Utagawa Hiroshige (歌川広重) (artist 1797 – 1858)

Opening page of volume one of the Edo nishiki Azuma bunko [江戸錦吾妻文庫] - Seductive bijin in winter biting her kimono

Print

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Date:1850
Dimensions:5 in x 7.75 in (Overall dimensions) Medium:Japanese woodblock print
Links National Museum of Asian Art
Kuniyoshi Project Description:It is often difficult to determine who the artist of a shunga piece is. Another copy of this print, but from the Pulverer Collection, is now in the National Museum of Asian Ar where it is ascribed to Hiroshige. However, Dr. William Pearl at his Kuniyoshi Project has chosen to give it over to Kuniyoshi. (See the link above.) For now, we will stay with Hiroshige. This is not an easy decision. If we receive more specific information in the future we will consider changing the attribution.

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This print would come under the category of abuna-e - erotic but not explicit. According to the curatorial files at the British Museum after 1782 it became the practice to start a shunga volume with a close-up detail of the a beautiful woman and ended with another close-up detail of her genitalia. It says: "It was apparently Kasukawa Shunsho- (d. 1792), possibly in collaboration with Utamaro, who in his erotic black-and-white book Ehon kaname-ishi of 1782 who first came up with the idea to show a half-length picture of a beautiful woman in the first single-page illustration of a volume, and then to match this in the final single-page illustration with a close-up of the genitals. This was further developed by Utamaro and Shunsho- ’s pupil Katsukawa Shuncho- in Ehon hime hajime (Picture Book: First-Time Princesses) of 1790, where it was linked to the popular pseudo-science of ‘physiognomy’. In this late book by Utamaro, a masterpiece among his erotica, the faces and genitals in each of the three volumes are memorably presented in even larger close-up. The compositions are so skilfully drawn and artfully cropped within the page that both kinds of ‘portrait’ seem equally filled with life. Viewers of Utamaro’s ‘large-head pictures’ (o - kubi-e) who also knew his erotica must surely have mentally connected the two."
Related entities erotic prints (shunga - 春画) (genre)
ōkubi-e (大首絵) (genre)

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