Chapter Sixteen:

Sexuality and Popular Art of 17th-Century Japan

Woodblock prints were images produced by pressing a succession of carved wooden blocks, often with each block dipped in a different color of ink, onto a stationary piece of paper or thin canvas. For an illustrated explanation of the details of print making in Tokugawa times, see #this web site.# The key point for our purposes is that woodblock prints were mass-produced for the purpose of resale to the general public. Although art had long been a consumable commodity, the efficient production of woodblock prints brought prices down to levels that most residents of Edo could afford.

Because woodblock prints were produced for the general public, they featured themes and topics with wide appeal such as popular stage actors (the rough equivalent of today's film and pop music stars), sumō 相撲 athletes, famous places of natural beauty, and recent social or political scandals. And guess what was the most popular topic of such prints? Neo-Confucian metaphysics? Not quite. Sex, glamour, and celebrity? Yes.

Tokugawa-period woodblock prints are generally called ukiyo-e 浮世絵, meaning "images of the floating world." Many people incorrectly think that the term ukiyo-e means erotic images, probably because so many ukiyo-e were erotic. But ukiyo-e encompass landscape scenes and a wide variety of non-erotic themes. Erotic woodblock prints were most commonly known as shunga 春画, meaning "spring pictures." The word "spring" often means "youthful sexual beauty" or "youthful sexual vigor"  in Japanese usage then or now. Prostitution, for example, is baishun 売春, "selling spring," which has a different emotive sense than the English term. Similarly, the word "color" (iro 色 by itself, -shoku -色 in many compound words) often means eroticism or sexuality.

Before continuing, take a look at several of these sites and study some of the prints:

Jim Breen's Ukiyo-e Gallery <> Library of Congress <> Ukiyo-e: Pictures of the Floating World <> Ukiyo-e from Museum Nagoya  <> Ukiyoe in the Sweetbriar Collection  <> from the Tobacco and Salt Museum <> Misc. ukiyo-e <> Prints of Andō Hiroshige <> Prints of Utagawa Kunisada

Prior to the Tokugawa period, the term "ukiyo," "floating world," conjured up mental images of sadness and anxiety regarding the transitory nature of this world. The term, of course, is of Buddhist origin. During the Tokugawa period, however, the term ukiyo underwent a transformation. It came to mean a place of pleasure, consumption, sensuality, and hedonism, but with a positive connotation of "the world of pleasure." In the words of art historian Richard Lane:

for the newly liberated townsmen of the seventeenth-century Japanese Renaissance "floating world" tended to lose its connotations of the transitory world of illusion and to take on hedonistic implications. It denoted the newly evolved stylish world of pleasure, the world of easy women and handsome actors, all the varied pleasures of the flesh. (Richard Lane, Images from the Floating World: The Japanese Print (New York: Konecky and Konecky, 1978), p. 11.)

(#Tokugawa-Period Academic Reading#)

Major Topics in ukiyo-e Prints Include:

The discussion below focuses mainly on the topics in bold print.

The earliest ukiyo-e, in the first decades of the Tokugawa period were figure paintings. A representative early example is #Princess Sen and Her Lover,# which depicts a granddaughter of Tokugawa Ieyasu, surrounded by her ladies-in-waiting, receiving a letter from a samurai lover. Passion lurks beneath the surface of the painting as the princess eagerly reads the samurai's letter. In #Bathhouse Girls# we find bold sensuality mixed with a sense of strength and confidence. Public bathhouses were numerous in Tokugawa Japan, and most were simply places to bathe, with no connection with prostitution. In certain areas, however, one could find "special" bath houses, staffed with voluptuous attendants who did more than simply scrub customers' backs. The bakufu banned such bathhouses in 1657, but, despite some occasional attempts at enforcing the ban, the bathhouses continued to exist. They exist today as well and are known by the generic term "soapland." Perhaps the most common theme of the early ukiyo-e paintings were the courtesans who inhabited the pleasure quarters found in every major urban area. #Courtesans at Leisure# is a large screen painting depicting eighteen courtesans in various scenes from ordinary life (#another example#). Ordinary life was the subject of much of the later ukiyo-e as well. In the case of courtesans, depictions of their "ordinary," that is, private, lives often had voyeuristic overtones as we shall see. 

