Recommendations of the Editorial team
The best -known work of the Katsushika Hokusai is certainly his “big wave ahead of Kanagawa” from 1831, which has long been flushed into pop culture. From fashion and streetwear, to the “Simpsons” to album covers (Keane, Weezer) or alienations by Banksy on the wall of the houses, the equally impressive and threatening motif shape our understanding of the miracle of a force.
A little less well known, but possibly more ambitious are Katsushika Hokusais (NSFW) works in the erotic art of the Edo era (1603–1868, in the Shunga, his “spring pictures”.
Hokusai often worked with conscious exaggeration. Oversized genitals, bizarre poses or grotesque perspectives. You found that funny, and humor is a child of his time. The pictures in woodcut printing, as a new illustrated book shows, always have show values. Especially since it sometimes got down to business with octopuses.
Many Shunga show erotic encounters in unusual situations. Secret affairs in the closet, voyeuristic scenes with curious children or servants who are lentils behind curtains. So it’s not just about the act itself, but about what happens around it. And about caricatures of human vanity.
Insight into a hidden work
Our (cultural) understanding of Japan is characterized by the astonishment of etiquette and tradition, which is apparently opposed to an apparently deeply anchored desire for graphic sexuality (as today in the mangas). Erotic representations were prohibited in Japan at the EDO period, but were tolerated and partly used as a teaching material. “Hokusai. Shunga” combines eight books and series from 1786 to 1823, plus texts by Hokusai itself.
Pockets
- Hokusai. Shunga
- Andreas Marks
- Hardcover in the Schuber, 24.3 x 30.4 cm, 2.75 kg, 480 pages
- Taschen.com
- € 100