The Dream of the Fisherman's Wife

The Dream of the Fisherman's Wife The Dream of the Fisherman's Wife (蛸と海⼥ Tako to ama, literally Octopus(es) and shell diver), also known as Girl Diver and Octopi, Diver and Two Octopi, etc., is a zoophilia-associated woodcut design of the ukiyo-e genre by the Japanese artist Hokusai. It is from the book Kinoe no Komatsu (English: Young Pines), a three-volume book of shunga erotica first published in 1814, and is the most famous shunga Hokusai ever produced. Playing with themes popular in Japanese art, it depicts a young ama diver entwined sexually with a pair of octopuses.

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History and description

The Dream of the Fisherman's Wife is the most famous image in Kinoe no Komatsu, published in three volumes from 1814, during the Edo period. The book is a work of shunga, a form of erotic art popularized by the ukiyoe movement.* [1] The image, Hokusai's most famous shunga design, depicts a woman, evidently an ama (a shell diver), enveloped in the arms of two octopuses. The larger of the two mollusks performs cunnilingus on her, while the smaller one, his son, assists on the left by fondling her mouth and left nipple. In the text above the image the woman and the creatures express their mutual sexual pleasure from the encounter.* [2] One of Utagawa Kuniyoshi's images of Tamatori's escape from Ryūjin and his sea creatures

The work is untitled in the collection; it is generally known as Tako to ama in Japanese, translated variously into English. Richard Douglas Lane calls it Girl Diver and Octopi;* [3] Mathi Forrer calls it Pearl Diver and Two Octopi;* [4] and Danielle Talerico calls it Diver and Two Octopi.* [5] It measures 6½" × 8¾" (16.51 cm × 22.23 cm).* [6]

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the surface.* [7] The Tamatori story was a popular subject in ukiyo-e art. The artist Utagawa Kuniyoshi produced a number of works based on it, which often include octopuses among the creatures being evaded by the bare-breasted diver.* [7] In the text above Hokusai's image, the big octopus says he will bring the girl to Ryūjin's undersea palace, strengthening the connection to the Tamatori legend.* [5] The Dream of the Fisherman's Wife is not the only work of Edo-period art to depict erotic relations between a woman and an octopus. A number of early netsuke carvings show cephalopods fondling nude women.* [8]* [9] Hokusai's contemporary Yanagawa Shigenobu created an image of a woman receiving cunnilingus from an octopus very similar to Hokusai's in his collection Suetsumuhana of 1830.* [10]

Interpretations

Scholar Danielle Talerico notes that the image would have recalled to the minds of contemporary viewers the story of Princess Tamatori, highly popular in the Edo period.* [2] In this story, Tamatori is a modest shell diver who marries Fujiwara no Fuhito of the Fujiwara clan, who is searching for a pearl stolen from his family by Ryūjin, the dragon god of the sea. Vowing to help, Tamatori dives down to Ryūjin's undersea palace of Ryūgū-jō, and is pursued by the god and his army of sea creatures, including octopuses. She cuts open her own breast and Talerico notes that earlier Western critics such as Edmond places the jewel inside; this allows her to swim faster and de Goncourt and Jack Hillier interpreted the work as a escape, but she dies from her wound soon after reaching rape scene. However, she notes that these scholars would 1

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4 NOTES teracting with octopods such images might arise,”citing Hokusai's print an early exemplar of such a tradition.* [11] The work has influenced a number of later artists such as Félicien Rops, Auguste Rodin, Louis Aucoc, Fernand Khnopff, and Pablo Picasso.* [13] Picasso painted his own version in 1903 that has been shown next to Hokusai's original in exhibits on the influence of 19th-century Japanese art on Picasso's work.* [14] In 2003 a derivative work by Australian painter David Laity, also titled The Dream of the Fisherman's Wife, sparked a minor obscenity controversy when it was shown at a gallery in Melbourne; after receiving multiple complaints Melbourne police investigated, but determined it did not break the city's pornography laws.* [15]* [16] Hokusai's print has had a wide influence on the modern JapaneseAmerican artist Masami Teraoka, who has created a number of images of women, including a recurring“pearl diver”character, being pleasured by cephalopods as a symbol of female sexual power.* [17]

Image by Kuniyoshi of Tamatori fighting an octopus

have seen it apart from the Kinoe no Komatsu collection and without understanding the text and visual references, depriving it of its original context.* [5] According to Chris Uhlenbeck and Margarita Winkel, "[t]his print is testimony to how our interpretation of an image can be distorted when seen in isolation and without understanding the text.”* [2]

