Shunga Books and Prints in Context

What is Shunga?

‘Shunga’ refers to books, paintings and prints that depict sexual relations explicitly. Images often accompany erotic stories or dialogue. These works today are referred to as shunpon (books) or shunga, but in the Edo period there were many terms for shunga: including makura-e, warai-e, ehon (written with various characters).

Virtually all ukiyo-e artists produced shunga. Beginning with Hishikawa Moronobu, through Nishikawa Sukenobu and Suzuki Harunobu, down to Torii Kiyonaga, Kitagawa Utamaro, Katsushika Hokusai and Utagawa Kuniyoshi, these artists all produced shunga prints and books. Furthermore, popular writers such as Ryûtei Tanehiko and Tamenaga Shunzui, as well as intellectuals/poets such as Ôta Nanpo also wrote shunga books. However, after the Censorship Laws of the Kyôhô Reforms in 1722, in order to avoid punishment, artists and writers usually used secret code names in published books or prints. For example, Hokusai used the name ‘Shishikigankô’, Kuniyoshi, ‘Ichimyô kaihodo yoshi’, and Tanehiko, ‘Kujiritei sanehiko’.

The range and number of shunga works in the Edo era is vast. Artists and writers often depicted sexual relations set in the context of classical literature and poetry, and sometimes borrowed from or parodied popular Kabuki or fiction, always finding new means of expression.

From the perspective of technical and artistic achievement as well, shunga works are equal to or superior to other ukiyo-e woodblock prints. In fact, many of the most extravagantly produced colour-printed books in Japan are found in the shunga genre.

Shunga books and prints/paintings were a major part of Edo-period culture, but today the level of research on shunga is not very high. We still do not know the full extent of the number of books and prints/paintings, or how they circulated, or their relation to non-shunga works. These major questions are still to be explored. As these questions are answered, we can hope to learn more and more not only about shunga but also about Edo-period culture in general.