Kinoe no Komatsu

Page depicting lesbian couple

Page depictions a couple in 69

Kinoe no Komatsu (喜能会之故真通) ('Young Pines'), published in three volumes in 1814, is a woodblock-printed book of shunga erotica by Hokusai made within the ukiyo-e genre.

Narratives[]

The Dream of the Fisherman's Wife

Kinoe no komatsu has two types of narrative. One continuous narrative is about the sexual life of Hanada Umenosuke, and it links all three volumes together. In Volume I he gets involved in a sexual relationship with his aunt's son-in-law's daughter Tamami Oiso. In Volume II, the couple get involved with Tamami Oiso's maid, and in Volume III, Hanada Umenosuke becomes a practising acupuncturist and treats both a man and a woman. A second type of narrative that fills the empty space alongside the imaged tells about the activities depicted.^[1]

Illustrations in the albums are views of partially naked couples. One scene in Volume III, the most famous of Hokusai's erotic paintings, called The Dream of the Fisherman's Wife, is unique in its focus: it depicts a woman, evidently an ama (a shell diver), enveloped in the limbs of two octopuses. The larger of the two mollusks performs cunnilingus on her, while the smaller one, his offspring, assists by fondling the woman's mouth and left nipple. The surrounding text express their mutual sexual pleasure from the encounter.^[1]

Further reading[]

• Jack Hillier, The Art of Hokusai in Book Illustration (London: Sotheby Parke-Bernet Publications; Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980), pp. 170–71.
• Jack Hillier, The Art of the Japanese Book, 2 vols. (New York: Sotheby's Publications, 1987), pp. 894–99.
• Danielle Talerico, "Interpreting Sexual Imagery in Japanese Prints: A Fresh Approach to Hokusai’s Diver and Two Octopi", Impressions, no. 23 (2001), pp. 24–41.

References[]

External links[]

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• Full three volumes of Kinoe no komatsu