We associate spring pictures ("shunga") with the Edo period, lovers usually fully dressed with just an aperture or two for maneuvers, equipped as we would all like to be but seldom are, earnestly engaged with a dedication that is a far remove from the normal spheres in which we operate.
Consequently, traditional shunga come, as it were, endistanced. It is aesthetically too far away from us to feel the pull that the original customers did. We regard it uninvolved. Though intended to raise unchaste thoughts, the spring picture no longer does so. Even the government now finds no reason to censure this genre of print.
But the art of shunga was not confined to the Edo period. It continued to be made because of steady demand, and there are many examples in the Meiji, Taisho, Showa and Heisei eras. Much, however, has changed, including our apprehension of the prints themselves.
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