Shunga in two historical layers: master drawing and wartime Tsushima silk painting

This pair brings together a graphic work and a silk painting connected by the same composition and artistic line. The graphic version belongs to the professional shunga tradition of the Taisho - early Showa period. Its confident line, controlled figure placement, and direct connection with classical shunga point to the hand of a trained master of the genre. The absence of an established artist’s name is not unusual in this field: anonymity, private circulation, and work outside the official art world were part of the historical nature of shunga.

The series of graphic works appears to have found a second life in painted versions on silk. Reverse inscriptions on related sheets connect this later layer with Tsushima, military service, and the wartime Showa years, approximately 1942-1944. These inscriptions include the name Sugimoto, probably an army corporal associated with the execution, circulation, or preservation of the series. In this way, a professional shunga composition was transferred into the private environment of wartime Tsushima, where the old genre continued in a different form and under different historical conditions.

The importance of this pair lies in the meeting of two layers: professional erotic graphic art from the Taisho - early Showa period and a private painted silk version connected with the military world of Tsushima. The series shows how shunga continued to exist outside official culture - as a closed, personal, and rare form of Japanese visual tradition in the twentieth century.