Subject
Fw: TT-17 Oriental customs
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Date
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EDQUERY. E-mysteries abound. Akiko tells me she did not see her message below
although my sent-mail shows it went out about noon on Sunday the 26. Please
advise whether you have or have not seen this before.
----- Forwarded message from a-nakata@courante.plala.or.jp -----
Date: Tue, 28 Sep 2004 06:59:42 +0900
From: Akiko Nakata <a-nakata@courante.plala.or.jp>
Reply-To: Akiko Nakata <a-nakata@courante.plala.or.jp>
---------------------------------
I found Don's interpretation convincing. It is probable that VN was meaning
by "the contrast between the fictitious and the factual" those blank faces
of the people sexually excited drawn in Japanese shunga.
It is very interesting to know how VN and the Westerners see those blank
faces. Now I know the reason why I could not relate "Far Eastern sexual
customs" with them. I think such faces are the stylized ones showing sexual
ecstasy, not masking it. They are particular to shunga like the writhing
foot fingers. But I know very little about Japanese erotic prints, which
tend to strike me as "exotic," as they would the Westerners. I may be wrong
in assuming something about the genre of art, which has been more highly
evaluated in the West than in Japan. I do not know much about the literary
pornography of 18th century either, but judging from a few pieces I read,
characters are rather talkative while making love (they talk about their
pleasure, not about their acquaintances or politics, etc), far from
concealing their sexual pleasure. I do not think they had such kind of
sexual etiquette.
Akiko
--------------------
EDNOTE. Akiko's Note calls attention to VN's (or Mr. R's) remark about "Far
Eastern sexual customs" and ponders what customs these might be. A couple
of passages from ADA (cited below) offer some clarification. VN apparently
illustrates the "fictitious" and the "factual" distinction by reference to
old Japanese prints such as the one I have attached. Although it is not
particularly evident in this example, an examination of erotic shunga and
ukiyo-e prints shows that the faces of the participants, especially females
in frenzied couplings, very often display no emotion. This disjunction of
strong emotion and stolid expression is presumably what VN has in mind in
his account of Armande's sexual protocol. Although I know very little about
such matters I would hazard that the Japanese dichotomy may be in some
part a by-product of the limitations of woodblock printing as well as local
traditions of sexual etiquette. Perhaps those better informed could
enlighten us.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
------------------
ADA passages:
The collection of Uncle Dan?s Oriental Erotica prints turned out to be
artistically second-rate and inept calisthenically. In the most hilarious,
and expensive, picture, a Mongolian woman with an inane oval face surmounted
by a hideous hair-do was shown communicating sexually with six rather plump,
blank-faced gymnasts in what looked like a display window jammed with
screens, potted plants, silks, paper fans and crockery. Three of the males,
contorted in attitudes of intricate discomfort, were using simultaneously
three of the harlot?s main orifices; two older clients were treated by her
manually, and the sixth, a dwarf, had to be contented with her deformed
foot. Six other voluptuaries were sodomizing her immediate partners, and one
more had got stuck in her armpit. Uncle Dan, having patiently disentangled
all those limbs and belly folds directly or indirectly connected with the
absolutely calm lady (still retaining somehow parts of her robes), had
penciled a note that gave the price of the picture and identified it as:
?Geisha with 13 lovers.? Van located, however, a fifteenth navel thrown in
by the generous artist but impossible to account for anatomically.
----------------------------
?? took place at coincident dates, we were just ordinary sisters,
exchanging routine nothings, having little in common, she collecting
cactuses or running through her lines for the next audition in Sterva, and I
reading a lot, or copying beautiful erotic pictures from an album of
Forbidden Masterpieces that we found, apropos, in a box of korsetov i
khrestomatiy (corsets and chrestomathies) which Belle had left behind, and I
can assure you, they were far more realistic than the scroll-painting by
Mong Mong, very active in 888, a millennium before Ada said it illustrated
Oriental calisthenics when I found it by chance in the corner of one of my
ambuscades.
