Tomioka Eisen And His Two Solo Masturbating Women

29 november 2016

We have added a shunga piece to our collection from the well-known Meiji artist Tomioka Eisen (1864-1905) featuring a solo girl giving herself sexual pleasure while reading a book (Fig.1.).

Fig.1. ‘Masturbating Womann’ (c.1897-1899) from the series ‘Yakumo no chigiri (Poetic Interlude)’ by Tomioka Eisen (Available in our gallery for Euro 650,-)

Act of Masturbation

The print is a preface page of the concertina album Yakumo no chigiri (Poetic Interlude), a twelve-sheet, aiban formatted work dating to around 1897-1899. He was most probably assisted by his pupil Hamada Josen (1875-?).

It represents a young woman absorbed in the act of masturbation. The representation does accentuate a pornographic sense with the woman gently stroking her vagina.

There is an earlier (better known) expurgated impression (Fig.2.) of this design which depicts the woman in a more suggested pose. Here her gesture is only intuited by the languid pose and by the pleasurable expression on her face.

Fig.2. Purified earlier version of Tomioka Eisen’s ‘Masturbating Woman‘ design (Picture from Japprent.nl)

Allusive Eroticism

Although at a distance of almost a century and with a style and a poetic language by now quite old, we are therefore in front of a trial of subtle and allusive eroticism for certain verses similar to that of Utamaro, and the fact that Eisen still looks at this master is proven by the shunga of the sixth sheet of this album: a direct reprise of a print of the Komachi biki series by Utamaro.

Excerpt of Fig.2. (Picture from Japprent.nl)

The later impression is the rarer version of the two, it’s seldomly seen. It’s a commercial edition that includes two crowd-pleasing aspects, the explicit depiction of the female private parts and Mount Fuji on the screen.

Dildo

Eisen’s competitor Ikeda Terukata (1883-1921) also designed a memorable image featuring a single woman masturbating, in this case with a tortoise-shell harigata (dildo) while looking at a shunga book (Fig.3).

Both Eisen’s en Terukata’s albums are characteristic of shunga from the Meiji era: the printing is exquisite, with a generous use of metallic pigments and bokashi (tonal gradation) to expresss the lovely quality of the kimono’s. The contour lines are equally refined.

Fig.3. ‘Masturbating woman with dildo‘ (c.1900-5) from an untitled series by Ikeda Terukata

You can purchase the explicit version of Tomioka Eisen design in our shunga gallery. Remember when you snooze, you lose!

The following video features more excited women entertaining themselves:

Which of the two designs, the explicit or the more discreet Eisen image of the single woman, do you prefer?