Copulerende man en vrouw c. 1870 - 1880

This print, "Copulating Man and Woman," was made by Kawanabe Kyosai in Japan. The artist lived through the transition from the Edo to the Meiji period, a time of enormous social and political change as Japan opened to the West and modernized rapidly. Kyosai’s work, like much art of the period, comments on this clash of cultures. Prints like this one, called "shunga," or "spring pictures," were traditionally associated with pleasure and fertility. Yet, they were also sometimes used to satirize social customs. In this image, Kyosai plays with the grotesque and absurd, challenging conventional notions of beauty and decorum. As art historians, our job is to unpack these layers of meaning. We might look at contemporary literature, political cartoons, and other visual sources to understand how artists like Kyosai were responding to the changing social landscape of their time. Ultimately, this print reminds us that art is always a product of its specific historical moment.