For additional homoerotic artwork we have in store, please click here.
 
Authentic Edo period original, c.1840, Japanese erotic art shunga surimono woodblock print picture by an artist of the UTAGAWA School.  Shunga picture measures 9.6 cm x 12.7 cm.  Very good colors and impressions.  Condition is decent+ with some wear, soiling, bit of creasing, and one pinhole at top right.  No backing.  Please see and judge from photos.
 
A rare homoerotic, gay (danshoku – homosexual relations within samurai culture) shunga from c.1840 Japan.  In this scene, an older, mature samurai (nenja) takes advantage of his younger wakashu (younger servant, receptive partner) during an act of grave worshipping.
 
This piece has also drawn commentary from respected collector and scholar Professor Brian Coppola (University of Michigan), who has written extensively on shunga and its homoerotic traditions.  He observes:
 
"By placing a sexual encounter at a family grave, the image ridicules or destabilizes the reverent facade of societal rituals.  The elder man violates not just decorum, but the sacredness of familial duty—a deliberate subversion of Confucian values.  This is likely intended as a humorous jab at hypocrisy: the same samurai class expected to model high virtue is shown acting according to private desires.  The image exposes a contrast between public stoicism and private indulgence.
 
Like much shunga, this image likely operated in a world of comic inversion: high and low class, sacred and vulgar, old and young.
 
The small inset of the tiger might symbolize male aggression or virility, a typical animal metaphor in shunga.”
 
Professor Coppola’s insight highlights the cultural sharpness of this rare depiction—satirizing public virtue while exposing private desire—making it not only a striking homoerotic scene but also a window into the layered humor and inversion at play in Edo-period shunga.
 
For more information on homosexuality during feudal era Japan and the concurrent evolution of nanshoku please click here.