Sexually explicit shunga of the Edo period have long been subjected to censorship and suppressive official attitudes. In the Meiji era, due to crypto-colonial pressures, censorship grew more...Show moreSexually explicit shunga of the Edo period have long been subjected to censorship and suppressive official attitudes. In the Meiji era, due to crypto-colonial pressures, censorship grew more stringent and persists until today. Even academic shunga publications long remained censored and their study has been marginalized within ukiyo-e research, both in Japan and abroad. With the liberalization of shunga publication in Japan, scholarship began closing the gaps in the field, shifting from aestheticizing to more critical approaches. However, despite the interconnectedness of shunga with ukiyo-e imagery, museum institutions have lagged behind in their inclusion. Thus, marginalizing and self-censoring institutional attitudes still persist, despite changing social ones, constructing a disjuncture between scholarly and institutional discourses on shunga. This thesis presents the 2013 British Museum exhibition and its 2015-2016 reshowing in Japan, which resulted from the international collaborative efforts of researchers and practitioners, as a model for overcoming institutional self-censorship and marginalization of shunga. Thus showing a way forward towards the inclusion of the sexually explicit genre.Show less