#Elite courtesans,# who were famous celebrities, plied their trade in a district on the outskirts of Edo called #Yoshiwara# (it relocated from time to time, sometimes, temporarily, to more central locations in Edo). Yoshiwara was the bakufu-sanctioned, expensive, high-class brothel district, frequented by many of the wealthy and sophisticated men of Edo. For more details, see Gerald Figal's #"A Night at the Yoshiwara."#

By the 1660s, the first mass-produced woodblock prints began to appear, often in the form of pages illustrating of handbooks on sex. These prints were created from sets of wooden blocks and could, therefore, be produced in quantity. Although initially expensive, the price of these prints dropped steadily as more efficient methods of production developed along with greater consumer demand. We should bear in mind that these illustrated sex manuals were perfectly legitimate books in their day. As Lane points out, "these erotica must be regarded in the light of seventeenth-century Japanese life and mores. Sex was considered a very natural function, and ways of increasing enjoyment of this function were felt to be more commendable than censurable." (Ibid., p. 37. For a somewhat dissenting view, see Timon Screech, Sex and the Floating World: Erotic Images in Japan, 1700-1820.) The subject matter soon broadened well beyond sex manuals, but sexuality, in one form or another, remained at least a subtle presence in many ukiyo-e prints. During the eighteenth century, technical advances in the print making process led to multi-colored prints.

#Lovers Surprised# (ca. 1660s) is a good example of the early phase of mass-produced prints. Although only two people are depicted explicitly, the skillful used of detail in their facial expressions creates the effect of the presence of a third person. By the middle of the eighteenth century, multi-colored prints had become mass-produced commodities as well.

Unlike the case in Europe, Japanese artists did not celebrate the nude figure in their work in any medium until the late Meiji period. Japanese popular art of the eighteenth century, detailed polychrome prints of famous beautiful women--usually courtesans--were much in demand (#typical courtesan example#). These prints emphasized the subtle, often elaborate facial features, gestures, long hair, and richly decorated clothing of these women to convey a sense of erotic beauty and sexual power.

In most erotic prints (whether featuring courtesans or not), partial nudity--often revealing the "jade gate" and "jade stalk" in exaggerated detail--was common in depictions of sexual acts, but it was the *combination of partial nudity, clothing and behavior* that made such prints appealing to consumers. The nude male or female figure itself was not an object of artistic depiction in Tokugawa times, whether to convey a sense of the erotic or for any other purpose.

*Lovers with Clam Shell* (part of the Uta makura, Poems of the pillow, series) by the famous ukiyo-e artist #Kitagawa Utamaro# (1753-1806), produces a particularly striking sense of sensual passion. The interplay of legs and sheer clothing, the grasping hands, and the man's intense right eye (look closely just below the woman's hair) as the two lovers embrace contribute to the overall impact of the print. There is another erotic element to the picture that is specific to Japanese culture: The nape of the neck, which the woman displays prominently in her passion, was a highly erogenous part of the body. It was common for ukiyo-e prints to include poems, usually about something in nature, with obvious sexual connotations. The poem on the man's fan reads:

Its beak caught firmly in the clam's shell

The snipe cannot fly away

On an autumn evening

Most Japanese, then and now, regard autumn as the best season, a time when the intense heat and humidity of the summer had passed, and the evenings had become pleasantly cool.

