind.
His Pillow of Verses (Utamakura) includes a wind-blown
seadog with a woman seemingly of his own ethnic group
although dressed in the costume of a different epoch (illus.
123). Most travellers with the voc were in their thirties, but
this man looks older. Still, Utamaro never went to Nagasaki,
so he would not have seen a European at close range, if
indeed at all.*°4 This is from the non-adversarial period, but
even by the standards of those shunga, the bodies are almost
totally absent, as if Utamaro lacked the confidence to attempt
them, although the heads are carefully rendered. As with all
the pictures in the album, it is without text.
The first European women came to Japan in 1817 and were
at once painted (illus. 124). One was none other than the wife
of the voc head in Japan, Jan Cock Blomhoff, who brought
her on his second trip (on the first, which ended two years
previously, he had not been so faithful and had fathered a
child by a Maruyarra woman called Itohagi).’”’ His wife
came with two maids and a child. They were soon expelled,
although not before the important Nagasaki artist Kawahara
Keiga could make a formal portrait. Although the dating
cannot be proven, it seems that the painting was immedi-
ately remade pornographically (illus. 149). The shunga ver-
sion has also been attributed to Keiga.*” This is part of a set

148 Katsushika
Hokusai, A Couple
Collecting Vaginal
Juices, multi-
coloured page
from Enmusubt
izumo no sugi
(1830s).
 149 Kawahara
Keiga(?), Captain
and Mrs Blomhoff—
Shunga Version,
after 1817, section
of handscroll,
colour on paper.

of twenty pictures showing Europeans in many sexual situa-

tions, with each other and with Japanese. The Blomhoffs’
lion-legged sofa comes up a second time, where a sailor and
a Maruyama woman romp on it (illus. 125).
The series has no homosexual scene, and I have found no
Western-related nanshoku imagery. This is perhaps odd, per-
haps not. The surge of interest in Europe coincides with the
beginning of the suppression of nanshoku representation. As
part of the ‘moving outside’ of shunga, the bulk of foreign-
related pornography is beyond the pale of non-adversarial,
inclusivist shunga and the age of compulsory heterosexuality
approaches. However, the links between those who studied
the West and those who favoured nanshoku are oddly close.
Gennai was famous as both. Dutch studies circles wrote
much about nanshoku, and especially about its enforced exci-
sion in the West. Morishima Chury6 gave an entry in his
European Miscellany (Kom6 zatsuwa) entitled ‘Prohibition of
Nanshoku’, writing,

In their countries, nanshoku is ferociously prohibited. They

say it is counter to human ethics. There was someone
found guilty of it then [time unspecified] who was burned
at the stake, and the youth was drowned in the sea.
Apparently, this is still done. My source is this year’s
scribe, Rikarudo.*°7

294
Surprise and nonplussment greet the news imparted by this
‘Rikarudo’ — who was actually Jan-Baptist Ricard cited
above, in Japan in 1784-5, back in 1786, and in Edo the fol-
lowing year when he must have met Churyo. (He was again
in Nagasaki in 1794.)'°° What Ricard was doing talking about
this subject to an important man like Chiiryo (brother of the
shogun’s body physician) is unclear, as indeed is his own
stake in the matter.’°? Later Chiryo published in another
book that nanshoku prohibitions extended to the Western
colonies too.!'° Daikoku-ya Kodayti could vouch for their
severity, since he happened to arrive in Yakotsk just as a
senior official, one Smolyanof, was being tried for sodomy; it
was Churyo’s brother who edited Kodaytfs narrative and
expressed shock that the man was found guilty although the
boy was a willing partner.'"’
Europeans, who so punctiliously plotted the world, sailed
through all seas and categorized what they found, also ruled
things out. To categorize was also to exclude. Shunga in its
heyday eschewed the construction of barriers. As the new
regime of limited and coerced sexuality emerged from
within the shogunal state, it met the draconianism of an out-
side doing the same with equal rigour. Shunga came to an
end, although pornography of another kind continued to
flourish. The period treated in this book was nota golden age
of sex, for all relationships were founded on inescapable
disequilibriums of power. But it may have been one of the
finest times in the history of erotic pictures. The late eigh-
teenth century was at least an age when parties wished to
represent sex as pleasurably shared and mutually sustain-
ing, and when they were relatively indifferent to gender
combinations shown pictorially. We should consider the
possibility that it was the very commercialism of Edo sex,
and the self-evidence of its not being the result of people
choosing to come together, that required erotica to compen-
sate with such profuse lies. But the lies appear so plausible,
for the pictures are so unfantastic and self-contained, that
perhaps their visions were even believed to be true —as they
often continue to be.

295
7 Re-engaging with Edo Erotica

Sex and the Floating World appeared first in Japanese, in 1998,

and then, expanded and adapted, in English, in 1999." This is
over a decade ago, but in the words of a scholar writing in
2004, ‘the issues and approaches raised by Screech are of
ongoing significance’. He went on, ‘since the publication of
these twin volumes [the Japanese and English], a worldwide
discussion has ensued over their content and approach.’*
The most recent book-length English-language study of Edo
erotica, published in 2005, still finds Sex and the Floating
World ‘a much debated and highly recommended examina-
tion of the genre’.? Nevertheless, the field has changed
dramatically since publication of the first edition, and it is
high time to take stock of new discoveries and develop-
ments. This new chapter seeks to catch up, in some measure,
with those evolutions.
In the 1990s, for the first time under modern Japanese law
it became legal to publish images of pubic hair. Genitals
could also be shown, so long as the picture was historic, not
made but only reproduced — previous censorship had applied
even to historical products and serious studies. Some writers
on Edo erotica had braved prior conditions, notably Hayashi
Yoshikazu, whose many publications formed the bedrock of
subsequent writing.* Yet Hayashi and his publishers found it
prudent to limit themselves to minute illustrations, at least
before the 1990s, with critical areas airbrushed away. Such
work, inevitably, was of more value to historians of sexuality
than of pictures, as analysis of the visual data was all but
impossible.
Once the situation changed, a wave of publications broke.
These (with very rare exceptions) were celebratory in tone,
and shared the agenda of proposing to the reader that
imagery had been unjustly neglected (true enough), but
more problematically, that it belonged in the warm embrace
of ‘Japanese art’. Even Hayashi published some such works
late in life, often together with Richard Lane. New books and

296
series displayed the finest works, often in facsimile. If the
pioneers had made do (or had to make do) with inferior-
quality reproductions, new volumes deployed lavish colour.
The field tilted in the opposite direction and in their enthusi-
asm to prove that erotica can be art, critics missed the point
that it must always, ineluctably, also be something else, and
that something else will be the very reason for which it was
made. This second generation of publications, in its search to
prove the link to ‘art’ masterpieces, expanded public knowl-
edge and awareness, but froze, or even retarded, any reinte-
gration of images into their political and social contexts. One
laudable exception to this tendency was the volume edited by
Sumie Jones in 1995, Imaging/Reading Eros, though sadly that
book was never openly published or marketed.
As erotic images impinged anew on the public sphere, an
identifying label was required to denote them — one that
would burnish them and distance them from any considera-
tion of purpose. The actual historical terms, carefully used by
scholars like Hayashi, were seldom euphemistic, and so
were expunged. Words changed during the Edo Period, but
the one most widely encountered is makura-e (‘pillow pic-
tures’), somewhat flowery, but clearly denoting what (or
where) the images were for; in formal Edo contexts, the
term kdshoku-bon (sexual books) was used. The term newly
selected was shunga. ‘Shunga’ (literally ‘spring pictures’) is
attested in Edo times, but infrequently and not until the turn
of the eighteenth century. ‘Shunpon’ (spring books) was now
also coined for images still in collated state - much was
printed or published as sets, though many survive as dis-
membered elements.
Sex and the Floating World accepted the term shunga
(though not shunpon). Ina working draft, [had kept shunga in
quotation marks throughout, to highlight it as a problematic
word. But this was cumbersome, and I abandoned the prac-
tice. Perhaps I should not have, or should have stuck with
makura-e and koshoku-bon, since shunga homogenizes and
prettifies. Shunga also drives a wedge between those contin-
uing to study history, who necessarily consider period cate-
gories, and those who sequester the images away as Elen lkt
was to forefront the issue of purpose that I also used the
term ‘pornography’. Of course, that word comes with bag-
gage, but it is applied to many types of picture from many
207
periods and cultures, and I feel that it works for Edo erotica,
even as I retained ‘shunga’. By saying ‘pornography’, we
encourage the reader to think about both the status of the
images as images (their ‘pictoriality’), and their historical
contexts in situations of sexual use. Yet ultimately, ‘shunga’
and ‘shunpon’ are easy to remember. A plethora of words
with minor differences would be off-putting for all but spe-
cialists, and the two terms are now the defaults, in Japanese
as well as other languages.
The ‘art’ claim is now also largely accepted. It is no longer
necessary to argue for shunga being (or rather, for some
shunga being) art, nor do we any longer need to decry the
genre’s neglect. No one denies that shunga shows the verve,
inventiveness and the attention to finish for which Japanese
design is rightly admired. Many — even most — of the great
names of Edo Period picture-making produced erotica
(painted or printed), and in the case of artists who depicted
city life, its pleasure districts and night-time spots (collec-
tively, artists of the Floating World, ukiyo), erotica evinces
some of their finest pieces, and a large percentage of total
output. More recently, Japanese enthusiasts have created the
portmanteau phrase ‘ukiyo-e shunga’ (‘erotic pictures of the
Floating World’), which has the advantage of restricting dis-
cussion to the popular urban materials of the Edo Period
(rather than all Japanese erotica, transhistorically), but which
falls down by suggesting, counterfactually, that wkiyo-e that
is not shunga ukiyo-e is therefore somehow not related to sex.
It is perhaps ironic that the one place the ‘shunga is art’
proposition did not stick was in museums. There has still
never been a shunga exhibition in Japan. Shunga is still
routinely deleted from exhibitions of Edo-period picture-
makers, even for artists of the Floating World, where to do so
eviscerates their oeuvre. When the British Museum’s cele-
brated exhibition of Kitagawa Utamaro travelled to Japan in
1995, all erotica was removed and even deleted from the
catalogue.’ Curators (including those for that exhibition) are
frustrated by this, but boards of trustees do not seem ready to
yield. Many museum-based scholars undertake excellent
research, but always behind the scenes.
The entire point of writing Sex and the Floating World was
to bind the history of visual materials and the history of sex-
uality back together. We may wish to look across the wealth
298
of works and decide what is art and what is not. But that is
not always the best question to ask of any type of erotica.
More important, I think, is to understand shunga in terms of
why it was made, looked at, owned, how it was used, and
why it looks as it does, and this, incidentally, will also help us
appreciate it better aesthetically.

THE QUESTION OF MASTURBATION

My chief argument was that to be properly understood,

shunga needed to be looked at in context. Some was certainly
art, some was not, but sorting the one from the other was
not the root issue. Failure to consider context had led to
some egregious misprisions. Most careless was the still-too-
prevalent contention that the mutual pleasure denoted in
shunga (which is indeed striking) demonstrates a healthy
attitude towards sex by Edo-period people, witha respect for
female, as well as male, delight, and a shunning of abuse and
force. (The subtext is how this was degraded by the arrival of
‘Western’ mores in the mid-nineteenth century.) I argued the
reverse: mutuality is stressed in the pictures because it was
likely to be absent in real sexual encounter — a premise which
the historical record amply supports. Art historians should
be used to the notion that art compensates for absences much
more often than it illustrates realities. We make pictures of
what we lack. It may be possible to argue that Edo Japan had
a more inclusive attitude towards sex — it was notably with-
out the policing systems of Europe, with anathematized
‘deviancies’, like homosexuality, lesbianism, nymphomania,
paedophilia or bestiality. But Edo sexuality was still con-
trolled, and, with a highly developed sex industry to stimu-
late and manipulate desire, over-ridingly unequal. Pictures
were a key to sustaining myth, not reality. And pictures were
important as they were readily available, cheap enough, and
consumable privately, according to one’s taste and fancy, all
of which were untrue for other forms of commercialized
sexual event. The relation of shunga to sexual practice was
not at all one-for-one or transparent. In a world where much
sex was bought (through prostitution) or enforced (through
status, economics or age-privilege), where sex, in other
words, was often ‘sexploitation’, and where love matches
299
were rare, pictures could nurture a dream of sharing, which 150 Nishikawa
Sukenobu, The Way
was entirely elusive in life. Only when art historians stop talk- of Sex and Bedroom
ing to social historians can shunga be seen as anything else. Waters (Shikidé toko
A concentration of shared erotic pleasure in pictures chdzu), 1720. A two-
page spread. Hon-
seemed to me, a priori, a good reason for supposing that con- olulu Academy of
sumers were not enjoying such sex, and in fact — and this Art, Lane Collec-
tion.
became my central thesis, adumbrated over nearly 300
pages — I went further: shunga was made for those who
largely had sex alone. Again, this ought not to be problem-
atic. Modern pornography is more closely allied to mastur-
bation than it is to shared sexual acts. That does not in itself
mean that Edo-period erotica must be too, but then, the over-
whelming preponderance of evidence suggests it was. There
is the internal evidence of pictures too, where masturbation
is so frequently encountered as to become an assumed
adjunct of shunga and all ukiyo-e; and, as I believe I demon-
strate, there is much literary evidence too (illus. 150). Many
reviewers of Sex and the Floating World ignored everything
else I postulated to focus only on this, and the extent to which
the claim was resisted amazed me.
In the same spirit of refusing apparatuses of denial, I used
the term ‘prostitute’ and avoided the coded ‘courtesan’ more
300
 }<
%

vy,
z
z

widely encountered in English discussions. I wanted to avoid

drawing a veil over what these people actually did, and what
the viewer of the pictures wanted to fantasize about them
doing. The term ‘sex-worker’ has gained currency, and serves
the purpose better, being neither periphrastic nor demean-
ing, but that word had not yet come into use in the 1990s.
My argument that shunga is best assessed as a tool for
onanism was borrowed in 2003 by Thomas Laqueur, in his
ground-breaking study Solitary Sex: A Cultural History of
Masturbation, a book which has been widely hailed. Laqueur,
outside the domain of Japanese studies and with no interests
vested in its pretences, accepted as a truism that erotica is
largely for masturbation.° Neither Laqueur nor I ever pre-
tended erotica was exclusively for masturbation, contrary to
one reviewer’s remark that ‘Screech holds that male mastur-
bation . . . was the sole motivating force behind all shunga
art.’7 For astart, I allowed for female masturbation, indeed,
I was careful to give prominence to it. The reviewer betrays
the source of his sense of affront by slipping in the curious
phrase ‘shunga art’. I also agree there may have been group-
uses of shunga, in couples or other collectives. But such
contexts, I maintain, cannot account for the genre as a whole.
301
In the 1990s the masturbation thesis had not yet been put.
Such discussion of use as existed was confined to use of
shunga as foreplay, or for bridal trousseaux to prepare girls
for the wedding bed. At that time, hoary old nags were still
being trotted out, such as that shunga were educational tools,
charms against insects or fire, or even against death in battle,
which are found in the Edo period to be sure, but generally
only as tongue-in-cheek extenuations for ownership. I felt
the onanistic case had to be strongly put.
Note also that autoeroticism is safe. Prostitution was rife,
but deadly. The great physician Sugita Genpaku recorded in
1810 that fully 70-80 per cent of patients came to him because
of sexually transmitted diseases.* Condoms, contraceptives,
abortions on demand and medical advances incline us to
forget how critical to sexual practice the issue of safety was.
Casual affairs might have disastrous consequences, even
leaving aside Edo law, which permitted a man to kill his wife
and lover caught in flagrante. Edo’s licensed pleasure district,
the Yoshiwara, which had the highest available standards of
care and hygiene, was cruelly referred to as the ‘village of the
falling noses’ (hanachiru sato), a pun on the homophonic
Village of the Falling Flowers from the court classic Tale of
Genji, but referring to the symptoms of syphilis.°
Some reviewers of the first edition simply could not deal
with masturbation, but others offered more serious alterna-
tives, such as that shunga might serve to introduce, or adver-
tise, sex-workers, or specialists in one technique or another.?°
302
151 Tsukioka Settei,
page from Com-
pendium of Anuses
and Penises (Jincho
choko kitaisei), 1768.

\}

The proposal is worth considering, but the evidence is not

substantial. Only quite rarely does erotica depict named
people, to whom the viewer might resort in search of them or
their specific skills. Unnamed prostitutes are much more
common, with generically lovely faces; these professionals
are shown entwined with their lovers, but not so as to suggest
any learned and practised technique. Even where a prosti-
tute is named — itself rare — one cannot move from her shunga
image to knowledge of her speciality, nor much idea of her
looks. Actors, who often worked as prostitutes, are more
often named, though claims are never made for any specific
sexual skill they had, and pictures probably advertised their
303
theatrical, rather than bedroom, persona. Interestingly, pic-
tures of people masturbating over pictures of actors (in
shunga form or in normal guise), as well as over prostitutes,
commonly feature within shunga (illus 16, 151, 152, 153, 154
and 10; 163 and 164). Thus, ownership of an image of either
type of worker, whether sexualized or not, is more likely to
have been an end initself, than an opening gambit to a fleshly
encounter — beyond the means of most people anyway.
A more rewarding suggestion, and one I had failed to
mention except briefly, was that erotica could have been pro-
duced to encourage, as a reviewer put it, ‘flagging or jaded
appetites’.** In many societies, ageing males have the largest
spending power, so why not incite them to buy works that
might offer release, but which would, better still, provoke
them on to higher levels of spending, either in the red-light
district, or post-performance at the theatre? Some of the
finest three-volume all-colour shunga albums were expensive
items, attesting to wealthy owners who did not need to forgo
pleasure — or not for reasons of cost. Items may have been
‘advertisements for the stimulation of consumer appetites’.**
The sense is, then, that one looked at a book and then went
out to savour the real thing. But it took almost two hours to
get to the Yoshiwara from central Edo.’ It is hard to imagine
aman firing himself up with a book, then making such a trip.
So did he go first, and view a book on arrival? That would
entail a long boat ride in search of sexual recreation when
not even aroused. And the evidence of shunga usage in the
prostitution areas is almost zero. The Yoshiwara burned
down occasionally, so much is lost, but all available data
shows erotica was not found in brothels, but in homes, and
that it was not a prior goad to something that properly came
later. True, one of the main publishers of erotica (and other
Floating World themes) had his shop right at the gate to the
Yoshiwara, but I would contend that this was to allow
departing men to buy pictures to carry back to the city, to tide
them over until they could visit again (the Yoshiwara was far,
and also costly). This is more plausible than imagining the
shop was located there so that men might discover newly
indentured women, or fads, on the way in.
Cecilia Seigle, in her extensive study of the Yoshiwara, has
found a dislike of open erotica there. “To Yoshiwara women’, she
writes, ‘pornography would have been totally unacceptable
304
152 Tsukoka Settei,
page from The Way
of Love, Women’s
Treasures for Day and
Night (Bid6 nichiya
joho ki), 1764-71.

