Art of Ukiyoe

Bath Time, Ukiyo-e Style

Naked ladies! Naked ladies everywhere!

The bathhouse print was something of a sub-genre in Ukiyo-e, linking traditional woodblock print designs with shunga, or erotic prints. It allowed artists to display the female form – often in many poses – without being explicitly sexual, which could get the artists and publishers in trouble. (Shunga, for example, which were produced by most of the great names in Ukiyo-e, including Utamaro and Hokusai, were often unsigned.)

But of course, when we fill a design with many naked women, it can’t help but be a little sexy, or at least hint at eroticism.

For my new featured print, I’m taking a look at this wonderful and raucous bathhouse triptych by Ochiai Yoshiiku (1833-1904). Here we see 16 naked women, one topless woman, seven elaborately clothed women, three children and three men -- likely the proprietor and attendants -- all cavorting in a sento, or the neighborhood baths that were shared by both sexes in Edo times.

The traditions of the sento remain in place today, although they are no longer mixed (that ended with the arrival of Westerners in the 1850s and 1860s). One washes oneself thoroughly, as all the women in the foreground are doing, before slipping into the scalding water of the tub, as the women in the upper right hand of the right-hand sheet have done.

Then one soaks in the steamy, blissful water, catching up on local news with bath mates, and perhaps sharing gossip.

An early such design came from Torii Kiyonaga, who’s 1787 “Interior of a bathhouse” gave us a view of eight women in various states of undress preparing for or enjoying their baths. Later, Toyohara Kunichika would also provide his take on the crowded bathhouse scene, often with a healthy dose of comedy, such a nude woman pratfalling or two naked women getting into a hair-pulling catfight as the male attendants struggle to resolve the fracas.