Japanese erotic art is generally regarded as reaching a peak during
the Edo period, 1600-1868; Edo refers to the small fishing town
which was to succeed the old city of Kyoto as capital of Japan and
which was to become the Tokyo of today. The Edo period saw a quite
unparalleled development of erotic art and literature, one
consequence of which was that the Japanese government started to
take an interest in censorship
The Tokugawa, or Edo, period
A movement that paralleled and occasionally intersected with the
aforementioned developments in painting was that of the production
of ukiyo-e, or “pictures of the floating world,” which depicted the
buoyant, fleeting pleasures of thecommon people. This specialized
area of visual representation was born in the late 16th and early
17th centuries as part of a widespread interest in representing
aspects of burgeoning urban life. Depictions of the brothel quarters
and Kabuki theatre dominated the subject matter of ukiyo-e until the
early 19th century, when landscape and bird-and-flower subjects
became popular. These subjects were represented in both painting and
woodblock print form.
Woodblock printing had been a comparatively inexpensive method of
reproducing image and text monopolized by the Buddhist establishment
for purposes of proselytization sincethe 8th century. For more than
800 years no other single societal trend or movement had
demonstrated a need for this relatively simple technology. Thus, in
the first half of the17th century, painters were the principal
interpreters of the demimonde. The print format was used primarily
for production of erotica and inexpensive illustrated novellas,
reflecting the generally low regard in which print art was held.
This perhaps resulted from the idea that the artist, when creating a
painting, was essentially the producer and master of his own work.
However, when engaged in woodblock print production, the artist was
more accurately classified as the designer, who had been
commissioned and was often directly supervised by the publisher,
usually the impresario of a studio or other commercial enterprise.
The simplest prints were made from ink monochrome drawings, on which
the artist sometimes noted suggestions for colour. The design was
transferred by a skilled carver to acherry or boxwood block and
carved in relief. A printer made impressions on paper from the inked
block, and the individual prints could then be hand-coloured if
desired. Printing in multiple colours required more blocks and a
precise printing method so that registration would match exactly
from block to block. Additional flourishes such as theuse of mica,
precious metals, and embossing further complicated the task. Thus,
while the themes and images of the floating world varied little
whether in painting or print, the production method for prints
involved many more anonymous and critical talents than those of the
artist-designer whose name was usually printed on the single sheet,
and the mass-produced prints were considered relatively disposable
despite the high level of artistry that was frequently achieved.
Nevertheless, with the exponentialincrease in literacy in the early
Edo period and with the vast new patronage for images of the
floating world—a clientele and subject matter not previously
serviced by any of the traditional ateliers—mass production was
necessary, and new schools and new techniques responded to the
market.
In the last quarter of the 17th century, bold ink monochrome prints
with limited hand-colouring began to appear. “The Insistent Lover”
by Sugimura Jihei (fl. c. 1681–1703) providesan excellent example of
the lush and complex mood achievable with the medium. Within a
seemingly uncomplicated composition Jihei represents a tipsy brothel
guest lunging for a courtesan while an attendant averts her eyes.
This scene, likely played out hundreds of times each evening in the
urban licensed quarters, skillfully suggests the multileveled social
games, including feigned shock and artful humouring of the insistent
guest, that prevailed in the floating world. This print, too, with
an almost naive representational quality, is an example of the
generally straightforward, exuberant mood of the times in regard to
the necessary indulgences.
From the late 17th until the mid-18th century, except for some
stylistic changes and the addition of a few printed, rather than
hand-applied, colours, print production remained basically
unchanged. The technical capacity to produce full-colour, or
polychrome, prints (nishiki-e, “brocade pictures”) was known but so
labour-intensive as to be uneconomical until the 1760s, when Suzuki
Harunobu (1725?–70), whose patrons were within the shogun's circle,
was commissioned to produce a so-called calendar print. Calendar
manufacture was a government monopoly, but privately produced works
were common. Seeking to avert any censorship, the private calendars
were disguised within innocent-looking pictures. Harunobu's young
woman rescuing a garment from the line as a shower bursts is an
example of the technique. The ideograms for the year 1765 are part
of the hanging kimono's pattern. More importantly, the work is a
full-colour print. Even though it was commissioned for limited
distribution, it excited general audiences to the possibilities of
expanding the repertoire and appearance of woodblock prints.
Harunobu's productions, through the end of the decade, elegantly
suggested the new possibilities. His work so raised the level of
consumer expectation that publishers began to enter full-colour
production on the assumption that consumption levels would outweigh
production costs. Not all prints were produced with the subtlety and
care of Harunobu's, but the turn in taste toward full-colour prints,
of whatever quality, was irreversible.
The last quarter of the 18th century was the heyday of the classic
ukiyo-e themes: the fashionable beauty and the actor. Katsukawa
Shunshō (1726–92) and his pupils dominated the actor print genre.
