“Shunga”, an official “National “Treasure” is banned in Japan
Shunga, meaning “spring pictures” in Japanese, were this country’s pornography of the 18th and 19th centuries. Oddly, today it’s not easy to find shunga in Japan ever though it’s rather tame compared to current Japanese mainstream manga of rape and mayhem or the huge number of erotic male homosexual stories published for preteen girls. However, it can be found in most large bookstores in the art books section
After 200 years, Japan’s exiled erotica finds a home in Rotterdam museum
Tokyo—-Now Shunga forms the centerpiece of what is being billed the “first chronological overview of Japanese erotic art”, not in Japan, where it is illegal to import them, but in the Netherlands. Wim Pijbes, director of Rotterdam’s Kunsthal gallery, which is hosting the Lust of spring: Erotic fantasies of the Edo era exhibition, told The Art Newspaper that he “can’t think of any major American museum putting shunga on” and that it had been “notoriously absent” in past Royal Academy catalogues….
….Importers face similar problems. David Caplan, who runs the Mita arts gallery in Tokyo, said: “It can’t be done. We’ve had [Shunga] shipments stopped by Tokyo customs. “They used to have young people who blacked out the genitals with pens. Imagine what doing that all day that would do to you.”…
You can randier versions of shunga that are not safe for work here at Google Image Search.
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