The collector and businessman, Hayashi Tadamasa (1851–1906), who was one of the first to bring these precious Japanese woodcarvings to Paris, owned no less than two hundred “guides to the houses of pleasure,” describing the life of the courtesans of Yoshiwara.
Utamaro (1753–1806), the absolute master of coloured woodcuts, divided his life between his art and the Yoshiwara district. Goncourt, who wrote his biography, wrote of him that “He spent his days with his editor or in his studio and his nights in Yoshiwara.” Since his publisher’s office was situated right at the entrance to the infamous district, the path between his studio and the houses of pleasure was doubtless a short one. Perhaps we could consider him a Japanese Toulouse-Lautrec? There were fifty houses of ill-repute listed at that time, with nearly 6,000 girls, of whom at least 2,500 were courtesans offering various pleasures. Edo, which is now the city of Tokyo, numbered at the time over a million inhabitants. The greatest courtesans of the period owed the brilliance of their existence not only to the wealthy city bourgeoisie but even more particularly to the large number of provincial aristocrats who had ended up in the capital. These were men with no occupation and nothing to do; the hours they spent enjoying the pleasures of the Yoshiwara district made it easy for the police to keep them constantly under surveillance.
23. Images of Spring, coloured shunga, 18th century. Silk on card.
Just as European absolutism had declined in influence, so Japanese warrior ideology had lost an important part of its influence in Japan. Gradually love and sexuality came to replace the more bellicose activities of the nobility. So when the noblemen moved around the capital with their numerous suites, they travelled regularly by horse to the Yoshiwara district or were carried there by litter. The state police had, therefore, not hesitated to grant a licence to the pleasure district; it made their task of surveillance much easier to have this group of individuals all in one place. Yoshiwara was founded about 1600 on marshy land – then known as “rush land” – and was situated behind the imperial palace. In 1657, after the great city fire, it had to move to the area near the Merciful Temple of Asakusa, but its name remained unchanged. The district was then surrounded by walls and ditches and divided into nine separate areas. Entering this “town of perpetual daylight which glitters resplendent like a peacock’s tail”, the first thing one would have encountered was the main street with its fifty tea houses which really did serve tea and nothing more.
In a way, they acted as the antechambers to the brothels and as places where clients and prostitutes could meet and agree on terms. Parties took place there and everything was so incredible and splendid “one began to doubt whether one was still on earth.” The “library” of these “houses of ill-repute” usually consisted of erotic books. As clients waited their turn, they would pass the time drinking tea and flicking through these albums with their risqué pictures and amusing stories. As with the Greeks, physical love signified an elevated state of being for the Japanese also. Like the Greek hetaera, the courtesans of Yoshiwara were proficient in different arts. They wore beautiful and costly garments just like real princesses. Jippensha Ikku, a friend of Utamaro, once said of the women of Yoshiwara: “They are educated like princesses. From a very early age they are given a full education. They know how to read and write, they learn all the arts, music as well as the tea ceremony, ikebana or the best way to arrange a bunch of incense.” At the beginning, the courtesans used to use an old-fashioned poetic language, as had been the custom in the imperial palaces over a thousand years earlier, but which no longer bore any resemblance to everyday Japanese.
24. Images of Spring, coloured shunga, 18th century. Silk on card.
So, is the geisha a robot-like creature created solely for man’s satisfaction? She is, as Théo Lesoualc’h has remarked, the product of a long transformation wrought by the Japanese to the image of woman: the flawless form in which all elements of “femininity” can be found condensed. Nothing in a geisha’s behaviour is left to chance. In the eyes of the man, she is the symbol of perfection, from her refined and artistic hairstyle or her way of wearing make-up and wooden-soled sandals, right down to the perfectly-judged manner of her behaviour, which clearly dictated how she should position her body, what her conversation should be and how she should express her feelings. “The geisha is the archetype of woman. She is the erotic fetish of feminine grace, although codified and reduced,” wrote Lesoualc’h.
A Westerner looking at shungas will notice first of all the cold and detached expressions on the faces of the couples making love. Both sexes consummate the sexual act with a stoic impassivity as if they were only partially involved in the act. Only their stretched-out and curled toes and the cloth which the woman bites with all her might to contain her excitement betray the extent of their ecstasy. Following the traditional rules of this art nothing which could possibly move the observer is expressed here. One might also notice the extremely exaggerated, almost caricature-like dimensions of the male organ. Could it be a fear of impotence that lies behind these over-inflated penises? Or is it the product of a fantasy which itself hides man’s fear of woman’s untamed nature? However, what we also find in these over-sized penises are reflections of the ancient phallic cult of the Shinto religion. Shintoism, which is the indigenous religion of Japan and a cult entirely devoid of all metaphysical dogmas, is an astonishing mixture of the most varied rituals in honour of over 800 polymorphic gods.
25. Images of Spring, coloured shunga, 18th century. Silk on card.
Thus the phallus quite naturally became a god to whom temples, or private altars at home, were dedicated. It was even invoked in prayer on some evenings in the pleasure districts during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Even today one can still come across ancient phallic steles on the edges of fields which have been placed there as symbols of fertility. Festivals in honour of the phallus were a regular event and were the occasion for exuberant processions. An account dating from the end of the nineteenth century describes one of these processions in Tokyo: “A phallus several metres high, all covered in gleaming varnish, was placed on a sort of portable casket and carried by a group of young men, who were shouting or laughing at the tops of their voices. They zig-zagged along the streets and made sudden, unexpected charges in all directions. Real Baccanalian rites!” Thus the cult of the phallus was the backbone of the Shinto religion. In the temples, wooden, porcelain, stone or metal phallic figures were sold as good-luck charms. Japan never suppressed sensuality as such; if there were laws and limitations, they were always socially based but never religious. To seek physical pleasure was considered a natural desire, even if it consisted of unusual practices. Thus, sodomy figured among the normal pleasures of the body. The word “sin”, it seems, was never uttered. Even when we are shown “natural love” in its many varied forms in the woodcarvings, they always involve massive priapic fantasies.
Almost all masters of woodcarving produced erotic images, sometimes even in such precious materials as gold, silver or mother-of-pearl. And yet the shunga studios were for the most part clandestine. Artists did not sign their work, or else used a pseudonym. The number of copies made was always limited and most often sold on the black market.
26. Images of Spring, coloured shunga, 18th century. Silk on card.
Purity of line became a rule that could not be broken for woodcarving; the artist had to carve out the lines in the wood with extreme care. Parallel perspective was mainly dominant: lines that were parallel in nature were also parallel in the wood. Central perspective, which was a European invention, was only introduced in the nineteenth century. Likewise, the Japanese were not familiar with the effects of shadow and light which are so much a part of European art. The initial technique was to print onto paper with one sole block and then to colour the picture by hand which considerably restricted the numbers which could be produced because of the time involved. For this reason, they started using several blocks in the eighteenth century. Katsushika Hokusai (1760–1848) is the last great figure of the Ukiyo-e. After him, woodcarving began to decline, giving way to vulgar copies produced in large numbers