CENSORING ART

Not all censorship is official or overt. In addition to legal censorship, institutional and social censorship of art was prevalent in the nineteenth and twentieth century. This chapter will consider the roles that official and unofficial censorship have played in the treatment of shunga in Japan and the UK, focusing in particular on how institutional censorship of shunga has changed in the British Museum, from being hidden away in the nineteenth century to being exhibited in the twenty-first century. To begin, a brief account of what shunga is will be given. Next, censorship in Edo Japan will be discussed, before moving on to censorship in the UK as seen in the example of the British Museum’s Secretum. Some instances of how the British Museum has subsequently dealt with shunga will be examined, including the 2013 Shunga: Sex and Pleasure in Japanese Art exhibition. Lastly, the issue of censorship of shunga in modern Japan will be raised.

Shunga are sexually explicit woodblock prints, paintings and illustrated books made in Japan during the Edo period (c.1603–1868). Shunga were predominantly created in the most popular style of the time: ukiyo-e (pictures of the floating world). Almost all of the leading ukiyo-e artists, including Hishikawa Moronobu (1618–94), Suzuki Harunobu (1725–70), Kitagawa Utamaro (1753–1806) (Figure 4.1), Katsushika Hokusai (1760–1849) (Figure 4.2) and Utagawa Kuniyoshi (1797–1861) produced shunga as well as the pictures of beautiful women, warriors, actors and landscapes that they are known for. However, shunga was not a movement, as artists were working across different cities, styles, media and centuries. Rather, shunga is a collective term used to refer to pre-modern Japanese art that depicts sexual scenes. It is beneficial to think of shunga as a genre, like landscape or portraiture, rather than as a homogeneous category. The term shunga is often translated into English as ‘erotic’ or ‘pornographic’ art, but these loaded terms have negative connotations. In order to avoid such associations, the more neutral term ‘sex art’, as proposed by Tim Clark, curator at the British Museum, is preferred.²

Figure 4.1 Kitagawa Utamaro, from the series Utamakura (Poem of the Pillow), 1788. Colour woodblock print, 25.4 × 36.9 cm. This is one of the most well-known shunga images: it has been exhibited and reproduced more readily than other shunga because it is less explicit yet of high artistic quality.

Shunga portrays all kinds of people in a range of sexual situations, including husbands and wives, adulterers, young lovers, townspeople, ladies-in-waiting and even foreigners. Visual and textual sources support the current scholarly consensus that shunga were viewed by both men and women of all classes of society for a variety of purposes including art, humour, protection, education, seduction, and arousal.³

Despite being officially banned in 1722, shunga was an open secret that was widely produced, circulated and tolerated throughout the Edo period until the 1850s onwards when, mainly due to European and American influences, depictions of sex became a sensitive subject and gradually disappeared from Japanese art. Since then, due to a combination of legal, social and institutional censorship, shunga has largely been omitted from art history, excluded from exhibitions and censored in publications.

Shunga did not face the same moral judgements and strict censorship that sex art did, and to an extent still does, in certain countries, including post-Edo Japan. This was mainly due to politics and religion. Prior to 1600, Japan suffered civil disruption as rival clans fought for power. In 1603 Tokugawa Ieyasu became the shogun (military leader) of a newly unified and peaceful Japan. To protect this recently established social order, mostly from the threat of Christianity, in the 1630s Japan entered a period of isolation that would last until 1853, when Japan was forced to end its closed-door policy and interact with the rest of the world. Throughout that period, the Tokugawa clan remained in power and kept most aspects of people’s lives under strict control. Due to its relative isolation, Edo-period Japan was largely unaffected by the moral attitudes and censorship which were prevalent in contemporary cultures. Notably, due to the predominance of Christianity, in Europe and North America sex and the naked body are associated with sin, shame, guilt and embarrassment. Shintō (the way of the gods) is the animistic belief system indigenous to Japan and features sex at the heart of its creation myth. Buddhism, which co-exists alongside Shintō beliefs, advises against sexual misconduct, but treats sex between two people who love each other as moral, whether they are married or not. In contrast to Christianity, in Shintō and Buddhism sex is not sinful, but treated as a part of life and an aspect of human experience. Consequently, it was an acceptable and popular subject in art during the Edo period.