The so-called“aria della piovra”(“Octopus aria”)“Un dì, ero piccina”in Pietro Mascagni's opera Iris (1898), on a libretto by Luigi Illica, may have been inspired by this print. The main character Iris describes a screen she had seen in a Buddhist temple when she was a child, depicting an octopus coiling its arms around a smiling young woman and killing her. She recalls a Buddhist priest explaining: “That octopus is Pleasure... That octopus is Death!"* [18]

4 Notes [1] Uhlenbeck, p. 56; 161. [2] Uhlenbeck, p. 161. [3] Lane, p. 163

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Influence

[4] Forrer, p. 124 [5] Talerico 24-42.

The Dream of the Fisherman's Wife is often cited as an early forerunner of tentacle erotica, a motif that has been common in modern Japanese animation and manga since the late 20th century. Modern tentacle erotica similarly depicts sex between human women and tentacled beasts; notably, however, the sex in modern depictions is typically forced, as opposed to Hokusai's mutually pleasurable interaction.* [11] Psychologist and critic Jerry S. Piven, however, is skeptical that Hokusai's playful image could account for the violent depictions in modern media, arguing that these are instead a product of the turmoil experienced throughout Japanese culture following World War II, which was in turn reflective of pre-existing, underlying currents of cultural trauma.* [12] However, scholar Holger Briel argues that “only in a society that already has a predilection for monsters and is used to in-

[6] Famous Shunga Masterpiece Diving Girl With Octopus Hokusai - c.1814 AK Antiek. Retrieved: 2011-12-17. [7] Miller, p. 137. [8] Schwarz, pp. 96–97. [9] Symmes, p. 132. [10] Lenehan-White, Anne. “Shunga and Ukiyo-e: Spring Pictures and Pictures of the Floating World”. www.stolaf. edu. Retrieved November 6, 2010. [11] Briel, p. 203. [12] Piven, p. 110–112. [13] Bru, pp. 55–77.

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[14] “Picasso's Japanese erotic inspiration on show in Barcelona”. The Independent. November 6, 2009. Retrieved December 3, 2010. [15] “Love is a many-tentacled thing...”. The New Zealand Herald. New Zealand Press Association. October 21, 2003. Retrieved December 14, 2010. [16] Fickling, David (October 22, 2003). “Melbourne row over art 'porn'". The Guardian. Retrieved December 3, 2010. [17] Bing, pp. 44–47. [18] Mallach, p. 127 and note.

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References • Bing, Alison; Heartney, Eleanor; Hoffman, Kathryn (2006). The madness and perversion of Yukio Mishima. Chronicle Books. ISBN 0-8118-5097-8. Retrieved December 3, 2010. • Briel, Holger (2010).“The Roving Eye Meets Traveling Pictures: The Field of Vision and the Global Rise of Adult Manga”. In Berninger, Mark; Ecke, Jochen; and Haberkorn, Gideon, Comics As a Nexus of Cultures: Essays on the Interplay of Media, Disciplines, pp. 187–210. McFarland. ISBN 978-07864-3987-4 Retrieved November 9, 2010. • Bru, Ricard (2010). “Tentacles of love and death: from Hokusai to Picasso”. Secret Images. Picasso and the Japanese Erotic Print, Thames & Hudson, London, pp. 50–77. • Forrer, Mathi (1992). Hokusai: Prints and Drawings. • Lane, Richard (1978). Images from the Floating World, The Japanese Print. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-211447-1; OCLC 5246796 • Lenehan-White, Anne. “Shunga and Ukiyo-e: Spring Pictures and Pictures of the Floating World” . www.stolaf.edu. Retrieved November 6, 2010. • Mallach, Alan (2002). Pietro Mascagni and his Operas. UPNE. Retrieved July 8, 2011. • Piven, Jerry S. (2004). The madness and perversion of Yukio Mishima. Greenwood Publishing Group. ISBN 0-275-97985-7. Retrieved November 11, 2010. • Schwarz, Karl M. (1995). Netsuke Subjects: A Study on the Netsuke Themes with Reference to their Interpretation and Symbolism. Tuttle Publishing. ISBN 0-8048-2026-0. Retrieved November 10, 2010.

