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Summary
Penis Parinirvana
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| Title |
Penis Parinirvana |
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| Description |
English: Painting, hanging scroll. Parody of the Death of the Buddha. Ink, colours and gold on silk. Sealed.
[Jap.Ptg.Add.1299_W] - |
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| Date | 19thC(mid) | |||||||||||||||||||||||
| Medium | silk | |||||||||||||||||||||||
| Dimensions |
Height: 135 centimetres (mount)
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| Collection |
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| Current location |
Asia |
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| Accession number |
2011,3012.1 |
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| Notes | At first glance this appears to be an image of the sacred Parinirvana (Death of the Buddha; Clark et al 2013, fig. 1). However, on closer inspection, the ‘Buddha’ figure in the middle, lying on its side, turns out to be a gold-coloured phallus with arms and legs. Around the back of the dais we see weeping female figures and Buddhist deities, holding sex toys in place of ritual implements; all of their faces are shaped like vulvas. In front of the dais, crawling and sitting on the ground, are two additional human-like penis figures. Around them are eels, a loach fish, eggs, bracket fungus, burdock and bamboo shoots – all foods thought to boost sexual energy. The style of the painting, with light brush strokes and gentle translucent colours, suggests an artist trained in the Edo Kano school and a mid nineteenth-century date. One important aspect of shunga was its customary irreverence in parodying all kinds of classical arts and established authority; here we see this extended to traditional Buddhist iconography. Already in the Edo period quite a few light-hearted parodies had been created of the parinirvana, paintings such as Parinirvana of Ariwara no Narihira (Narihira nehan-zu, Tokyo National Museum) by Hanabusa Itcho- (1652–1724) and Fruit and Vegetable Parinirvana (Kaso nehan-zu, Kyoto National Museum) by Ito- Jakuchu- (1716– 1800). There are also a number of nineteenthcentury popular ‘death prints’ (shini-e) of kabuki actors being presented as the Buddha in the parinirvana reclining position. Such playful representations of actors – popular sexual icons – were perhaps the inspiration for artists to go a step further and present the phallus itself, the emblem of male sexuality, as the Buddha. Interest in taxonomies of the phallus appeared in shunga books as early as the late seventeenth century (Ko-shoku kinmozui [Collection of Erotic Pictures to Enlighten the Young]; Clark et al 2013, cat. 100) and continued to be a popular topic in the eighteenth-century works of Tsukioka Settei (Onna dairaku takara-beki [Great Pleasures for Women and their Treasure Boxes]; Shunga, cat. 92; and Bido- nichiya joho- ki [Treasure Book for Women on the Way of Love, Day and Night]; Shunga, cat. 102). Furthermore, the popular worship of phallic symbols has a long tradition in Japan (Clark et al 2013, pp. 364–7). In the popular culture of the Edo period, such personifications or objectifications of the phallus and the vulva were on the one hand profane and bawdy, but on the other, they also retained elements of sacred awe. [AY] | |||||||||||||||||||||||
| Source/Photographer | https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/A_2011-3012-1 | |||||||||||||||||||||||
| Permission (Reusing this file) |
© The Trustees of the British Museum, released as CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 | |||||||||||||||||||||||
| Other versions |
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Licensing
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File history
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| Date/Time | Thumbnail | Dimensions | User | Comment | |
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| current | 07:11, 6 May 2020 | | 1,600 × 1,347 (451 KB) | Copyfraud | British Museum public domain uploads (Copyfraud/BM) Utagawa Kuniyoshi image 20 #129 |
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