Exhibition note
On “Shunga: Sex and pleasure in Japanese Art” at the British Museum, London.
Sugimura Jihei, Lovers under a quilt with phoenix design, untitled erotic picture, mid - 1680s. Private collection, USA.
Shunga, “spring” or “pillow” pictures, the very, very explicit, erotic Japanese prints and scrolls, have now made it to the respectability of a major exhibition at the British Museum. Indeed the show reflects the important, contemporary collaborative research between British and Japanese scholars on the history, aesthetics, social meanings, and humor of this form of art. It was not always so. When an English trader brought some choice examples back to Britain in 1613, his outraged employers, the officials of the East India Company, had...
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