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Exhibition: Shunga - Sex And Pleasure In Japanese Art

MICHAL BONCZA recommends the British Museum's exhibition of Shunga erotic art from Japan

Shunga: Sex And Pleasure In Japanese Art

British Museum, London WC1

4 Stars

Darkened rooms in the British Museum are currently home to erotic prints and watercolours dating from the early modern period in Japan.

They are shunga ("pictures of spring," a euphemism for sex) which, with their overwhelming air of intimacy, demand a reflective response.

Multi-faceted and masterly executed, they encapsulate sexuality in a manner so liberating as to cause confusion in any mind still blinkered by Judeo-Christian prescriptiveness.

The breathtakingly light brush strokes over paper, or the equally swift lines expertly shaped by chisels on wood, are supplemented by discreet colour palettes which are as engrossing as the world they record.

It was a world that was far from simplistic, one in which shunga was primarily a communication media as much as a visual and sensual pleasure - an art language of many purposes and much subtlety.

Here are endearingly practical "paperback" lovemaking guides for newlyweds, considerate advice on masturbation, sharp condemnation of paedophile Buddhist monks taking advantage of young novices and heartfelt sympathy for the hardships and violence endured by geishas.

At shunga's core was an egalitarian recognition of the entitlement to pleasure, where women were equal to men and homosexuality was celebrated with honesty.

But perhaps Shunga's greatest joy is its characteristically sharp sense of satire and a compulsion to entertain, as in one finely observed scene where an older woman throttles her semi-naked husband, dragging him off a much younger lover.

Elsewhere the ribaldry gets scatalogical, with images of the "who's got the biggest" or "who can ejaculate farthest" schools.

Exhibited too are works by shunga's enfant most terrible Kawanabe Kyosai, considered heir to the legendary Hokusai of "wave painting" renown.

Undisciplined and wild at heart, partial to sake, he was a samurai's son who feared nobody and his biting satires, like the famous Battle Of Farts which ridiculed the political ferment of 1867, led to him spending three spells in jail.

But there was no hiding place for the corrupt ruling elites and their acolytes he mercilessly castigated and ridiculed in public to widespread popular approval, reflected in the mass sales of his caricatures.

Ridiculously outsized members apart, this exhibition has the potential to amuse, educate and even edify. Recommended.

Runs until January 5 2104. Bookings: (020) 7323-8181.

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