The Fitzwilliam Museum will be playing host to a new exhibition of erotic eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Japanese prints and woodcuts, a move designed to complement the British Museum’s autumn survey of what is known as Shunga art.

The Fitzwilliam Museum’s website claims that “some of the greatest artists of the era’” are to be represented, including Utamaro, Hokusai and Hiroshige.  The images will range from the modest, of lonely lovers yearning for absent partners, to the much more explicit, of sexual partners.  The museum also boasts of a rare erotic book, recently acquired, which tells a version of the popularnineteenth-century Tales of Genji and is illustrated with sex scenes.

Writing in IOL Lifestyle, Harry Mount suggests that the London exhibition “will blow the lid off the modern image of the Japanese as a shy, demure people – and reveal what an extremely sexually liberated nation they once were”. Laura Inge, the Murray Edwards JCR Arts Officer, even described the erotica as “the Japanese eighteenth and nineteenth century equivalent to Nuts magazine”.  Indeed, concerns over the planned display of these risqué prints have led the British Museum to impose an age limit upon visitors for the very first time, with under-16s to be accompanied by an adult. 

A spokeswoman for the Fitzwilliam Museum, Tracy Harding, told Varsity that they would not be imposing such limitations, but would have signage warning of the explicit imagery and that parents should admit younger children “at their own discretion”.  She also explained: “We are not going to be exhibiting the more contentious images as our show is not specifically focusing on sex and erotic pictures.”

The night of longing: Love and desire in Japanese prints, will be on display from 1st October until 12th February, and is free entry to all.