His innovative images clearly portrayed actors not as
interchangeable bodies with masks but as distinctive personalities
whose postures and colourfully made-up faces were easily
recognizable to the viewer. Masters at portraying feminine beauty
included Torii Kiyonaga (1752–1815) and Kitagawa Utamaro
(1753–1806). Both idealized the female form, observing it in
virtually all its poses, casual and formal. Utamaro's bust
portraits, while hardly meeting a Western definition of portraiture,
were remarkable in the emotional moods they conveyed. A mysterious
artist active under the name of Tōshūsai Sharakuproduced stunning
actor images from 1794 to 1795, but littleelse is known of him.
At the close of the 18th century, a palpable tightening of
government censorship control and perhaps a shift in public interest
from the intense introspection provided by artists ofthe demimonde
forced publishers to search for other subject matter. Landscape
became a theme of increasing interest. In Edo the artist Katsushika
Hokusai (1760–1849), who as a young man trained with Katsukawa
Shunshō, broke with the atelier system and experimented successfully
with new subjects and styles. In the 1820s and '30s, when he was
already a man of some age, Hokusai created the hugely popular print
series Thirty-six Views of Mt. Fuji. Andō Hiroshige (1797–1858)
followed with another landscape-travelogue series, Fifty-three
Stations of the Tōkaidō, which offered scenes of the towns and way
stations on the central highway connecting Edo and Kyōto. Both these
and other artists capitalized on public interest in scenes of
distant places. These landscape prints in some way assuaged the
restrictive travel codes enforced by the shogunate and allowed
viewers imaginative journeys.
Hokusai was also an important painter. His energetic rendering of
the Thunder God is a fine example of the quirky and amusing quality
of his figural painting. A characteristic swiftly modulating brush
defines the figure, and light cast from an unseen source, perhaps
lightning, allows for a play of light and shadow over the figure to
model a sense of body volume. All the more remarkable is the fact
that Hokusai wasin his 88th year when he painted this vigorous work.
Hiroshige painted as well, but his legacy is a vast number of prints
celebrating scenes of a Japan soon to vanish. His “View from
Komagata Temple near Azuma Bridge” is part of a series of 100 views
of Edo. It demonstrates Hiroshige's finely honed abilities to effect
atmosphere. The appearance of the cuckoo screeching in the sky
alludes to classical poetry associated with late spring and early
summer, as wellas to unrequited love, while the tiny figures and the
red flag of the cosmetics vendor suggest the transitory nature of
life and beauty.
The depiction of famous views allowed for their idealization and
also for important experiments with composition. Fragmentary
foreground elements were used effectively to frame a distant view, a
point of view adopted by some European painters after their study of
19th-century Japaneseprints. Ironically, in their return to
landscape and flora and fauna subjects, Japanese print arts revived
the metaphoric vehicles of personal expression so familiar to the
classic Japanese and Chinese painting traditions.
Although the time-tested themes of erotica, brothel, and theatre
continued to be represented in 19th-century prints, an emerging
taste for gothic and grotesque subjects found ample audiences as
well. Historical themes were also popular, especially those that
could be interpreted as critiques of contemporary politics. Ukiyo-e
prints seemed to have been transformed from a celebration of
pleasure to a means of widely distributing observations on social
and political events. As the century closed, the print form, while
active, was subsumed by the development of the newspaperillustration.
This new form served many of the same purposes as prints and thus
dramatically reduced the print audience, but it did not satisfy the
needs of connoisseurs.
Encyclopaedia Britannica
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The style is known as
shunga, with some of its
greatest practitioners (Harunobu,
Utamaro, etc.) producing large numbers of works.
Painted hand scrolls were also very popular. The Chinese
tradition of the erotic is extensive, with remarkable
examples of the art dating back as far as the
Yuan period (1280-1367). Unfortunately not much
survives as a result of
Mao Zedong's revisionist destruction of pre-communist
art during his
Great Leap Forward.
Shunga
The popularity of the Japanese Shunga is still increasing. They are one of the
most sought after erotic art images of today and now they have finally reached
the 'high Art' status as well. The Kunsthal in Rotterdam has the biggest exhibit
ever created of Shunga art. The exhibit is called 'Desire of Spring, Erotic
Fantasies in Edo Japan'.
The chronological overview shows us famous artworks from
Kitagawa Utamaro, Katsushika Hokusai, Suzuki Harunobu
and others. The artworks are from different courses,
both museums and private collections. Along with the
Shunga there are love letters, erotic novels and kabuki
theatre to bring back the taste of the erotic side of
Japan from that period.
Japanese Shunga
The Japanese Shunga became populair around 1900 in the western
world. At first they had a hidden existence in Europe and we do
know from different courses that they were quite popular in
'artistic' Paris at that time. Some European artists, Like
Vincent van Gogh are know for their love of the Shunga Prints.
Van Gogh even used some ideas in his personal work. But a lot of
others did collect them as well and some of the visual concepts
were transform in to European art style's like Art Nouveau.
Erotic Shunga images
The erotic Shunga images, well we should call them pornographic,
are showing us the world of the Geisha, actors and courtesans in
the Edo period. The images are both explicit and humorous. But
because of the graphical artistic quality it's just never
embarrassing to watch them. But who knows, maybe one day they
will say the same about our porn images.
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