153 Utagawa
Toyokuni,
‘Masturbation
with a Brocade
Print [of Ichikawa
Danjtro Vv)’
(Onishiki ategakt),
page from untitled
printed album,
1820s.

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eases
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156 Kitagawa Utamaro, from untitled set of prints, 1802.
157 Keisai Eisen, page from untitled painted album, c. 1825.
Klaus F. Naumann Collection.
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158 Katsushika Hokusai, Picture Book: Patternbook of the Vagina (Ehon tsui
no hinagata), 1812.
 |
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es

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160 Utagawa Toyokuni, The Cry of the Goose that Greets the Night (Oyo gari
no koe), 1822.
 my
k Umer
ont
BH eke
161 Katsushika Hokusai, The Adonis Plant (Fukuju-s0), 1810s.
and out of place.’ And this was not confined to that premier
quarter, for the same pertained ‘even in the illegal prostitu-
tion quarters of Edo’."+ Seigle concludes that all available
evidence ‘seems to substantiate Screech’s theory that erotica
were... used mainly for masturbation’.
Many period comments about masturbation using shunga
were quoted in Sex and The Floating World. Seigle has found
more. One, imitating the words of a dealer, refers to senior
samurai residences:

‘This sort of book

Is mostly for the mansions,’
Says the lending librarian.®

Gentlemen in the mansions had money, but little time, and

were schooled in notions of honour and thrift; they were
implausible regulars in the brothels. Ladies had means to buy
or borrow pictures, but were unable to leave their homes.
Master and mistress both needed ‘this sort of book’. And so
did their retainers, always on duty, and with low incomes.
Lest we supposed male use outdid female, a glass dildo has
recently been excavated from the mansion area of Odawara
Castle, surviving because made of more durable materials
than male onanistic toys generally were (illus. 162). At the

162 Glass dildo (9.6 cm), excavated at

Owadawa Castle.

313
 163 Nishikawa
Sukenobu, page
from Shikido mitsuse
otoko, c. 1725.

other end of the social scale, a fictional work of 1780, also in

poetic metre, opens with an impoverished man forced to live
far from the ‘mansions’,

Drinking thin soup

Or just plain water,
Bending his elbow,
Anew ‘pillow book’
Absorbs his gaze.
Poor, out-of-luck teacher.'7

His arm movement hinges between draining his pottage and

masturbating.
Both sources take it for granted that erotica was for self-
pleasuring. But actually, the visual evidence shows that
‘normal’ pictures of the Floating World were used in this way
too, by women and men (illus 3 and 4; 150, 153). My remark
that ‘all Floating World art is libidinous’ (p. 28) was written
to contest those who refused to see anything erotic in the
‘normal’ kind of work, even though, after all, depicted
people are sex-workers — or at least highly nubile. The wall so
studiously built between overt erotica and non-overt pic-
tures of the Floating World cannot be allowed to stand, and I
spent much time demolishing it. In a way, one might even
say, shunga does not really exist, but is an element in a repre-
314
164 Nishikawa
Sukenobu, page
from Shikido mitsuse
otoko, c. 1725.

sentational continuum from clothed beauties to copulation.

The presence or absence of depicted organs naturally makes
a difference, but all Floating World pictures served to raise
ideas in the mind, and lead viewers on to an imagining of
things —I repeat, an imagining — for the realities were proba-
bly out of reach, so instead they turned to the next page.
What was within reach, of course, was themselves.

FAMILIES

One feature of shunga [had missed entirely was pointed out

by Hayakawa Monta. Many depicted couples are precisely
that — husband and wife.’® Prostitution is often shown, and
with it the thrill of purchased sex (elite sex-workers would
tend to be better looking and more finely honed than hus-
bands or wives of the print-buying public), but married
couples, together, are also common. (The difference can be
told by clothes: married women wote sleeves short, not trail-
ing, and prostitutes properly closed their garments at the
front, not the back; where male prostitutes are actors, they
will have a shaven forelock concealed by a cloth, and where
not actors, generally tasselled sleeves.) Hayakawa’s isa valu-
able observation. But I am not sure it alters my conclusions.
At the time, men outnumbered women in the city, and even
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when this ceased to be so in reality, it remained a percep- 165 Tsukioka Settei,

page from
tion.*? Many people were living apart from their families, Compendium of
who were off in the countryside, and nearly all marriages Anuses and Penises
were arranged. The fantasy of a love-match had great appeal. (Jinché choko
kitaisei), 1768.
The elusiveness of a real romantic and sexually active home
life made it a desideratum in sexual imagery. Edo pictures
and stories attest to this the other way around, being full of
representations of despair at the impossibility of domestic
fulfilment, and of the final recourse of double love-suicide,
an eventuality so often talked of that a word for it was
devised, shinju (‘heart’s loyalty’). It is possible to interpret the
loving couples who saunter through Floating World pictures
as not strolling, but fleeing to a place of secret death (freezing
weather adding to the chilling sense) (illus. 6, 74). This is not
to deny that shunga might sometimes have been used by cou-
ples, just as pornography might today, but once again, it
cannot account for the genre as a whole.
It is also worth noting how often females in Floating
World pictures are neither professionals nor wives, but
under-age girls. The inclusion of children remains shocking
to many shunga viewers today. Countries with even the most
liberal pornography laws still legislate against anything
condoning paedophilia, or which introduces children into
sexual contexts, even two children together without an adult
present. But shunga is full of it (illus. 155). Given that prosti-
tution was on so elevated a level (in terms of numbers and
professionalism), the fresh, young and innocent surely
became desired as a proposition, within the space of pictures,
less likely in reality to occur. It is also possible that these
pictures would have been owned by girls, for there is no
reason a child could not have fantasized induction by an
316
adult partner. Throughout my book I never assumed that
masturbation was indulged in only by adults. There are plenti-
ful images of boys and girls copulating with their peers, which
also might have been consumed onanistically by children.
Also for two males: it often happens that the male in the
picture is a boy. Males shaved their pates, but boys retained
the forelock, tied back over the bald area; at the coming-of-
age ceremony — occurring at about fifteen years old — this
would be cut off (actors hid the loss with the cloth). It is not
difficult to imagine that boys of this age group might be
prime consumers of erotica. We do not know the normal age
of puberty, but with architecture precluding privacy for par-
ents and elder siblings, the mental awakening of children (if
not physiological changes to the body) may have been earlier
than today. There is evidence that boys would begin to mas-
turbate at ten, perhaps girls too.”°
In shunga an adult male is often shown taking a boy from
behind. The boy is not always erect, which might suggest
the picture was for an adult male, who would use the boy,
indifferent to his pleasure, even preferring a pictorial fantasy
of compulsion. But conversely, loss of erection during anal
intercourse is not uncommon, and there is no reason to
assume a flaccid boy is unwilling, or without sensations of
pleasure. A boy could certainly have used such a picture to
fantasize about an older man. In male—male (nanshoku) writ-
ings, the shape and quality of a boy’s anus is often com-
mented on. But his penis, its preferred length and girth, and
how to stimulate it, was also extensively adjudicated. This
suggests sex with boys was not just about the pleasure of
penetration for the adult, and this should colour our reading
of imagery (illus. 165).
Still for future investigation is the presence of children in
erotica alongside a sexually active pair —not part of the action,
but fully within sight, sound and smell of it (illus. 1 56).77

PAINTING VS PRINTS

The Japanese woodblock print is fabled throughout the

world. Hokusai’s Great Wave at Kanagawa (with the tipping
boats and diminutive Mt Fuji in the background) may be the
most recognized art object in existence. Since erotica related
317
 166 Keisai Eisen,
cover to Erotic Book:
The Wife's Travel
(Ehon fuji
no yuki), 1824.

to, and depicted, shifting fashion and taste, it made sense for
all but the most affluent, spendthrift or obsessed to distract
themselves with prints, rather than one-off commissioned
paintings, which would have cost exponentially more.??
But there are intriguing overlaps. The same image, or vir-
tually the same entire album, can be found in both painted
and printed form. A printed book by Hokusai, for example,
Couple's Pattern-Book (Tsui no hinagata), reappears as a painted
album by Keisai Eisen (illus. 157 and 158).*> It is not possible
in the present state of research to postulate how this came to
be. Hokusai’s book has been dated to between 1811-22. There
is no date on Eisen’s version, though he had a long career in
shunga; his largest work, the multi-volume Pillow Library
(Makura bunko, see illus. 134), began publication in the last
year proposed for Hokusai’s album, 1822. But which set
came first in this and other cases? Did a painter produce an
album for a high-paying client, and then print it afterwards,
perhaps using studies that remained in the studio? It was
common enough for artists to repeat a successful composi-
tion as a second painting, so why not replicate it in print?
318
167 Kitao Sekk6sai,
page from
Genkaid6o, Onna A;
imagawa oshie-bumt,
5
1768. SS
Mi
>
ise SS
LA
A
eS ate

;
|Fi »

' <:
<i

But would the owner of a painting approve of the mass cir-

culation of an object bought under the assumption it was
(more or less) unique? Did Hokusai pirate Eisen, or the other
way around, or were there negotiations between them? Was
it a publisher who decided whether a painted work had
larger-scale commercial scope? Or, on the other hand, might
the prints have been produced previously, with a wealthy
client then asking a master to rework a set he was fond of,
and perhaps already owned, inserting his stipulated alter-
ations?
Prints predominate due to the ephemeral nature of their
content, but there was also the matter of care. Erotica is liable
to become soiled. A painting on silk or paper could not be
cleaned. Pictures of males masturbating over paintings show
them taking care to avoid damage by ejaculate (illus 4; 150). A
printed album could be more easily discarded and replaced.
And once we abandon the quest always for the finest colours
and best impressions of a work, it becomes apparent how
many extant books were subjected to furious reading and
splatter (illus. 159; see also 150). Lending libraries existed in
major cities, and were mobile via peddlers, as in the senry
quoted above. House-bound servants and women had
access to the stock as much as men. The economics of run-
ning a lending library might not have worked without a vast
holding of erotica, mostly serving the ‘mansions’. There are
319
 =
168 Tsukioka Settei,

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3
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page from Onna

3gaBE
kitaisei), 1768.

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 many extant shunga with lending-library stamps, and, most
intriguingly, with the injunction that returning the book
blemished will result in a fine (illus. 166). To my knowledge,
no stain on a shunga has yet been analysed to see if its source
is male or female (or a cup of tea) (illus. 159).
Andrew Gerstle has also shown how serious tomes, of the
kind families openly borrowed for their children to read, had
erotic versions, and that this was notably the case in books
intended for girls.*+ The early Edo core text Onna daigaku
(Great Learning for Women), for example, spawned the Onna
dairaku (Great Fun for [or with] Women), and Onna imagawa
oshie-bumi (The Imagawa Admonitions for Women and Letters for
Teaching) gave rise to Onna shimegawa oshie-bumi (Love Letters
and a River of Erect Precepts for Women) (illus. 167 and 168).
Erotic variants might be termed parodies, or they might be
termed parallels of the original, with the second type used for
another purpose. These fit into the technique of yatsushi, or
‘eroticized analogy’, that is to be found in many Floating
World contexts, where a lofty figure from the past, or a
canonical theme, is reconfigured as a winsome modern.”

170 Sekk6, page

from Hyakunin
isshit shoku shibako,
c. 1764-76.
Honolulu Academy
of Art, Lane
Collection.

321
SAME-SEX EROTICA 171 Kitao
Shigemasa, page
from An Erotic
One of the intentions of Sex and the Floating World was to Programme of No
amalgamate illustrations of the varying sexual preferences. Plays (Yokyoku iro
bangumi), 1780.
One reviewer wrote, ‘the ease with which Screech moves
between discussion of same-sex and opposite-sex amatory
relations admirably avoids the ghettoization of same-sex
activities within a single chapter or section.’*° I specifically
did not create a separate chapter to cover male and female
homosexuality, and there were two reasons for this, one
historical, one artistic. Firstly, our sense of the normative dif-
fers from that of Edo times. Homoerotic encounters (whether
gay or paedophilic, in modern terminology) are scattered
through albums in which most of the other images are het-
erosexual. There are exclusively male—male shunga albums (I
have never seen an exclusively female-female one), but the
more common resort is to have one or two male—male images
within a male-female set. Such combinations assume that a
reader is not intended to be aroused by some images and
322
displeased by others. Outrage or ‘turn-off’ was clearly not
expected of the male or female, child or adult who flicked
through the range of illustrated possibilities, for all that
readers may have lingered, as a personal preference, on some
pictures more than others. Secondly, there are no figural or
imagistic features of same-sex shunga: as pictures, they are
identical with the different-sex kind.
Numerically, same-sex erotica is less, which is unsurpris-
ing, as probably less was made. But it is likely also that
survival rates are lower. After Meiji, much may have been
destroyed, as mores changed. Also, note that Yukio Mishima
is said to have owned a large collection of male—male erotica
from the Edo Period that his widow burned. Modern widows,
unable to accept this dimension of their husbands’ sexuality,
may have put paid to many collections.
Female—female imagery, where it exists, could have been
for female use, but it is not hard to suppose an audience of
prurient males. Elite households had women’s quarters, and
the shogun his vast &oku (great interior, or harem). There was
no shortage of male fascination with the goings-on inside
such places, but there was also no shortage of erotic potential
there for the women within. Female-only domestic spaces
were more common than male-only ones, outside some
specific contexts, like monasteries.
Male—male erotica has, collectively, left a full pictorial and
textual record. Most, however, is paedophile, and although
(as stated) the penile sensations of the boy are not unregis-
tered, it overwhelmingly assumes a dominant adult penetra-
tor and a penetrated boy, whose anus is his principal asset.
Kissing and fellatio are hardly ever seen (I know of only one
image, and it is set in China), though oral sex appears in
male-female shunga (illus. 162, 164 and 169).
In the first edition of Sex and the Floating World, | was
unable to offer any images of two adult males engaged in sex.
But the research of Ellis Tinios has discovered what eluded
me, and revealed that such shunga does exist, though it is
scarce (illus. 170 and 171).*7

323
A CHINESE CONNECTION

One further avenue of enquiry relating to shunga emerged

just as this second edition was close to completion. This is
the question of contact between Japanese publishers and
audiences and Continental erotica. Chinese and Korean
responses to Japanese shunga were noted on the very first
page of the original edition of Sex and the Floating World. But
it was not possible to estimate whether Chinese or Korean
imagery had entered Japan and had an impact there. It is still
impossible to comment on the Korean case, but information
has now appeared regarding the Chinese.
Ming printed erotica was found in Japan in the mid-
twentieth century, but it was uncertain when it had arrived,
so no link to the period of shunga production was possible.
However, an early seventeenth-century copy of the Chinese
Variegated Battle Arrays of the Flowery Camp (referred to
above), remounted in the form of a handscroll, has been
found, bearing a colophon by a Japanese owner, dated to
1763 (see illus. 115).?° Sadly, this inscription is anonymous,
but there maybe a link to that hero of Japanese shunga, Nishi-
kawa Sukenobu, who, it will be recalled, gave his name to the
erotic genre in toto, as Nishikawa-e (-e meaning picture). S6ren
Edgren has pointed out the similarities between the decora-
tive border of Variegated Battle Arrays, which is quite unusual
and actually rather European-looking, and the title-page toa
parody of the Tales of Ise, produced by Sukenobu in 1731 as
The Man of Old in Modern Guise (Mukashi otoko imayo sugata).
Sukenobu may have owned this Ming book, and if not he
must at least have seen it. An analysis of the colophon may
one day reveal it to be in Sokenobu’s handwriting.
Still more interesting is Hiromitsu Kobayashi’s discovery
of a Ming source behind a curious, undated and unsigned
Japanese book, Pictures of the Height of Sophistication (Farya
zetcho zu), attributed to Hishikawa Moronobu and reckoned
to date from the 1680s.*? It was assumed to have a Chinese
source, since the pictures look Chinese, and there is a Chinese
(kanbun) text next to the translation in Japanese. Kobayashi
has located the source, bearing the same title, Fengliu jue-
chang tu in Chinese. It is a high-luxury, colour-printed work,
and dated to 1606, which makes it earlier than any printed
shunga known from Japan. An analysis of the pictures must
324
wait for another scholar, but these two Chinese books offer a
wide range of sex positions and permutations, same- and
opposite-sex actions, interior and exterior views, and with
many pictures-within-pictures and the like.
Kobayashi has further suggested that one of the illustra-
tions, entitled “Awakening of the Erotic Impulse’ (Chun shui
ji/Shunsho ki), showing a woman re-robing after the event,
witha man assisting her, was the inspiration for a painting by
none other than Sukenobu, showing a similar woman, now
alone, tying the cords of her skirt, clearly Japanese, but with
a Chinese-style painting on a screen behind her.
As more Chinese erotica comes to light (it still languishes
hidden in the People’s Republic), more such borrowings may
come to light, suggesting a greater volume of Continental
erotica in Japan than has been imagined.
Shunga studies is now a recognized field, though one that
has not yet fully matured. There is more work to be done, but
I hope that, if the first edition was useful in setting out terms
for debate, then this second edition will continue to interest
and inform the reader.

225
References

INTRODUCTION

1 Peter Wagner, Eros Revived: Erotica and the Enlightenment in England

and America (London, 1988), p. 6. This point is also made in Lynn
Hunt, ‘Obscenity and the Origins of Modernity, 1500-1800’, The
Invention of Pornography: Obscenity and the Origins ofModernity,
1500-1800 (New York, 1993), pp. 9-18.

