#Karma sutra define code#

Most of what remains of shunga is in woodblock format and in the Ukiyo-e style, although a few painted scrolls exist that pre-date that. Like much else, it was imported from China and historians have suggested that illustrations in medical dictionaries introduced into Japan in the Muromachi Period (1336вЂ“1573) might have been what inspired Japanese artists to begin producing their own images of sexual acts in the Chinese style.Д«y the Edo Period (1603вЂ“1868), the production of shunga was a thriving industry, thanks to the rapid development of woodblock printing techniques and the willingness of even the best-known artists of the time (such as Katsushika Hokusai and Kitagawa Utamaro) to produce pieces and there is evidence to suggest that what resulted was enjoyed across the broadest strata ofВ society.

#Karma sutra define code#

Known as shunga (meaning вЂњpictures of springвЂќ, the seasonal allusion being a common code word for sex). It was photography as much as anything else that put an end to what had been a thriving trade in JapanвЂ™s own artistic erotica. There was far less emphasis on graphic depictions of sexual acts and this move-together with the advent of photography-in no small part contrived to widen the gap between what was acceptable as erotic art and what was considered broadly unacceptable (at least in public) as pornography. In Europe, during periods of supposed refinement and even repression-think for example of Victorian Britain-Western artists still managed to produce erotica, although the eroticism became much more symbolic. Visitors to the Roman ruins at Pompeii, in southern Italy, are also selectively invited to look at some of what remains of the erotic art createdВ there.Д®arly examples of erotica are often quite graphic-explicit scenes that some would define as pornographic, although as courts around the world have discovered, it is far from easy to define the fine subjective line between erotica andВ pornography.

And that evidence goes back a long way in history there are Palaeolithic cave paintings, for example, and many a Greek urn has been adorned with explicit depictions of sexual acts, many of a homo-erotic nature. Most cultures and civilisations have left behind evidence of this, whether in the form of paintings or sculptures. (Encyclopedia of Japanese Erotic Art: Shunga)ДЄrt and eroticism are closely related.