Although shunga was made nominally illegal along with other luxury goods in 1722 as part of the Kyōhō reforms, the production and dissemination of shunga was largely tolerated by the government. There was little differentiation between the creation and distribution of shunga and other genres of art: it was drawn by the same artists, cut by the same carvers, commissioned by the same publishers, and sold by the same sellers to the same audience. The extent to which censorship laws were enforced varied over time and similar edicts were reissued in 1790 and 1841. These resulted in temporary dips in production,⁴ but shunga continued to be made and sold, albeit in a more discreet manner in deference to the edicts. One example of the government’s tolerance is noted by Andrew Gerstle, who points out that kashihonya (itinerant lending libraries) were not prosecuted for circulating shunga.⁵ As long as it did not affect the stability of family or societal relationships, the government was generally tolerant of sex, and the prohibitions in publishing did not single out shunga for moral judgement. Artists and publishers were more likely to be prosecuted for political or social commentary than for sexually explicit works, because, as Rosina Buckland notes, these were a greater threat to social order.⁶ Art was censored in Edo Japan to enforce political control: the government, in an attempt to avoid criticism, which they claimed would be damaging to society, banned artists from depicting political figures and current events. In 1804, Utamaro was arrested not for his extensive shunga output but for his unheroic depiction of the sixteenth-century shogun Toyotomi Hideyoshi.⁷

It was not until the 1850s, when Victorian morals and Christian notions of shame and sin were introduced, that attitudes towards depictions of sex and the human body changed in Japan. Due to cultural and social pressure exerted by shocked foreigners, shunga was suppressed during the Meiji period (1868–1912) and since then has remained problematic in Japan. An awareness of the gaze and judgement of others, of cultural outsiders, prompted this cultural self-censorship because Japan wanted to be seen as a civilised and modern nation, as equals. Interestingly, it was social censorship that was effective in suppressing shunga in Japan, rather than the previous official censorship, which was not fully enforced due to the social and moral acceptability of shunga.

Definitions and categories can have an impact on how institutions and the public respond to objects;⁸ yet, to date, there is no national policy nor standardised guidelines for the acquisition, cataloguing, handling or display of sexually explicit items for museums and other cultural institutions.⁹ The imprecision of legal definitions relating to obscenity and pornography can be problematic for institutions, especially if shunga is referred to by these terms. It could be argued that the lack of clarity relating to ‘obscene’ or ‘pornographic’ artworks puts the burden on institutions to self-censor for fear of falling foul of the law or engendering a public outcry, both of which only become apparent after such works have been acquired or displayed. In this way, institutional censorship can be seen as a preventative measure rather than an indication of the level of acceptability or engagement with sexually explicit items at a given time, as is often assumed.

By institutional censorship, I do not mean decisions made as part of the regular curatorial selection process based on issues such as quality, condition, provenance or cost, nor those which are made to ensure complicity with legal requirements. Rather, institutional censorship is the decision to exclude sex art solely because of the sexual content. This decision may be made due to social pressure, personal preference or religious influence but, regardless of the reason, there seems to have been an unspoken agreement by cultural institutions, in the UK, Japan and other countries, that they would not openly engage with such items. An invisible line of acceptability was drawn and institutions assumed responsibility for maintaining that line. Although access to sexual material has become more commonplace in recent decades, particularly on the internet, sex continues to be a sensitive subject and many cultural institutions remain cautious about what they collect and exhibit. One aspect of institutional censorship is an unspoken decision to uphold the implicit taboo of sex art by not exhibiting it; yet this exclusion of sex from cultural institutions ignores, and even denies, an important aspect of human experience.

One form of institutional censorship in nineteenth-century Europe was the creation of ‘secret museums’. These were separate rooms or locked cabinets within museums or libraries with restricted access, which contained items, usually uncatalogued, that were deemed ‘obscene’. In 1795, the first secret museum was formed in Naples to house the sexually explicit and phallic artefacts uncovered in Pompeii. The Secret Cabinet required a special permit and ‘only those people of mature years and sound morals would be admitted’,¹⁰ which in effect excluded women, the lower classes and unmarried men. That people wanting to view newly uncovered antiquities had to undergo personal judgement reinforced the stigma of negativity and ‘wrongness’ created around explicit items. In the 1830s, the Bibliothèque nationale de France separated works which were ‘contrary to good morals’ from the main collection and placed them in a locked section referred to as L’enfer, or Hell.¹¹ Despite these examples, as Stuart Frost, head of Interpretation at the British Museum, points out, ‘Formal Secret Museums were never common since only large institutions needed them. Elsewhere the smaller quantities of difficult or troublesome artefacts could be kept in the Keeper’s office or left languishing in stores.’¹² There is little documentation of this type of unofficial institutional censorship; it was prevalent but intangible. Problems arising from informal secret museums include decontextualisation of objects, loss of provenance and other accompanying information, and the risk of theft or damage, especially to uncatalogued items.