1 EROTIC IMAGES, PORNOGRAPHY, SHUNGA AND THEIR USE

1 Ernest Satow (ed.), The Voyage of Captain John Saris to Japan, 1613
(London, 1967); pp. Ixvii-lxviii.
2 Craig Clunas, Pictures and Visuality in Early Modern China
(London, 1997), pp. 151-2. These words are from Li Xu, 1597.
3 Kamigaito Ken’ichi, ‘Nikkan zenrin gaikono keifu, pt 2", pp. 4-10.
Choi Park-Kwang, ‘Japanese Sexual Customs and Cultures Seen
from the Perspective of the Korean Delegations to Japan’, Imaging/
Reading Eros (Bloomington, IN, 1995), pp. 76-8; in 1711 the Korean
Sin Yu-Han, in Hayyulok, recorded the existence in Japan of a song
which included the lines, ‘Show me the erotic, vivid pictures /
You're hiding in your bosom./I enjoy comparing us with those
pictures/...’, quoted in Choi, ibid., p. 77.
4 Ihara Saikaku, Nanshoku okagami, p. 36.
5 This term was invented by Steven Marcus in The Other Victorians:
A Study of Sexuality and Pornography in Mid-Nineteenth-Century
England (New York, 1974), pp. 44-5.
6 Ihara Saikaku, Shoen okagami, pp. 274-5. The work is also known
as Koshoku nidai otoko.
7 Anon., Koshoku tabi nikki, unnumbered last page from copy in
National Diet Library, Tokyo.
8 Nishizawa Ippt, Yakei tomo-jamisen (1708), p. 317.
g ‘Ogamu te ni koe no muchi utsu makurabon’; quoted in Hanasaki
Kazuo and Aoki Meir6, Senrytino shunga-shi, p. 106.
10 Azuma — ‘the East’ — means Edo. For the azuma-gata, see Tanobe
Tomizo, Igaku mitate edo no koshoku, pp..177-9.
11 Thara Saikaku, Koshoku ichidai otoko, p. 211 (including an illustra-
tion of the models on display in Nagasaki, where locals and
foreigners are viewing them).

326
12 The preface is reproduced in Tsuji Nobuo et al. (eds), Ukiyo-e hizo
methinshtt Utamakura, p. 53. For the illustrations see Kobayashi
Tadashi (ed.), Ukiyo-e soroi-mono: Makura-e, vol. 1, pp. 39-49.
13 For Kiyosabur0’s career, see Nojima Jisabur6 (ed.), Kabuki jinmei
jiten, p. 30. In the story, KiyosaburO’s name is written with the
character yo meaning ‘generation’ rather than ‘world’, which is
anachronistic since he changed upon adopting the name Arashi
(previously Hanai).
14 This inscription appears in ‘Hanazuma of the Hydgo-ya’ from the
series Gonin bijin aikyo kurabe (c. 1795-6). For a reproduction, see
Shugo Asano and Timothy Clark, The Passionate Art of Utamaro
(London, 1995), p. 171.
15 Julie Nelson Davis, ‘Drawing His Own Ravishing Features:
Kitagawa Utamaro and the Construction of a Public Identity in
Ukiyo-e Prints’, php thesis, University of Washington, Seattle
(1998), esp. pp. 172-292.
16 ‘Nigao-e de ateire o suru naga-tsubone’; quoted in Kimoto Itaru,
Onanii to nihonjin, p. 42.
17 Tanobe, Igaku mitate, p. 177.
18 The dtsubi-e exists asa genre showing close-ups of genitalia; as far
as | am aware, it has not previously been suggested that these
derive from dkubi-e, but the dating fits.
1g Hiraga Gennai, Nenashi-gusa kohen, pp. 124-6.
20 See Howard Link, The Theatrical Prints of the Torit Masters: A
Selection of Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Ukiyo-e (Honolulu,
HI, 1977), pp. 31-6. Dating of the lives of early Torii artists is
problematic, as several different people seem to have used the
same names.
21 Fora full translation, see Timothy Clark, Ukiyo-e Paintings in the
British Museum (London, 1992), pp. 24-6.
22 From 1793, non-Yoshiwara women could not be named, and in
1796 no women could be: see Suzuki Jazo, Ehon to ukiyo-e,
PP- 433-61.
23 For a discussion of this and other prints that move to (and more
specifically from) shunga, see Richard Lane, ’“Kiesareta shunga” o
abaku’, Geijitsu shincho (June 1994), pp- 3-47-
24 These have been partially studied by Hayashi Yoshikazu, Edo no
makura-e no nazo, pp. 38-63. However, Hayashi only considers the
post-Toyokuni sort. Shikitei Sanba states in the preface to
Hayagawari mune no karakui (1810) that Toyokuni was reviving a
style popular when he (Sanba) was young (Sanba was born in
1776); quoted in Tanemura Suehiro, Hakonuke karakuri kidan, p. 47.
25 Timon Screech, O-Edo ijin orai, pp. 177-89. See also Paula Findlen,
‘Humanism, Politics and Pornography in Renaissance Italy’, The
Invention of Pornography, ed. Lynn Hunt, p. 61 (with illustration).

327
 26 There are several senryii on the similarity of titles, see Hanasaki
and Aoki, Senryi no shunga-shi, pp. 43-4.
27 For a reproduction and transcription of the story, see Hayashi
Yoshikazu, Katsukawa Shunsho, p. 147-83, especially pp. 153-5.
Hayashi interprets the book being used as a guide to the
Yoshiwara (saiken), although the text refers to it as a makura zoshi.
28 Three classics are Kimoto, Onanii to nihonjin, Fukuda Kazuhiko,
Edo no seiaigaku, and Tanobe, Igaku mitate.
29 Tokasai, Shikudo kinpi sho, ed. Fukuda Kazuhiko, vol. 1, p. 62. The
old master is called Inpon.
30 See Fukuda’s comments, ibid., p. 63.
31 Fora transcription of the inscription and a (poor) reproduction,
see Sasaki JOhei, Okyo shasei gashi, p. 177; the sketch is from his
Jinbutsu seisha sohon (1770).
32 ‘Makura-e o takara ni yomu shikareru’; quoted in Yamaji Kanko,
ed., Suetsumehana yawa, p. 28.
33 ‘Makura-e mainichi kawaru okidokoro’; quoted in Hanazaki and
Aoki, Senrytino shunga-shi, p. 49.
34 Because of the abraded quality of the original, this translation is
tentative.
35 See Hanazaki and Aoki, Senryii no shunga-shi, pp. 69-70.
36 Clunas, Pictures and Visuality, p. 157.
37 Anzai Un’en, Kinsei meika shoga dan, p. 384.
38 Ota Nanpo et al., Shunso hiji, p. 6.
39 Henry Smith, ‘Overcoming the Modern History of “Shunga”’,
Imaging/Reading Eros, p. 27.
40 thara Saikaku, Koshoku ichidai otoko, p. 116.
41 Takeda Izumo et al., Kanadehon chiishingura, p. 368.
42 Ibid., headnote. The editor who makes this comment is Otoba Hiromu.
43 Smith, ‘Overcoming the Modern History of “Shunga””’, p. 28;
Hanasaki and Aoki, Senryii no shunga-shi, pp. 113-14.
44 Quoted in Asano and Clark, The Passionate Art of Utamaro, p. 285
(adapted).
45 Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Confessions (1782); quoted in Joan DeJean,
‘The Politics of Pornography’, The Invention of Pornography, ed.
Lynn Hunt, p. 110.
46 Shiba Kokan, Saiyii nikki, p. 70.
47 ‘Zashikimochi nise Tan’ytio kakete oki’; 1am grateful to Kasuya
Hiroki for supplying me with this verse; in the Yanagidaru it is
no. 21/4/4/omote.
48 ‘Baka fufu shunga o manete te o kujiki’; ‘muri ni shunga no mane o
shite tsujichigai’; quoted in Hanasaki and Aoki, Senryil no shunga-
Sil) p. 43.

328
2 TIME AND PLACE IN EDO EROTIC IMAGES

1 Robert Darnton, New York Review ofBooks, December 1994; quoted

in Smith, ‘Overcoming the Modern History of “Shunga””’, p. 26.
2 Hayashi Yoshikazu, Edo no makura-e no nazo, p. 164-Asano Shugo
and Shirakura Yoshihiko, ‘Shunga shuy6 mokuroku’, Ukiyo-e
soroi-mono: Makura-e (1995), pp. 32-42. More fully (arranged
chronologically, not by illustrator) is Shirakura and Kogawa
Shin’ya (eds), ‘[Makura-e] nenpy0’, pp. 129-37.
3 Matthi Forrer, ‘Shunga Production in the 18th and 19th Centuries’,
Imaging/Reading Eros, table on p. 23.
4 Ibid., p. 24.
5 Nakano Eizo, Edo jidai: koshoku bungeibon jiten, p. 230.
6 Nakano Mitsutoshi, ‘Kyoho kaikaku no bunka-teki igi’, pp. 53-63.
All relevant publishing controls are quoted.
7 Fora recent study on the birth of the multi-coloured print, see
Edo-Tokyo Museum (ed.), Nishiki-e tanjo: Edo shomin bunka no kaika
(exhibition catalogue, 1996).
8 See for example, Takizawa Bakin, Kiryo manroku, p. 207.
9 Forrer, ‘Shunga Production’, p. 24.
10 See note 1/33 above.
11 This generalized figure is now accepted by almost all sources.
12 Samuel Pepys, Diary, 13/1/1668 and 9/1/1668; see The Shorter
Pepys, ed. Richard Lathan (Harmondsworth, 1986), pp. 873, 875.
13 Until recently, scholars misread ehon (erotic book) as enpon, a pos-
sible, though incorrect pronunciation; some continue to do this,
but it obliterates the double meaning.
14 Takuchi Makoto, ‘Festivals and Fights: The Law and the People of
Edo’, Edo and Paris: Urban Life and the State in the Early Modern Era,
ed. James L. McClain et al. (Ithaca, Ny and London, 1994), p. 402.
More generally, see Noguchi Takehiko, Edo no wakamono-ko.
15 See Fujita Satoru, Matsudaira Sadanobu, p. 111.
16 Matsudaira Sadanobu, Uge no hitokoto, p. 112.
17 ‘Utamaro no bijin fusuma de toshi 0 yoru’; quoted in Timothy
Clark, ‘Utamaro and Yoshiwara’, The Passionate Art of Utamaro,
p. 45 (my own translation).
18 Ishino Hiromichi, Esoragoto, p. 270.
19 Engelbert Kaempfer, A History ofJapan together with a Description of
the Kingdom of Siam (London, 1727), p. 206.
20 Muro Kyis6, Kenzan hisaku, pp. 263-64.
21 Moriyama Takamori, Shizu no odamaki, p. 240.
22 Ibid., p. 242. For the expansion of theatrical styles, see also
C. Andrew Gerstle, ‘Flowers of Edo: Kabuki and its Patrons’, 18th
Century Japan (Sydney, 1989).
23 Moriyama Takamori, Ama no yakimo no ki (1798), pp. 706-7.
24 Yuasa Genzo, Kokui-ron (17937?), p. 36.

329
25 Moriyama Takamori, Ama no yakimo no ki, pp. 706-7.
26 Matsura Seizan, Kasshi yawa, vol. 11, p. 31. The family name is
sometimes given as ‘Matsuura’.
27 This event is reported in Sugita Genpaku, Nochimigusa, p. 77. For
a parody of the shinjii fad, see Santo Kyoden, Edo umare uwaki no
kabayaki (1785), pp. 176-7.
28 See above note.
29 Anon., Tenmei kibun, kansei kibun (date unknown), p. 194. The
building is referred to as a chaya built in the style of those on Naka-
no-cho (the Yoshiwara’s central street), complete with engawa and
somagaki (verandah and blinds).
30 I refer to Saikaku’s novels Késhoku ichidai otoko (1682), Koshoku
ichidai onna (1686) and Késhoku gonin onna (1686).
31 Anon., Tenmei kibun, kansei kibun, p. 194.
32 For Eishi, see Kobayashi Tadashi, ‘Gazoku no koo: honga to
ukiyo-e’, pp. 367-9. For Michinobu, see Timon Screech, The
Shogun’s Painted Culture, pp. 136-40. Eishi’s father was kanjobugyo
(chancellor of the exchequer) and Michinobu was oku-eshi
(painter-in-attendance on the shogunal house).
33 See Kobayashi Tadashi, Hanabusa Itcho, pp. 23-7. It was only after
his return that he took the name Itcho.
34 For this incident, see Naito Masato, ‘Chobunsai Eishi no iwayuru
“Yoshiwara kayoi zukan” ni tsuite’, Nikuhitsu ukiyo-e taikan (1996).
35 Kobayashi Tadashi, ‘“Sumida gawa ryogan zukan” no seritsu to
tenkai’, Kokka, 1172 (1993), pp. 5-22.
36 Asaoka Kyotei, Zocho koga biko (c. 1845), quoted in Naito Masato,
‘Chobunsai Eishi no iwayuru “Yoshiwara kayoi zukan” ni tsuite’,
Pp. 240.
37 Timothy Clark, ‘The Rise and Fall of the Island of Nakazu’,
Archives of Asian Art, 45 (1992), pp. 72-91.
38 Sugita Genpaku, Nochimigusa, p. 81.
39 Matsura Seizan, Kasshi yawa, vol. v, p. 67.
40 Anon., Tenmei kibun, kansei kibun, p. 260.
41 Sugita Genpaku, Nochimigusa, pp. 84-5.
42 Matsudaira Sadanobu, Taikan zakki, p. 40.
43 Moriyama Takamori, Ama no yakimo no ki, p. 606.
44 Matsudaira Sadanobu, Seigo, p. 273.
45 ‘Yanebune mo yakata mo ima goyosen chitchin wa naku tsuchi
tsunde iku’; quoted in Saito Gesshia, Buko nenpyo (1849), vol. 11,
p- 3- For the Nakazu policy generally, see Shibusawa Eiichi, Rakuo-
koden, p. 155, and Clark, ‘Rise and Fall’. The verse was later attrib-
uted to Ota Nanpo, see Clark, ibid., p. 89.
46 Matsudaira Sadanobu, Uge no hitokoto, p. 143.
47 Ibid. See Timon Screech, The Shogun’s Painted Culture, pp. 102-10.
48 Matsudaira Sadanobu, Shugyo-roku, pp. 184, 190, 192.

330
49 Shibusawa Eiichi, Rakud-K6 den, p. 187.
50 ‘Tenaga ga ashinaga ga hairikomu no furo no uchi’; quoted in
Yamaji Kanko, Suetsumuhana yawa, p. 206.
51 See, for example, Shiba Kokan’s letter of 1813 to Yamaryo
Kazuma, reproduced in Nakano Yoshio, Shiba Kokan ko, p. 43.
52 ‘Onna yuno shdjigata wa anadarake’. | am grateful to Kasuya
Hiroki for alerting me to this verse.
53 Fora selection of ukiyo-e showing bathing, see Hanasaki Kazuo,
“Nyttyoku’ hadaka no fizoku-shi.
54 James McClain, Kanazawa: A Seventeenth-Century Japanese Castle
Town (New Haven, cr and London, 1982), pp. 113, 143. This had
not always been the case, see ibid., p. 64. Kanazawa technically did
have bathhouses, but they were permitted to open only six days
per month.
55 Katsuragawa Hoshi, Hokusa bunryaku, p. 584.
56 Sato Narihiro, Chiryo manroku, p. 160. Narihiro is also called
Churyo.
57 For Toryo (or Toryt, more often called Hoitsu), see Naito Masato,
‘Sakai Hoitsu no ukiyo-e’, Kokko, 1191 (1995), pp- 19-27. For the
(mistaken) claim about Sdtatsu, see Hiroshi Mizuo, Edo Painting:
Sotatsu and Korin, trans. John M. Shields, vol. xvimt of Heibonsha
Survey ofJapanese Art (1972), p. 45: ‘[Sotatsu] never seems to have
concerned himself with depicting the life and manners of his own
time’. This has become a cliche of Sdtatsu lore.
58 For Shigemasa’s shunga titles, see Asano Shagoand Shirakara
Yoshihiko, ‘Shunga shuy6 mokuroku’, pp. 135-6.
59 Toshoga engi emaki; the work is now in the Tokyo National
Museum.
60 For Keisai, see Uchida Kinzé, ‘Kuwagata Keisai kenkyt: okaka
eshi jidai no katsud6 o megutte’, Kokka, 1158-9 (1992), and Henry
Smith, ‘World Without Walls’, Japan and the World (London, 1988).
61 Santo Kyozan, Itcho ryi-teki ko; ms in National Diet Library, Tokyo.
For Hoseid6 Kisanji’s novels, see Koike Masatane et al. (eds), Edo
no gesaku ehon, vol. 11, pp. 107-42; for Nanpo’s verse, see Hanada
Giichiro, Ota Nanpo, p. 130. For the history of this set of scrolls, see
Asakura Hidehiko, Edo shokunin-zukushi, pp. 1-9.
62 See Robert Campbell, ‘Poems on the Way to Yoshiwara’, Imaging/
Reading Eros, p. 95.
63 This text appears at bottom left of illustration 30.
64 Matsura Seizan, Kasshi yawa; quoted in Asakura Hidehiko, Edo
shokunin zukushi, p. 2.
65 Matsudaira Sadanobu, Taikan zakki, p. 35. The term rendered ‘vul-
garity’ is iyashiki.
66 Moriyama Takamori, Shizu no odamaki, pp. 251-2. The books
referred to are Kusunoki ichidai ki, Yoshitsune ichidai ki, Hachikazuki,

534
 67 For the death of Iemoto, see Blussé et al. (eds), The Deshima
Dagregisters (Leiden, 1995), Vol. Ix, p. 232.
68 The motto comes from Yamamoto Tsunemoto: see below, note 77.
69 Fora discussion, see Eiko Ikegami, The Taming of the Samurai
(Cambridge, MA and London, 1995), pp. 253-64.
70 Tachibana Nankei, Hokuso sadan, pp. 204-5.
71 Furushima Toshio, ‘The Village and Agriculture during the Edo
Period’, p. 498.
72 Yuasa Genzo, Kokui-ron, pp. 6-8.
73 Ibid.
74 Matsudaira Sadanobu, Seigo, p. 255.
75 For Nankei’s anatomical work, see Nihon Ishi Gakkai (ed.), Nikon
iji bunka shiryo shiisei, vol. 11, pp. 37-52.
76 Matsudaira Sadanobu, Taikan zakki, p. 158.
77 Yamamoto Tsunemoto, Hagakure, p. 44. The source of the com-
ment was the doctor Jun’an (d. 1660).
78 Sharakusai, Tosei anabanashi; quoted in Nakamura Yukihiko,
Gesaku-ron, p. 121.
79 Takizawa Bakin, in Kiryo manroku, p. 43, reported seeing a play of
Ranmaru’s life performed in Osaka.
80 Ota Kinjo, Gosd manpitsu, p. 250. The battle was Fukushimaguchi
taikassen.
81 Ihara Saikaku, Nanshoku dkagami, p. 593.
82 Ota Kinjo, Gosd manpitsu, pp. 152, 250-1.
83 Nishiyama Matsunosuke et al. (eds), Edo-gaku jiten, p. 557.
84 ‘Yoshicho no shdji ni utsuru gozdshi’; quoted in Shunro-an Shijin,
Edo rio shikido (1996), vol. 1, p. 108. Yoshitsune is referred to as
Gozoshi.
85 His legends were collected in the Giheiki; see Helen Craig
McCullough (trans. and ed.), Yoshitsune: A Fifteenth-Century
Japanese Chronicle (Stanford, CA, 1996).
86 Ihara Saikaku, Nanshoku okagami, p. 593.
87 This was interestingly suggested (perhaps unwittingly) in the recent
Takarazuka play Shinsengumi, in which the Meiji reformers begin
creation of a new state by killing all the homosexuals among them.
88 Shikitei Sanba, Shikitei zakki (1811); quoted in Teruoka Yasutaka,
‘The Pleasure Quarters in Tokugawa Culture’, 18th Century Japan
(Sydney, 1989), p. 27, and more generally in Celia Segawa Seigle,
Yoshiwara: The Glittering World of the Japanese Courtesan (Honolulu,
HI, 1993), PP- 204-23.

