Between the 17th and late 19th centuries, Japan boasted a vibrant culture of erotic art known as shunga. Some of the biggest names in ukiyo-e (woodblock prints), such as Katsushika Hokusai and Kitagawa Utamaro, produced reams of sexually explicit images alongside their more respectable work.
These pictures sometimes served an educational purpose, but they were also a source of amusement — and aesthetic pleasure — for a society that didn’t share the hang-ups about sex that prevailed in the West at the time.
The arrival of Christian morality during the Meiji Era (1868-1912) put an end to all that. The artistic value of shunga is now more widely recognized overseas than at home: It’s hard to imagine the Tokyo National Museum hosting an exhibition dedicated to shunga, like London’s British Museum did back in 2013.