• Symmes, Edwyn C. (1995). Netsuke: Japanese Life and Legend in Miniature. Böhlau Verlag Wien. ISBN 3-205-05515-2. Retrieved November 10, 2010. • Talerico, Danielle (2001). “Interpreting Sexual Imagery in Japanese Prints: A Fresh Approach to Hokusaiʼs Diver and Two Octopi”. In Impressions, The Journal of the Ukiyo-e Society of America, Vol. 23. • Uhlenbeck, Chris; Margarita Winkel; Ellis Tinios; Amy Reigle Newland (2005). Japanese Erotic Fantasies: Sexual Imagery of the Edo Period. Hotei. ISBN 90-74822-66-5.

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6 TEXT AND IMAGE SOURCES, CONTRIBUTORS, AND LICENSES

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Text and image sources, contributors, and licenses

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Text

• The Dream of the Fisherman's Wife Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dream_of_the_Fisherman'{}s_Wife?oldid= 673965841 Contributors: Shii, Paul Barlow, Ootachi, Error, Adam Conover, Agtx, Shavenwarthog, WhisperToMe, Furrykef, Grendelkhan, Branddobbe, Paranoid, Altenmann, Jax, Varlaam, BesigedB, Antandrus, J3ff, Nils~enwiki, MakeRocketGoNow, O'Dea, Keenanpepper, Fataltourist, Sockatume, MBisanz, Aaronbrick, Kaveh, Oop, Jumbuck, Keenan Pepper, LordAmeth, Simetrical, Havermayer, Clemmy, Male1979, とある⽩い猫, Ajshm, Gerbrant, Marudubshinki, Mandarax, Sparkit, Cuchullain, Fishanthrope, Bensin, Shenzhuxi, Margosbot~enwiki, Nihiltres, Ptcamn, American007, Dogcow, Mkill, Jcvamp, Tanet, SmackBot, Nihonjoe, Zserghei, BiT, Tyciol, Scwlong, Can't sleep, clown will eat me, Cybercobra, Curly Turkey, Arthuralee, Normalityrelief, Mgiganteus1, For great justice., Seqsea, Woodroar, JoeBot, RekishiEJ, Astrubi, CmdrObot, Angelynx-prime, Ræv, Epbr123, Maxxo, The Wednesday Island, Dick morandt, AntiVandalBot, Skomorokh, Hno3, Magioladitis, Froid, Fslap, Erkan Yilmaz, J.A.McCoy, Johnbod, Ksy92003, RVJ, GrahamHardy, Vilem l., Michaeljharary, Enkyo2, SieBot, Oda Mari, Wmpearl, Avnjay, Nyssa23, Thedreamofthefishermanswife, SteveCoppock, LAX, Mpdimitroff, Rhododendrites, Deerstop, Bearsona, Addbot, B2xiao~enwiki, Fieldday-sunday, Metsavend, Rikku223, Ccacsmss, Tide rolls, Lightbot, Luckas-bot, Jdub2255, AnomieBOT, Petropoxy (Lithoderm Proxy), LucienBOT, RedBot, Lotje, EmausBot, WikitanvirBot, Riggr Mortis, Assortedslog, Tyros1972, ClueBot NG, Helpful Pixie Bot, Hzy980512, Gabriel Yuji, Dan653, Pidelaserra, Freshboxey, Cpt.a.haddock, Maigo ghost, Lingzhi, MagicatthemovieS, Monkbot, Jilsim, Sérgio Itigo, Knife-in-the-drawer, Slainte12, Antiquebookimages, Toorealforyou and Anonymous: 115

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Images

• File:Commons-logo.svg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/4a/Commons-logo.svg License: ? Contributors: ? Original artist: ? • File:Nihongo.svg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a5/Nihongo.svg License: Public domain Contributors: Own work Original artist: Convert to SVG by OsamaK from Image:Nihongo.png. based on w:Image:Nihongo Bunpou b.200x200.png. • File:Tako_to_ama_retouched.jpg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b7/Tako_to_ama_retouched.jpg License: Public domain Contributors: http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/IqaZK0BxaIlKtTVWZJc0ew Original artist: Katsushika Hokusai (葛飾北斎) • File:Tamakatzura_Tamatori_attacked_by_the_octopus.jpg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/95/ Tamakatzura_Tamatori_attacked_by_the_octopus.jpg License: Public domain Contributors: ? Original artist: ? • File:Tamatori_being_pursued_bya_dragon.jpg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ab/Tamatori_being_ pursued_bya_dragon.jpg License: Public domain Contributors: ? Original artist: ?

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Content license

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