Sex and the Floating World

This text offers an assessment of the genre of Japanese paintings and prints today known as shunga. Changes in Japanese law have at last enabled erotic images to be published without fear of prosecution, and many books have since appeared in Japan. In this book, the author aims to situate the imagery within the contexts of sexuality, gender or power. Questions of aesthetics and of whether shunga deserve a place in the official history of Japanese art, have dominated and the question of the use of the images has been avoided. Screech seeks to re-establish shunga in its proper historical contexts of culture and creativity.