Voyeuristic
The vast majority of sexual liaisons portrayed in shunga are heterosexual. Of these, it appears that favorite scenarios were voyeuristic in nature, with both male and female voyeurs often masturbating or involved in sex with one or more partners. Compositions generally depict a man enjoying the company of any number of women. A woman making love to two men appears only occasionally and then almost exclusively in shunga antedating c.1760.
Fig. 1. ‘Lesbian Couple with Harigata’, ‘Shiki no sugatami (Viewing Forms in the Four Seasons), Utagawa Kunisada, c.1842
Homoerotic
Male-male intercourse was not an uncommon subject up until around the 1780s; it virtually dissapeared in nineteenth-century shunga (see Ellis Tinois’ The Representation of Male-male sex in Japanese Erotic Books‘). Some homoerotic scenes are in fact bi-sexual scenes, an older man is having anal intercourse with a younger male who in turn is having sex with a woman (see Fig.2).
Lesbian
Love scenes between women were relatively rare (see Fig.1) while male-male fellatio and female-female cunnilingus was not included in the shunga reportoire. Scenes of humans having sex with animals, usually with dogs, foxes and octopuses, were not unheard of.
Fig.2. ‘Homoerotic couple and Female’, c.1825. Yanagawa Shigenobu (1787-1832)
Ugly
Rape scenes occur throughout the history of shunga, but the greater number of surviving compositions in nineteenth-century enpon hint at an increased popularity at this time. The men in rape scenes are often presented as excessively lecherous, ugly, hirsute and therefore low class. It is difficult to know what kind of conclusions should be drawn from this, however. Perhaps social convention dictated that the ugly could only gain the favours of a woman by force (see Fig.3).
Fig.3. ‘Gruesome Rape in a Forest‘ From the ´Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter: Prospects for the Four Seasons‘. Kunisada, c.1829.
The following video (not visible on Youtube!) explores more shunga designs featuring violent rape scenes:
Source: ‘Japanese Erotic Fantasies, Sexual Imagery of the Edo Period‘ by Chris Uhlenbeck.
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