Kinoe no komatsu 喜能会之故真通

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Commentary by Ann Yonemura

Posted November 2014

Kinoe no komatsu, published in three volumes in 1814, is a masterpiece of Hokusai’s erotic books (shunpon) and is the earliest of eight titles (sixteen volumes) that were published between 1814 and 1822. The three-volume set of Kinoe no komatsu is one of two shunpon titles by Hokusai in the Pulverer collection (see also Tamakazura, circa 1820) and is a beautifully preserved example of this masterpiece of erotic art.

Following the preface and preceding the seven double-page illustrations in each volume is a close-up bust portrait of a courtesan. Known as ōkubi-e (literally, “big head pictures”), such portraits of courtesans became popular in the mid-1790s through single-sheet prints by Kitagawa Utamaro (1754–1806) and other artists. The term was also used to describe portrait prints of kabuki actors in their stage roles. Ōkubi-e are extremely rare among Hokusai’s prints, and as Jack Hillier notes, they are rare as well in Hokusai’s books, where they appear mainly in the erotic category (Hillier 1980, pp. 170–71). Each volume concludes with a close-up view of genitalia (ōtsubi-e).

The text comprises two types of narrative. One continuous narrative that links the three volumes recounts the sexual adventures of Hanada Umenosuke, who becomes involved in a sexual relationship with his aunt’s son-in-law’s daughter Tamami Oiso. In volume 2, the couple becomes involved with Oiso’s maid, and finally in volume 3, Hanada becomes an acupuncturist and treats both a manservant and a woman. A second type of narrative fills the empty space in each image and relates, often humorously, to the activities depicted (Talerico 2001, p. 35).

All but one of the illustrations are tightly composed views of couples whose partially abandoned clothing and disordered bedding form brilliantly patterned settings for their passionate embraces. One scene in volume 3, the most famous of all Japaneseshunga images, is unique in its outdoor setting and its focus: a nude female abalone diver lies among the rocks entwined by a large and a small octopus that are suckling her mouth and genitals. Danielle Talerico’s exegesis of this image has separated it from early, culturally bound interpretations by Western writers who considered it to be “both beautiful and repellent” (Talerico 2001, p. 25). For the Edo audience, Talerico considers, the scene would have recalled popular understandings of the ancient tale Taishokan (The great woven cap), episodes of which include an effort to retrieve a precious gem stolen by the Dragon King of the Sea. The protagonist, Fujiwara Kamatari (614–669), marries a diver who retrieves the gem for him but sacrifices her own life as a result.

The image also would have referred to long-standing erotic associations with abalone divers. The surrounding text records, with exaggeration and humor, the words and sounds of the woman and the octopi. Nonetheless, the unease that many viewers initially experience arises in part from the startling realism of the octopus, whose eyes are directed outward, as they would be in nature, and the complete exposure of the woman lying across shadowy rocks as she succumbs to ecstasy.

Despite censorship of erotic images in Japan at the time of publication and thereafter, and culturally specific impediments to research, exhibition, and publication elsewhere, scholars have recently focused more attention on Japanese erotic books. International workshops and symposia, as well as forthcoming exhibitions and publications, promise to shed new light on this aspect of Japanese art and Hokusai’s artistic achievement in this genre.

Selected reading:

Jack Hillier, The Art of Hokusai in Book Illustration (London: Sotheby Parke-Bernet Publications; Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980), pp. 170–71.

Jack Hillier, The Art of the Japanese Book, 2 vols. (New York: Sotheby’s Publications, 1987), pp. 894–99.

Danielle Talerico, “Interpreting Sexual Imagery in Japanese Prints: A Fresh Approach to Hokusai’s Diver and Two Octopi,” Impressions, no. 23 (2001), pp. 24–41.