Pornography or erotic art? Japanese museum aims to confront shunga taboo

Japan’s adult movie industry is among the biggest in the world, and its range of pornographic manga is eclectic and ubiquitous. But it has taken centuries-old works of art for the country to challenge official reticence towards graphic depictions of sex.

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  In recent weeks, tens of thousands of people have flocked to a tiny museum in suburban Tokyo to cast their eyes over woodblock prints and paintings of couples, and sometimes groups, in the throes of sexual ecstasy.

With titles such as Pillow Book for the Young: All You Need to Know About How the Jewelled Rod Goes In and Out, the images leave little to the imagination.

  In one of the least explicit works, a semi-naked woman clutches a bamboo comb between her teeth, her gaze meeting that of the viewer. Others, though, abound with loosened or discarded kimono and the oversized genitalia of men and women in all manner of sexual contortions. Voyeurism and orgies are recurring themes. And unlike in pornographic movies made in Japan, expurgatory pixellation is nowhere to be seen.

  Billed as the first proper shunga (spring pictures) exhibition in the country of the genre’s birth, the collection of 133 prints found a home at the Eisei Bunko Museum , but only after being rejected by at least 10 other prospective venues.

  Galleries that feared shocking visitors with the frank depictions of sexual escapades unfolding inside Edo-era (1603-1868) brothels, inns, teahouses – and even Buddhist temples – misread the public appetite for shunga, a once-popular subgenre of ukiyo-e that mixes explicit content with visual humour and short stories with innuendo.

  The museum’s director, Morihiro Hosokawa, said he was honoured to give the Japanese public its first opportunity to “appreciate the real shunga” for decades.

  “Printed copies of shunga are widely available to collectors, and it is not logical that art fans are denied an opportunity to see the original works,” Hosokawa, a former prime minister, told reporters before the exhibition opened. We must work to break the taboo.”

(Interestingly, auction house Sotheby’s staged a shunga exhibition in Hong Kong in 2013 that showcased more than 60 erotic prints and albums from antique dealer Mitsuru Uragami’s Edo period collection and no one here bat an eyelid.)

  With it running until December 23, the Tokyo exhibition has already attracted more than 90,000 visitors willing to wait up to half an hour for a glimpse of the works of such shunga luminaries as Katsushika Hokusai and Kitagawa Utamaro.

  The Eisei Bunko exhibition is long overdue, said Akiko Yano, an art historian at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London University, who rejects the would-be censors’ view of shunga as feudal-era pornography. “I suggest that they look carefully at the prints to appreciate how delicately they were made and to read the text and dialogues inscribed in each picture,” she said.

  “Then they will see that each shunga contains a story, characters and a gentle atmosphere, as well as wit, satire and lots of other funny elements.”

  About half the images on display at Eisei Bunko were loaned by the British museum, which hosted its own widely popular shunga exhibition in 2013, with the rest coming from Japanese museums and private collections.

  Having started out as paintings reserved for the upper classes in 17th century Japan, shunga were embraced by people from all backgrounds after the invention of woodblock printing enabled artists to turn out erotic images in their thousands.

  Not everyone shares the Japanese art world’s enthusiasm over shunga’s long-awaited reappearance, however.

  Last month, police warned four weekly magazines that they could be breaking obscenity laws after publishing shunga to coincide with the exhibition. One editor was suspended for running perhaps the best-known shunga, the Dream of the Fisherman’s Wife, which depicts a woman being pleasured by two octopuses.

  That ribald brand of humour, and the clear delight artists took in mixing the preposterous with the erotic, prompted the Tokugawa shogunate to issue, in 1722, a ban on unauthorised books that included shunga.

  Shunga production continued, out of sight of the authorities, but there was to be no revival of mass consumption, as Japan’s 19th century modernisers shunned aspects of Japan’s history and culture they considered unwelcome reminders of its feudal past.

  “Once shunga had been officially classified as ‘obscene’, it was difficult to rescue it back into the realm of art,” said Tim Clark, head of the Japanese section at the British Museum.

  “It is good that people in Japan are finally able to see the real shunga works and not just illustrations in books,” Clark added.

  “I hope they will feel a sense of discovery and re-connection with something important that has been missing from the way the cultural history of Japan has been presented until now. It is clear that people in Japan are responding very positively to the beauty, humour and humanity of shunga.”