Sex and the Floating World: Erotic
Images in Japan 1700-1820 by Timon
Screech
A Provocative Book From A Creative Scholar...
During the Edo period in eighteenth-century Japan, erotic paintings and
prints known today as shunga were popular among both men and women.
Yet, prior to Tim Screech’s definitive study, Sex and the Floating World,
no one had attempted to situate these overtly sexual images within the
contexts of the sexual, gender, or class tensions of the time.
Newly revised and expanded, this second edition of Sex and the Floating
World examines how and why these images were made and used. Along
the way, Screech illuminates a provocative world of sexual fantasy in Edo
Japan.

‘With concern, proportion, wit and a bit of levity, the author of this
authoritative and invaluable contribution to scholarship has given us the
book for which we have long waited.”—Japan Times
“Screech provides a fascinating and informative introduction to the social
and sexual habits of pre-modern Japan, copiously illustrated and full of
witty anecdotes as well as solid scholarly research. The ideal bedtime
read?”—Insight Japan
Personal Review: Sex and the Floating World: Erotic Images in
Japan 1700-1820 by Timon Screech
Vast numbers of people are already familiar with "shunga," the Edo-period
erotic art that is the subject of Timon Screech's "Sex and the Floating
World." Few readers, however, will have focused on learning about the
context in which this erotic art was produced. Moreover, some of
Screech's findings will undoubtedly come as a surprise. Chief among the
book's arguments is that the culture of urban Edo which produced the
"shunga" was not one of "laxity and freedom, sexual or other." Rather,
Screech says, the art served the needs of "auto-eroticism" for a city (Edo,
now Tokyo) that, because of political requirements, was overwhelmingly
populated by males who had been separated from their families and
denied access to females. Screech's book stands in stark contrast to the
many previous volumes on "shunga" that have concentrated on
reproducing the erotic prints, and the total space devoted to visual images
is rather limited. Still many readers will find this book rewarding, and
however iconoclastic some of the findings may be no serious student of
Japanese art or early modern history will want to be without it.
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