----- End forwarded message -----
although my sent-mail shows it went out about noon on Sunday the 26. Please
advise whether you have or have not seen this before.
----- Forwarded message from a-nakata@courante.plala.or.jp -----
Date: Tue, 28 Sep 2004 06:59:42 +0900
From: Akiko Nakata <a-nakata@courante.plala.or.jp>
Reply-To: Akiko Nakata <a-nakata@courante.plala.or.jp>
---------------------------------
I found Don's interpretation convincing. It is probable that VN was meaning
by "the contrast between the fictitious and the factual" those blank faces
of the people sexually excited drawn in Japanese shunga.
It is very interesting to know how VN and the Westerners see those blank
faces. Now I know the reason why I could not relate "Far Eastern sexual
customs" with them. I think such faces are the stylized ones showing sexual
ecstasy, not masking it. They are particular to shunga like the writhing
foot fingers. But I know very little about Japanese erotic prints, which
tend to strike me as "exotic," as they would the Westerners. I may be wrong
in assuming something about the genre of art, which has been more highly
evaluated in the West than in Japan. I do not know much about the literary
pornography of 18th century either, but judging from a few pieces I read,
characters are rather talkative while making love (they talk about their
pleasure, not about their acquaintances or politics, etc), far from
concealing their sexual pleasure. I do not think they had such kind of
sexual etiquette.
Akiko
--------------------
EDNOTE. Akiko's Note calls attention to VN's (or Mr. R's) remark about "Far
Eastern sexual customs" and ponders what customs these might be. A couple
of passages from ADA (cited below) offer some clarification. VN apparently
illustrates the "fictitious" and the "factual" distinction by reference to
old Japanese prints such as the one I have attached. Although it is not
particularly evident in this example, an examination of erotic shunga and
ukiyo-e prints shows that the faces of the participants, especially females
in frenzied couplings, very often display no emotion. This disjunction of
strong emotion and stolid expression is presumably what VN has in mind in
his account of Armande's sexual protocol. Although I know very little about
such matters I would hazard that the Japanese dichotomy may be in some
part a by-product of the limitations of woodblock printing as well as local
traditions of sexual etiquette. Perhaps those better informed could
enlighten us.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
------------------
ADA passages:
The collection of Uncle Dan?s Oriental Erotica prints turned out to be
artistically second-rate and inept calisthenically. In the most hilarious,
and expensive, picture, a Mongolian woman with an inane oval face surmounted
by a hideous hair-do was shown communicating sexually with six rather plump,
blank-faced gymnasts in what looked like a display window jammed with
screens, potted plants, silks, paper fans and crockery. Three of the males,
contorted in attitudes of intricate discomfort, were using simultaneously
three of the harlot?s main orifices; two older clients were treated by her
manually, and the sixth, a dwarf, had to be contented with her deformed
foot. Six other voluptuaries were sodomizing her immediate partners, and one
more had got stuck in her armpit. Uncle Dan, having patiently disentangled
all those limbs and belly folds directly or indirectly connected with the
absolutely calm lady (still retaining somehow parts of her robes), had
penciled a note that gave the price of the picture and identified it as:
?Geisha with 13 lovers.? Van located, however, a fifteenth navel thrown in
by the generous artist but impossible to account for anatomically.
----------------------------
?? took place at coincident dates, we were just ordinary sisters,
exchanging routine nothings, having little in common, she collecting
cactuses or running through her lines for the next audition in Sterva, and I
reading a lot, or copying beautiful erotic pictures from an album of
Forbidden Masterpieces that we found, apropos, in a box of korsetov i
khrestomatiy (corsets and chrestomathies) which Belle had left behind, and I
can assure you, they were far more realistic than the scroll-painting by
Mong Mong, very active in 888, a millennium before Ada said it illustrated
Oriental calisthenics when I found it by chance in the corner of one of my
ambuscades.
----- End forwarded message -----