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Rating: 
Summary: Lots of nice reproductions
Review: - so let's start there. Every page has at least one full-color reproduction of, well, reproduction or something related. The colors and printing are good. The author has also presented some notes of cultural explanation, and a few bawdy stories. The pictures don't seem to be hand-picked for their aptness to the story they embellish, but keep up the enjoyable mood of the book.
For all that, I found parts of this book disappointing. None of the pictures is labelled with artist or even era. I can't hunt down more of the work that I liked, or see if stylistic similarities point to some artist or time. Also, some of the pictures are quite small, as if the shunga itself was of secondary interest to the text. The stories, too, are cut loose from attribution - the author could have made them up for all I know. That's not a possibility I take seriously, but it was disappointing to lose all trace of historical context for the stories, too. For some odd reason, the last section of the book is quite unrelated to shunga. It's nice material, from lady Murasaki's diary, and nicely illustrated. It's just not shunga, though - remember what this book was called?
The pictures are enjoyable, and show some variety in practices and poses. I was hoping for more, though, more information about the images and their creators, and more about the history shown. As much as I like the pictures, I'm still looking for real information about these lovely prints, the people who made them, and the times in which they arose.
//wiredweird
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