Meiji-Period Ukiyo-e Shunga Scroll

1880. Fine. A lovely Meiji period ukiyo-e styled Shunga scroll that underscores what it means to get horizontal! With six separate erotic scenes, or couples in carnal embrace and/or coital positions. The artwork is mostly watercolored, with ink used for the outlining and some detailing. The color palette is rich in reds, blues and grays, and flesh is colored convincingly yet a light touch that is more suggestive than fully colored. Above and blow the continuous scroll artwork is a plaid fabric of orange and green. The scroll is about 280 cm long and 11 cm wide. When fully wrapped around its core center peg, it is 4.5 cm in diameter. To secure it closed, it has a long fabric ribbon that wraps around a greenish gold silk fabric that is mounted onto the otherwise blank backside of scroll. This ribbon on the scroll end is looped around a thin fabric-covered wooden rod, and on the other end there is a bone roller or clasp. There is no fabric piece to insert the bone piece into, and we see no evidence there ever was, so one would now slip the bone piece under the wrapped ribbon. On the pictorial side, underneath the fabric at the closing end, is gold flecked paper. The actual artwork is 7.5 cm wide. The painted scenes are between 30 and 34 cm each, from lowest toe to topmost detail above a head. N.d., latter part of the nineteenth century. The Ukiyo-e School of Japanese art strove to depict ordinary human activity as it fit into the "Floating World". Prurient though explicit sex might be viewed in the West, nothing could be more ordinary than sexual intercourse, it goes without saying, and while "Floating" has a different meaning in terms of the aspirational objective of this approach to art, we will note that on the scroll the couple is in a sense floating, their lovemaking occurring without a specific setting or any background. The scroll has perhaps light wear. There is a gold vertical title piece at the closed end. There are no Japanese characters on this, and we see no evidence that there ever were. This small gold piece does have some rubbing or loss of its gold paint. The condition issues we have just detailed seem trivial to us, and overall we consider this scroll to be in excellent condition.