Flutterby™! :

On the shunga theme, an interesting essay on sex in manga. An essay on shunga, images cropped to leave out the naughty bits, but some background and a reprint book for sale. I ran across "Shunga" today. being a typical westerner, pretty much ignorant of all but the history of the conquering culture, I did a net search. Shunga is a woodcut style of erotic art that came from Japan from the mid 1600s to the mid 1800s, what I think of as typical Japanese art except that the genitals are enlarged and clearly drawn, heterosexual and homosexual content. After looking at a few of these it's clear where the pornographic manga comes from, and it's interesting to see how the restrictions on how sexuality in the latter half of the 20^th century have changed the depictions. Unfortunately few images came up in a web search. The R. M. Degener gallery for Japanese woodblock prints in Germany has a bunch of shunga prints for sale. And Timeless Treasures has a number of prints too, along with Chinese and Indian erotic art. I prefer to help living artists with my higher end art buys, but it seems like at least some coffee table books are in order.