Shunga? I hardly even know her!

Erotic Japanese prints at The British Museum

See I WONDER IF THEY’LL BE HUMANS OR VEGETABLES? for an explanation of this image, at least in so far as any explanation is possible.

Last week I had the chance to visit the British Museum’s exhibition of shunga, which translates as the rather euphemistic “Spring paintings”: Japanese erotic prints and books from the medieval period up to the turn of the twentieth century. So it’s Spring as in sap rising, if you know what I mean.

Given the enduring popularity at this blog of James Joyce’s bum letters and the number of people who come here trying to find out (in English) what the octopus is saying in Hokusai’s Dream of the Fisherman’s Wife, I thought some of you perverts scholars may be interested to hear a bit about the exhibition. It’s worth a visit if you can get to London and you’re into Japanese culture and/or smutty pictures; therein lies one of the unintentionally funny things about it. Yes, every single day at the British Museum hundreds of respectable middle class people are spending a hour or more scrutinising vintage porn with no holds barred depictions of what goes where. I suspect many of them would say (like the complacent wife in Airplane!) that Jim never looks at porn when he’s at home, and many of them are Telegraph readers or Guardianistas who’d probably assert that pornography is demeaning and sordid. Yet here they are, earnestly checking out pictures of famous actors’ penises… albeit famous actors’ penises from over a century ago. It’s all strangely un-arousing anyway, at least to me.

There are also some inadvertently amusing pseudo-scholarly captions such as “the unusually large size of the colour print serves to accomodate the orgy”. Er, yes… it does. The print in question (circa 1785) shows a travelling salesman being set upon by six housewives who in true pornographic style are all absolutely gagging for it, proving that where (heterosexual/heteronormative male) sexual fantasies are concerned, plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

Complaints about pornography being unrealistic and damaging to the body images of “real” people are also nothing new. In 1254 a chap called Tachibana no Narisue wrote that “the old [shunga] masters depict the size of the thing far too large … If it were depicted actual size there would be nothing of interest. For that reason, don’t we say art is fantasy?”

If you’re on the front page this post has some rather explicit images and text after the “continue reading” link, so NSFW unless you work at a Japanese vendor of sexy prints during the Edo era, OK?

Delta of Venus

(CC licensed image by Boaz Ng, http://www.flickr.com/photos/ng_b/8320933204)

The standard story is that the carnivorous Venus Flytrap (Dionaea muscipula) plant’s name refers to the Roman goddess of love, without going into too much detail. Muscipula actually means mousetrap, not flytrap, but that’s not important right now (to quote Airplane! for no apparent reason).

Dionaea means “daughter of Dione”, i.e. Aphrodite, Venus’ Greek counterpart. This fixation on love goddesses gives some clue as to the real reason for the name; the filthy minds and sniggering schoolboy humour of 18th century naturalists. To them it was equally salient that it trapped and digested unsuspecting visitors (hence, flytrap) and that it had two touch sensitive, reddish lobes surrounded by hair… i.e. it reminded them of female genitalia. That link isn’t at all obscene, by the way, it just gives some more background information on the perpetrators of this Linnean lewdness.

I admit that I’m no gynaecologist, but I think it’s highly unlikely that any of their wives were harbouring anything like this down below…

… although apparently sex is what came to the minds of those mixed-up pervs when they saw an inviting Flytrap squeeze the life out of whatever foolish creature blundered into Venus’ clutches.

Sigmund Freud: “Please step into my office, gentlemen.”

I suspect this information may add a certain je ne sais quois to future Little Shop of Horrors viewings.

The incalculable mischief of goats

Miscellaneous odd, interesting posters and signs from the aforementioned book The Public Notice. In a sign from 1854 at Dalkey, near Dublin, Laurence Waldron has a peculiarly specific complaint against his tenants:

To be sold: Books, Ribbons, Hannibal, William and Nancy

More scans from The Public Notice. The one above is a poster advertising sale and leasing of slaves, from the West Indies in 1829. Although I was obviously aware that slaves were sold on to other owners, it never previously occurred to me that they’d also be rented out just like horses were (“On the usual conditions of the Hirer finding them in Food, Clothing and Medical –––––––––ance”: the latter word is mostly unreadable). The slaves for sale were Hannibal, “an excellent House Servant of Good Character”, William, curtly described as “a Labourer”, and Nancy, “an excellent House Servant and Nurse”. The slaves listed as “To be let” are also mostly divided into “House Servants” and “Labourers”, the latter being considered worth much less money, and commonly referred to as field negroes/niggers. Notice also the final item on the bill is “that celebrated English horse, Blucher”.

A similarly blasé, callous elision of the difference between owning horses and owning humans is demonstrated in another announcement reproduced in The Public Notice: an 1850 poster for an American raffle in which a dollar stake put you in the way of winning the first prize, which was “a dark bay horse” called Star. Second prize was “a mulatto girl” called Sarah.

