Sex and the Floating World: Erotic Images in Japan 1700-1820

by Timon Screech

Newly revised and expanded, this second edition of Timon Screech's definitive "Sex and the Floating World" offers a real assessment of the genre of Japanese paintings and prints today known as shunga. Changes in Japanese law in the 1990s enabled erotic images to be published without fear of prosecution, and many shunga picture-books have since appeared. There has, however, been very little attempt to situate the imagery within the contexts of sexuality, gender or power. Questions of aesthetics, and of whether shunga deserve a place in the official history of Japanese art, have dominated, and the question of the use of these images has been avoided. Timon Screech seeks to re-establish shunga in a proper historical frame of culture and creativity. Shunga prints are not like any other form of picture for the simple fact that they are overtly about sex. And once we begin to examine them first and foremost as sexual apparatus, then we must be prepared for some surprises. The author opens up for us the strange world of sexual fantasy in the Edo culture of eighteenth-century Japan, and investigates the tensions in class and gender of those that made and made use of shunga.

Genres: Art, Japan, Nonfiction, History, Academic, Sexuality, Japanese Literature

477 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1999

Reviews

[Tobi ﾄﾋﾞ · Rating 5 out of 5]

got so fixated on this that i felt dizzy

[Owen Hatherley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Amusing for the amount of effort it makes to be unsexy - but a really interesting analysis of how shunga prints and books presented an egalitarian sexual utopia of mutual pleasure, devoid of patriarchy and hierarchy, which as a historian, the impressively named author stresses Edo Japan was definitely not.

[Nuria Sánchez · Rating 4 out of 5]

Me ha parecido un recorrido muy interesante por el mundo de las estampas eróticas, con una colección de imágenes fascinante y temas qué me han producido mucha curiosidad (el de los espejos mola mucho)

[Donna · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've always been drawn to Japanese "spring pictures" of the Edo period, perhaps because there are so few artistic portrayals of sex in the Western tradition (beyond female nudes). Screech's book was a delight to read. It provides not only training for the eye in terms of symbols, coded meanings and artistic styles, it gives the reader a fascinating historical and cultural context of sexual attitudes in Edo Japan. The pictures are gorgeous and inspiring--I wrote a whole erotic story based on Harunobu's "Autumn Moon of the Mirror Stand"--but the author's courage in exploring what these pictures were used for is refreshing, thought-provoking and deliciously intelligent.

[snowgray · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was incredibly informative not only about shunga but also generally about life in Japan during this period of history. It's also the most hilarious academic text I've ever read. The author's dry wit is delightful. The experience of looking at pictures after reading his analysis is also fascinating, equally as wonderful as reading really high-quality literary analysis.

[Tony Goriainoff]

Bought in Poblenou, Barcelona, Spain.
August 27, 2024