In early modern Japan thousands of sexually explicit paintings, prints, and illustrated books with texts were produced, euphemistically called spring pictures ( shunga ) . Frequent ly tender, funny and beautiful, shunga were mostly done within the popular school known as pictures of the floating world ( ukiyo - e ), by celebrated artists such as Utamaro and Hokusai. Shunga is in some ways a unique phenomenon in pre - modern world cultu re, in terms of the quantity, the quality and the nature of the art that was produced. This catalogue of a major international exhibition aims to answer some key questions about what is shunga and why it was produced. In particular the social and cultura l contexts for sex art in Japan are explored . Erotic Japanese art was heavily suppressed in Japan from the 1870s onwards as part of a process of cultural modernisation that imported many contemporary western moral values. Only in the last twenty years or so has it been possible to publish unexpurgated examples in Japan and this landmark book places e rotic Japanese art in its historical and cultural context for the first time. Drawing on the latest scholarship and featuring over 400 images of works from major public and private collections, this important book looks at painted and printed erotic images produced in Japan during the Edo period (1600 1868) and early Meiji era (1868 1912). These are related to the wider contexts of literature, the atre, the culture of the pleasure quarters, and urban consumerism