332
3 BODIES, BOUNDARIES, PICTURES

H George Steiner, ‘Night Words: High Pornography and Human

Privacy’, Language and Silence: Essays on Language, Literature and the
Humanities (New York, 1977), p. 70.
i) thara Saikaku, Koshoku ichidai otoko, p. 41.
1S) Matsuo Bashoin Kai 0i (1672) makes the first claim, while his Saga
nikki (1691) records his love for one Tsuboi Tokoku; see Iwata
Junichi, ‘Haijin basho no dosei-ai’, p. 260.
a Katsushikano Inshi, Todai edo hyaku bakemono, p. 393.
Wa Paul Schalow, ‘The Invention of a Literary Tradition of Male Love:
Kitamura Kigin’s Iwatsutsuji’, Monumenta Nipponica, XLVI (1993),
pp. 1-31.
oy For the teleology of ‘ways’, see Konishi Jun’ichi, ‘Michi and
Medieval Writing’, Principles ofClassical Japanese Literature, ed. Earl
Miner (Princeton, NJ and Guilford, 1985), pp. 181-208.
Ni The ‘five blocks’ were Edo-ch6 1 and 2, KyOmachi 1 and 2, and
Sumi-ch6 (there had been five blocks in the old Yoshiwara and,
although the new Yoshiwara had a sixth block, Ageya-cha, the
former name persisted). The ‘two blocks’ were Yoshi-cho itself
and Fukiya-cho. ~*~
8 Richard Lane (ed.), Okumura Masanobu: ‘Neya no hinagata’ (1996),
pp. 34-5. The specific reference is to the anonymous Aikya sanmen
daikoku (early 1740s); see ibid., fig. 22.
9 Kobayashi Tadashi and Asano Shtigo (eds), Ukiyo-e soroi-mono:
Makura-e, vol. 1, p. 19. A different, unattributed translation is given
there.
10 Fora full treatment, see Rictor Norton, Mother Clap’s Molly-house:
Gay Subculture in England, 1700-1830 (London, 1992), pp. 92-106.
11 Jippensha Ikku, Tokaidochii hizakurige, pp. 22-3. The reader should
be aware that this is censored out of the only English translation —
Hizakurige or Shank’s Mare, trans. Thomas Satchell (Rutland, vr,
and Tokyo, 1960).
12 Gary Leupp, Male Colors, p. 138.
13 Ihara Saikaku, Nanshoku okagami, p. 552-7.
14 Koike Togor6, Koshoku monogatari, p. 265. The two retainers
involved are Sakabe Gonzaemon and Hotta Masamori (later made
rojii [shogunal counsellor]); they are referred to as nen‘yil no kosho
or ‘boy lovers’.
15 Sharakusai, Tosei anabanashi; quoted in Nakamura, Gesaku-ron,
p. 124.
16 Konoe Ieharu, Kiki (mid-seventeenth century); quoted in
Tanemura Suehiro, Hako-nuke karakuri kidan, p. 26. The previous
female shujo was Koken (r. 749-58).
17 Ban Kokei, Kinsei kijin-den (1790), p. 301.
18 Sugita Genpaku, Nochimigusa, p. 65.

333
19 Sugita Genpaku, Rangaku kotohajime (1816), p. 496.
20 Timon Screech (trans. Takayama Hiroshi), Edo no karada o hiraku
(1997).
21 Thomas Laqueur, Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to
Freud (Cambridge, MA, and London, 1990), pp. 7-113.
22 For this nexus of personalities, see Timon Screech, The Western
Scientific Gaze and Popular Imagery in Later Edo Japan: The Lens
within the Heart (Cambridge and New York, 1996), p. 28 and
passim.
23 This event is well known. See, among others, Sugimoto Tsutomu,
‘Kaitai shinsho no jidai’. For Kulm, see A. M. Luyendijk-Elshout,
‘“Ontleedinge” (Anatomy) as Underlying Principle of Western
Medicine in Japan’, Red-Hair Medicine: Dutch-Japanese Medical
Relations, ed. H. Beukers et al. (Amsterdam and Atlanta, 1991); the
Dutch translation of Kulm was entitled Ontleedkundige Tafelen.
24 Sugita Genpaku et al. (trans. and ed.), Kaitai shinsho, p. 323 (illus-
trator’s preface).
25 Sugita Genpaku, Rangaku kotohajime, pp. 489-95; it is not certain
that Hoshtiwas present at the dissection, since on one occasion
Genpaku says he was, but on another he leaves his name off the
list.
26 William Heckscher, Rembrandt's Anatomy Lesson of Dr Nicolaas Tulp
(New York, 1958), p. 32.
27 Sugita Genpaku, Rangaku kotohajime, p. 492. [have argued that
Genpaku’s reconstruction of events is not quite credible: see
Screech, Edo no karada, pp. 162-8.
28 For Thunberg’s biography, see Catharina Blomberg, ‘Carl Peter
Thunberg: A Swedish Scholar in Tokugawa Japan’, Contemporary
European Writing on Japan: Scholarly Views from Eastern and Western
Europe, ed. lan Nish (Ashford, 1988).
29 Charles Thunberg, Thunberg’s Travels, trans. F and C. Rivington
(London, 1795), vol. 111, pp. 178, 201.
30 Jennifer Robertson, ‘Sexy Rice: Plants, Gender, Farm Manuals, and
Grassroots Nativism’, Monumenta Nipponica, xxx1x (1984), p. 236.
31 Peter Wagner, Eros Revived, p. 42.
32 Luyendijk-Elshout, ‘“Ontleedinge” (Anatomy) as Underlying
Principle’, pp. 27-8.
33 For an English-language analysis, see Gregory M. Pflugfelder,
‘Strange Fates: Sex, Gender and Sexuality in Torikaebaya
monogatari’, Monumenta Nipponica, xLvit (1992), pp. 347-68.
34 [have also translated the title as ‘Red-fur Miscellany’: see Screech,
Western Scientific Gaze, p. 21.
35 For Gérard de Lairesse, see Alain Roy, Gérard de Lairesse
(1640-1711).
36 Morishima Chiryo, Komo zatsuwa, p. 479.

334
37 Paula Findlen, ‘Humanism, Politics and Pornography in
Renaissance Italy’, p. 57.
38 Ernest Satow (ed.), The Voyage of Captain John Saris to Japan
(London, 1967), p. 83.
39 Ibid., p. 204. Saris states 200-300 mas; 1 mas = 6d. Iam grateful to
Derek Masserella for alerting me to this reference.
40 lam grateful to Matsuda Kiyoshi for the details of these books.
Full particulars appear in his Yogaku no shoshiteiki kenkyii (Kyoto,
1998). For Kokan, see Shiba Kokan, Shuparohikki, p- 58. Kokan
claims to have read the story in weirerudo beshikereihingu (wereld
beschrijving) in the possession of the daimyo of Fukuchiyama,
Katsuki Masatsuna, although he surely read it in the Japanese
translation.
a er Mishima Yukio, Kamen no kokuhaku, pp. 189-92. This book is
known in English as Confessions of a Mask.
42 Mishima also noted that images of St Sebastian often had this
autoerotic purpose, see ibid.
43 Kenneth Clark, The Nude (Harmondsworth, 1956), pp. 6-7. By
the time the book was written, Clark was chairman of the
Independent Television Authority.
44 T.J. Clark, The Painting of Modern Life, pp. 79-146.
45 Ibid.
46 Sato Doshin, ‘Nihon bijutsu’ no tanjo, pp. 132-8.
47 For another interpretation of the large size of genitals, see below.
48 A famous case are the Harunobu boys (misread as girls) in the
Koya print from the Mu-tamagawa series — see illus. 111 below.
49 Edouard de Goncourt, Outamarou, peintre des maisons vertes (1891).
For the term seird, see Timothy Clark, ‘Utamaro and Yoshiwara:
the “Painter of the Greenhouses” Reconsidered’, The Passionate Art
of Utamaro, p. 35.
50 Anne Hollander, Seeing Through Clothes (Berkeley and Los
Angeles, ca, and London, 1993), pp. 6-12.
51 Asano Shugo, ‘Shunga no jidai kubun’ (unpublished paper).
52 Satake Yoshiatsu (Shozan), Gaho kory@, p. 102.
53 Shiba Kokan, Seiyogadan (1799), p. 403. He used the phrase sanmen
on ho.
54 Sato Narihiro, Chairyo manroku, p. 76.
55 Satake Yoshiatsu (Shozan), Gaho kory0, p. 101.
56 For reproductions, see Naruse Fujio et al. (eds), Shiba Kokan zenshit
(1992), vol. Iv, figs 102-3. One is a line drawing, the other is exe-
cuted in the Floating World manner.
57 For attribution of the work, dating and assignment of the title, see
Hayashi Yoshikazu (ed.), Shigenobu ‘Yanagi no arashi’, pp. 1-3.
58 For this scroll, as well as further remarks on the depiction of for-
eigners, see Chapter Six.
59 Yuasa Akeyoshi, Tenmei taisei-roku, p. 210. The phrase was ‘yujo
tagasode o kaiage’.
60 Koikawa Harumachi, Muda iki, pp. 116-17.
61 Yanagisawa Kien, Hitorine (c. 1710), p. 156; Ota Nanpo, Hoton
chinkai, quoted in Hanasaki Kazuo and Sato Yoshito, Shokoku yiri
Zue, p. 276.
62 Matsudaira Sadanobu, Uge no hitokoto, p. 102.
63 Ruth Shaver, Kabuki Costume (Rutland, vr, and Tokyo, 1966),
Pp- 77-8.
64 Blussé et al. (eds), Deshima Dagregisters, vol. x, pp. 8-9.
65 So named in Masanobu’s categorization, see Chapter Five. There
were said to be forty-eight sexual positions (shija hatte), although
which was what depended on the writer.
66 Hayashi Yoshikazu, Edo no makura-eshi (1987), p. 276. Fukuda
Kazuhiko refers to the same book under the title of Haru no sewa:
see his Ukiyo-e: edo no shiki (1987), pp. 110-11.

4 SYMBOLS IN SHUNGA

1 Hayashi Yoshikazu attributes the pictures to a follower of Eisen

and the text to Tamenaga Shunsui; see his Edo ehon 0 sagase (1993),
p. 106. Otsuru is seen cavorting with the boy next door.
2 Asai Ryoi, Ukiyo monogatari; quoted in Howard Hibbett, The
Floating World in Japanese Fiction, p. 11.
3, Hamada Giichiro (ed.), Edo bungaku chimei jiten, p. 371.
4 Muroyama Genjiro, Kosenrya ni miru kyo, omi, pp. 57-61.
5 ‘Toshidoshi saisai kyaku 0 yobu tame ni ue; Sakura ni hito o
tsunagu yoshiwara; Yoshiwara e hairu sakura mo wakaki nite’;
quoted in Sato Naoto, Senryi yoshiwara fuzoku zue, pp. 84-6.
6 Fujiwara no Kanesuke (attrib.). ‘Hanazakura oru shOdsh0’ is con-
tained in his Tsutsumi chtinagon monogatari, pp. 4-101.
7 Quoted in Richard Bowring, ‘The Ise monogatari: A Short Cultural
History’, Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, 52 (1992), p. 413. lam
grateful to Cynthia Daugherty for pointing this passage out to me.
8 ‘Anibun ni ume o tanomu ya chigozakura’; quoted in Iwata
Jun’ichi, ‘Haijin basho no dosei-ai’, p. 260.
9 Note that the narcissus in Japanese (suisen) has none of the indica-
tions of narcissism which come from Greek legend.
10 Patricia Fister, Kinsei no josei gakatachi (1994), p. 222. Joryt’s name
is sometimes inverted as Rytjo.
ai Ibid, P2195.
12 See Donald H. Shively, ‘The Social Environment of Tokugawa
Kabuki’, Studies in Kabuki: Its Acting, Music, and Historical Content
(Honolulu, H1, 1978), pp. 29-45; the lady was Ejima, the actor
Ikushima Shingor6, and at the time of the event (1714) she was

336
 thirty-three and he forty-three. The shogun was letsugu.
13 In the eighteenth century, Ju Citong (Jap. Kikujido) was often
taken as the ancestor of nanshoku; see, for example, the anony-
mous Fiizoku shichi ytidan (1756), cited in Shunro-an Shijin, Edo no
shikido, vol. 1, p. 34.
14 Ueda Akinari, Ugetsu monogatart, pp. 47-58.
15 ‘Omoi izuru tokiwa no yama no iwatsutsuji wa neba koso are
koishiki mono 0’; see Ki no Tsurayuki (ed.), Kokin wakashii, p. 205.
16 For the Kobo Daishi myth, see chapter Five below.
17 For Kigin’s Genji scholarship, see Thomas J. Harper, ‘The Tale of
Genji in the Eighteenth Century’, 18th Century Japan, pp. 106-7,
and for Iwa-tsutsuji, see Paul Schalow, ‘The Invention of a Literary
Tradition of Male Love: Kitamura Kigin’s Iwatsutsuji’.
18 Ota Nanpo, Iwa-tsutsuji, pp. 367-86. The wakashii text was by
Hosokawa Genshi, ibid., pp. 479-82.
19 Ihara Saikaku, Nanshoku okagami, p. 25. For the source of this
myth, see chapter Six.
20 Kumazawa Banzan, Shiigi washo (late 1740s); quoted in Gregory
M. Pflugfelder, ‘Cartographies of Desire: Male—Male Sexuality in
Japanese Discourse,1600-1850’, PhD thesis, Stanford University,
CA, 1996, p. 190, n. 23, and Hiraga Gennai, Nenashi-gusa kohen,
p. 150.
21 Suzuki Hiroyuki, ‘Rakuda 0 egaku’, Bijutsu-sht, 338 (1987),
pp. 128-46. For the 1793 request, see Blussé et al. (eds), The Deshima
Dagregisters, vol. x, p. 38.
22 The arrival of the whale and the shogunal viewing are recorded in
the anonymous Tenmei kibun, Kansei kibun, p. 280. For other popu-
lar celebrations, see Screech, Western Scientific Gaze, pp. 244-6.
23 Nakano Eizo, Edo higo jiten, pp. 242-3. The term was ‘shakuhachi
sori’.
24 ‘Uwazori no ada shakuhachi no yo ni soe’; ibid.
25 ‘Katsuragi: tsuki tarade keya no himamono kaze no oto’.
26 See Hillier, Suzuki Harunobu, p. 82 (with illustration). Ehon uku
medori dates from c. 1743.
27 For Inagaki Tsurujo, see Fister, Kisei no josei gaka-tacht, p. 223
(where the Idemitsu Museum version of this painting is illus-
trated).
28 For a reproduction see Sawada Akira, Nihon gaka jiten: jinmei hen,
Pp34t-
29 The series is entitled Hinagata wakana no hatsumoyo.
30 The Tokyo National Museum version is illustrated here; for the
Idemitsu Museum version see above, note 27.
31 Gary P. Leupp, Male Colours, p. 121; Paul Schalow, ‘Review of
Gary P. Leupp, “Male Colors’”, Journal ofJapanese Studies, 23
(1997), p. 199. Schalow takes issues with Leupp’s assumption that

Bo7,
 fellatio necessarily occurred. However it certainly did, as is
attested by an untitled manuscript by Okada Shogi (ignored by
the above writers) dated to 1794, which refers to heterosexual fel-
latio as ‘silk trembling’; the relevant section is quoted in Stephen
and Ethel Longstreet, Yoshiwara: The Pleasure Quarters of Old Tokyo
(Rutland, vr, and Tokyo, 1988), p. 78, although they provide
inadequate bibliographic details. For a continuation of the
Leupp-Schalow debate, see Journal ofJapanese Studies, 24 (1988),
pp. 218-23.
32 See Timon Screech (Murayama Kazuhiro, trans.), Edo no shiko
kukan (Seidosha, 1998), pp. 161-98, and Mori Yoko, ‘Nihon no
shabon-dama no gui to sono zuzo’, Mirai, 344 (1995), pp. 2-15.
33 For reproductions see Screech, ibid.
34 Translated in John M. Rosenfield and Shijird Shimada, Traditions
ofJapanese Art: Selections from the Kimiko and John Powers Collection
(Cambridge, MA, 1970), p. 362. Rosenfield and Shimada also iden-
tify Tankytias Akutagawa Tankyt, although suggesting a slightly
earlier date for the painting.
35 See, for example, Namiki Gohei, Tomigaoka koi no yamabiraki (1798),
quoted in Hamana Giichiro, Edo bungaku chimei jiten, p. 186.
36 The preface is transcribed, with publication data, in Tanahashi
Masahiro, Kibyoshi soran vol. 111, p. 151.
37 thara Saikaku, Haikai dokugin ichinichi senku, p. 154.
38 Nanshoku yamaji no tsuyu is signed Nankai Sanjin, thought to be
Sukenobu’s pen name; see the version edited by Omura Shage
(1978), pp. 1-6.
39 For the publishing history of this series (which changed publisher
part way through) see Asano Shiigo and Timothy Clark, The
Passionate Art of Utamaro, p. 235. Although he calls the types phys-
iognomic, in all cases it is the actions of the women that betray
them, not their faces. The inscription reads ‘Somi Utamaro kaga’.
40 Ota Nanpo, Hanga kandan (1804), quoted in Teramoto Kaiyt,
Nagasaki-bon: Nanban komo jiten (Keishosha, 1974).
41 For example, Hitogokoro kagami no utsushi-e (1796); see Screech,
Lens Within the Heart, p. 117.
42 Otsuki Gentaku, ‘Kankai ibun’, p- 531.
43 Clunas, Pictures and Visuality, p. 155. The book was found in Japan
in 1945, although its period of entry (and the date of the book
itself) is unknown. There are some concerns about its authenticity,
see idem.
44 Mishima Yukio, Gogo no eiko, p. 308. John Nathan’s translation,
The Sailor who Fell from Grace with the Sea (Harmondsworth, 1970),
p. 12, misrepresents this image, however, by rendering Mishima’s
‘temple roof’ as ‘temple tower’.
45 Leupp, Male Colours, p. 175; characteristically Leupp does not

338
 properly source this anecdote, so | am not able to confirm its
authenticity.
46 ‘Hamaguri ni hashi o shitsuka to hasamarete shige tachikanuru
aki no yiigure’.
47 Shirahata Yosaburo, Daimya teien, p. 165 (with illustration).
48 ‘Otoko-yama to mo iisOna Inari-yama; Oya-oya to yome
torikaneru Inariyama; Inari-yama tsto ushinau jo-sennin’; quoted
in Muroyama, Kosenryii ni miru kyo, omi, pp. 143-6. The warlock
referred to is Kume-sennin.
49 Ihara Saikaku, Saikaku shokoku-banashi, pp. 263-388 (with illustra-
tion).
50 Scho, ‘Saijd no bomon nite’, in Sochd shitki, p. 805. Sdcho is best
known as Ikkya Sojun’s renga partner (renga are linked verses
composed sequentially, usually by two or more poets).
51 Leupp, Male Colours, p. 41, quoting Donald Keene, ‘The Comic
Tradition in Renga’, Japan in the Muromachi Age, ed. John W. Hall
and Toyoda Takeshi (Berkeley and Los Angeles, ca, and London,
1977), P- 275:
52 Screech, Edo no karada o hiraku, pp. 30-45.