Nowadays, explicit items like shunga are usually deemed ‘erotic’ or ‘pornographic’, but in the nineteenth century would have been labelled ‘obscene’. Legal censorship of such items began with the 1857 Obscene Publications Act. It had previously been unofficially regulated by class, as art would only have been available to those who could afford, or had access to, paintings, costly prints and other visual materials. As Lynn Hunt observes, regulation, and therefore definition, only became necessary once art could be mass-produced as cheap prints, thus making it accessible to the lower classes.¹³ Although prior to nineteenth century obscenity laws the concept of pornography did not exist, that is not to say that art could not and was not used for the same purposes as modern-day pornography, namely arousal or masturbation. However, the act left the term ‘obscene’ undefined. In the 1868 case of Regina v. Hicklin, Chief Justice Cockburn described obscenity as a ‘tendency to deprave and corrupt those whose minds are open to such immoral influences’. From then on, his ‘definition’ was used for prosecutions. The Obscene Publications Act was not necessarily intended to apply to institutions, or art, as it was primarily aimed at books and the written word. Nevertheless, the act may be applicable and it is reasonable to assume that sexually explicit, phallic or erotic art could be considered an ‘immoral influence’.

It could be argued that the vagueness of the obscenity law, and Cockburn’s subsequent attempted definition, shifted the responsibility to institutions, which in the nineteenth century judged that women, children and the uneducated had to be protected from the ‘obscene’. This gendered and class-based censorship was patronising but consistent with social attitudes towards, and the treatment of, women, minors and the lower classes at the time.

It was in an informal manner during the period 1830 to 1850s that some antiquities in the British Museum began to be segregated, irrespective of cultural context, due to their ‘obscene nature’. For example, in 1830 the British Museum acquired fragments of Marcantonio Raimondi’s I Modi (The Positions), a series of engravings, after drawings by Giulio Romano, showing sexual positions. Even though they had already been subject to physical censorship (the genitals were cropped out), the prints were kept in a separate folio in the Keeper’s office as they were considered ‘too vulgar by the Museum for cataloguing with the general collection’.¹⁴ Acts of physical censorship could be carried out by collectors, dealers, staff in institutions or even visitors to museums, whose sensibilities had been offended. In addition to the risk of being chopped up and locked away, two- and three-dimensional erotic items could be subject to fig leaves, loincloths, draped material, or blocks of colour being added to obscure genitals. Works were censored in these ways or hidden away because it was thought that viewing them might ‘provoke an imbalance in the relationships between men and women and hence a breakdown in the social order’.¹⁵ Furthermore, men of lower classes were not trusted be able to ‘respond appropriately’ to explicit items. Therefore, institutions restricted access to those who were deemed suitable – educated men who could respond in a detached, scholarly manner – men such as George Witt, who was a doctor and collector.

In 1865 Witt donated his collection of phallic antiquities, which he titled Symbols of the Early Worship of Mankind, drawn from cultures around the globe to the British Museum. It included Japanese netsuke (carved toggles), votive wooden phalluses, and shunga prints in scrapbooks. Given the mores of the time, it is surprising that the Trustees accepted Witt’s collection, as the records show, without objection. David Gaimster credits this to the ‘archaeological merit’ of the objects,¹⁶ while Lawrence Smith praises the Trustees’ forward thinking.¹⁷ The Secretum was officially formed that same year, partially in response to Witt’s donation, but also likely in response to the Obscene Publications Act 1857. The Secretum combined the 434 objects in Witt’s collection with approximately 700 items that had previously been unofficially segregated and locked away in the Keeper’s office.

