Covering up Japanese erotica for lols betrays our timidity when it comes to sexuality

The erotic Japanese artform shunga has been modernised – using jokey emoji-like icons. It’s proof of our perversely prudish sexual age

What’s gone wrong with erotica? Are we too addled by a hypersexualised age to find artistic beauty in images of desire?

The question is aroused – or not – by a book of “modern shunga” that takes the sensual art form invented in 17th-century Japan and subjects it to some crass, and actually quite prudish, jokes. It’s all very well showing footballs, feathers and emoji-like Punch and Judy faces over the rude bits in these sketchy pastiches of shunga masterpieces. But what happened to good old-fashioned voyeurism? Why cover up what people in the past loved to look at?

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