5 THE SCOPIC REGIMES OF SHUNGA

1 Regrettably no readily available reproduction of this image exists.

It is contained in Hokusai manga.
2 ‘Notte e giorno faticar,/Per chi nulla sa gradit,/Piova e vento
sopportar,/Mangiar male e mal dormir. /Voglio far il gentiluomo/
E non voglio piu servir./Oh che caro galantuomo!/ Voi star dentro
colla bella,/Ed io far la sentinella!’
3, Ujiie Mikito, Bushido to erosu (1995), pp. 11-14.
4 Ibid.
5 Ibid., pp. 14-16.
6 ‘Waka-danna yo wa ogande hiru shihari’. Yamaji Kanko (ed.),
Suetsumuhana yawa, p. 25.
7 ‘Tsuki ya aranu haru ya mukashi no haru naranu waga mi hitotsu
wa moto no mini shite’: Ise monogatari, p. 82.
8 ‘Kimi ya koshi ware ya yukiken omohoezu yume ka utsutsu ka
nete ka samete ka’. Kino Tsurayuki (ed.), Kokin wakashu, p. 230.
9 As wellas the British Museum version reproduced here, there is a
virtually identical one formally in the Azabu Museum of Arts and
Crafts, Tokyo, and a third in the Museo d’Arte Orientale ‘Edoardo
Chiossone’, Genoa.
10 Anon., Ise monogatari, pp. 91-2.
11 Thara Saikaku, Koshoku ichidai otoko, p. 213.
12 See Kendall H. Brown, The Politics of Reclusion: Painting and Power
in Muromachi Japan (Honolulu, H1, 1997), pp. 73-161. Brown

999
 stresses the nanshoku elements of the story.
13 Onishi Hiroshi, ‘Nihon, chagoku no geijitsuka densetsu’,
Geijitsuka densetsu (1989), pp. 213-16.
14 For the publication details, see Hayashi Yoshikazu, Edo makura-e
no naZzO, pp. 235-65.
15 The original names are Kagiya and Yanagiya. The iconography is
that Osen is by a red shrine pillar, while Ofuji has gingko leaves
scattered on the ground.
16 For an analysis of publishing controls of this kind, see Suzuki Jz6,
Ehon to ukiyo-e, pp. 433-61.
17 Komatsu-ya Hyakki, Faryii koshoku maneemon, p. 122. The text also
refers to Kappa Sanjin, author of Nanshoku saiken: kiku no sono
(1764).
18 For the text, see Koike Masatane et al. (eds), Edo no gesaku ehon,
vol. 1, pp. 11-30.
19 Hogarth’s set was published in 1735. Sumie Jones has examined
the links between these two works in ‘William Hogarth and Kitao
Masanobu: Reading Eighteenth-Century Pictorial Narratives’,
Yearbook of Comparative and General Literature, xxxtv (1985),
PP=3/-73:
20 Komatsu-ya Hyakki, Faryi koshoku maneemon, p. 122.
21 Anon., Ise monogatart, p. 79.
22 For a modern edition, see Kimura Shage (ed.), Hihon: Edo bungaku-
sen, vol. Il.
23 Anon., Koshoku toshiotoko, quoted in Hayashi, Edo makura-e no
nazo, p. 239. The analysis of the story that follows is my own.
24 For details, see Tanahashi Masahiro, Kibydshi soran, vol. 1, p. 137.
25 Screech, Western Scientific Gaze.
26 Shiba Kokan, Tenchi ridan, p. 246. See also Screech, Lens Within the
Heart, p. 172.
27 Ihara Saikaku, Koshoku ichidai otoko, pp. 44-5.
28 For another, similar illustration to the tale, dating to the early
seventeenth century, see Hayasahi, Edo ehon o sagase, p. 40.
29 For the text, see Koike Masatane et al. (eds), Edo no gesaki ehon,
vol. 1, pp. 251-80. For an explanation of the title, see ibid., p. 250.
30 Anon., Kamigata iro shugyd, quoted in Hayashi, Edo makura-e no
nazo, p. 183.
31 ‘Ukiyo eshi bobo 0 miru no mo shigoto nari’; quoted in ibid.,
p. 174; a similar senryd appears in Hanasaki and Aoki, Senryii no
shunga-shi, p. 83.
32 Anon., Otome sugata, transcribed in Fukuda Kazuhiko, Ukiyo-e edo
no shiki, pp. 48-9. For a reproduction of the illustration, see
Screech, Lens Within the Heart, p. 190.
33 For a reproduction, see Screech, ibid., p. 178.
34 Shikitei Sanba, Ukiyo-doko, p. 289. Ihave discussed this in Screech,

340
 Lens Within the Heart, p. 125.
35 Shoden-ga-Shirushi, Ehon hime-hajime; for a transcription with
illustrations, see Hayashi Yoshikazu, Kitagawa Utamaro,
pp. 251-02.
36 Utei Enba 1, Oyo gari no koe; see Hayashi Yoshikazu, Edo no
makura-eshi, pp. 186-7.
37 Hayashi Yoshikazu, in his Utagawa Kunisada, suggests the second
spread in the earlier book was copied by Kunisada as an illustra-
tion to Sangoku myoto ishi (1826), see pp. 109-10, including pictures.
38 Hanakasa Bunky6, Koi no yatsufuji is described in ibid., pp. 115-20.
Bunkyo signed the work ‘Kyokushu Shijin’ in parody of Bakin’s
pen name, Kyokutei Shijin.
Go
g Ryitei Tanihiko, Shunjo gidan mizuage-cho; for a description, see
Hayashi, Utagawa Kunisada, pp. 101-3. It is not certain in which
order these two books appeared, but they may both be from 1836.
40 ‘Tomegane jiman wa moto e me ga modoru’; | am grateful to
Kazuya Hiroki for informing me of this verse; in the Yanagidaru it
is no. HG/ten/lo/2.
41 Katsuragawa Hosht, Hokusa bunryaku, p. 196.
42 ‘Ima iku tokoro o Yyshima no tomegane’; quoted in Okitsu
Kaname, Edo senryi, p. 257.
43 ‘Harasanza mite tomo ni yaran tamegane’; | am grateful to
Kazuya Hiroki for informing me of this verse; in the Yanagidaru it
is no. Ten/3/chi/2.
44 Sharakusai Manzi, Shimadai me no shogatsu, p. 1 recto. The author is
not to be confused with the print-maker Toshtisai Sharaku.
45 Shiba Kokan, Saiyi nikki, p. 53.
46 Fazoku shichi yadan, quoted in Shunro-an Shujin, Edo no shikido,
vol. 1, pp. 34-5.
47 For aselection of senryi, see ibid., pp. 36-7.
48 ‘Wasurete mo kumu yashitsuramu tabibito no takano no oku no
tamagawa no mizu’. This is an extremely difficult verse, from
which modern commentators have shied away. My translation is
tentative.
49 Matsura Seizan, Kasshi yawa, vol. v1, p. 85.
50 For the text, see Santo Kyoden, Gozonji no shobaimono, p. 227.
51 Hasegawa Mitsunobu, Ehon otogi shina kagami, quoted in Oka
Yasumasa, Megane-e shinko, p. 96.
52 Morishima Chary6, Shin yoshitsune saiken no ezo, quoted more fully
in Screech, Lens Within the Heart, p. 131.
53 Quoted in Oka Yasumasa, Megane-e, p. 89. | erred in Lens Within
the Heart by referring to this book as anonymous and dating it to
1735; see p. 124.
54 My decipherment of these puns is partially indebted to Julian J.
Lee, ‘The Origin and Development of the Japanese Landscape

341
 Print: A Study of the Synthesis of Eastern and Western Art’, Pho
thesis, University of Washington, Seattle, 1977, pp. 56-8, although
we differ on some points, and he does not offer any nanshoku inter-
pretation.
55 Timon Screech, ‘Glass, Paintings on Glass, and Vision in
Eighteenth-Century Japan’, Apollo, xiv (1998), pp. 28-32.
56 Thunberg, Thunberg’s Travels, vol. 111, p. 49.
57 Ibid., p. 284.
58 Santo Kyoden, Kaitsu unubore kagami, p. 1 recto.

6 SEX AND THE OUTSIDE WORLD

1 Fora translation of regulations pertaining to the Yoshiwara, see

Seigle, Yoshiwara, pp. 23-4. There was a guardhouse inside the
gates to ensure rules were observed.
2 Jinnai Hidenobu’s ideas are most succinctly summarized in
English in his ‘The Spatial Structure of Edo’, Tokugawa Japan: The
Social and Economic Antecedents ofModern Japan (Tokyo, 1990). Asai
Ryoi, Ukiyo monogatari; quoted in Hibbett, The Floating World in
Japanese Fiction, p. 11.
3 Sugita Genpaku, Rangaku kotohajime, p. 505.
4 For the flaneur and his relation to painting, see Timothy Clark, The
Painting of Modern Life, pp. 23-78; for the issue of gender, see
Griselda Pollock, Vision and Difference: Femininity, Feminism and
Histories ofArt (London, 1988), pp. 50-91. Ginbura is a contraction
of Ginza (the street) and bura-bura (‘wander’); see Edward
Seidensticker, Low City, High City: Tokyo from Edo to the Earthquake,
1867-1923 (Harmondsworth, 1983), pp. 264-7.
5 The text of this supposed injunction has not been located: see
Suzuki Jazo, Ehon to ukiyo-e, pp. 433-61.
6 Komatsu-ya Hyakki, Fiiryii koshoku maneemon, p. 122.
7 For the Makurabon taikai-ki, see Richard Lane et al. (eds), Shinpen
shiki hanga: makura-e, p. 63.
8 Haga Toru, ‘Precariousness of Love: Places of Love’, Imaging/
Reading Eros, pp. 97-103. The inferences drawn from Haga’s obser-
vation are my own. ‘Precarious’ is Haga’s own translation of his
term kiwadoi.
g Cleland, Fanny Hill; for the homosexual encounter, see Pp. 193-6,
for the lesbian awakening, pp. 48-5. It is worth noting the persis-
tent belief that Cleland was himself homosexual.
10 G. B. Sansom, Japan: A Short Cultural History (London, 1931), Pp. 213.
11 See Seigle, Yoshiwara, p. 123; these refer to chapters 9, 2, 27 and 10
respectively.
12 This famous (regrettably undated) verse is quoted in many sec-
ondary works: see, among others, Seigle, Yoshiwara, pp. 213-14.

342
 ‘Wakaki ko ni yomashita Genji mo doku ni nari’. !am grateful to
Kasuya Hiroki for introducing me to this verse.
Hatakeyama Kizan, Shikido okagami, p. 403.
For a table of the Genji-ko, see Nihon Ukiyo-e Kyokai (ed.),
Genshoku ukiyo-e dai hyakka jiten, vol. 1v, p. 57. The former penta-
gram should have one single vertical with four linked ones (not
two and three, as here).
16 Teikin, Teikin waraie-sho; | am grateful to Ellis Tinios for introduc-
ing me to this book. This is the Hana-no-En (‘Blossom Banquet’)
chapter of the Tule of Genji. Needless to say, normal Genji pictures
of this scene (which were common) did not include a sexual act:
see Mieko Murase, Iconography ofthe ‘Tale of Genji’ (New York and
Tokyo, 1983), pp. 79-80.
For this important aspect of ukiyo-e, see Kobayashi Tadashi, Edo no
e 0 yomu (1989), Shinoda Junichi, Nise monogatari-e (1995) and
Timothy Clark, ‘Mitate-e: Some Thoughts and a Summary of
Recent Writings’, Impressions, 19 (1997), Pp. 6-27.
18 Hagiwara Hiromichi, Genji monogatari hyoshaku; quoted in Harper,
‘The Tale of Genji in the Eighteenth Century’, p. 108 (adapted).
19 This event crosses between chapter two (‘Boomtree’) and chapter
three (‘Lady of the Locust Shell’). Genji sleeps with the brother of
Utsususemi (the Lady of the Locust Shell) because she herself
refuses him.
20 For a history of readings of Ise, see Bowring, ‘The Ise Monogatari:
A Short Cultural History’.
Pit I believe the preponderance of depictions of Narihira arriving in
Musashi and passing Mt Fuji is to be taken as an Edo appropria-
tion of Ise.
22 Anon., Ise monogatari, pp. 160-63.
Daimon no
a3 Ihara Saikaku, Nanshoku dkagami, p. 25. The brother,
Chijjo, also called Koretaka, appears in section 69 of Ise.
no wakamurasak i no zurikoromo shinobu no mitare
24 ‘Kasugano
kagiri shirarezu’; Ise monogatari, p. 79.
misquotes the
25 Ihara Saikaku, Nanshoku okagami, p. 25. Saikaku
verse, giving karikoromo (hunting robe) for zurikoromo (printed
robe).
26 This is an ambiguous print, since it shows a collection of women
who could never have sat in a room together (for historical and
social reasons); I interpret it as a work in the ‘exhaustive depic-
tion’ (tsukushi) genre. Asano and Clark have noted this, writing
‘there seems to be some hidden meaning to this picture, but it has
not yet been deciphered’: see The Passionate Art of Utamaro, p. 207.
‘shape’; ‘fine shape’ (on-
27 Kata means either gentleman /lady or
gata) was a dildo, see Tanobe Tomizo, Isha mitate edo no koshoku,
pp. 158-77.