Many ukiyo-e prints have a voyeuristic quality, perhaps most commonly achieved by depicting women bathing. Consumers of prints were particularly interested in behind-the-scenes depictions of courtesans as they might appear while at rest, such as in Utamaro's *Courtesan in Dishabille.* Although such a print may not seem voyeuristic to contemporary viewers, courtesans were mysterious sexual celebrities to most Edo men. Only the richest could purchase their services, and even these men saw courtesans only in their quasi-official mode as entertainers. To see a courtesan in her completely private moments was thus quite interesting to many print buyers.

More obviously voyeuristic, sexually explicit depictions between a man and woman often featured a third party watching the activity. Sometimes this third party was a serving maid. In other cases, the artist would include a diminutive male or female figure who would watch the activities of the main characters and comment on them. Even today, voyeurism, eavesdropping on the sexual activities of others, is a major component in Japanese eroticism.

Images Intended for Women?

Clearly, and not surprisingly, men were the main consumers of the explicitly erotic ukiyo-e prints (shunga). Were any such prints--or the functional equivalent--produced, in whole or in part, for women? It is only recently that some students of Tokugawa-period art have asked this question, so the answer is still taking shape. It seems that at least a few prints may have been in whole or in part aimed at women as potential consumers. One possible example is Inagaki Tsurujo, #Woman Manipulating a Glove Puppet,# from the late eighteenth century. The puppet of a shakuhachi-playing wandering Buddhist monk that the woman is manipulating is full of phallic overtones. This work is a painting, not a print, but we do not know the identity of the person who commissioned it. Inagaki Tsurujo was a female painter, and the image clearly suggests both female control over and satisfaction with the phallic-like monk puppet. For more commentary on this work: #click here.#

Another possibility is Chōbunsai Eishi's #Woman Dreaming Over the Tales of Ise.#  Here, a woman has fallen asleep while reading the Tales of Ise (Ise monogatari) is a Heian-period work of classical literature. From the part of the print above the woman's sleeping head we can see the content of her dreams: a scene of illicit lust between Ariwara-no-Narihira, famous by Edo times as a great lover, and a lady he carried off to the province of Musashi. This part of of the Tales of Ise is illustrated less elegantly #in this Edo-period edition.#

I have heard that Kuniyoshi produced a series of shunga that ended up as a small book intended to fit into the sleeves of women's kimono, but I am not certain about the accuracy of this claim. Hopefully, future research will help clarify the extent to which women both produced and consumed shunga.

"Few peoples, said Lane, "have ever pursued the cult of artistic erotica as assiduously as the Japanese." (Images from the Floating World, p. 113.) Nevertheless, one should not get the impression that all ukiyo-e prints were about eroticism in a narrow sense. The prints dealt with the many other aspects of relations between men and women, as well as other topics. The parting of lovers, usually in the morning, was a common theme. Such depictions are somewhat reminiscent of Heian-period sentiments, but the Tokugawa-period versions tend to convey a stronger sense of mutual, poignant emotions. Sometimes the emotions of love and courtship were conveyed through the image of only one person, who would, of course, be depicted #showing strong emotions.#

The ukiyo-e prints also celebrated the excitement of courtship, particularly among teenagers experiencing, perhaps for the first time, the full force of emotions connected with love and lust. A closely related point is that this art form celebrated youth. One rarely sees anyone in an ukiyo-e print who appears over forty; youths in their very early teens are quite common. Many scholars have commented that Tokugawa-period intellectual thought tended to celebrate nature's vitality. The youthful vitality evident in many of the ukiyo-e prints may be a popular manifestation of the same tendency. Toyonobu's  (1711-85) #Girl Tying Verse to a Cherry Branch# is an example of this type of print. Here, a teenage girl at a festival strains to tie a love poem to a cherry branch in full bloom, the spring season corresponding to passion and love in Japanese symbolism.

