Allegories of Love

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It is widely acknowledged that early modern European pornography was a political medium. In Japan, however, partly on account of the artistic merit of much of its early modern pornographic production, the possibility that representations of sex could have circulated as political signifiers has been overlooked. This article takes the pornographic works of the early eighteenth century Kyoto artist Nishikawa Sukenobu as a case in point. Between 1710 and 1721, Sukenobu produced in the region of 50 erotic works. These differed from earlier pornographic works in that the accompanying narratives--supplied largely by the author Ejima Kiseki--dwelt not on the blissful comedy of sex that had hitherto dominated the medium, but on stories of thwarted love and the sexual desolation of the brothels. This is significant, for discussions of consensuality and affective marriage were not confined to pornography. The popular Shinto preacher Masuho Zanko, for example, was at the same time attributing the demise of affective relations to the imposition of Confucianist social norms. The same opposition between sexual love and Confucian constraint is echoed in Sukenobu's pornographic works and versions thereof emerge in his later illustrated books (ehon). Given that the metaphorical possibilities of romantic love as a political signifier were being discussed at the same time in Shintoist and Kimon circles in relation to the political writings of Chinese heroes of the Warring States period, we should not overlook the possibility that the early modern pornographic endeavour was, in part, a sophisticated rhetorical strategy.
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