343
 28 Koikawa Shozan, Tabimakura gojasan tsugi, quoted in Hayashi
Yoshikazu, Ehon kiko: tokaid6 gojiisan tsugi, pp. 35-6.
29 Engelbert Kaempfer, History ofJapan, p. 260. See also Koga Jijiro,
Maruyama yijo to tokomo-jin, vol. 1, p. 720.
30 See Hattori Yukio, Sakasama no yarei, pp. 115-67 (with illustrations).
31 See, for example, a senryi: ‘bijo wa shiro binan wa tera 0 kata-
mukeru’. Quoted in Hiratsuka Yoshinobu, Nihon no okeru nanshoku
no kenkyil, p. 15.
32 For the complete series, see Asano and Clark, The Passionate Art of
Utamaro, pp. 195-8.
33 Yujo, Banji, quoted in Sasaki Johei, Okyo shasei gashii, p. 155. Yujo,
prince-abbot of the Enman-in, was a pupil and sponsor.
34 Kitagawa Morisada, Morisada Manko; cited in Takeuchi, Nihon no
rekishi, pp. 9, 13.
35 See Kashiwabara Satoru, ‘“Teikan-zu” shokai’, pp. 124-37.
36 Originally, the bock contained eighty-one good rulers and thirty-
six bad, although in Japan, where they were sometimes made into
good and bad paired screens, the number was evened out. The
work was published in 1583, although the 1606 edition subse-
quently became more famous in Japan.
37 Kano Ikkei, Kososhi, pp. 724-5. lam grateful to Kendall Brown for
drawing my attention to this work.
38 For a Kamakura-period source, see the anonymous Kagaku-shil,
cited in Tanobe, Isha mitate, p- 208.
39 ‘Dokyo sore wa ude de nai ka to mikotonori’; quoted in ibid., p. 210.
40 ‘Senzuri o kaku to Hojo tokkaeru’; Yamaji Kanko (ed.), Suetsumu-
hana yawa, p. 259.
41 Chishingura yanagidaru no kami (early nineteenth century); cited in
Shunroan Shtjin, Edo no shikido, vol. 1, p. 82 (with illustration).
42 Ihara Saikaku, Nanshoku okagami, p. 25. Kenko, author of
Tsurezure-gusa, died in the mid-fourteenth century, some 300 years
after Sei ShOnagon’s brother Sei no Wakamaru; Sei ShOnagon was
author of Makura no soshi (‘the Pillow Book’).
43 The anonymous prior work Ehon taiko-ki was illustrated by Okada
Gyokuzan. Jippensha Ikku, Bakemono taiko-ki; Ota Nanpo, Taidai
taiko-ki, see Davis, ‘Drawing His Own Ravishing Features’, P- 341.
44 For an overview of the documents, see Suzuki, Ehon to ukiyo-e,
PPp- 433-61. For a recent reassessment, see Davis, ibid., pp. 337-47.
45 This was noted by Takizawa Bakin, Iwademo no ki, quoted in Davis,
ibid., p. 338. For convenient illustrations of the triptych and three
of the set of five, see Asano and Clark, The Passionate Art of
Utamaro, pp. 243-5; it is possible that the five-piece set originally
had other (now lost) members.
46 These ideas appear in senryii. ‘Shitteiru kuse ni sekirei baka na
yatsu’ (He knew all along and the wagtail was just wasting its

344
 time), quoted in Hayashi Yoshikazu, Geijutsu to minzokuni
arawareta seifiizoku, p. 14. Also, ‘Senzuri o Kunikototachi-no-
mikoto kaki’ (Kunikototachi-no-mikoto had to wank), in Yamaji
Kanko (ed.), Suetsumuhana yawa, p. 138; Kunikototachino-mikoto
was the first god.
47 Ihara Saikaku, Nanshoku dkagami, p. 25.
48 Anon., Ama no ukihashi, p. 62. The preface writer is the otherwise
unknown Unkyt.
49 Kimuro Boun, Mita kyo monogatari, pp. 563-81. Boun is also called
Nido-tei. The work was published in 1789.
50 Shiba Kokan, letter to Yamury6 Kazuma, reproduced in Nakano
Yoshio, Shiba Kokan ko, pp. 42-3.
51 Kimuro Boun, Mita kyo monogatari, p. 568.
52 Ibid., p. 569.
53 Ibid.
54 The supplement only is reproduced in Edo shunji, 7 (1978),
pp. 14-28; illustrations by Tsukioka Settei.
55 Hiraga Gennai, Nanshoku saiken mitsu no asa (1768), p. 111.
56 Hime-kaido. For a general treatment see Constantine Vaporis,
Breaking Barriers: Travel and the State in Early Modern Japan
(Cambridge, MA, 1994), especially pp. 42-3.
57 Cited in Ujiie Mikito, Bushido to erosu, p. 106.
58 Kaempfer, History of Japan, p. 53.
59 Ibid., pp. 345-6.
60 Fora partial reproduction see Hayashi Yoshikazu, Ehon kiko:
tokaid6 gojiisan tsugi, pp. 50-51.
61 For senrya on this, see Okitsu Kaname, Edo senryil, pp. 301-2. For
a discussion of the Shinagawa brothel area, see Hayashi, ibid.,
Prete
62 Jippensha Ikku, Tokaidochi hizakurige, pp. 22-3.
63 For the history, see Hayashi, Ehon kiko, pp. 18-24.
64 Ibid., pp. 23-4.
65 Fora bibliographical study of Koikawa Shozan, see Hayashi, Edo
ehon o sagase, pp. 62-78.
66 Regrettably, I have been unable to secure a copy of this book, or
reproductions, but see Hayashi, Ehon kiko, p. 36; see also below,
note 71.
67 For a discussion of this book, see Hayashi Yoshikazu, Utagawa
Kunisada, pp. 178-81.
68 For the Edoite, see Nishiyama Matsunosuke, Edokko. For Edo’s
boundaries (first plotted in 1791 but only finalized in 1811), see
Kato Takashi, ‘Governing Edo’, pp. 42-5.
69 For example, Ehon hana no oku (1825), p. 35 (illustrations by Eisen).
For the literary genre itself, see Jacqueline Pigeot, Michiyuki-bun:
Poétique de l’itinéraire dans la littérature du Japon ancien (Paris, 1982).

34)
 70 Kibi Sanjin (Kosh6ken), Toto meisho zue (1794); see above, illus. 82.
71 For the illustration to this episode, see Shunro-an Shijin, Edo no
shikido, vol. 1, p. 88; interestingly, virtually the same image
appeared in a book of the following year (1856), Kiso kaido tabine no
temakura, where it represents sex on the Kiso highway at Fushimi,
see ibid., p. 74.
72 Hayashi, Ehon kiko, p. 14.
73 Tsuji Tatsuya, ‘Politics in the Eighteenth Century’, Cambridge
History ofJapan, ed. John W. Hall (Cambridge, 1991), vol. tv, p. 468.
74 Ibid., p. 471.
75 Teikin, Teikin warai-e sho; Teikin’s remarks are inscribed on the
page with illus. 3 above. Tokasai (Fukuda, ed.), Shikido kinpisho,
vol. 11, p. 32.
76 Teikin, ibid.
77 Shiba Kokan, Shunparo hikki (1811), p. 69.
78 For an edition of the whole work, see Hayashi Yoshikazu (ed.),
Edo meisaku ehon: Sento shinwa.
79 Peter Wagner, Eros Revived, p. 86.
80 Blussé et al. (eds), The Deshima Dagregisters, vol. x, p. 161.
81 Ibid., pp. 22, 38, 55.
82 For my calculation of this figure, see Screech, Lens Within the Heart,
Pp. 256,n. 41.
83 Furukawa Koshoken, Saiyii zakki, p. 164.
84 The story of the former has been translated by Donald Keene, The
Battles of Coxinga.
85 For example, on Thunberg’s ship (the largest, he says, for many
years) there were 110 Europeans and thirty-four Malays; see
Thunberg, Thunberg’s Travels, vol. 111, pp. 11-12.
86 Blussé et al. (eds), Deshima Dagregisters, vol. x, p. 94. This occurred
in 1797.
87 lam grateful to Matsuda Kiyoshi for this information. For
Voltaire’s book, see Robert Darnton, Edition et sédition: L’'Universe
de la littérature clandestine au xvule siecle (Paris, 1991).
88 For an interesting conversation recorded c. 1790 between an
unnamed Dutchman and Satd Narihiro on sexual mores in Japan,
see Sato, Chiryomanroku, p. 69.
89 Tojin ban nikki, see Koga Jojiro, Maruyama yiijo, vol.1, p. 561; also
Clunas, Pictures and Visuality, p. 150.
go Satow (ed.), The Voyage of Captain John Saris to Japan, pp. 47-8.
g1 Nicole Rousmaniere, ‘The Accessioning of Japanese Art’, Apollo,
CXLV (1997), PP. 23-9.
g2 Furukawa Koshoken, Saiya zakki, p. 164.
93 Koga, Maruyama yiijo, vol. 1, p. 768; later the limit was increased to
five nights.
94 Ibid., p. 454. The price would have been 15 monme, half going to

346
 the shop.
95 Blussé et al. (eds), Deshima Dagregisters, vol. vii1, p. 74; Thunberg,
Thunberg’s Travels, vol. 11, pp. 168-9.
96 Shiba Kokan, Saiyii nikki, p. 71.
97 ‘Kono kunino nami ya shitawan karabito mo yawaraku haru no
yushi goken ni’. The verse appears to be signed Sansui-ya
Satoseme.
98 ‘Maruyama ya onna ni yomenu fumi ga kuru; Tsiji o tsurete
Maruyama no kyaku; Maruyama no kyaku wa ichiman sansen ri’;
quoted in Hanasaki Kazuo and Sato Yoshito, Shokoku yuri zue,
pp- 278-82.
99 Furukawa Koshoken, Saiyi nikki, p. 164.
100 For a reproduction of Kokan, see Naruse Fujio et al. (eds), Shiba
Kokan zensha, vol. tv, pp. 118-19, and for Tairo, see Koga,
Maruyama yijo, vol. 1, frontispiece.
101 Keisai Eisen, Makura bunko, p. 74
102 ‘Ketdjin onna no shiri e bachi 0 oki’; quoted in Hanasaki and Sato,
Shokoku yitri zue, p. 282.
103 Rangaku, or ‘Dutch studies’.
104 For the youth of voc operatives in Japan (and the mistakes about
Western life expectancy this caused) see Sato Narihiro, Charyo
manroku, p. 124; see also Screech, O-Edo ijin orai, pp. 79-84.
105 For Blomhoff see Koga, Maruyama yijo, vol. 1, p. 790ff.
106 Fukuda Kazuhiko so attributes it (verbal communication).
107 Morishima Chury6, Komo zatsuwa, p. 467.
108 I am grateful to Cynthia Vialle for supplying details of Ricard’s
biography.
109 Ricard’s diary is not of much help here, but it is included in Blussé
et al. (eds), Deshima Dagregisters, vol. x, pp. 158-69.
110 Morishima Chiry6, Bankoku shinwa (1789), p. 254
111 Katsuragawa Hoshi, Hokusa bunryaku, p. 236; the offence was
compounded by being committed before an altar in church on
Easter Day.

7 RE-ENGAGING WITH EDO EROTICA

1 Timon Screech, Shunga: katate de yomu edo no e, trans. Takayama H.

(Kodansha, 1998); Timon Screech, Erotyzcne obrazy Japonskie 1700-
1820, trans. Romanowicz (Krakow, 2002)
2 Paul Berry, ‘Rethinking Shunga: The Interpretation of Sexual
imagery of the Edo Period’, Archives of Asian Art, L1v (2004), p. 7.
3, Chris Uhlenbeck, ‘Erotic Fantasies of Japan: The World of
Shunga’, in Chris Uhlenbeck and Margarita Winkel, Japan Erotic
Fantasies: Sexual imagery of the Edo period (Amsterdam, 2005), p. 12.
4 Hayashi’s enormous archive is now in the Art Research Centre of

947
 Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto. See, www.arc.ritsumei.ac.jp /
theater /biiti/.
5 Asano Shogo and Timothy Clark, The Passionate Art of Utamaro,
2 vols (London, 1995). Note that all shunga is corralled at the end
of the catalogue for ease of deletion from the Japanese edition.
6 Thomas W. Laqueur, Solitary Sex: A Cultural History of
Masturbation (London, 2004), see pp. 300 and 332. Laqueur does
not discuss Japan (it does not figure in the index) but reproduces
(with permission) three images from Sex and the Floating World.
7 David Pollack, Review of Timon Screech, Sex and the Floating
World, in Early Modern Japan (Fall 2002), p. 65.
8 Sugita Genpaku, Keiei yawa, in Nihon koten bungaku taikei, vol. 64
(Iwanami, 1976), p. 283.
9 For syphilis and its treatment in Japan, see Timon Screech, Japan
Extolled and Decried: Carl Peter Thunberg and the Shogun’s Realm,
1775-1796 (London, 2005), pp. 35-8
10 Pollack, Review, p. 66.
a4. Ibid?
12 Ibid.
13 See Timon Screech, ‘Going to the Courtesans: Transit to the
Pleasure District of Edo Japan’, in The Courtesans’ Arts: Cross-
Cultural Perspectives, Martha Feldman and Bonnie Gordon (eds),
(Oxford, 2006), pp. 255-79.
14 Cecilia Segawa Seigle, ‘The Decorousness of the Yoshiwara —
A Rejection of Shunga’, in Japan Erotic Fantasies, Uhlenbeck and
Winkel, p. 37.
15 Ibid., p. 41.
16 Kano hon wa yashiki omo da to kashihon’ya. See ibid., translation
mine.
17 Taka yoji, quoted in ibid., p. 46, note 2. Translation mine. Seigle
misses the masturbation reference, and unhelpfully translates
makura-e (pillow book) in the original as ‘shunga’. For the original,
see Sharebon taisei, Mizuno Minoru (ed.) (Chao Koron-sha, 1980),
vol. 9, p. 194.
18 Hayakawa Monta, ‘Shunga ni okeru chijo’, in Ukiyoe shunga o
yomu, Shirakawa et al. (eds), vol. 2, pp. 189-291.
19 See, Timon Screech, ‘Sex and Consumerism in Edo Japan’, in
Consuming Bodies: Sex and Consumerism in Contemporary Japan, ed.
Fran Lloyd (London, 2004), p. 27.
20 See above, pp. 31-2.
21 Fora related discussion, see Julie Davis, Utamaro and the Spectacle
of Beauty (London, 2007), pp. 195-6.
22 For commentary of the price of painted ukiyo-e, see Timon Screech,
‘Owning Edo-Period Paintings’, in Acquisition: Art and Ownership
in Edo-Period Japan, Elizabeth Lillehoj (ed.) (Warren, cr, 2007),

348
 pp. 31-2.
23 The album is reproduced as Hayashi Yoshikazu and Richard Lane,
eds, Ukiyo-e shunga meihin shiisei, vol. 13. For date and meaning of
the title, see, p. 11.
24 Andrew Gerstle and Hayakawa Monta (ed.), Tsukioka Settei 1:
Onna shimegawa oshiebumt1, pp. 121-8.
25 This has recently been studied by Alfred Haft, Patterns of
Correspondence Between the Floating World and the Classical Tradition.
26 Paul Berry, ‘Rethinking Shunga: The Interpretation of Sexual
Imagery of the Edo Period’, Archives ofAsian Art (2004), p. 11.
27 Oral communication. Iam grateful to Ellis Tinios for alerting me
to the works given here as illus. 170 and 171.
28 Séren Edgren, ‘The Bibliographic Significance of Colour Printed
Books from the Shibui Collection’, Orientations, xL (2009), pp. 34-5,
with illustrations. Edgren translates the title as Variegated Postures
ofthe Flowery Camp.
29 Hiromitsu Kobayashi, ‘In Search of the Cutting Edge: Did Ukiyo-e
Artists Borrow from Erotic Illustrations of the Chinese Fengliu
juechang tu?’, Orientations, xt (2009), pp. 62-7, with illustrations.
=

349
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RECENT FURTHER READINGS

Berry, Paul, ‘Rethinking Shunga: The Interpretation of Sexual imagery

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Davis, Julie Nelson, Utamaro and the Spectacle of Beauty (London, 2007)
—,, ‘The Trouble with Hideyoshi: Censoring ukiyo-e and the Ehon
taikoki Incident of 1804, Japan Forum, 19 (2007), pp. 281-316
Fujimoto Kizan, Shikodo okagami (Yagi Shobo, 2006)
Gerstle, Andrew, and Hayakawa Monta, eds, Tsukioka Settei 1: Onna
shimegawa oshiebumi, Kinsei enpon shiryo shusei 4, Kyoto:
Nichbunken Japanese Studies Series 40 (2007)
Robin D. Gill, Octopussy, Dry Kidney & Blue Spots: Dirty Theme from 18—
19¢ Japanese Poems, or Senryu, Compiled, Translated and Essayed (no
place: Paraverse Press, 2007)
Haft, Alfred, ‘Patterns of Correspondence Between the Floating World
and the Classical Tradition: A Study of the Terms “mitate”, “yat-
sushi” and “faryu” in the Context of Ukiyo-e’, unpub. php thesis,
University of London, 2005
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Ukiyoe shunga o yomu, vol. 11, pp. 189-291
Hayakawa Monta, Ukiyo-e shunga to nanshoku (Kawade Shobo
Shinsha, 1998)
—, The Shunga of Suzuki Harunobu: “Mitate-e” and Sexuality in Edo
(Kyoto: International Research Center for Japanese Studies, 2001)
—,, ‘Suzuki Harunobu no mitate-e n ok6z6: ‘Imayo tsuma kagami’ no
etoki’, Nihon kenkyt, 16 (1997), pp. 125-60

360
Hayashi Yoshikazu and Richard Lane, eds, Ukiyo-e shunga meihin
shtisei (Kawade Shob6 Shinsha, 1997), 24 vols
—, Edo no haru: ihojin mankai (Kawade Shobo Shinsha, 1998)
Screech, Timon, ‘Going to the Courtesans: Transit to the Pleasure
District of Edo Japan’, in Martha Feldman and Bonnie Gordon, eds,
The Courtesan's Arts: Cross-Cultural Perspectives (Oxford, 2006),
PP: 255-79
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Realm, 1775-1796 (London, 2005)
—, ‘Sex and Consumerism in Edo Japan’, in Fran Lloyd, ed.,
Consuming Bodies: Sex and Consumerism in Contemporary Japan
(London, 2004), pp. 23-40
Shirakura Yoshihiko, ed., Ukiyoe shunga o yomu (Chuo Koron-sha,
Chutko Sdsho, 2000), 2 vols
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Tanaka Yuko, Harigata: Edo onna no sei (Kawade Shobo Shinsha, 1999)
Tanaka Yuko, Edo no koi: ‘iki’ to ‘uwaki’ ni ikiru (Shtei-sha, 2002)
Tan’o Yasunori, ‘Nanshoku no hana’, Waseda daigaku daigakuin bengaku
kenkyti kiyo, 44 (1999), pp. 139-56
—, Nanshoku no keshiki: iwaneba koso are (Shinkosha, 2008)
Uhlenbeck, Chris, and Margarita Winkel, Japan Erotic Fantasies: Sexual
Imagery of the Edo Period (Amsterdam, 2005)
Walthall, Anne, ‘Masturbation and Discourses of Female Sexual
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pp- 1-18

Journal Special Editions:

Ming Erotic Colour Prints, Orientations, x (2009)
Shunga: Edo no eshi shiju hatte, Bessatsu Taiyo (Heibonsha, 2006)
Shunga ui: Iro moyo hyakutai, Bessatsu Taiyo (Heibonsha, 2008)
Shunga: Nilcuhitsu, Bessatsu Taiyo (Heibonsha, 2009)

361
List of Illustrations

1 Anon., The Minister Relocated to the Northern Provinces, mono-

chrome woodblock illustration for Ihara Saikaku, Shoen dkagami
(Koshoku nidai otoko) (1684).
2 Anon., Monk Worshipping a Painting, monochrome woodblock
illustration for Koshoku tabi nikki (1687).
3 Anon., Produce, monochrome woodblock illustration for Teikin,
Teikin warai-e sho (c. 1830).
4 Anon., Man using a Portrait and an ‘Edo shape’, monochrome
woodblock illustration separated from an unknown shunga book
(c. 1760).
5 Kitao Shigemasa, Geisha from the Nishigashi and Inscription, 1781,
diptych, colour on silk. Original lost. Photo: Jack Hillier.
6 Suzuki Harunobu, Shared Umbrella, late 1760s, multi-coloured
woodblock print.
7 Attrib. Isoda Korytsai, Lovers under a Willow in the Snow, late
1760s, multi-coloured woodblock print.
8 Utagawa Kunifusa, Playing Sugoroku at a Heated Table, multi-
coloured woodblock page with pull-up, from a shunga album,
Tsukushi matsufuji no shirakami (1830).
g Utagawa Kunifusa’s Playing Sugoroku ... with the pull-up raised.
10 Katsukawa Shunsho, Wet Dream After Reading a Pillow Book, mono-
chrome woodblock illustration for Jintaku Sanjin, Ukiyo no itoguchi
(1780).
11 Terasawa Masatsugu, Song, monochrome woodblock page from
his Aya no odamaki (1770s).
12 Utagawa Kunisada, Lovers Viewing a Shunga Scroll, multicoloured
woodblock page from the anonymous Shiki no nagame (c. 1827).
13 Hishikawa Moronobu, Lovers Indoors, monochrome woodblock
page from Hana no katari (modern title) (1679[?]).
14 Kitagawa Utamaro, Lovers, multi-coloured woodblock page from
a shunga album, Utamakura (1788). The British Museum, London.
15 Chobunsai Eishi, Life on the River Sumida, 1828, pair of six-fold
screens, ink and colour on paper. Formerly in the Azabu Museum
of Arts and Crafts, Tokyo, present whereabouts unknown.
16 Utagawa Kunimaro, Nun using a Portrait ofMatsumoto Koshiro (?),
multi-coloured woodblock page from a shunga album, Ikurasemu
(c. 1830s).