Famous, beautiful courtesans became perhaps the most representative subject matter of the color prints of the eighteenth century. Recall that the elite courtesans were social celebrities. Prints of these courtesans, therefore, functioned roughly like photographs or posters of famous actors, actresses, popular musicians, et cetera did and do in more recent times. The elaborate dress of the elite courtesans provided an excellent opportunity for artists to display their talent. Because the courtesans' robes were multi-colored and bright, artists could strive for a realistic effect while still providing consumers of the prints with a rich array of bright color. (#courtesan examples#)

ukiyo-e prints also dealt with subjects other than relations between men and women. Prints often, for example, depicted different types of occupations such as wood cutters and #vendors of various types.# During the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, #landscapes# enjoyed a period of intense popularity (see more examples from links at the start of this chapter). Modern copies of these landscape prints still figure prominently in materials intended for tourists or consumption outside Japan. Why? Because they convey nice, wholesome images of the quaint Japan of bygone days--an image that still has great appeal to the imaginations of many people outside of Japan. This is not to imply, however, that there was anything artistically lacking in the best of the ukiyo-e landscape prints, for many are magnificent accomplishments of the highest quality.

The bakufu sometimes attempted to regulate or censor ukiyo-e prints. But remember, while a small segment of Confucian-influenced moralists did condemn the celebration of sexuality in art, their views were not representative of most Japanese of the time, whether samurai or commoners. Bakufu regulations, therefore, rarely took serious aim at "rectifying morals" by reducing exposure to sexually-explicit art. The primary objective was to reduce luxury consumption and spending. Bakufu officials tended to have an antiquated view of economic laws, often regarding luxury spending as a drain on the economy as a whole. Because ukiyo-e prints were not necessities, and because they were extremely popular, the bakufu often sought to "rectify morals" by limiting such things as the size, paper quality, number of colors and so forth. These regulations usually had a temporary effect but were never successful in the long run in curbing public consumption of large, brightly-colored prints. Another area of censorship involved politics. One artist, for example, received a brief prison sentence for depicting Toyotomi Hideyori (Hideyoshi's son, killed by Tokugawa Ieyasu). Anything even indirectly connected with questions of bakufu legitimacy was dangerous ground, although it was rare that an artist would receive more than a mild punishment (e.g., a short period of house arrest) for running afoul of the bakufu in this way.

During the Meiji period and later, censorship of art and literature became much more strict, and sexuality itself gradually came to be regarded as a corrupting influence on morality. Sexually explicit art still flourished in modern times, as it always does, but it was no longer in the mainstream of popular tastes as it had been earlier. Today, mainstream attitudes about sexuality and nudity in Japan have a distinctly "Puritanical" quality similar to, albeit somewhat less intense than, the situation in the United States. The modern state, through its censors, educational system, and by other means has helped sweep away the relatively more celebratory attitude toward sex and the pleasures of the flesh common in Tokugawa times.

Interestingly, the image of Japan as a sexual paradise for men was common in the United States a generation ago, and it still lingers vaguely in the backs of many American minds. This view was the product of the immediate postwar generation of U.S. soldiers who, owing to their power as conquerors and possessors of highly-valued dollars, found sex readily available. As one competent observer of contemporary Japan has noted:

Buried somewhere in the minds of many Western men is an image of pliant raven-haired beauties, all trained in the most contortionist ways to please a man. Although their numbers are mercifully dwindling, there are still some American men who only want to hear about "geisha girls" when they learn that I have lived in Japan. . . . [I]t is a shock for many Westerners to discover that in terms of sexual latitude, Japan lies closer to Spain and Portugal than to Sweden. (Jared Taylor, Shadows of the Rising Sun: A Critical View of the "Japanese Miracle," [Tokyo: Charles E. Tuttle Co., Inc., 1983], p. 185.)

Sexuality is still a major part of life in Japan, of course, as it is in all societies. Even the power of the modern state cannot fully suppress it. So, not surprisingly, in today's Japan sexuality permeates advertising, fashion and many other realms of life. The point here is not that sex is less important in today's Japan, but simply that social attitudes regarding it have undergone significant changes since the Tokugawa period.

#Further reading: Tokugawa period#

#Further reading: Tokugawa and modern period#