Featured Antique Japanese Shunga Erotic Framed Block Print

Bought a nice Japanese block print yesterday. Has a sticker on back from Things Japanese, a gallery in NYC. Nice frame as well.

 

Beautiful Kraft ! The Japanese erotic woodblock print has a hallowed place in Japanese Art.One amazing Shunga is 'The Dream of the Fisherman's Wife' by Hokusai, 1814.
Of course Japanese woodblocks influenced the European Impressionist movement,like African Art and Cubism.Can't imagine though most 19th Century Europeans embraced Shunga let alone displayed it !
From Wiki-'Shunga was probably enjoyed by both men and women of all classes...we can deduce that samurai, chonin, and housewives all owned Shunga. All three of these groups would suffer separation from the opposite sex; the samurai lived in barracks for months at a time, and conjugal separation resulted from the sankin-kotai system and the merchants' need to travel to obtain and sell goods. It is therefore argued that this ownership of Shunga was not superstitious, but libidinous.'
PS- Trippy find,I rarely if never bump into these outside of a bookstore or gallery.

 

Couldn't be identified here but they're a discussion forum to which you can download an image.

https://ukiyo-e.org/

Debora

 

Bosko, I wasn't sure about buying it.

Debora, very interesting site.

 

It's a very helpful resource.

Debora

 

I saw a lovely pair of Ukio-E woodblocks at our local charity a few months ago at $85 for the pair. They weren't erotic but lovely renderings of ducks and cherry blossom trees & were genuine woodblock prints.
They were actually more detailed & colorful than the 1st printings by the original well-known artist-but they were period 'knock-offs' ! Hence worth less than the first,original run.The 'original' printings were going for $300-$700 each,but these,who knows ?
Ukio-e art was frequently bootlegged while in the original artists lifetime especially if said image was a 'best seller'-probably in the same way Shakespeare's Quartos were during his lifetime.
PS-I prob looked at several hundred images of said prints online before passing on them.Again-good luck & Debora's website should help.

 

What a great print! I just adore Japanese block prints.
The look on the guys face makes me laugh!
This one is is discreet enough to hang, but spicy enough to start conversation.

 

Yep-Definitely tamer than a lot of Shungas and Pompeiian fertility gods !

 

I’ve got an album of some pretty dang nasty ones. I love it though.

 

I know! They can be really *graphic*

 

Would anyone know age of my print?

 

I'm still said I passed on getting one or two books while in Tokyo......but I'd already had to buy another suitcase that I filled completely with books...85% of them being adult doujinshi. So I went for the modern successors instead.

 

"I'm still sad I passed on getting one or two books while in Tokyo"
Mirana- Are they fairly affordable over in Japan ?
PS-Guess it has to do with the edition (?)

 

Oh sure. Same price as any other "coffee table" art book. I saw them in a major book seller all grouped together in their art book section haaa. They were around 4000-6000 yen range then, but I went nearly two decades ago.

If you mean prints....I did not go into any galleries that carried them, so I couldn't say.

 

I'll check around and see how much antique woodblock Shunga go for now.Japanese culture blows my mind-the cerebral,spiritual and physical aspects of it. Bourdain did a mild take on the Tokyo fetish-culture that was entertaining,and I don't think many here would find it offensive (???).