Shunga Totally Explained

Everything about Shunga totally explained

ť For other uses of the term Shunga see Shunga (disambiguation)

is a Japanese term for erotic pictures.
   Most shunga are a type of ukiyo-e, usually executed in woodblock print format. While rare, there are extant erotic painted handscrolls which predate the Ukiyo-e movement. Translated literally, the Japanese word shunga means picture of spring; "spring" is a common euphemism for sex.
   The ukiyo-e movement as a whole sought to express an idealisation of contemporary urban life. Following the aesthetics of everyday life, Edo period shunga sought to express the sexual mores of the chonin in the widest variety of forms possible, and therefore depicted heterosexual and homosexual, old and young alike, as well as a wide range of fetishes. In the Edo period it was enjoyed by rich and poor, men and women, and despite being out of favour with the shogunate, carried very little stigma. Almost all ukiyo-e artists made shunga at some point in their careers, and it didn't affect their prestige as artists.
   The art of shunga provided an inspiration for the Showa and Heisei, or modern, period art known in the Western world as hentai, and known (formally) in Japan as 'jū hachi kin' (literally, "18-restricted", or adult-only) anime and manga. Like shunga, hentai is sexually explicit in its imagery.
   Shunga finally succumbed to the introduction of erotic photographs at the beginning of the Meiji era (1868—1912).

Production

Shunga were produced between the sixteenth century and the nineteenth century by ukiyo-e artists, since they sold more easily and at a higher price than their ordinary work. Shunga prints were produced and sold either as single sheets or - more frequently - in book form, called enpon. These customarily contained twelve images, a tradition with its roots in Chinese shunkyu higa. Shunga was also produced in hand scroll format, called kakemono-e (掛け物絵). This format was also popular, though more expensive as the scrolls had to be individually painted.
   The quality of shunga art varies, and few ukiyo-e painters remained aloof from the genre. Experienced artists found it to their advantage to concentrate on their production. This led to the appearance of shunga by first rate artists. Ukiyo-e artists owed a stable livelihood to such customs, and it appears that producing a piece of shunga for a high-ranking client brought them enough money to live on for about six months.
   Full-colour printing, or nishiki-e, wasn't invented until 1765, and a lot of shunga predates this. Prior to this, colour could be added to monochrome prints by hand, and from 1744 beni-zuri-e allowed the production of prints of limited colours. Even after 1765 a lot of shunga was produced using older methods. In some cases this was to keep the cost low, but in many cases this was a matter of taste.
   Shunga produced in Edo tended to be more richly coloured than that produced in Kyoto and Osaka, mainly owing to a difference in aesthetic taste between these regions - Edo has a taste for novelty and luxury, while the kamigata region preferred a more muted, understated style. This also translates into a greater amount of background detail in Edo Shunga.

Characters

Possibly the most common character of shunga was the courtesan. Utamaro was particularly revered for his depictions of courtesans, which offered an unmatched level of sensitivity and psychological nuance. Tokugawa courtesans could be described as the celebrities of their day, and Edo's pleasure district, Yoshiwara, is often compared to Hollywood. Men saw them as highly eroticised due to their profession, but at the same time unattainable, since only the wealthiest, most cultured men would have any chance of sexual relations with one. Women saw them as distant, glamorous idols, and the fashions for the whole of Japan were inspired by the fashions of the courtesan. For these reasons the fetish of the courtesan appealed to many. However, Utamaro is just one example of an artist who was sensitive to the inner life of the courtesan, for example, showing them wistfully dreaming of escape from Yoshiwara through marriage.

Lack of realism

Shunga couples are often shown in unrealistic positions with exaggerated genitalia. Explanations for this include increased visibility of the sexually explicit content, artistic interest and psychological impact: that is, the genitalia is interpreted as a 'second face,' expressing the primal passions that the everyday face is obligated by giri to conceal, and is therefore the same size as the head and placed unnaturally close to it by the awkward position.

Audience

Shunga was probably enjoyed by both men and women of all classes. Superstitions and customs surrounding shunga suggest as much; in the same way that it was considered a lucky charm against death for a samurai to carry shunga, it was considered a protection against fire in merchant warehouses and the home. From this we can deduce that samurai, chonin, and housewives all owned shunga. All three of these groups would suffer separation from the opposite sex; the samurai lived in barracks for months at a time, and conjugal separation resulted from the sankin kotai system and the merchants' need to travel to obtain and sell goods. It is therefore argued that this superstition was euphemistic in nature, and ownership of shunga wasn't superstitious, but libidinous in nature. It was traditional to buy newly married couples shunga. This and records of women obtaining it themselves from booklenders tells us that women were avid consumers of it. Shunga may have served as sexual guidance for the sons and daughters of wealthy families. This has been disputed since the instructional nature of shunga is limited by the impossible positions and lack of description of technique, and there were sexual manuals in circulation that offered clearer guidance, including advice on hygiene. Shunga varied greatly in quality and price. Some of it was highly elaborate, commissioned by wealthy merchants and daimyo. Some of it was limited in colour, widely circulated, and cost little more than a bowl of noodles. Enpon were available through the lending libraries, or kashi-honya, that travelled in rural areas. This tells us that shunga reached all classes of society - peasant, chonin, samurai and daimyo.

Noted Shunga artists

Genre Classification

Some dispute exists among scholars regarding how to classify shunga - while its sexually explicit nature leads one to consider it pornography, there are serious problems with this assumption. Specifically, it's difficult to separate shunga from ukiyo-e as a whole. It was produced by the same artists as what might be considered non-sexual ukiyo-e. Bijin-ga, which didn't contain sexually explicit images, were equally erotic, and there are many records of people masturbating over them, implying that if shunga is pornographic, so must this be.Further Information

Get more info on 'Shunga'.

External Link Exchanges

Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:

<a href="http://shunga.totallyexplained.com">Shunga Totally Explained</a>

Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned.