The accompanying title to the British Museum exhibition Shunga: sex and pleasure in Japanese art.

In early modern Japan, thousands of sexually explicit paintings, prints and illustrated books with text were produced. These were euphemistically referred to as “Spring Pictures” (shunga). Frequently tender, funny and beautiful, shunga were mostly done within the popular art school known as ukiyo-e (“pictures of the floating world”), by celebrated Japanese artists such as Utamaro and Hokusai.

This hardback catalogue aims to answer key questions around shunga and its production, in particular, the social and cultural contexts of sex and art within Japan. Drawing on the latest scholarship and featuring over 400 images from major public and private collections, this fascinating book examines erotic images produced in Japan during the Edo period (1603-1868) and early Meiji era (1868-1912). The imagery is related to the wider contexts of literature, theatre, the culture of the pleasure quarters, and urban consumerism, and interpreted through their sensuality, reverence, humour and parody.