8vo (218 x 158 mm.), orig. silk-covered boards, gold label on upper cover, paintings pasted on gold-flecked paper over stiff boards. [Japan]: late Edo or Meiji era.

A very fine album of 12 paintings (the well-known “set of 12“ format) of women’s vulvas, mostly with penises inserted. Many of the scenes are obviously post-coital. The details of the pubic hair and sexual organs are very beautifully painted in vivid colors. One of the images depicts a very young woman masturbating, and another shows a man’s hand stimulating his partner.

In fine condition, preserved in an attractive silk brocade patterned chitsu... More

Scroll on paper (330 x 4680 mm.), with seven scenes in brush & ink and color washes, gold-flecked endpapers, gold-flecked borders throughout, silk brocade on outside of endpapers, silver-flecked paper on verso of scroll, wooden core roller. [Japan: late Edo].

A remarkable erotic scroll depicting the visit of a group of traveling Buddhist priests to a roadside inn, where they have much and varied sex with each other and the inn’s female employees, who supplemented their incomes as prostitutes. There are seven scenes:

1. The first scene depicts two young Buddhist priests, one a younger assistant, with walking sticks. They... More

Scroll (300 x 4150 mm.), with pale green silk borders & endpapers, wooden core roller. [Japan]: n.d. but probably early Edo.

This is a fine example of an erotic scroll, anonymously painted as usual but with great skill. The scroll contains ten scenes of men (sometimes samurai) and women engaged in various sexual activities. Two of the scenes are threesomes, one of which shows a young samurai copulating with two older women. The hairstyles of both the women and men are typical of the pleasure courts of the early Edo period.

Erotic paintings in Japan have a long tradition, established... More

Ten cards (181 x 50 mm.), all preserved in the orig. folded color-printed wrapper, entitled on upper panel Furyu e tanzaku [Elegantly Illustrated Tanzaku Cards]. [Japan: Meiji Era].

Ten erotic cards, issued together, each in the tanzaku ban format, and accompanied by their original color-printed wrapper. Tanzaku cards were popular in the Meiji era (1868-1912); see Rosina Buckland’s “Erotic Art of the Meiji Era (1868-1912)” in Timothy Clark et al., eds., Shunga. Sex and Pleasure in Japanese Art (British Museum: 2013), pp. 454-55.

The upper panel of each is very finely color-printed with saturated inks, embossing, and rich use of... More

16 double-page & four single-page color-printed woodcuts. 13; 11; 9 folding leaves. Three vols. Small 8vo, orig. speckled semi-stiff boards (boards rubbed), orig. block-printed title labels on upper covers, new stitching. [Japan, probably Edo]: manuscript inscription dated “1832” at end of each volume.

First edition and very rare; we do not find this book listed in WorldCat or in the Union Catalogue of Japanese Books. The Preface is signed by Akikei (or Akikage) Higashikuni.

This work is an erotic version of Shiki no en, an 18th-century group of songs on the four seasons of love from the Yamada ryu school... More

Vol. I: Illustrated “title-page,” one double-page woodcut with foldouts to form a four-panel diptych, with the addition of a “trick super flap” depicting three female genitalia (young woman, mistress, & wife), six double-page woodcuts, & two single-page woodcuts, all color-printed; & three double-page black & white woodcuts. Vol. II: Illustrated “title-page,” five double-page woodcuts, & two single-page woodcuts, all color-printed; & four double-page black & white woodcuts. Vol. III: Illustrated “title-page,” four double-page woodcuts, & two full-page woodcuts, all color-printed; & three black & white double-page woodcuts. All leaves have color-printed borders. .5, 1 folding leaf of preface (color-printed), 13... More

One double-page woodcut illus. & numerous woodcut illus. in the text. 38 folding leaves. Small 8vo, orig. patterned wrappers (wrappers a little waterstained, some worming), orig. block-printed title label on upper cover, new stitching. Edo: Tsutaya Juzaburo, 1783.

First edition and very rare; this work is a guidebook, with poetic and allusory reviews, to the courtesans and brothels of the Yoshiwara pleasure quarter in Edo. This district served “as a kind of cultural salon where samurai and townsman culture could interact, and the quarter was able to transmit this culture to a wider world thanks to burgeoning links with the... More