The Invention of Pornography & the Imprinting of Love in the 17th Century

Italy in the sixteenth century and Japan in the seventeenth century both saw the emergence of print pornography in book form, often accompanied by poetry. This presentation will compare I Modi, designed by Giulio Romano and printed by Marcantonio Raimondi with accompanying verses by Pietro Arentino, with several works by Hishikawa Moronobu and his predecessors. The focus will be on the purpose of such works, their role in defining gender, sexuality and the licit and illicit in their relative early modern societies. How do the respective artists use their own classical past—that is, the Greek and Roman antiquity on one hand, and the courtly culture of the Heian period on the other—and how do they characterize sexual relations in their present times? What role does class play in the depiction and reception of sexual acts in the two societies? How did the authorities, both secular and religious, respond to these works—or not? This presentation will attempt to provide signposts to answering these questions.

Joshua S. Mostow is a Professor in Pre-Moderne Japanese Literature and Art at the Department of Asian Studies at the University of British Columbia. His research areas cover inter-relations between text and image, especially in Japanese culture; Japanese women’s writing in the court tradition; the ideological construction of the Heian period in the modern era; and Japanese “national erotics” (the use of sexuality in cultural self-definition). Among numerous publications, Professor Mostow is the author of Courtly Visions: The Ise Stories and the Politics of Cultural Appropriation (Brill, 2014) and Pictures of the Heart: The Hyakunin Isshu in Word and Image (University of Hawai’i Press, 1996). He has co-authored with Asato Ikeda A Third Gender: Beautiful Youths in Japanese Edo-Period Prints and Paintings (1600-1868) (Toronto: Royal Ontario Museum, 2016).

The lecture is supported by the Department of Arts and Cultural Studies, UCPH. For more information: gunhild@hum.ku.dk