Making polite conversation about 'Shunga'

I attended the opening of the much-heralded Shunga exhibition at the British Museum last night. It didn’t disappoint – there is a huge amount to see, and I didn’t make it into the last room at all before the exhibition closed, so I’ll have to go back.

It was interesting to see people’s reactions to the show, given that a great deal of the material could be termed “pornographic”. There was something slightly bizarre about the great and the good, many of them businessmen in suits, poring over these prints. The Japanese contingent seemed un-bothered; in reality (‘honne’ as opposed to ‘tatemae’) Japan remains pretty relaxed about sex. The Westerners, particularly the women, seemed less comfortable.

The subtext of this exhibition is that shunga deserve to be treated as great art. And I think the show demonstrates this beyond question, particularly in its “Masterpieces of Shunga” section. Most of the great ukiyoe artists produced shunga, and many of the works demonstrate extraordinary subtlety, for instance in the depiction of elaborate, if rumpled, kimonos, and in scenes where the action is viewed through transparent gauze. There is also a great deal of humour on show, with lovers frequently spied on, and occasionally interrupted by an irate spouse.

Is the work demeaning to women? On the whole, I don’t think so. They mostly look as though they are having as good a time as the men. Where an attempted rape is portrayed, the assailant is shown as grotesque, and the text implies that the woman will probably succeed in fighting him off. (I’m not sure how the ravishing of fisherwomen by water sprites or, indeed, the notorious octopuses fits into this framework.) Women are shown disporting themselves with younger lovers while their husbands are out – but equally a lot of the work portrays transactional sex in which wealthy men are entertained by geisha at tea houses. It’s inevitable that the art reflects the social realities of its day.

One aspect I hadn’t expected was the amount of (male) homosexual activity on show. This doesn’t seem to have been considered unnatural in the Edo period, though it seems mainly limited to the ancient Greek model of older men taking younger ones as lovers. Some of the pictures show threesomes with two men and one woman, but rather than both men focusing on the woman, these situations involve a wealthy male client hiring both genders at once, presumably for the sake of variety.

It’s ironic that although the Japanese seem mostly unembarrassed by this sort of art, the British Museum has been unable to find a major gallery in Japan to take on the show, presumably because of fears of criticism from conservative types. A further irony is that squeamishness about shunga is something only introduced to Japan by us Westerners, in Victorian times. Now our most “establishment” institutions can show these pictures, while their Japanese equivalents can’t. I hope the critical success of this show will change their minds.

Shunga sex and pleasure in Japanese art