1995 Chapters (Layout Features) and Conference Objects
Overcoming the Modern History of Edo "Shunga” (1995)
This article examines the history during the Edo period in the documented uses of erotic prints known by different names but primarily as “makura-e” (‘pillow pictures’) that evolved primarily within the context of the licensed pleasure quarters (yūkaku) from the 18th century, but also as protective amulets in samurai armor chests. As the title suggests, such prints came to be referred to in Meiji primarily as “shunga,” when a modern regime that prohibited their reproduction as a form of “obscenity” while preserving some of their traditional amuletic powers in the samurai tradition in the dispatch of shunga albums as part of care packages to troops in the field in the Sino-Japanese War of 1904-05.
Citation: Sumie Jones, ed., Imaging/Reading Eros. In "Proceedings for the Conference, 'Sexuality and Edo Culture, 1750-1850,'" Indiana University, August 1995 (Bloomington, IN: The East Asian Studies Center, Indiana University, 1996), pp. 26-34.
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- Title
- Imaging/reading Eros : proceedings for the conference, Sexuality and Edo Culture, 1750-1850, Indiana University, Bloomington, August 17-20, 1995
- Publisher
- East Asian Studies Center, Indiana University
More About This Work
- Academic Units
- East Asian Languages and Cultures
- Published Here
- July 20, 2026
Notes
I was part of a research group organized by Sumie Jones of Indiana University in the mid-1990s, with a preliminary meeting in London, and concluding with a conference at Bloomington in August 1995, where I presented this paper as my contribution to the group effort. As a historian of modern Japan, I focused on the changing evaluations of Edo period shunga, particularly in the Meiji period. A far more extended and scholarly treatment of the genre appeared as the catalogue for the major exhibition Shunga: Sex and Pleasure in Japanese Art that was held at the British Museum 2013-14.
