Japan has an ambivalent relationship with sexuality in visual form, which unfortunately includes its own estimable tradition of erotic art, or shunga (literally "spring pictures"). Though these works have long been banned from exhibition within Japan, that may be coming to an end with the nation's first major exhibition of shunga later this year at the Eisei-Bunko Museum in Tokyo.
The exhibition should mark the beginning of a fresh reappraisal of the cultural merits of such works and an end to banning erotic works of artistic and cultural value. The show has already found tremendous success in London at the British Museum, most recently in 2013, but showing these same works in Japan has long run afoul of obscenity laws.
These laws have disallowed the showing of depictions of genitalia, a ban that has kept some of Japan's best artworks from being exhibited here. The Eisei-Bunko Museum is now showing it has the courage to break the taboo and exhibit the artworks.