In 1938 some items from the Secretum were transferred to their relevant cultural departments, including Japanese items from the Witt collection to Oriental Antiquities. However, the Secretum, and notions of social and institutional censorship, remained largely intact and in 1948 anyone wishing to view items in the Secretum was required to submit a formal application to the Museum Director. But 1953 was the last year that items were deposited in the Secretum. Subsequently, new sex art acquisitions went directly to the appropriate department. Nevertheless, within the Oriental Antiquities department, shunga, then defined as works which depicted genitalia, were kept together in separate drawers from other Japanese prints.¹⁸

The Obscene Publications Act was updated in 1959 to officially incorporate the ‘deprave and corrupt’ test from the Hicklin case and to cover items which could not only be read but seen or heard. Section 4 or the ‘public good defence’ was added, under which works that might be considered obscene could be exempted in the interests of science, literature, art or learning. It could be argued that section 4 gave museums more flexibility and removed some of the impetus for institutional censorship; in the 1960s most items remaining in the Secretum were dispersed to the relevant departments, returned to their proper contexts. Another factor for this must be the significant changes in attitudes to sex in the 1960s, seen, for example, in the partial decriminalisation of homosexual acts in the 1967 Sexual Offences Act.

Since Japanese art began to become available in significant quantities in the 1860s, when Japan was coerced into relations with Europe and America, it has been possible for institutions to collect shunga. Yet, shunga collecting could be problematic for a number of reasons, notably the religious and social disapprobation of ‘obscenity’. Whether institutions should reflect, or challenge, the social and cultural norms is an important point to consider. Institutions, since they serve the public, faced even more difficulties than private collectors, but despite this some museums and libraries did acquire shunga. However, for the best part of a century, institutional acquisition of shunga and other erotic works was largely due to collections being donated or bequeathed from private collectors. In 1972, artworks from the Kelly bequest (Figure 4.2) were the first shunga in the British Museum to be officially accessioned and numbered.¹⁹ The existing shunga in the collection was catalogued in 1974.

Although there is no specific reference in the British Museum’s collection policies that would prevent the acquisition of shunga, there are many stages in the process at which unofficial censorship may, intentionally or unintentionally, occur; for instance when the approval of curators, trustees, the Director or funders is required. Former curator Lawrence Smith regards the deliberate acquisition of a shunga handscroll in 1980 as a turning point.²⁰ Indeed, that acquisition, which due to its price had to be approved by the Trustees and Director, indicates the shift from passive to active collecting of shunga which occurred in the British Museum. Since then shunga continued to be sporadically purchased, with acquisitions of shunga increasing to an average of one a year between 2003 and the 2013 exhibition.

Figure 4.2 Katsushika Hokusai, from the series Ehon tsuhi no hinagata (Picture-book Models of Couples), c.1812. Colour woodblock print, 25.9 × 38.9 cm. This print, depicting a couple in the throes of passion (note the curled toes and dishevelled hair), was owned by Sir Gerald Kelly and given to the British Museum in 1972 by his wife.

The first time that shunga was exhibited at the British Museum was in 1978, as part of the exhibition A Dream of Fair Women: Japanese Paintings and Prints of the Ukiyoe School (8 June–24 September). The exhibition, curated by Smith, included three shunga prints. These were the three least explicit scenes from Utamakura (Figure 4.1) but they were also chosen for their aesthetic qualities and Utamaro’s skill. This method of gradually reintroducing shunga as a part of ukiyo-e is an effective way to normalise shunga, rather than make it the focus of attention and which may offend. Clark took a similarly measured approach and integrated shunga in the series of chronological ukiyo-e exhibitions he curated between 1998 and 2002. Ukiyo-e I – Ukiyo-e V highlighted the British Museum’s Japanese print collection, which cannot be permanently displayed due to light-sensitive pigments. Over the exhibition series, on average, shunga accounted for almost 10 per cent of the works on display. On such occasions, a disclaimer informing visitors that sexually explicit works were on display was put up at the entrance(s) to the room(s). This progressive approach allowed visitors to decide for themselves, rather than the institution dictating what should be censored. Continuing this development, a significant number of shunga were included in the high-profile 1995 Utamaro retrospective exhibition, The Passionate Art of Kitagawa Utamaro. Rather than being singled out as something potentially shocking, shunga was shown the way it was considered in the Edo period – as a part of Utamaro’s oeuvre. Since 2000, shunga has been displayed semi-regularly in the British Museum.