362
17 Torii Kiyomitsu, Segawa Kikunojo tin the Role ofMinor Captain
Keshozaka, 1763, colour woodblock print.
18 Suzuki Harunobu, Woman Bringing in Washing During a Shower,
1765, calendar, multi-coloured woodblock print.
19 Tamagawa Senshi, Woman Washing, c. 1795, multi-coloured
woodblock print.
20 Chobunsai Eishi, Three ofthe Seven Lucky Gods at a Yoshiwara
Brothel, late 18th century, section of a handscroll, Lucky Gods Travel
to the Yoshiwara, colour on silk. Formerly in the Azabu Museum of
Arts and Crafts, Tokyo, present whereabouts unknown.
21 Utagawa Toyokunil, At the Women’s Bath, triptych, three-tone
woodblock page from Karasutei Enba 11, Oyo kari no koe (1822).
22 Anon., Mediaeval Lovers, c. 1600, section of an untitled shunga
handscroll, colour on paper.
23 Attrib. Okumura Masanobu, Sexual Threesome, c. 1740s, section of
three-tone woodblock printed handscroll, Neya no hinagata.
24 Kitagawa Utamaro, Needlework, c. 1797-8, multi-coloured wood-
block.
25 Yanagawa Shigenobu, Foreign Couple, Rendered in Imitation of
Copperplate, multi-coloured woodblock page from a shunga album,
Yanagi no arashi (1822).
26 Isoda Korytisai, Public Bathhouse, multi-coloured woodblock page
from the shunga album, Shikido torikumi jini awase (c. 1775).
27 Ishikawa Toyonobu, Wooden Bathtub, c. 1760, three-tone wood-
block print.
28 Sakai Tadanao (Tory6, or Sakai Hoitsu), Courtesan with Attendants,
late 1780s, colour on silk. Tokyo National Museum.
29 Kitao Masayoshi (Kuwagata Keisai), Two Women with a Man,
1780s, multi-coloured woodblock print. The British Museum,
London.
30 Kuwagata Keisai (Kitao Masayoshi), A Brothel in the Yoshiwara,
1822, detail from a collaborative handscroll Edo shokunin-zukushi,
colour on paper. Tokyo National Museum.
31 Katsushika Hokusai, detail from Boys’ Festival, 1810s, multi-
coloured woodblock print.
32 Criminal, Spy, Nanshoku, monochome woodblock page from
Terashima Ryoan, Wakan sansai zue (1713).
33 Odano Naotake, Diaphragm, monochrome woodblock illustration
for Sugita Genpaku et al. (trans.), Kaitat shinsho (1774 [copy after
German original of 1725)).
34 Odana Naotake, The Body, Front and Back, from Sugita Gepaku et
al., Kaitai shinsho.
35 The Female Body, monochrome woodblock illustration for
Morishima Churyo, Komo zatsuwa (1787).
36 Eglon van der Neer, Portrait ofa Man and a Woman in an Interior,

363
 c. 1675, oil on panel. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (Seth K.
Sweetser Fund). Photo: Courtesy of the Museum of Fine Arts,
Boston.
37 Edouard Manet, Olympia, 1863, oil on canvas. Musée d’Orsay,
Paris. Photo: Agence Photographique de la Reunion des Musées
Nationaux.
38 Kuroda Seiki, Morning Toilette, 1893, oil on canvas. Original
destroyed during World War 11. Photo: Tokyo National Research
Institute of Cultural Properties.
39 Kikuchi Yosai, En’ya Takasada’s Wife Leaving her Bath, 1842, colour
on silk. Private collection.
40 Suzuki Harushige (Shiba Kokan), Foreign Woman and Child, c. 1790,
colour on paper.
41 Cover illustration to Le Japan artistique, no. 33 (January, 1891).
42 Marcantonio Raimondi, First Position, copperplate illustration for
Pietro Aretino, Sonnetti lussuriosi (1524).
43 Koikawa Harumachi, The Road to the Yoshiwara, monochrome
woodblock page from his Muda iki (1781 or 1783). National Diet
Library, Tokyo.
44 Kitagawa Utamaro, Three Beauties of the Present Day, c. 1793, multi-
coloured woodblock print.
45 Shimokobe Shisui, Lovers, monochrome woodblock page from an
untitled shunga album (c. 1771).
46 Katsushika Hokusai, Lovers, multi-coloured woodblock page for
Fukuju sou (1815).
47 Kitagawa Utamaro, Lovers, multi-coloured woodblock page from
Tama kushige (1801).
48 Utagawa Hiroshige, Lovers under the Moon, multi-coloured wood-
block page from a shunga album, Haru no yahan (c. 1851).
49 Utagawa Kunisada, Lovers and Sleeping Husband, multi-coloured
woodblock page from Shiki no sugatami (1842).
50 Ishikawa Toyonobu, Lovers and Servant Passing, monochrome
woodblock page from a shunga album, Ira sunago (c. 1750).
51 Kitagawa Utamaro, Lovers, monochrome woodblock page from a
shunga album, Ehon hitachi obi (1795).
52 Follower of Keisai Eisen, O-tsuru and Umejirio, multi-coloured
woodblock page from Shikitei Sanba (‘Kotei Shlljin’), Nishikigi
Soshi (c. 1825).
53 Anon., Whose Sleeves?, late 18th century, left-hand of a pair of six-
fold screens (right screen lost). Private collection.
54 Rekisen-tei Eiri, Lovers behind a Sliding Door, multi-coloured wood-
block page from an untitled shunga album (c. 1785).
55 Suzuki Harunobu, Autumn Moon of the Mirror Stand, multi-
coloured page from a shunga album, Faryii zashiki hakkei (c. 1768).
56 Kitagawa Utamaro, Lovers in Summer, multi-coloured woodblock

364
 page from Into-tei no Aruji (Shikitei Sanba?), Negai no itoguchi
(1799).
57 Ogata Korin, Rock Azalea, c. 1700, hanging scroll, colour and ink on
paper. Hatakeyama Memorial Museum, Tokyo.
58 Suzuki Harunobu, Lovers with Rutting Cats, multi-coloured wood-
block page from Komatsu-ya Hyakki, Farya enshoku maneemon
(1765).
59 Inagaki Tsurujo, Woman Manipulating aGlove Puppet, c. 1770, hang-
ing scroll, colour on paper. Tokyo National Museum.
60 Kitagawa Utamaro, Lovers with Clam Shell, multi-coloured wood-
block page froma shunga album, Utamakura (1788). The British
Museum, London.
61 Suzuki Harushige (Shiba K6kan), Nihon Embankment, c. 1770,
multi-coloured woodblock print from the series Faryi nana-
komachi. The British Museum, London.
62 Kitagawa Utamaro, Man Seducing a Young Woman, 1801-4, hang-
ing scroll, colour on silk. Tokusht Paper Company, Ltd, Historical
Archives, Tokyo.
63 Isoda Korytsai, Boy Plucking Plum-blossom with Girl, 1770s, multi-
coloured woodbloek print.
64 Yamazaki Jorya, Kabuki Actor Holding Irises, c. 1725, hanging scroll,
colour on paper. Idemitsu Museum of Arts, Tokyo.
65 Suzuki Harunobu, ‘Analogue’ of Ju Citong, c. 1765, multi-coloured
woodblock print.
66 Kitagawa Utamaro, Picture of the Middle Class, multi-coloured
woodblock print from the series Fazoku sandan musume, c. 1795.
67 Kitagawa Utamaro, Suited to Bold Designs Stocked by the Kame-ya,
multi-coloured woodblock print from the series Natsu isho tosei
bijin (c. 1804-6).
68 Kitagawa Utamaro, Goldfish, multi-coloured woodblock print
from the series Farya kodakara awase, c. 1802.
69 Maruyama Oshin, Camels, 1824, hanging scroll, colour and ink on
silk. Joe and Etsuko Price, Shinenkan Collection, usa.
70 Utagawa Toyoharu, Whale at Shinagawa (modern censoring),
monochrome woodblock illustration for the anonymous Ehon
fubiko tori (1798).
71 Suzuki Harunobu, Woman Playing the Shakuhachi, 1765-70, multi-
coloured woodblock print.
72 Torii Kiyomitsu, Nakamura Tomijuroin the role of Shirotae, mid-18th
century, three-tone woodblock print.
73 Suzuki Harunobu, Komuso with Prostitute and her Trainee, c. 1766-7,
multi-coloured woodblock print.
74 Kitagawa Utamaro, Umegawa and Chiibei, multicoloured wood-
block print from the series Ongyoku koi no ayatsurt, c. 1800.
75 Suzuki Harushige (Shiba Kokan), Women Blowing Bubbles with

365
 Child, c. 1780, hanging scroll, colour on silk. Kimiko and John
Powers Collection, usA.
76 Suzuki Harunobu, Blowpipe Alley, diptych, multi-coloured wood-
block prints, 1765-70. The British Museum, London.
77 Kitao Shigemasa, Blow-pipe Alley, monochrome woodblock page
for Santo Kydden, Ningen banji fukiya no mato (1803). National Diet
Library, Tokyo.
78 Isoda Koryitsai, Lovers in Fukagawa District, multi-coloured wood-
block page from Haikai meoto maneenon (c. 1770).
79 Katsushika Hokusai, Lovers with Mirror, c. 1810, multi-coloured
woodblock page detached from an unknown shunga album.
80 Okamura Masanobu, Lovers beside Paintings of ‘The Tales of Ise’,
handcoloured woodblock page from a shunga album, Neya no
hinagata (c. 1738).
81 Suzuki Harunobu(?), Customer with Osen —-Shunga Version,
1765-70, multi-coloured woodblock print. Photo: Sumisha, Tokyo.
82 Keisai Eisen, Copied from Kaitai shinsho, multi-coloured wood-
block page from his Makura bunko (1832). Photo: Fukuda
Kazuhiko.
83 Utagawa Kunisada, Vaginal Inspection, multi-coloured woodblock
page from a shunga album, Azuma genji (c. 1837).
84 Suzuki Harunobu, The Jewel River on Mt Koya, multi-coloured
woodblock print from the series Mu-tamagawa, 1765-70. Kobe City
Museum.
85 Torii Kiyomitsu, Lovers Using a Mirror, multi-coloured woodblock
illustration from an untitled shunga album (c. 1765).
86 Nishikawa Sukenobu, Samurai Youth with Gun, monochrome
woodblock page from Nankai Sanjin (Sukenobu?), Nanshoku
yamaji no tsuyu (1730s).
87 Kitagawa Utamaro, Woman Blowing a Popin, multi-coloured wood-
block print from the series Fujo jinso juppin, c. 1800.
88 Aubrey Beardsley, Adoramus, an unpublished drawing for
Lysistrata, c. 1896.
89 Isoda Korytsai, Evening Glow at the Teashop, multicoloured wood-
block page from the series Imayo jinrin hakkei, 1770s.
go Anon., Lovers at Asukayama (modern censoring), monochrome
woodblock page from Furukawa Koshoken (‘Kibi Sanjin’), Edo
meisho zue (1794).
g1 Suzuki Harunobu, Ibaraki-ya, c. 1767/8, multi-coloured wood-
block print.
g2 Nishikawa Sukenobu, The Maid, monochrome woodblock page
from Makurabon taikei-ki (c. 1720).
93 Hishikawa Moronobu, Through the Screens, monochrome wood-
block page from Koi no mutsugoto shijii-hatte (1679). Chiba
Prefectural Museum of Art.

366
94 Detail from Hokusai, Lovers with Mirror (illus. 79).
95 Sugimura Jihei, Erect Man Approaching Sleeping Woman, mono-
chrome woodblock page from an untitled shunga album (c. 1684).
96 Chdbunsai Eishi, Woman Dreaming over ‘The Tales of
Ise’, c. 1800,
hanging scroll, colour and gold on silk. The British Museum,
London.
97 Hishikawa Moronobu, Shunga Version of ‘Masashi Plain’ from ‘The
Tales ofIse’, monochrome woodblock page from Ise genji shikishi
(modern title) (c. 1684).
g8 Sugimura Jihei, Woman of Water with Man of Wood, monochrome
woodblock page from the anonymous Sansei aisho makura (1687).
99 Suzuki Harunobu, Putai Exiting a Painting, 1765-70, multicoloured
woodblock print.
100 Suzuki Harunobu, Ukiyonosuke’s Visitation at the Kasamori Shrine,
multi-coloured woodblock page from Komatsu-ya Hyakki, Firyi
enshoku maneemon (1765).
101 Suzuki Harunobu, Samurai Customer with Osen, 1765-70, multi-
coloured woodblock print. Photo: The British Museum.
102 Thara Saikaku(?), Yonosuke Watches the Maid through a Telescope,
monochrome woodblock illustration for his Késhoku ichidai otoko
(1682).
103 Okumura Toshinobu, Sodesaki Kikutaro in the Role of the Maid, and
Ichikawa Masugoro in the Role of Yonosuke, 1730s, hand-coloured
monochrome woodblock print. Keia University Library, Tokyo.
104 Kitagawa Utamaro, Kinjuro’s Letter is Inspected, monochrome
woodblock page from Namake no Bakahito, Uso shikkari gantori
cho (1783). Tokyo Metropolitan Central Library.
105 Utagawa Kunisada, Penises of Ichikawa Danjitro and Iwai Hanshiro,
multi-coloured woodblock page from a shunga album, Takara
awasei (1826).
106 Kitagawa Utamaro and Katsukawa Shuncho, Three Women inan
Upstairs Room, monochrome woodblock page from Shoden-ga-
Shirushi, Ehon hime-hajime (1790).
107 Kitagawa Utamaro and Katsukawa Shuncho, page following illus.
106, from Shirushi, Ehon hime-hajime.
108 Utagawa Kunisada, Yoshizane Uses a Telescope, multi-coloured
woodblock page from Kyokushii Shijin (Hanakasa Bunky0), Koi
no yatsubuchi (1837).
109 Utagawa Kunisada, page following illus. 108 from Shtjin, Koi no
yatsubuchi.
110 Utagawa Kunisada, At a Summer House, multi-coloured wood-
block page from the anonymous Shunjo gidan mizuage-cho (1836).
111 Kunisada, page following illus. 110 from the anonymous Shunjo
gidan mizuage-cho.
412 Suzuki Harunobu, Motoura Of the Yamazaki-ya, multi-coloured

