File:Painting, handscroll, shunga (BM 1978,0123,0.2).jpg

Height: 43.60 centimetres

Width: 76.50 centimetres

Clark 1992

No matter how impressed we are by Toyoharu's sure grasp of the human form and the freshness of his colouring, there is no avoiding the fact that this is a scene of rape, and violent rape at that. Two maids working in the service area of some restaurant or mansion (to judge by the assorted paraphernalia stacked up behind them - tatami, braziers, a flower vase, an umbrella) have been set upon by three burly workmen who clearly had been sweeping the garden until they threw down their brooms for the attack. Dropping her tray of cups and dishes in terror, a waitress still holds the sake kettle as she is abused by two men at once. Her companion has not even had time to stop washing cloths in a tub on the verandah before she, too, is violated.

There can be little doubt that the original intent of the work was to titillate, and we can only wonder why such elegant accomplishment has been lavished on so base a theme. Rape scenes are not unusual as one of a series of (generally twelve) otherwise affectionate scenes in late eighteenth- and nineteenth-century erotic prints and paintings. Only rarely do they convey a real and direct sense of terror and pain - as in the case of Utamaro's famous scene of a woman biting her attacker in 'Utamakura' ('Poem of the Pillow', 1788) -and all too often, as here, the aggressors wear the characteristic smirk that is evidence of pandering to fantasy.