Shunga: Sex and Pleasure in Japanese Art at the British Museum (3 October 2013–5 January 2014) was the first shunga exhibition in the UK.²¹ It was a landmark exhibition in terms of scale, quality and its aims. Shunga was placed within its proper contexts allowing people to engage and interact with it more meaningfully. The exhibition, along with the 550-page scholarly catalogue, was the culmination of a five-year cross-cultural collaborative Leverhulme-funded project on shunga between the British Museum and the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), in the UK, and Ritsumeikan University and Nichibunken (the International Research Centre for Japanese Studies) in Japan. The British Museum opted not to have an age restriction on exhibition entry. Instead, they continued their relaxation of institutional censorship and allowed visitors to make an informed choice. A disclaimer, displayed prominently at ticket desks, outside the exhibition room, and on the British Museum website, explained that the exhibition contained sexually explicit work and advised that under-16s should be accompanied by a parent or guardian.

To understand the issues institutions face in relation to sexually explicit art, and if anything differed greatly from other exhibitions, I interviewed the exhibition’s curators, and staff in other departments, about their roles in the Shunga exhibition. Rather than being limited by institutional censorship, the previous invisible but implicit restrictive line, the decisions over what was included and how it was presented were based on considerations similar to any exhibition. These were a mix of regular curatorial decisions and practical issues, such as quality and condition of the work, availability of loans, and working within spatial and budget constraints. There was some discussion as to whether images depicting rape should be included, not as an attempt to censor them out but rather to avoid giving viewers a misleading impression of their prominence as a subject in shunga. One such print by Utamaro was shown in the exhibition, as scenes of sexual coercion did exist; however, they were infrequent and the vast majority of shunga depicted consensual sex with a focus on mutual pleasure (as in Figure 4.2), elements which visitors frequently noticed and commented on. The only works that were deliberately omitted were for legal reasons rather than institutional ones. In shunga, children are not involved in sexual acts. There are, however, scenes in which children are present; often a toddler walking in on his parents or older sibling. These works rely on the innocence of the child to create humour. Additionally, they add a touch of reality to a genre that is filled with fantasy. However, under the 2009 Coroners and Justice Act, section 62(6), it is an offence to be in possession of a prohibited image of a child, including images where a child is present when adults are involved in a sexual act. Therefore, shunga including children were excluded from the exhibition to comply with this act.

With regard to the issue of social censorship, there was a distinct lack of public outcry, despite some tabloids’ attempts to sensationalise the exhibition.²² The majority of the 205 visitors who answered the exhibition exit questionnaire gave overwhelmingly positive feedback.²³ Over the decades, forward-thinking individuals at the British Museum have been challenging the boundaries and breaking away from institutional censorship. It is possible this has positively affected the tolerance level of social censorship, or, conversely, visitor feedback suggests that society’s tolerance for sexually explicit art has increased and it is only now that institutions are catching up to this fact. Many respondents felt that an exhibition like Shunga was overdue. Visitors frequently commented how pleased they were that an institution like the British Museum was acknowledging sex and sexuality, as these topics are an important, and relatable, aspect of human experience. For example, one visitor to Shunga complained about the lack of ‘homosexual representation’ in the exhibition, because he wanted to see his own sexuality depicted. However, there were more than a dozen male–male images throughout the exhibition, most of which he had not noticed because they were integrated rather than segregated into a separate category. This reflects the more inclusive way that male–male shunga were treated in the Edo period: shunga were usually produced as a set of twelve prints or twelve scenes in a scroll painting and it was not uncommon to include one or two scenes of male–male couples. It is hoped that integrated displays and institutional engagement, along with the acquisition and display of objects depicting same-sex couples such as the Warren Cup,²⁴ are signs that institutional and social censorship of LGBT-related artefacts are becoming outdated.

Through exhibitions, institutions provide space for the consideration, and even legitimisation, of difficult or sensitive topics. Yet, how an institution defines an item affects how a visitor understands or interprets it. Under the institutional theory of art, the status of ‘art’ is conferred upon an object by the art world, which consists of curators, museums, and galleries. Institutions like the British Museum, which is held in high esteem not just in the UK but worldwide, have authority; therefore their categorisation, or ‘judgement’ in effect, carries a greater weight. This became apparent when gathering feedback from Shunga exhibition visitors. Unlike the longstanding debate in philosophy,²⁵ visitors did not see ‘art’ and ‘porn’ as two mutually exclusive categories, within one of which shunga must be placed, but as flexible and overlapping concepts. Most people interviewed did not question whether or not shunga was art, partly because it was displayed and titled as such by the British Museum. On the other hand, the accompanying interpretation provided visitors with the information necessary to decide for themselves. The Shunga exhibition is a key example of how the British Museum has made significant changes to its unofficial censorship of sex art over the centuries, which in turn can help to change visitors’ attitudes.

