Shunga: Sex and Pleasure in Japanese Art, British Museum - exhibition preview

Ahead of the British Museum’s highly anticipated Shunga exhibition of explicitly erotic Japanese prints, curator Timothy Clark dissects one image and lets us into the strange secrets of the mysterious art
British Museum
Timothy Clark5 September 2013

Artist Hishikawa Moronobu was the founder of the so-called “floating world” school in Edo (modern Tokyo), during Japan’s period of isolation from the West, 1600-1868, who specialised in paintings and prints of the twin so-called “bad places” of the brothel quarters and kabuki theatres, as well as sexually explicit “spring pictures”, or Shunga.

Lavishly appointed theatre teahouses, shibai-jaya, were located close to the kabuki theatres, sometimes adjacent and connected by passageways, convenient for patrons to meet and party with their favourite actors. Since performances lasted from morning until dusk, these teahouses served food during intervals, and remained open in the evening for socialising. They also provided the facilities for patrons to have sex with young trainee actors (iroko).

Patrons in the early period were usually men but later women, too, were known to have liaisons with actors. From the early 18th century onwards, women made up as much as half the audience for kabuki.

In 1714, a scandal erupted when a liaison was discovered between Lady Ejima (1681-1741), a lady-in-waiting in the household of the military ruler (the shogun), and the actor Ikushima Shingor (1671-1743). Both parties were exiled and the theatre where they met was demolished.

Particularly from the late 1600s and early 1700s, there are many works of popular literature and art that present male-male sex, known as nanshoku (“male colours”) to the urban man of means as a socially accepted alternative to sex with women. This grew out of long traditions of male-male sex in Buddhist temples and between samurai. The understanding was always that sex should take place between a mature male, the nenja, who took the active role, and a youth, the wakashu, who took the passive role. Both partners had accepted rights and obligations within this dynamic, which they were expected loyally to fulfil.

The painting featured here, Scenes in a Theatre Teahouse, created in 1685 by Moronobu (died 1694) in delicate ink and colour on a silk handscroll, follows the artistic conventions of removing the roof and walls of a building to reveal the action inside.

This had been common in Japanese art since early medieval times. The scroll may originally have been much longer on the right side, the composition connecting up directly with the entrances to theatre dressing rooms. This work, on display in next month’s Shunga: Sex and Pleasure in Japanese Art, is part of the British Museum collection and relates closely to seven other fragments by Moronobu showing scenes in the brothels and theatres, dated at various times between 1672 and 1689, now preserved in the Tokyo National Museum.

The British Museum scroll was purchased in Japan sometime between 1873 and 1880 by William Anderson (1842-1900), a British professor of surgery who was working in Tokyo for the Japanese government, and sold to the Museum in 1881.

Shunga: Sex and Pleasure in Japanese Art
British Museum

1. The right-hand room is appointed with a high-culture decorative scheme: sliding door panels painted with Chinese-style ink landscapes; a display alcove with a hanging scroll of Chinese calligraphy; and a Chinese celadon incense-burner on a tall red-lacquered stand. In this party room a wealthy client is having his shoulders rubbed by a blind masseur and is sharing sake and titbits with a trainee actor. Another young actor, identified by the purple cloth covering his forehead as a female-role specialist (onnagata), plays a jaunty tune on the shamisen, a three-stringed instrument like a banjo particularly played in kabuki and the pleasure-quarters. In 1652, the samurai authorities insisted that young kabuki actors shave off their sexy forelocks — onnagata have worn purple head-cloths to compensate for the missing forelock ever since.

2. In the left-hand room, a young actor entertains his client with sake inside a large hanging mosquito net in the bedchamber. A young male servant sits respectfully outside, ready to pour more drinks.

3. Outside the gateway to the teahouse, on the left side, a samurai with twin swords is being escorted in by a young actor. Servants bring bolts of expensive cloth and a trunk of new clothes as gifts for the actors.

4. In the street, actors encounter another group of male patrons, two of whom hide their faces behind fans. Samurai were not meant to frequent the kabuki theatres and brothel districts, but many did.

5. The scroll is signed, sealed and dated openly by the artist: “Painted by Hishikawa Moronobu in the winter of 1685.”

Shunga: Sex and Pleasure in Japanese Art is at the British Museum (britishmuseum.org) October 3-January 5. Parental guidance advised for under-16s.

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