album;
egoyomi;
shunga;
surimono
- Museum number
- 1973,0723,0.35
- Title
- Object: Zoi-cho 増衣帖 (Album of Gift Prints)
- Description
-
Album, woodblock prints. Shunga. 109 erotic surimono, mostly calendar prints. In chitsu (case) with title-slip.
- Production date
- 1814-1826 (circa)
- Dimensions
-
Height: 9.60 centimetres
-
Width: 13 centimetres
- Curator's comments
- ‘Picture calendar’ (e-goyomi) is the name given to the genre of small size, privately commissioned prints which were exchanged at the New Year as greetings. The oldest ukiyo-e examples date from the Kyo-ho- era (1716–36) and they grew steadily in popularity over the next century or so. Before 1874 a lunar calendar was used in Japan (rather than a solar one), which necessitated annual calculations by the government astronomical bureau to decide the order for the ‘long’ (thirty-day) and ‘short’ (twenty-nine-day) months – plus occasional, extra ‘intercalary’ months – for the coming year. Although the publication of calendars was strictly speaking an official monopoly, these privately exchanged prints vied to find ingenious ways to hide the numbers of the long or short months (or both) somewhere in the picture. In the early nineteenth century there was an explosion in the production of picture calendars that were also shunga. This album is pasted with more than one hundred examples that date from between about 1814 and 1826. Only one is signed by Eisen, otherwise the prints can be attributed on stylistic grounds mainly to artists of the Kikukawa and Katsushika schools. Matsura Seizan (1760–1841), the samurai lord of the Hirado fief in Kyushu, built up a large collection of picture calendars between the years 1771 and 1785, which are preserved in luxurious scrapbooks in the Matsura Historical Museum, Hirado. Seizan, who was an important patron of floating-world artists such as Katsukawa Shunsho- (Clark et al 2013, cat. 47) and Hosoda Eishi (Clark et al 2013, cat. nos. 56, 57, 87, 117), later commented on the custom of exchanging shunga picture calendars in his extensive diary Kasshi yawa (Night Tales of the Year of the Rat), in an entry from the year 1824: 'Recently they [picture calendars] have become even more popular. They are printed in a luxurious style that not even brocade and embroidery can match. At the end of the old year and beginning of the new, rich and poor alike keep them tucked into the breast [of their robes] and think nothing of exchanging them even in the precincts of the palace [Edo Castle]. The most elaborate ones are shunga. This shows how the world has changed ...' Matsura Seizan, Kasshi yawa vol. 47, 18241 [TC]
- Location
- Not on display
- Exhibition history
-
Exhibited:
2000 24 Mar-24 Sep, London, BM, Japanese Galleries, 'Japan Time' [two openings]
2013 3 Oct - 2014 5 Jan, London, BM, Shunga: Sex and pleasure in Japanese art, 1600-1900
- Acquisition date
- 1973
- Acquisition notes
- Transferred from the Department of Oriental Manuscripts and Printed Books.
- Department
- Asia
- Registration number
- 1973,0723,0.35
- Additional IDs
-
Other BM number: Or.59.e.6 (previous British Library shelfmark)