Article 175 of the Japanese Penal Code, originally written in 1907, codifies Japan’s obscenity law but, like the UK Obscene Publications Act, does not define the term ‘obscene’. There was a relaxation in the enforcement of the laws relating to depicting nudity, specifically pubic hair, in the 1990s. Shunga no longer had to be masked or painted over and, since they could be shown uncensored, there has been a steady increase in shunga publications. However, when the 1995 British Museum Utamaro exhibition was subsequently shown at the Chiba City Museum, the shunga were removed from both the exhibition and the bilingual catalogue.²⁶ Censoring an important aspect of an artist’s oeuvre out of a retrospective exhibition can give an inaccurate and misleading impression of the artist and their output.

Interviews with curators in Japan confirm there are no official institutional guidelines on shunga but that institutions are expected to self-censor for fear of upsetting the public. In Japan there continues to be significant social pressure to conform, which is encapsulated in the common idiom that the nail that sticks out gets hammered down. Thanks, in part, to a positive response from visitors and the UK media, there has been a growing interest in the British Museum’s exhibition in the Japanese media. Shunga remains a problematic subject in Japan, as the numerous thwarted efforts to stage a shunga exhibition in Japan in recent years attest. A curator at a renowned Japanese institution commented that Japanese society is not yet ready for a shunga exhibition, indicating that social and institutional censorship are still strong in Japan. It is hoped that this situation will change in the wake of the British Museum exhibition, as it may stimulate discussion and acclimatise Japanese people to shunga. Small steps in that direction have already been made. A selection of shunga was shown, albeit in a curtained-off area, at the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo in the 2003 exhibition Happiness.²⁷ A selection of shunga was displayed in 2009 at Ritsumeikan University, Kyoto, although this received complaints. Finally, after much effort and debate, Shunga ran at the Eisei Bunko Museum, Tokyo, 19 September–23 December 2015. Positive responses to the Eisei Bunko show led to a similar exhibition, Shungaten, at Hosomi Museum, Kyoto, 6 February–10 April 2016. The reactions to these exhibitions from the public, the media and cultural institutions, and how these affect the social and institutional censorship of sex art in Japan, will be the subject of a future article.

The British Museum has actively challenged conventional institutional and social censorship through its changing attitude to shunga, and other sex art, over the years, as seen in the dissolution of the Secretum, in the shift from passive to active acquisition, and the increasing and integrated display of sex-related artefacts such as shunga and the Warren Cup. There are differing opinions on whether museums should take a proactive or reactive role when dealing with sensitive topics, but I posit that an important aspect of institutional exhibitions is their ability to go beyond merely reflecting or confirming current views, and to help inform and raise questions about those views. This has been the case with the British Museum as the positive responses to its Shunga exhibition have helped to change perceptions of shunga. It has even contributed to changes in the institutional censorship of shunga in Japan. If fully realised, this change would bring the censorship of shunga full circle: it became censored in Japan due to an awareness of the gaze and judgement of others; but now the acceptability of shunga in the opinion of others seems to be helping it become acceptable again in Japan.

1. This paper draws heavily from Louise Boyd, ‘Art, sex, and institutions: defining, collecting, and displaying Shunga’ (unpublished PhD thesis, University of Glasgow, 2016, available at https://theses.gla.ac.uk/7546/) and is indebted to British Museum staff, particularly Tim Clark, Stuart Frost, and Lawrence Smith. Thanks are also due to Toshio Watanabe who gave feedback on an earlier version of this given as a conference paper.

2.Timothy Clark, ‘Sexhibition: reflections on shunga in London, looking forward to shunga in Tokyo’, 文化資源学(Bunka Shigengaku) 13 (2015), p. 127.

