Paper short abstract:

My aim is to outline the close relationship between sex, humour and didactic intention in the sexually-explicit production of Edo period (shunpon).There are two major trends in this production: narrative playful prose texts and didactic manuals, that reworked earlier literature to appeal to readers.

Paper long abstract:

In my paper, my aim is to outline the close relationship between sex, humour and didactic intention in the sexually-explicit literary production of Edo period Japan usually referred to as shunpon.

Until recently the focus of academic studies on the considerable shunpon production has been on pictures. The few studies dedicated to texts of shunpon view them as mere sex tools, or as works with a strong satirical or political intention. It is my contention that, in shunpon, it is important to look at images and text as two parts which together create a whole to fully understand their nature and aims.

So far I have identified two major trends in the shunpon textual production, which are narrative prose texts, mostly playful, and non-narrative didactic manuals. The common trait between these two tendencies is the highly intertextual nature.

In the first case, I argue that sexual parody is used to provoke laughter. Almost all the texts considered as authoritative and canonical (such as Confucian educational works, courtly literature or waka anthologies) have shunpon rewritings, where the humorous effect is achieved by substituting the refined and dignified expressions with trivial sexually-related parts. Particularly, I will show how this mechanism works in the sexually explicit rewritings of Tales of Ise, the Pillow Book and the Tale of Genji, and how the depiction of some of the protagonists of earlier literature changes with the introduction of the sexual parodic element.

In the second case, I examine how notions in sex manuals were taken from medical texts, but often adapted and reworked to meet the need of readers in premodern Japan. Particularly, in several cases sexual health precepts were conveyed using a fictional frame, where protagonists of earlier literary works, who had a reputation for being 'lecherous', teach how to behave in bed, how to make aphrodisiac potions, etc.

Accordingly, my reading is a parodic humorous and educational nature in shunpon that reworks and adapts earlier literature to appeal to readers of the time, with both practical and highly entertaining books.