New York has everything


I’m sorry to say that on our last trip to New York, we missed this museum.

Peruse an 1814 sketchbook by the Japanese artist Katsushika Hokusai and eventually you’ll come across a bashful, wide-eyed octopus. You’d never guess that the innocent creature leads a secret life of debauchery. But a few years later, there he is on a woodblock print, still wide-eyed, now presented by Hokusai in a moment of infamous passion—his bulbous head pushed between the legs of a young woman, delivering a rather well-received session of cunnilingis. Hilarious and startling, it’s just one example of the explicit shunga, or “pictures of spring,” in an exhibition at the Museum of Sex surveying four centuries of Japan’s cartoonish pornography.

Next time!

(via 3quarksdaily and Jennifer Ouellette)

Comments

  1. Mena says

    This one is kind of creepy but it reminds me of a certain explicit octopus picture posted here recently. Don’t open it if you are at work or under 18, even though it showed up on a “safe” google search.
    http://www.gregkucera.com/_images/shunga/shunga_octopus_web.jpg
    Oddly enough, here’s my random quote right now:
    If you have a dark bushy mustache, shave it off NOW.
    Rack Jite

    Who says that the universe doesn’t have a sense of humor?

  2. Torbjörn Larsson says

    Cultural museums like these are valuable.

    “Hilarious and startling”
    Why they think they need to promote the pornography I can’t see. ;-) But it’s a good description of shunga in general.