Japanese erotica is unveiled 40 years on

 
Kano school. Older and younger man making love, first scene from Untitled shunga handscroll. Early 17th century. Handscroll; ink, colour, gold, silver and gold leaf on paper; © The Trustees of the British Museum
© The Trustees of the British Museum
29 October 2013

Jamie Maclean, editor of the Erotic Review, is rather excited by the British Museum’s current show, Shunga: Sex and Pleasure in Japanese Art. His organ contains an article by Peter Webb, a leading expert on erotica who wrote a 550-page book, The Erotic Arts, in 1975. “When Peter went to the British Museum asking to see its collection in the Seventies he was told there was no work of that nature,” says Maclean. “Only when he contacted the director was he given references to departments where such material might be held.”

Webb writes in ER: “Thus I gained access one day to the marvellous collection of Japanese erotica in the Department of Oriental Antiquities which, I was informed, could not possibly be exhibited to the public and which had never been catalogued.

“It was therefore with some déjà vu that I visited the BM’s major Shunga exhibition, where their collection is proudly displayed. Clearly a great deal has happened in 40 years. Shunga are explicit images of sexual enjoyment, usually in the form of albums of coloured engravings. They were an expected part of a Japanese artist’s work, created for entertainment and also for sexual instruction and often given to brides on their wedding day.”

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