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Twelve Bouts in the Way of Love

1: Frontispiece

The series opens with three couples enjoying each other's company with food and drinks. The finely appointed room is decorated with a large standing screen, arrangements of flowers, and a hanging scroll on display in the tokonoma (alcove). The blossoming plum chosen for the decorations and the closed shoji panels suggest that it is a cold season.

Isoda Koryusai, fl. ca. 1764-1789

Twelve Bouts in the Way of Love
(Shikido Torikumi Juniban)

complete set of twelve oban prints, the frontispiece signed Koryusai ga, ca. 1775-77

each oban yoko-e approximately 9 1/4 by 14 7/8 in., 23.5 by 37.7 cm

This set published:
Klompmakers, Japanese Erotic Prints, 2001, pp. 127-149
Uhlenbeck and Winkel, Japanese Erotic Fantasies, 2005, pp. 109-112, nos. 28a, 28d, 28c
Bru, Erotic Japonisme: The Influence of Japanese Sexual Imagery on Western Art, 2014, p. 62, no. 54 and p. 122, no. 132

References:
Hayashi and Lane (eds.), The Complete Ukiyo-e Shunga, no. 3, Twelve Bouts for Eros: Koryusai's Shikido tokkumi Shunga Album, 1996
Kobayashi (ed.), Ukiyo-e soroimono makura-e: Shunga,
1997, Vol. I, pp. 26-37
Shirakura, Eiri shunga ehon mokuroku, 2007, p. 156

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kikumon

Scholten Japanese Art is open Monday - Friday, and some Saturdays by appointment only

Contact Katherine Martin at
(212) 585-0474 or email
[email protected]
to schedule a visit between 11am and 4pm preferably for no more than two individuals at a time.

site last updated
March 29, 2024

Scholten Japanese Art
145 West 58th Street, suite 6D
New York, New York 10019
ph: (212) 585-0474
fx: (212) 585-0475