Early Modern Japan

71 the woman nurses or otherwise diverts the child – the latter offers the male reader, and perhaps the female one as well, a different point of entry into the scene. But this does not mean as Screech proposes that this particular child is trying to reach up his mother’s skirt to reach her willing genitals; it only means that the eroticized gaze between the two figures reaching toward one another and the urgent request for and happy imminent release of the breast create the charged path along which the viewer’s desire is channeled and released. And what should coincidentally lie smack in the middle of that exchange of gazes but a great swath of elegant kimono material that has the not-soinnocent look of product-placement to it. Eroticism was regularly directed to the latest designs on sale in the great material emporiums of the time that are so often seen in ukiyo-e prints of the city. Indeed, as Screech quite accurately observes, “In pictures of the Floating World, the clothes themselves carry sexual weight” (110). This is, as he notes, not a question of an acceptance of or a preference for semi-concealment, but is rather a fetishization of clothing. Still, his catalogue of clothing and accessories often requires some comment. For example, Screech finds that Utamaro’s three Kansei beauties in fig. 44 (Tosei san bijin, 1793) are “wearing meaner sorts of cloth than those of the former age” (117). They may very well be, since the Kansei sumptuary laws against gorgeous clothing were in effect, whether in art or in life. But it would be hard to tell in this monochrome reproduction, which scarcely does justice to the gorgeousness of the fabrics depicted. If we look closely, for example, we find that one robe has a finely-patterned and clearly expensive kasuri design; a second sports a very delicate karaori design whose discreet mon in white – undoubtedly a crest – is almost indistinguishable from its greyscale ji ground; and the central and tallest of the women (and thus the most important of the three) is wearing a simple crested haori that was never intended to be gaudy but rather to suggest the beauty underneath (the crest of the woman in kasuri is shown on her fan). Color reproductions of prints by the same artist about five years later (figs. 26, 57) make use of gaudy robes that might well look “mean” as well if they too were reproduced in monochrome. The robes on the figures shown in the pornographic fig. 57 are as gorgeous as any in the genre. Fig. 26, like the Three Beauties, is erotic though not pornographic, with both bearing the artist’s signature and censor’s kiwame seal, as shunga prints never did since they were not intended for sale in bookshops. Contrary to Screech’s suggestion that it was only the prints that the censors saw that showed “mean” clothes, however, the robes in all of those bearing the censor’s seal are equally exquisite. Screech’s elaborate explanation (121) of what clothing is for is much too difficult when its role is, quite simply, to frame and provide the setting for the action of the genitals. It is useful to think of clothing as the setting for characters on stage. There is a great deal more here that might be critiqued. The book is well-organized in that it tries to provide a place for nearly everything; but in trying to cover nearly everything, it ends up seeming disorganized. Almost every time Screech proposes a good idea, he spoils it with a bad one, or a weak or erroneous interpretation, or a hectoring and arrogant manner that makes the reader disinclined to accept even the best of ideas. His illustrations seem selected to make his points, rather than serve as representative examples of the genre. But perhaps the greatest problem remains the fact that shunga pictures do not really constitute a separate genre at all; they are part and parcel of ukiyo-e art in general, and can only be understood in close reference to it.