SHUNGA: The Lost Japanese Erotica 
春の画 SHUNGA 「Haru no e SHUNGA」
Release Date: November 24th, 2023
Duration: 121 mins.
Director: Junko Hirata
Writer: N/A
Starring: Tadanori Yoko, Makoto Aida, Ryoko Kimura, Aki Ishigami, Monta Hayakawa (Interviews) / Yo Yoshida and Mirai Moriyama (Voice Overs),
Website Twitter: @harunoe_shunga
Shunga are prints that show graphic depictions of sex. During their long history, dating back to the Heian era (794 to 1185), they disappeared somewhat from public life and became the preserve of private collectors following government censorship during the Meiji period (1868-1912) only to gain a new appreciation following an exhibition at the British Museum in 2013.
At first glance, one might be tempted to think of shunga merely as pornography not fit for public display in a gallery but Junko Hirata’s expansive and gorgeous documentary Shunga: The Lost Japanese Erotica successfully reclaims their artistic and human value by revealing the skill put into making them and their ubiquity and function in everyday Japanese life.
Commissioned by Naoko Komura to be released the same year as another film she produced, the comedy drama Shunga Sensei/Picture of Spring (2023), Shunga: The Lost Japanese Erotica acts as a perfect primer for the artform as it offers an expansive vision of the artwork’s place in Japanese culture, taking us from what is regarded as one of the very first images, “Tale of the Brushwood Fence,” to contemporary artists combining classical shunga and otaku aesthetics.
In establishing shunga as art, Hirata uses the efforts to reproduce a classic shunga, Torii Kiyonaga’s “Handscroll for the Sleeve,” for a modern-day audience as a framing device for the film. We see its making with traditional techniques and the commissioner of the work, publisher Yukiko Takahashi, provides some narration which guides the viewer to start seeing the complexity that goes into the creation. The art of ke-wari (carving hair), involving multiple intricate millimetre-long lines made by chisel by woodblock artist Kayoko Suga is seen in extreme close-up, discussion of colours with printer Noriyasu Soda shows how precise new ink colours have to be to match the originals. Later on, people display other works with dazzling techniques like Kira-zuri (embossing) and gin-zuri (printing with silver) applied to convey the beauty and skill that went into making pictures dismissed for being obscene due to content.
Seeing such beauty that results after so much delicacy, concentration, and skill exercised by the artisans, one is left marvelling at the effort involved. To highlight the images, Hirata has skilfully-done detail-finding pans, close-ups and framing from cinematographers Yutaka Yamazaki (director of Torso, cinematographer on After the Storm, Distance, Still Walking, etc.) and Daiki Takano (Kadono Eiko’s Colorful Life: Finding the Magic Within). Their camerawork shows off the art in the best light and that acts to reinforce the story she wrangles from multiple interviews while also continuing to highlight the intricate craftsmanship involved.
Another technique in claiming artistic worth is invoking the fact that revered artists took the genre of woodblock prints seriously and dedicated part of their lives to the craft. Interviewees namecheck practitioners like Kitagawa Utamaro, famous for “Embracing,” and Katsushika Hokusai and his “Dream of a Fisherman’s Wife,” and these works are shown in their glory (erotic, humorous, and more) with the cultural context given, which is where the film gets even more fascinating.
While the images shown are titillating, they are also fun and some are scary. Shunga is a multi-genre format where some describe pure love, political allegory, humorous sex, references to mythology or fetishes and some from a later period have an ero-guro aspect that reflects an artist’s desire to provoke the jaded tastes of viewers. There are plenty of legs wrapped around waists, bodies lost in lust twisting at odd angles, and engorged oversized sexual organs but everything in the film is given a context that leaves a viewer enlightened and the art of shunga coming off as even more highly valuable in exploring the lives of people throughout the ages and getting this information is fascinating and fun.
In order to give a full picture of shunga’s history, Hirata travelled the length and breadth of Japan and overseas to meet art collectors, ukiyo-e researchers, historians, engravers, enthusiasts, and artists. We are in the pleasurable company of a wide variety of men and women give enthusiastic and informative interviews that also double as narration for the images seen on screen. There seems to be an equal gender split in terms of interviewees and significant positions behind the camera, including director, are women, which works to remove the stigma that erotic art is the sole preserve of men, especially as female commentators point out how active women are in the works.
Indeed, the art itself often speaks to this dynamic of equality in that we see shunga depict sex from across class lines, from lords and ladies to ama divers and widows and warriors, from different age groups to different sexualities as gay, lesbian, and androgynous characters are depicted in the throes of ecstasy, agony, and a myriad other emotions. We even get domestic scenes of women sharing shunga for enjoyment just to show how ubiquitous it may have been while interviewees explain social uses, such as women gifted shunga as a marital aid or samurai and, later, soldiers in the Russo-Japanese war keeping it on their person as a charm against death or even as a way to prevent fire. Through interviews, we learn so much about Japanese culture at various times. Seeing how people consumed shunga as well as seeing how their lives are depicted in the images, gives the film an informative ethnographic quality.
Adding even more of a cinematic aspect – and helping convey the jocular tone of some shunga and the way they might have been received as entertainment are animated sections narrated by Yo Yoshida and Mirai Moriyama where characters come to life. It lends the film a cushion of liveliness that adds to the sense of excitement and innocence to the sex shown. Meanwhile, interview settings are eye-catching, adding to the cinematic atmosphere, as they range from a refined club amidst the glitz of Tokyo’s Ginza to a feudal lord’s residence in Yanagawa, the city criss-crossed with canals in Fukuoka, to frosty Copenhagen.
With such a rich variety of stories depicted and with convincing narration, the film hits on something vital – how universal and natural sex is and how intrinsic it is to the lives of many people and shunga has a place in fostering that. The emotion and creativity of the artwork and the commentators imbues the genre of shunga with a strong humanistic current and Hirata’s efforts to show its widespread acceptance and many applications normalise it as she lifts it from the realm of pure titillation and pornography. The fun the commentators have in exploring the work makes it feel like a way of art that should be embraced and respected more than it has been in the past. Thus, Junko Hirata’s film is a success!
Shunga: The Lost Japanese Erotica played at Nippon Connection 2024 on May 29th. It will next be screened at Japan Cuts on July 13th. Japan Cuts runs from July 10th—21st, 2024 and features a wealth of classics, documentaries and fiction features and shorts. Here’s something of a preview of the titles playing. Check back here for coverage.