Emakimono shunga, 12 peintures sur soie : Histoire de la jeune fille céleste et de sa robe de plume

Japan, circa 1900. Erotic emakimono composed of twelve original paintings on silk, mounted continuously in a scroll covered with silk patterned with gilt brocade and bordered with gilt edging. The outer margins are of printed silk, while the paintings are laid onto a paler silk ground decorated with cloud motifs, the whole mounted on paper. A few small spots and light stains to the silk. Each painting measures 18 x 23.5 cm; complete scroll: 24.5 x 380 cm. In very good overall condition.

The series comprises twelve scenes, a number traditionally associated with painted shunga scrolls. Here, however, the paintings do not form a succession of independent couples or erotic situations: they create a continuous narrative, from the descent to earth of a celestial woman to her eventual return to the heavens.

The iconography unmistakably refers to the Japanese Hagoromo cycle. A celestial woman descends to earth wearing her feather robe; a fisherman takes possession of the garment that enables her to return to the sky, and the earthly episode that follows becomes here the framework for an erotic progression in several scenes. The first and final compositions show a pine grove beneath Mount Fuji, a landscape directly recalling Miho no Matsubara on Suruga Bay, the site traditionally associated with the legend.

The version represented in the scroll differs, however, from the canonical Noh play Hagoromo. In the drama, the fisherman ultimately returns the robe to the tennyo in exchange for a celestial dance; the present cycle belongs more closely to the wider family of tales in which a celestial woman’s garment is stolen by a man, forcing her to remain in the human world before she can eventually return to the heavens. The artist thus combines the geography and visual signs specific to the Japanese Hagoromo - fisherman, feather robe, pines, and Fuji - with a more extended narrative variant of the same legendary tradition.

Several domestic details recur throughout the erotic scenes, notably cloths used for intimate washing before or after intercourse. This attention to everyday gestures and objects strengthens the narrative continuity and places the supernatural story within a highly tangible world of physical intimacy.

The transformation of a classical theme into an erotic sequence may be compared with the practice of mitate, well established in Japanese art, whereby a literary or legendary subject is transposed, updated, or parodied in another register. The device was frequently applied to major classical narratives, notably the Genji monogatari; however, no comparable erotic treatment of Hagoromo has been documented in the course of our research.

The narrative character of the present work is particularly notable because twelve-scene shunga series more commonly consist of independent episodes. Continuous cycles are known, but are less frequent; this scroll is distinguished by the use of a recognisable legend as the structure of the entire sequence, with a true beginning, development, and final return to the opening landscape.

The handling and mounting place these paintings within a late phase of the painted shunga tradition, probably around 1900. The absence of an identifiable signature or seal does not allow the artist to be named, but is by no means unusual in works of this kind.

This scroll therefore does more than illustrate Hagoromo: it transforms its meaning. The passage between heaven and earth becomes a story of desire, of temporary life among humans, and of return to the celestial realm, the twelve scenes turning a classical legend into a fully sustained erotic narrative.