Sunga. The frank art of Japan

Hundreds of years have passed since the creation of these exciting images, but the Japanese erotic engraving continues to instill the views of the audience around the world. You can argue for a long time about who first took up the image on paper, in clay or marble of sexual scenes. They can be found even on the frescoes of ancient Rome or on ancient vases of Greece. All Europe in the Renaissance did not disdain pictures that raise the “tone”. Why only Europe? Something similar was characteristic of ancient Peru. And what can I say about India, where Kama Sutra serves a kind of alphabet for men and women! Praised by this art and China. But if you ask the connoisseur of this genre about the most spectacular examples of fine art, then the answer will be unequivocal: in this field, the works of the XVII-XIX centuries worked hard in this field.
We are by no means hinting at the sexual licentiousness of Japanese masters of culture. The fact is that the relations of sexes in all their diversity in Japan have always been perceived as something natural, and not limited by a purely family framework in the Japanese religion - Shintism - it will not be possible to find anything that would throw a gloomy shadow for sex. Even ancient myths dedicated to cosmogonic processes are often saturated with purely sexual details. Take, for example, a description of the process of emergence of the world stated in the most ancient written monument of Japan - “Kojiki” dated 712 years. The result of this quite innocent, from the point of view of the Japanese, divine incest was the appearance of the Japanese archipelago, and with it the whole world in which we live. The country has long existed (and still preserved!) A phallic cult associated with the glorification of the goddess of fertility. Sunga in the literal translation means spring pictures. Why did the Japanese give this name to drawings? Most likely, this term was borrowed from the Chinese. But in Japan he took root. Maybe this is due to the clear feeling of the change of seasons that is characteristic of this people. It is in the spring under the warm sunlight not only nature comes to life, but human feelings are also aggravated, emotions overwhelm the soul.

Sunge album books were originally considered the best and indispensable gift to the newlyweds by parents, relatives or friends. Part of the engravings in the book depicted very realistic situations, the other was more fantasy, where lovers took truly impossible poses, accessible, perhaps, only to experienced acrobats