Settei Tsukioka 月岡雪鼎

Onna Teikin Gosho Bunko 女庭訓御所文庫 and Onna Teikin Gesho Bunko 女貞訓下所文庫 [shunga volume, missing cover]

1768. Item #90579

Settei Tsukioka 月岡雪鼎. Onna Teikin Gosho Bunko 女庭訓御所文庫 and Onna Teikin Gesho Bunko 女貞訓下所文庫 [shunga volume, missing cover].C. 1768. N.p. and 1767? The first volume is string bound Japanese style fukuro toji 25 x 18cm with brown wrappers. 96 cho of black and white original woodblock prints. Onna Teikin Gosho Bunko 女庭訓御所文庫 [Library of Women’s Home Education] is a Confucian book of etiquette for women illustrated by the important artist Tsukioka Settei 月岡雪鼎 (1726-1786).

The second volume is string bound Japanese style fukuro toji 25.5 x 18.3cm with top layer of wrappers missing. Onna Teikin Gesho Bunko 女貞訓下所文庫 [Library of Womanly Virtue for the Vulva] is a shunga parody of the former volume and was also illustrated by Settei. Both volumes are housed in a modern chitsu with clasps 26 x 19cm.

As we know from other works by Settei, he had a clever, dynamic and quite frankly sometimes implicit feminism in his work, as shown in his wonderful and striking work inscribing female heroes throughout history, his Onna Buyū Yoso-oi Kurabe from 1766. He also created a series of erotic works with men and women both sharing and enjoying moments of exquisite physical pleasure. Obviously someone who loved women, not just sex. So, it should be no surprise he poked fun and had fun with his serious commission.

Until recently shunga works were not catalogued in Japan, although the Nichibunken in Tokyo has taken notice of the erotic parody genre. These masterworks have often enough been lost for all time because of the misguided censorship of “modern” Japan. It is only within the last few years that it has become an academically “safer” if still not really “safe” subject. (cf. Tsukioka Settei 1 "Onna shimegawa oeshi-bumi" : Kinsei enpon shiryo shusei IV (Collected Erotic Texts of the Early Modern Period IV, Series 40). http://doi.org/10.15055/00005229)

We are selling the original Settei-illustrated etiquette manual and the erotic parody together.

Original wrappers on the former volume are worn and damaged, yet the interior is in remarkably good condition. Top layer of original wrappers on the latter volume is missing. Wear to interior and soiling.

Price: $8,500.00