Handscroll of Ten Homoerotic (Nanshoku) Scenes – (Miyagawa Chōshun) ◄ Previous Next ►

Artist: Miyagawa Chōshun

Date: 701

Size: 27.2cm x 340.0cm

Technique: Silk

Although during the Edo period there was no taboo or stigma associated with male-male sexual liaisons, and many famous writers, artists and other celebrities were known to have same-sex lovers, there are very few surviving deluxe paintings capturing such scenes as found in this handscroll (figs. 1a–j). Erotica known as shunga, “spring pictures,” in the Japanese tradition was often presented in deluxe handscrolls as here, or in printed form, and was produced in great quantities through early modern times. Often a few scenes of male-male sex were integrated into handscrolls, albums or illustrated books devoted to erotica; to have an entire work dedicated to homoerotic liaisons, however, is rare.By definition, artists of the Ukiyo-e school portrayed images of courtesans or recognizable Kabuki actors. Nearly all of Chōshun’s surviving paintings—he did not design woodblock prints—capture images of beautiful women. This handscroll of male coupling is doubly remarkable. One of the few known paintings by Chōshun depicting a male figure is a hanging scroll of a wakashu (male youth), from the collection of the Tokyo National Museum (fig. 2). That iconic depiction overlaps in details with several of the figures of young men depicted here, notably, the young men’s distinctive hairstyle: forelocks and a shaven pate beneath an extra-long topknot. The wakashu in the Tokyo painting also sports an elegant haori, or thigh-length jacket, trousers, and swords tucked into his sash—attire also seen in the standing figure in the last scene of this handscroll. All ten scenes of this handscroll by convention depict scenes of lovemaking between an older man and one or a pair of younger men dressed or partly dressed in flamboyant costumes. Some appear to be scions of samurai families (who wield swords), others—wearing brightly colored kimonos more appropriate for young women—are young Kabuki actors who played female roles on the stage, still others were wakashu escorts for older men who frequented the pleasure quarters. One scene includes a female voyeur peeking at the amorous activities from behind a screen. The final five scenes are more explicit than the preceding five, and several show the lovers posed with accoutrements such as a shamisen (three-stringed musical instrument), and a tray of smoking utensils. As was the case of heterosexual erotica of the Edo period, there is often a dimension of playfulness—or sarcasm—to representation of lovemaking, keeping in mind that another term for pornography of the Edo period was warai-e, or “pictures to laugh about.”Despite the nonchalant societal acceptance of male-male coupling as a completely natural behavior by men at the time, painted images of same-sex erotic encounters are quite rare, though we can be sure that part of the issue is that in modern times many have been destroyed. Images of lesbian sex from the Edo period seem not to survive. The works of male erotica that do survive, as here, mostly date to the early eighteenth century and show scenes of a mature patron who is the active partner with the youth in the passive role. Oral sex is rarely depicted, and kissing infrequent, though this scroll unusually has two instances. These conventions hold true for later woodblock-printed male-sex manuals such as Male Love: Actors Without their Make-Up (Nanshoku hana no sugao) from the later eighteenth century, where again “... the older man invariably [takes] the active role in all sexual encounters and the younger man the passive role." (Timothy Clark, Shunga: Sex and Pleasure in Japanese Art, London, British Museum, 2013, pp. 20–21 and 443).Most erotica by Ukiyo-e school artists is created anonymously or signed with a nom de plume, so it is unusual in this case to find the handscroll signed by the artist. But rather than using his usual surname Miyagawa (taken from the name of his birthplace), the artist styles himself Hishikawa Chōshun, indicating that he saw himself as the stylistic heir of the pioneering Ukiyo-e artist Hishikawa Moronobu (1618–1694), even though Chōshun was too young to have actually studied with him. Indeed, in this work we see the late Moronobu style integrated into the softer, more voluptuous mood of the early eighteenth century, of which Chōshun was an proponent. This early work from Chōshun’s corpus, with brilliantly detailed kimono, also attests to his reputation as one of the great colorists of the Ukiyo-e tradition.Each of the scenes of male-male lovemaking is a bit salacious, some more than others, and conveys various emotional states of mind:Scene 1The opening scene shows a recumbent wakashu (male youth), a sword tucked into his sash, gently pressing against an older man who leans on a decorated lacquer armrest. The young man affectionately grasps the wrist of his mature companion.Scene 2A young man in a gorgeous green robe with oversize floral motif seems taken aback by the advances of an older townsman. On the right a wakashu entertainer strums a shami../..