Utamakura (Utamaro)

Utamakura (歌まくら, "poem[s] of the pillow") is the title of a 12-print illustrated book of sexually explicit shunga pictures, published in 1788.

The print designs are attributed to the Japanese ukiyo-e artist Kitagawa Utamaro, and the book's publication to Tsutaya Jūzaburō.

Ukiyo-e art flourished in Japan during the Edo period from the 17th to 19th centuries, and took as its primary subjects courtesans, kabuki actors, and others associated with the "floating world" lifestyle of the pleasure districts.

[2] Kitagawa Utamaro (c. 1753–1806) began designing prints in the 1770s; made his name in the 1790s with his bijin ōkubi-e ("large-headed pictures of beautiful women") portraits, focusing on the head and upper torso.

[3] He experimented with line, colour, and printing techniques to bring out subtle differences in the features, expressions, and backdrops of subjects from a wide variety of class and background.

[7] Utamakura (歌枕, "poem pillow") is a classical Japanese rhetorical concept in which poetical epithets are associated with place names.

[6] Unlike other illustrated books of the time, Utamakura is devoid of accompanying text, and employs luxurious techniques such as embossing, the dusting of mica for a glittering effect,[8] and bokashi,[9] a technique by which gradations of colour are achieved by applying varying amounts of ink to the printing block.

[12] Utamaro employs a varied contrast of tones in the area of the rocks, while fine lines of the running current partially obscure the underwater scene.

The pair appear to be on a bedroom floor surrounded by a byōbu folding screen, but that she is still in her kimono suggests her partner is not her husband.

[13] Two lovers have sex on the floor in front of a pair of byōbu screens decorated with the images of plum blossoms and bamboo.

The woman's kimono bears a Japanese primrose mon crest, a mark born by the geisha Tomimoto Toyohina, whom Utamaro often depicted.

[13] Amongst the fine printing details are the glittering mica dust applied to the tsunokakushi and the karasuri embossed pattern on the sole of the bride's tabi sock.

[34] They stayed at the Nagasakiya inn in the Hongoku-chō neighbourhood in the Nihonbashi district of Edo, and many stopped by to take a look at the foreigners.

[21] Utamaro may have seen Dutch people on one of these visits, and thus may have based the man's portrait on observation; women on the other hand were rare visitors to Japan, and the woman's garb is anachronistic.

The print receives such attention to detail that even the head of the penis is dusted with mica to give it a glittering effect.

The artist Kitao Masanobu remarked on the enormity of the penises Utamaro drew;[9] the French art critic Edmond de Goncourt, on the other hand, praised Utamaro's "power in the line, which makes the drawing of a penis the equal of the Louvre's Hand by Michelangelo".