Hyaku-monogatari

Edo horror stories

The hyaku-monogatari (“one hundred stories”) were told in Edo-era Japan when people came together to exchange kaidan, stories of ghosts, monsters, mysterious (fushigi) happenings, and frightening (osoroshiki) characters. This gatherings, hyaku-monogatari kaidan kai, can be conceived of as a kind of market for exchanging stories. These might be real (or claimed) personal experiences, stories people knew from elsewhere, or a story of their own devising. There may not always have been exactly one hundred stories; as in English, saying there are “a hundred” or “hundreds” of something can be deliberate hyperbole, just a way of saying there are more than you can easily count. Stories of mysterious and frightening things (mononoke) were and are indeed endless in number.

Kami-kiri (“Hair-cutter”) yōkai from ‘Hyakkai Zukan’ by Sawaki Suushi, 1737.

Wakan kaidan hyōrin, 1718:

“First light one hundred wicks with blue paper around them, and hide all weapons. Now, for each frightening tale, extinguish one wick… when all one hundred flames have been extinguished, a monster (bakemono) will most definitely appear.”

Hide all weapons! The theatricality of the slowly gathering darkness as the tellers vie with each other to tell the scariest story speaks for itself, I think.  The ritualistic repetition also plays a part in creating an immersive experience in which we allow ourselves to be scared. Try it! In fact I already used the techniques of the hyaku-monogatari kaidan kai directly in my own live show about occult stories and supernatural folk beliefs in Tudor England, Magickal Realism.

The popularity of the (by definition ephemeral and oral) hyaku-monogatari also contributed to a publishing boom as the best stories began to be collected and made available in print, making an enthusiasm for monsters and supernatural beings (妖怪 yōkai) the national Japanese pastime that it remains today. As for the yōkai themselves, it’s a huge subject with no shortage of English-language resources available online.

Source: Pandemonium and Parade– Japanese Monsters and the Culture of Yōkai by Michael Dylan Foster.

PS Semi-related, daft and entertaining, Denki Groove– モノノケダンス (Mononoke Dance):

The Punishments of China

More horrible stuff from China… I promise I don’t hate China as much as my collection of hard drive detritus might seem to suggest. Like the propaganda LPs, these images are mostly lacking context. The file names all include “NYPL”, which I’m guessing and/or vaguely recollecting is New York Public Library (or Libraries). I have a scan of the frontispiece, so I know the book they’re from is The Punishments of China– it also says “Illustrated with twenty-two engravings and explanations in English and French. London: Printed for William Miller, Old-Bond-Street; by William Bulmer & Co., Cleveland-Bow, St. Jame’s [sic], 1804.” Unfortunately I don’t have those explanations in English and French, so let’s all guess what the punishments are.

This one’s easy: crucifixion! Sorry for putting an exclamation point on crucifixion. His queue appears to be tied to the pole. It’s attention to these little details that marks out a true punisher from the dabblers.

Manacled to a bench? Could be worse…

Killed by a tiger in Wiltshire (Surprised!)

Tiger in a Tropical Storm (Surprised!) by Henri Rousseau, 1891. National Gallery, London.

A gravestone in the churchyard of Malmesbury Abbey in Wiltshire records what is apparently the first documented incident of a person in Britain meeting their end after being attacked by a tiger.

IN MEMORY OF HANNAH TWYNNOY

Who died October 23rd 1703

Aged 33 Years

In bloom of Life

She’s snatched from hence

She had no room

To make defence

For Tyger fierce

Took Life away

And here she lies in a bed of Clay

Until the Resurrection Day.

A plaque at nearby Hullavington (since lost… the plaque, I mean, not the village) recorded that Hannah was a barmaid who enjoyed tormenting the tiger in a travelling menagerie. Almost inevitably, Hannah didn’t enjoy her sport for very long before the tiger decided to teach her a fatal lesson. Presumably the lesson here was also deemed appropriate for local churchgoers, hence the plaque.

Hannah Twynnoy being “the first” obviously implies that other people have been killed by tigers in Britain since 1703, but I bet you don’t know how hard it is to find out exactly who those people were. Nor does there seem to be anybody keeping track of tiger deaths in Britain. Come on, this is important.

I’m reminded of a great little book from the late 1960s or early 1970s: A Small Book of Grave Humour, by Fritz Spiegl. As the title suggests, it collects epitaphs that are either deliberate attempts at black comedy or inadvertently funny because they’re so absurd. One from Gorgie Cemetery in Edinburgh is unforgettable because it’s hard to tell whether it’s meant to be funny or just turned out that way by mistake, thanks to incredibly bad syntax:

Erected to the memory of

John McFarlane,

Drowned in the Water of Leith,

By a few affectionate friends.