367
 woodblock print from the series Ukiyo bijin hana no kotobukt,
1765-70.
113 Kitao Masanobu (Santo Kyoden), Boyish God Offers Tstisaburo a
Magical Telescope, monochrome woodblock page from Sharakusai
Manri, Shimadai me no shogatsu (1787).
114 Kitao Masanobu (Santo Kydden), Peeping-Karakuri, monochrome
woodblock page from his Gozonji no shobaimono (1782).
115 Anon., Lovers Before a Screen, monochrome woodblock page from
Hua ying jin zhen, Chinese, Ming dynasty, early 17th century.
116 Nishimura Sukenobu, Lovers in a Ricefield, monochrome wood-
block page from the anonymous Makurabon taikai-ki (c. 1720).
117 Hayamizu Shungyosai, The Safflower, monochrome woodblock
page from the anonymous Onna koshoku kyokun kagami (1790s).
118 Suzuki Harunobu, Lovers in a Ricefield, multi-coloured woodblock
page from Komatsu-ya Hyakki, Faryii koshoku maneemon (1765).
119 Utagawa Kunisada, Beanman and Beanwoman Prepare to Storm the
Storehouse, multi-coloured woodblock illustration for Naniyori
Sanega Sukinari, Sentd shinwa (1827).
120 Maruyama Okyo, Yang Guifei, 1782, hanging scroll, colour on silk.
121 Katsushika Hokusai, Maruyama, multi-coloured woodblock print
from the series Nana yiljo, 1801-4.
122 Chobunsai Eisho, A European and a Maruyama Prostitute, c. 1790s,
multi-coloured woodblock print.
123 Kitagawa Utamaro, European Lovers, multi-coloured woodblock
page from Utamakura (1788). The British Museum, London.
124 Kawahara Keiga, The Blomhoff Family, 1817, standing screen,
colour on paper. Kobe City Museum.
125 Kawahara Keiga(?), Jan Cock Blomhoff with a Japanese Woman, after
1817, section of handscroll, colour on paper. Photo: Fukuda
Kazuhiko.
126 Suzuki Harunobu, ‘Analogue’of‘Evening Faces’, 1776, diptych,
multi-coloured woodblock print. Tokyo National Museum. Photo:
Kyoryokukai.
127 Kitagawa Utamaro, Group of Women around a Screen of‘The Tales of
Ise’, 1800, multi-coloured woodblock print.
128 Kitagawa Utamaro, Emperor Xuanzong and Yang Guifei, multi-
coloured woodblock print from the series Jitsu kurabe iro no
minakami, 1799. Private collection.
129 Anon., The Forest of Meats and Lake of Sake, monochrome wood-
block illustration for Zhang Juzhen, Teikan-zusetsu, 1606 (copy
after a Ming original of 1573).
130 Kano Mitsunobu (d. 1608), The Geomantic Cave and The Four
Greybeards of Mt Shang, pair of six-fold screens, colour and gold on
paper. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (The Harry G. C.
Packard Collection of Asian Art. Gift of Harry G. C. Packard and
Purchase, Fletcher, Rogers, Harris Brisbane Dick and Louis V. Bell
368
 Funds, Joseph Pulitzer Bequest and The Annenberg Fund, Inc.
Gift).
131 Kitagawa Utamaro, Hideyoshi and his Five Wives Viewing Cherry-
blossom at Higashiyama, c. 1803-4, triptych, multi-coloured wood-
block prints. The British Museum, London.
132 Kiyagawa Utamaro, Machiba Hisayoshi, c. 1803-4, multi-coloured
woodblock print from a series based on the anonymous Ehon taiko-
ki. The British Museum, London.
133 Yanagawa Shigenobu, Gods on the Floating Bridge ofHeaven Watch a
Wagtail, multi-coloured woodblock page from Detara-bo, Ama no
ukihashi (c. 1825).
134 Keisei Eisen, Gods on the Floating Bridge of Heaven Watch a Wagtail,
multi-coloured woodblock page from his Makura bunko (1822-32).
Photo: Fukuda Kazuhiko.
135 Ichiraku-tei Eisui, Portrait ofJippensha Ikku, monochrome wood-
block page for Jippensha Ikku, Tokaidochu hizakurige (1802).
136 Katsushika Hokusai, Akasaka, multi-coloured woodblock print
from the series Tokaido gojisan tsugi, c. 1810.
137 Kitagawa Utamaro 1, Kagegawa, multi-coloured woodblock page
froma shunga album, Hizasuri nikki (1820s).
138 Utagawa Kunisada, Odawara, multi-coloured woodblock page
from Tamenaga Shunsui, Irokurabe hana no miyakoji (late 1838).
139 Utagawa Kunisada, multi-coloured woodblock wrapper for a
shunga album, Shunga gojiisan tsuji (c. 1820).
140 Utagawa Kunisada, Oiso, multi-coloured woodblock page from a
shunga album, Shunga gojiisan tsuji (c. 1820).
141 Anon., Portrait of the Author, monochrome woodblock illustration
for Azumaotoko Itcho, Keichii hizasurige (1812).
142 Utagawa Kunisada, Lovers, multi-coloured woodblock page from
a shunga album, Azuma genji (c. 1837).
143 Utagawa Kunimaro, Woman Resisting Intercourse, multi-coloured
woodblock page from Koikawa Shozan, Keichit 0-karakuri (c. 1835).
144 Keisai Eisen, Rape, multi-coloured woodblock page from Waka
murasaki (1830s).
145 Tsukioka Settei, Maruyama, monochrome woodblock illustration
for his Onna tairaku takarabako:shokoku irosato chokufit (c. 1780s).
146 Nagahide, Europeans Collecting Vaginal Juices, monochrome wood-
block page from the anonymous Rakuto fiiryu sugatakurabe (c. 1810).
147 Yanagawa Shigenobu, A Continental Couple Collecting Vaginal
Juices, multi-coloured page from K6tei Shijin (Shikitei Sanba?),
Yanagi no arashi (1822).
148 Katsushika Hokusai, A Couple Collecting Vaginal Juices, multi-
coloured page from Enmusubi izumo no sugi (1830s).
149 Kawahara Keiga(?), Captain and Mrs Blomhoff— Shunga Version,
after 1817, section of handscroll, colour on paper. Photo: Fukuda
Kazuhiko.
369
150 Nishikawa Sukenobu, The Way of Sex and Bedroom Waters (Shikido
toko chozu), 1720. A two-page spread. Honolulu Academy of Art,
Lane Collection.
151 Tsukioka Settei, page from Compendium of Anuses and Penises
(Jincho choko kitaisei), 1768.
152 Tsukoka Settei, page from The Way of Love, Women’s Treasures for
Day and Night (Bido nichiya joho ki), 1764-71.
153 Utagawa Toyokuni, ‘Masturbation with a Brocade Print [of
Ichikawa Danjuro v]’ (Onishiki ategaki), page from untitled printed
album, 1820s.
154 Utagawa Kunisada, ‘Matsumoto Koshiro v’, from the series The
Tokaido Compared to Actors (Yakusha mitate tokaido), 1852. This is the
actor who appears in illus 16.
155 Tsukioka Settei, page from Library for Women’s Education in the
Lower Region (Onna teikin gejo bunko), 1768.
156 Kitagawa Utamaro, from untitled set of prints, 1802.
157 Keisai Eisen, page from untitled painted album, c. 1825. Klaus F.
Naumann Collection.
158 Katsushika Hokusai, Picture Book: Patternbook of the Vagina (Ehon
tsui no hinagata), 1812.
159 Katsukawa Shunsho, page from Erotic Book: Male and Female
Meetings at the Embankment (Ehon oshi-e dori), 1779.
160 Utagawa Toyokuni, The Cry of the Goose that Greets the Night (Oyo
garin okoe), 1822.
161 Katsushika Hokusai, The Adonis Plant (Fukuju-s0), 18108.
162 Glass dildo (9.6 cm), excavated at Owadawa Castle, from
Odawara-shi Kyoiku linkai (ed.), Odawara-jo to sono joka (Benrido,
1990), p. 114.
163 Nishikawa Sukenobu, page from Shikid6 mitsuse otoko,
c. 1725.
164 Nishikawa Sukenobu, page from Shikid6 mitsuse otoko, c. 1725.
165 Tsukioka Settei, page from Compendium ofAnuses and Penises
(Jincho choko kitaisei), 1768.
166 Keisai Eisen, cover to Erotic Book: The Wife’s Travel (Ehon fuji no
yuki), 1824.
167 Kitao Sekk6sai, page from Genkaid6, Onna imagawa oshie-bumi,
1768.
168 Tsukioka Settei, page from Onna shimegawa oshie-bumi, 1768(?).
169 Tsukioka Settei, page from Compendium ofAnuses and Penises
(Jincho choko kitaisei), 1768.
170 Sekko, page from Hyakunin isshi shoku shibako, 1764-7. Honolulu
Academy of Art, Lane Collection.
171 Kitao Shigemasa, page from An Erotic Programme of No Plays
(Yogyoku iro bangumt), 1780.

370
Index

Numerals in italics indicate caption numbers.

actors see kabuki Europe/Europeans 31-2, 47, 93, 96, 122,

Alternate Attendance (sankin kotat) 45 187, 255,123,124, 125, 288, 291, 146, 147,
Anzai Un’en 36-7 293-5, 299
Aoki Meiro 38-9 European medicine 100-105, 225
Arai Hakuseki 57
Aretino 42, 124-5 Forrer, Matthi 44, 49
Asai Ry0i 136, 244 Furukawa Koshoken 56-7, 90, 281, 287,
Asano Shiigo 44 289, 291

Beardsley, Aubrey 88, 189 Gerstle, Andrew 321

bestiality 228, 108, 109 Go-Mizunoo (fend) 99
booksellers 50 Go-Sakuramachi (fennd) 61
brocade pictures (nishiki-e), invention of
Haga Toru 247
47-9
bushido (way of the warrior) 84-6 Hanabusa Itcho 60-81
Hanasaki Kazuo 38-9
censorship 46-7, 50, 56, 106, 296 hayagawari-e (quick-change pictures) 30-31
China see Ming Hayakawa Monta 315
Chobunsai Eishi 51, 60-61, 15, 64, 20, 76-7, Hayamizu Shungyosai 117
83, 96,122 Hayashi Yoshikazu, 44, 128, 228, 296-7
Clark, T. J. 109 Hiraga Gennai 26, 47, 93, 100, 105, 164-5,
Cleland, John, 189-90, 257 217, 275, 294
Clunas, Craig 36 Hirata Atsutane 103
Hishikawa Moronobu 20, 44, 13, 148, 93,
Darnton, Robert 42-3 208, 97, 324
Davis, Julie Nelson 24 homosexuality (male) see nanshoku
delinquency 54 Hoseido Kisanji 78, 83, 101, 116, 221
double love suicide (shinji) 59, 316
Dutch East India Company (voc) 26, 76, Ichiraku-tei Eisui 135
102, 120-22, 165, 221, 227, 241, 275, 287, Thara Saikaku 15, 18, 1, 2, 20, 22-3, 37-8, 60,
88-9, 93-4, 98, 163, 185, 195, 208, 215, 222,
293
261, 268, 271
Dutch/European Studies (Ran gaku) 223,
225, 234, 292, 294 Ike Taiga and Ike Gyokuran 99
imaga (pictures of now) 82
Inagaki Tsurujo 59, 170-72
Eight Views (hakkei) 147, 191, 240
England 15, 51, 106-7 Ishikawa Masamochi 192

371
 Ishikawa Tair6 291 Koikawa Harumachi 119-20, 43, 217, 221
Ishikawa Toyonobu 27, 50 Korea 15, 263, 323
Ishino Hiromichi 55-6 Kulm[us], Adam 101-3, 225
Isoda Korytsai 30, 7, 44, 73, 26, 75, 83, 63, Kuroda Seiki 38
78, 190, 89, 202, 220 kyoka (‘mad verse’) 64, 78, 290

Jinnai Hidenobu 244 Lairesse, Gérard de 105

Jippesha Ikku 97, 269, 270, 276, 133, 281-2 Laqueur, Thomas 100, 301
Jones, Sumie 297 Lane, Richard 96, 296
lesbianism 257, 299
kabuki 23, 25, 26, 31, 48, 57-9, 87, 98-9, 122, Leupp, Gary 172,196
131, 146, 155, 222, 306 Li Bo 135-7, 205
Kaempfer, Engelbert 57, 275, 276 London 15, 96, 108, 286
Kanadehon chishingura (Treasury of Loyal
Retainers) 38, 268 Manet, Edouard 109, 37, 114
Kano Eisen-in Michinobu 60, 78 Maruyama Okyo 34, 40, 211, 120, 263-4
Kano Mitsunobu 130 Maruyama Oshin 69
Kano School 60-61, 211, 265-6 Matsudaira Sadanobu 55, 56-7, 58, 63-5,
Kano Tan’yti40 73-83,85
Katsukawa Shunch6 228, 106, 107, 276 Matsuo Basho 93, 95
Katsukawa Shunsho 10, 51, 52, 159 Matsura Seizan 63, 81, 107, 236, 288
Katsuragawa Hoshii 76, 101-2, 105 Matsura Takanobu 107
Katsushika Hokusai 48, 31, 116, 46, 126, 79, Ming 15, 36, 47, 245, 248, 129, 287, 324-5
198, 203-4, 94, 240, 244, 121, 136, 278, 282, Mishima Yukio 108, 189, 323
290, 292, 148, 158, 161, 317-18, 319 Morishima Chiry6 105-6, 35, 238, 294-5
Kawahara Keiga, 124, 125, 293, 149 Moriyama Takamori 58-9, 64-5, 82-3
Keene, Donald 196 Muroi Kytis6 57
Keisai Eisen 52, 136, 82, 225-6, 134, 272, Motoori Norinaga 260
144, 291,157, 166, 319
Kikuchi Y6sai 111, 39 Nagahide 146
Kimuro Boun 273-5 Nagasaki 56-7, 76, 116, 120-21, 275, 286-90,
Kitagawa Utamaro 24, 40, 44, 14, 52, 55,24, 293, 295
113-14, 44, 47, 128-30, 51, 136, 56, 60, 62, Nakazu (pleasure district) 62-3, 64-5
152-3, 66, 67, 68, 162, 74, 87, 187, 190, 192, Nakamura Butsuan 80
223, 104, 227, 106, 107, 245, 123, 127, 128, Namake no Bakahito 223-4
131, 132, 270, 293, 298, 156 nanshoku (male—male sexuality) 26, 57-9,
Kitagawa Utamaro 1 137
87-8, 90, 93-8, 152-4, 156-9, 195-6, 199,
Kitamaru Kigin 159, 260-61 216-17, 235-7, 239, 260, 266-7, 271, 275,
Kitao Masanobu see Santo Kyoden 278, 294, 317, 322-3
Kitao Masayoshi (Kuwagata Keisai) 77-8, Neer, Eglon van der 36
29, 80, 30 nigao-e (likeness pictures) 24, 26
Kitao Sekk6sai 167 Nishikawa Sukenobu 46, 86, 186, 92, 219,
Kitao Shigemasa 5, 28, 78, 77, 171 246, 116, 150, 163, 164, 324-5
Kobayashi Hiromitsu 324-5 Nishimura Sukenobu 116
Kobo Daishi (Kutkai) 236

37*
JIdano Naotake 100-101, 33, 34, 116 Steiner, George 92
Oda Nobunaga 87 Sugimura Jihei 44, 206, 95, 208, 98
Ogata Korin 57 Sugita Genpaku 59-60, 62, 63, 100-103, 120,
Okumura Masanobu 44, 46, 23, 96, 169, 80, 302
205-6 Suzuki Harunobu 29, 6, 30, 40, 44, 47-8, 50,
Okumura Toshinobu 103 18, 136, 55, 58, 147-8, 65, 71, 167, 73, 76,
Ota Kinjo 88, 90, 93, 97 175, 81, 84, 91, 211, 99, 213-16, 100, 101,
Ota Nanpo 37, 78, 83, 93, 159, 217, 269 220-21, 112, 240, 244-5, 118, 235, 126, 260
Otsu-e (pictures from Otsu) 239 Suzuki Harushige see Shiba Kokan
Otsuki Gentaku 244 syphilis / disease 258, 302

panoramas 78 Tachibana Nankei 84-5

Pepys, Samuel 51 tagasode bydbu (‘whose sleeves?’ screens)
physiognomy 225-6 119-20, 53, 193
Takizawa Bakin 228
Raimondi, Marcantonio 42 Tale of Genji (Genji monogatar1) 89-90, 117,
rape 254, 143,144 159, 176, 208, 225, 257-60, 269, 302
Rekisen-tei Eiri 54 Tamagawa Sensht 19
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 40, 42 Tanuma Okitsugu 50-51, 52, 54, 62-3
Russia 76, 101, 187, 232 Teikin 3, 22, 283
tengu 219-20
Sakai-cho 57 Terasawa Masatsugu 11
Sakai Tadanao (Tory6, or Sakai Hoitsu) 76, Terashima Ryan 94, 32
28 Thara Saikaku 102
Santo Kydden (Kitao Masanobu) 78, 80, Thunberg, Carl Peter 102-3, 241, 287, 288
176, 221, 233, 113, 237-8, 114, 241-2 Tinios, Ellis, 323
Satake Yoshiyasu (Shozan) 116 Titsingh, Isaac 289
Sato Nirihiro 76, 116, 288 toba-e 56
Schallow, Paul 172 Tokugawa leharu 50, 52, 83, 165
Sei Shonagon 32-3, 268 Tokugawa Jenari 52, 59-61, 63, 83
Seigle, Cecilia, 304, 313 Tokugawa Jenobu 57
Sekko 170 Tokugawa leyasu 54
senryu (verse) 20-21, 24, 34, 38, 40-41, 50, Tokugawa lIemitsu 5, 98, 200
55, 74, 89, 149, 167, 224-5, 228, 230, 232, Tokugawa Yoshimune 46
Torii Kiyomitsu 17, 72, 85, 240
233, 236, 267, 20-92, 313, 319
Sharakusai Manri 87, 233 Torii Kiyonaga 23, 51
Tosei anabanashi 98-9, 242, 263 Toyotomi Hideyoshi 85, 199-200, 266,
Shiba Kokan (Suzuki Harushige) 40, 47, 50, 270
108, 111, 40,114, 61, 146, 75, 211, 221-2, Tsukioka Settei 36, 170, 145, 151,152,154,
155,165,168, 169
235, 273, 234, 289
Shikitei Sanba 52, 226-7, 237 Tsutaya Jazaburo 52, 93
Shimokobe Shiisui 45
Shirakawa Yoshihiko 44 Ueda Akinari 157-8
Smith, Henry 38-9 Utagawa Hiroshige 48, 128-30, 244, 282
Sétatsu-K6rin School 77 Utagawa Kunifusa 8,9

oie
Utagawa Kunimaro 24, 16, 143 Western-style imagery 47, 25, 105-6, 109,
Utagawa Kunisada 12, 126, 130, 49, 83, 224- 38, 115-17, 211
6, 105, 228, 108, 109, 110, 111, 119, 138,
139, 140, 280, 142,154 Yamamoto Tsunemoto 86
Utagawa Kunitora 44 Hagakure (Hidden Among Leaves) 200
Utagawa Toyoharu 48 Yamazaki Jory 153-5, 64
Utagawa Toyomaru 70 Yanagasaki Yoshiyasu 25
Utagawa Toyokuni I 30, 21, 228, 153, 160 Yanagawa Shigenobu 25, 116, 133, 272, 147
 : ally he teeth century, :
yas shunga*were popular
r toeeeandie Hating World,

‘images were ie an J used,

illuminating a peoracstive world
: ofsexuali

Fromreviews
re waft ihefi ae

‘Sexae iheFloating World is

is a tour de force, ceevualled by avenge:
— elseT have encountered on shunga iral satcasatcreyucis(er-l Mcroye)elicie(e-lsteyamey
the questions itposes. It asks us to fundamentally rethink our under-
: ae: y ukiyoe!— Paul ie, poe of Japanese Studies

WWith concern, proportion, wit and a bit of levity, the author of this
authoritative and invaluable contribution to oe has given us
: the book for which we have long waited . .. a monumental study’
— ~ Donald Richie,The
7 Las Times

‘Aiden and one intcoduction to the social and sexual

habits of pre-modern Japan, copiously illustrated and full of witty
anecdotes as well as solid scholarly research’ — Insight Japan

TIMON SCREECH is a Professor in the History of Art at the School of

L@Futelaiez¥ e-vate reuaule-lamesat(et(o-m (rey) aOlaraycucsia yao)aMevate(eeMe-late Merah (ers
Associate at the Sainsbury Institute for the Study of Japanese Arts and
Cultures. His other books include The Shogun’s Painted Culture: Fear
and Creativity in the Japanese States, 1760-1829 (Reaktion, 2000).

With 171 illustrations, 45 in colour

COVER: Keisai Eisen, detail from an untitled = ART

painted album, c. 1825, Klaus F. Naumann
ISBN 978-1-86189-432-8

oS ||/\|||
REAKTION BOOKS
www.reaktionbooks.co.uk UK £17.95 RRP/US <5