Size Fetish in Japanese Woodblock Prints

Good morning everyone,

Today we’ll discuss size fetish in Japanese woodblock prints. The focus will primarily be on works from the 19th century. These fall under the Ukiyo-e 浮世絵 (“floating world”) genre made during a period in which the chōnin 町人 (“merchant class“) flourished in the national capital of Edo (the former name for Tokyo). The merchant class was prospering and had more money than they needed to survive. They used their excess funds to indulge in entertainment such as courtesans, geisha, and kabuki theater. This historical period was viewed by some as hedonistic and thus they described it as “floating world,” Ukiyo-e.

The mass-produced prints were reasonably affordable costing only a bit more than a cup of soba 蕎麦 (“noodles”). In modern Japan buying a similar serving of food would run anywhere between a few hundred to one thousand yen. One thousand yen is the equivalent of $6.83 in U.S. dollars as of this writing. Thus, long story made short, in the Edo period customers could buy an Ukiyo-e print for less than seven bucks!

(NOTE: The affordability data was taken from an article, in Japanese, from Touken World preserved at the Internet Archive. It stated that people could buy a Ukiyo-e for around 20 mon, currency used from the 14th until the late 19th century, when one cup of soba cost about 16 mon.)

Readers may be most familiar with “The Great Wave off Kanagawa” from this era, seen here:

The famous wave with Mount Fuji in the center was made by Hokusai. By the way, Hokusai also created the famous depiction of an octopus performing cunnilingus on a female pearl diver, a.k.a. an Ama 海女, in a print called “Dream of the Fisherman’s Wife.” He also drew an erotic dream in which a woman imagines an enormous penis.

Erotic art is called Shunga 春画 which directly translates as “spring art” with “spring” in this case being an euphemism for sexual intercourse. For those who want to investigate further, be advised that many Shunga woodblock prints are transgressive and include offensive themes such as bestiality and rape. They also explored LGBT themes to a limited degree with a few depicting gay and lesbian sex. However, the homosexual pairings were less about mutual attraction between two gay men and more about a subordinate sexually gratifying his superior.

You can learn more at the Shunga Gallery. Uncensored images can be seen in the Shunga Gallery article “Sensual Fantasies with Orgies, Sex-Starved Women and Aroused Giants.” Size fans will likely appreciate “Beanman and Beanwoman exploring Genital Mountains” found in that article. Interested persons can also find Shunga by Utagawa Kuniyoshi at the Kuniyoshi Project. Additionally, Dutch site AK ~ Antiek lists quite a few Shunga as well.

Of note, the artists making these woodblock prints worked under less strict censorship than contemporary Japanese artists and did not have to conceal genitals. Visit the links in the previous paragraph and you’ll see penises and vaginas without black bars or circles obscuring the drawings.

Predating Ukiyo-e, but also exploring size fetish, is the Mitsui handscroll which depicts a yobutsu kurabe 陽物くらべ (“phallic contest”). Traditionally, the creator of the scroll was believed to be a Buddhist monk and artist called Kakuyu or Toba Sojo.

It is unknown exactly when the Mitsui handscroll was created and it is believed to be a copy which combined two earlier works. Estimates of when the originals were first made range from the late 12th century until the mid-15th century. Increasing the difficulty of accurately determining the date are issues such as the fact that different sections were made in different centuries.

For more on that subject, check out “Historiography of the “Phallic Contest” Handscroll in Japanese Art” by Akiko Yano. That article first appeared in Japan Review Number 26 from 2013 and can be found online as a PDF.

By the way, the phallic contest was a little less than half of the scroll with the rest depicting a farting contest. Lest one think that artists in bygone times were always prim and proper 😉

The phallic contest inspired similar works featuring gigantic genitals in Ukiyo-e, such as the following example. It was taken from a book called Shinshiki neya no torigai 新色閨鳥貝 and features a 25-year-old man called Oinosuke who prays to a picture of an ancestor known for having a very large penis. The prayers were successful and the young man was given a phallus which measured nearly a meter in length! Alas, Oinosuke then struggled to find anyone capable of taking his newly enlarged cock.

I highly encourage my readers to seek out these erotic Japanese woodblock prints. They serve as yet another reminder that humans have always been fascinated with sex and repeatedly created fantastical, unrealistic, depictions of sex. People may justifiably consider such a reminder to be unnecessary. Nonetheless, some in the United States still push for censorship as they allege that our current era is somehow more decadent than previous eras. Apparently, it is important to remind them that humans have always wanted sex in art and that desire will never change.

Additionally, anti-sex trafficking organizations, ostensibly created to “protect the children!“, often try to repress this expression. These efforts harm sex workers and endanger the privacy of adult consumers. Thus, we should fight to protect our First Amendment rights and ensure that future generations will be able to make erotica, mundane or fantastical.

Lastly, I find it comforting that more than a century before my birth and more than three thousand miles away other people also found erotic potential in giantesses. Perhaps macrophilia is not as “odd” as I felt it was as a young man. At the very least, macrophilia is not unique to the 20th and 21st centuries.

That’s it for today folks. Next week’s review will cover “Pirates,” perhaps the most mainstream of all modern pornographic films. Pirates was released in 2005 as a combined effort from Adam & Eve and Digital Playground. At the time, its production budget was the highest ever for an adult film. Furthermore, the record amount of money spent was exceeded eight-fold by the sequel, “Pirates II: Stagnetti’s Revenge,” in 2008. The intent of next week’s review is to examine how the generous budget was used and how such financial resources could benefit a size-themed production.

Until then, keep growing!

This review was written by SolomonG and is protected under Fair Use copyright law.

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