ABSTRACT
This chapter briefly examines the state of research on shunga, including the recent exhibitions that have had an impact on its scholarly and popular perception. It considers the representation of female sexuality in shunga discourse in the second half of the eighteenth century. The chapter examines the depiction of male–male (nanshoku) relations in shunga. Shunga is a vast genre of not only illustrated books (enpon, ehon, makura-bon, shunpon, shungabon) and sheet prints of various sizes, but also of paintings surviving from medieval times onwards, including works by official painters of the Kano and Tosa schools among many others. The British Museum exhibition and its aftermath in the media did trigger some immediate changes. The Toyo Bunko Museum in Tokyo suddenly opened up its hitherto hidden shunga collection to researchers in 2014, and displayed many shunga items in an exhibition.
