Touching on sex slightly ;) Cro has drawn attention to Manga art and its sexual implications of how young girls dress, presumably for the lascivious eye of older men. Don't be too horrified look at Hollywood for a start and all those films of young females dangling on the arm of an older man.
But as I thumbed through my blogs I came across Kesaki, a conservator at the British Museum who had had a small exhibition on the subject of erotic Japanese books and paintings in 2014. The exhibition was called Shunga and I don't know if it was a success or not but Kesaki invited us to see the exhibition as it was being prepared.
Now in the studio at Chelmsford, there were 'pillow books' to be mended, collected by a client of Pauls. And I remember the Japanese kimonoed courtesan who hung on the wall for a while with a tissue delicately held between her lips. There was also the graceful lissom body of a young man half undressed that needed work done on it.
Such things as the pillow books became outlawed though, they are actually poking fun at you and are slightly cartoonish.
Japan I think is slightly behind on the implications of the equality of male and female as shown by the Me To campaign, but as everything in life it will become part of the mainstream of Western culture.
I found these old blogs just by typing in a name to search, never having used the labelling section. All because today, I found at the bottom of a carrier bag, the old Japanese dark brown butter dish, that my daughter had swiped off the kitchen windowsill the small items there, such as the wooden Japanese garlic box, to remind me of all the stuff I had used. There is an incense bowl and the little cupboard god, praying neatly.
Goldfish and Carp
Interesting Thelma - how very different their art is to ours.
ReplyDeleteThere are many things I had problems with in Japanese art Pat. The dark gods for one, colours for another, indigo is too dark for me but their culture is well defined. Sushi of course was another, we went once to the top sushi restaurant, where you sat at the bar and he prepared it in front of you, but the eating of raw fish for a vegetarian was not for me.
DeleteYoung Japanese women dressing in tartan skirts and white knee socks to appeal to the elderly perverts that make up the male part of their society reinforce my prejudices about the general inscrutability of Orientals. Basically, the Japanese are talented nut-cases.
ReplyDeleteIt is a weird set-up, a cult amongst the young, there are nightclubs and places such girls congregate at, need to do some more reading on the subject matter.
ReplyDeleteI love the sweeping inky lines of Japanese art. Shame I am seven years too late for the Shunga exhibition.
ReplyDeleteFunnily enough when I was still a teenager my cousin gave to me a book on Utamaro. His work was very beautiful, elegant with the fine lines and excellent pale soft colours. The Japanese are far less bashful about sex than you may think!
ReplyDeletehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utamaro