3.See Timon Screech, Sex and the Floating World: Erotic Images in Japan, 1700–1820 (London, 1999; revised edition 2009), Paul Berry, ‘Rethinking “shunga”: the interpretation of sexual imagery of the Edo Period’, Archives of Asian Art 54 (2004), pp. 7–22, and Allen Hockley, ‘Shunga: function, context, methodology’, Monumenta Nipponica 55/2 (2000), pp. 257–69 for discussions on functions. For more on audiences see Hayakawa Monta, ‘Who were the audiences for shunga?’, in Timothy Clark, C. Andrew Gerstle, Aki Ishigami and Akiko Yano (eds), Shunga: Sex and Pleasure in Japanese Art (London, 2013) pp. 34–47.

5.C. Andrew Gerstle, Great Pleasures for Women and Their Treasure Boxes & Love Letters and a River of Erect Precepts for Women (Hollywood, 2009), p. 2.

7.See Julie Nelson Davis, ‘The trouble with Hideyoshi: censoring ukiyo-e and the Ehon Taikōki incident of 1804’, Japan Forum 19/3 (2007), pp. 281–315.

8.For an exploration of these issues, see Boyd, ‘Art, sex, and institutions’, pp. 273–86.

9.There are guidelines for dealing with other sensitive issues, including human remains, ivory and stolen art, in particular works taken during the Nazi era.

10.David Gaimster, ‘Sex & sensibility at the British Museum’, History Today 50/9 (2000), unpaginated.

11.Marie-Françoise Quignard and Raymond-Josué Seckel (eds), L’enfer de la Bibliothèque, Eros au Secret (Paris, 2007).

12.Stuart Frost, ‘Secret museums: hidden histories of sex and sexuality’, Museums & social issues: a journal of reflective discourse 3/1 (2008), p. 31.

13.Lynn Hunt (ed.), The Invention of Pornography: Obscenity and the Origins of Modernity, 1500–1800 (New York, 1993), pp. 11–13.

17.Lawrence Smith, ‘Interview on shunga collecting and display in the British Museum’ (unpublished personal communication, 2014).

21.There had been prior shunga exhibitions outside the UK, notably in Helsinki (see Hayakawa Monta, Kielletyt Kuvat: Vanhaa Eroottista Taidetta Japanista = Förbjudna Bilder: Gammal Erotisk Konst Från Japan = Forbidden Images: Erotic Art from Japan’s Edo Period (Helsinki, 2002) and Shirakura Yoshihiko & Hayakawa Monta, Shunga: Himetaru warai no sekai: Herushinki shiritsu bijutsukan ukiyoe shungaten (Tokyo, 2003)), Rotterdam (see Chris Uhlenbeck (ed.), Japanese Erotic Fantasies: Sexual Imagery of the Edo Period (Amsterdam, 2005)) and Hawai’i (see Shawn Eichman and Stephen Salel, Shunga: Stages of Desire (New York, 2014)).

22.Harry Mount, ‘Is this the naughtiest art show Britain’s ever seen? . . . and the most shocking thing of all is that it’s at the British Museum’, Daily Mail, 2 September 2013, and Martin Phillips, ‘Shunga bunga: Rude Japanese art shown in UK’, Sun, 3 September 2013.

23.For a detailed analysis of the visitor feedback see Boyd, ‘Art, sex, and institutions’, pp. 234–69.

24.The Warren Cup, a first-century silver vessel which depicts scenes of sexual intercourse between older men and youths, was acquired by the British Museum for £1.8 million in 1999. The Cup was featured in various temporary exhibitions, which drew positive feedback (see Morris Hargreaves McIntyre, ‘Pleasure you can measure: visitor responses to the Warren Cup exhibition’ (London, 2006)), and is now on permanent display.

25.For an insightful summary and developments of this debate, see Hans Maes, ‘Drawing the line: art versus pornography’, Philosophy Compass 6/6 (2011), pp. 385–97 and Hans Maes and Jerrold Levinson (eds), Art and Pornography: Philosophical Essays (Oxford, 2012). See also Boyd, ‘Art, sex, and institutions’, pp. 27–47.

26.Asano Shūgō and Timothy Clark, The Passionate Art of Kitagawa Utamaro (London, 1995).

27. The shunga works were included uncensored in the catalogue: see David Elliottand Pier Luigi Tazzi, Happiness: a Survival Guide for Art + Life =Hapinesu:āto ni miru kōfuku e no kagi (Tokyo and Kyoto, 2003).