Lovers Interrupted, sheet 18 from the series "Poems of the Husband and Wife Mane'emon (Haikai meoto Mane'emon)"

Sheet 18 from Koryusai's chuban yoko-e (horizontal chuban) series Haikai meoto Mane'emon (Poems of the Husband and Wife Mane'emon), held by the Art Institute of Chicago and dated to about 1770 to 1771, depicts a scene of lovers interrupted in their intimate encounter. The Mane'emon series is a celebrated example of the comic shunga convention in which the miniature character Mane'emon, having drunk a magical potion that shrinks him to tiny size, travels through the floating world spying on lovers and recording their amorous adventures. The chuban yoko-e format, broader than it is tall, was favored for the series because it accommodated the bedchamber interiors and reclining figures of the scenes. Koryusai's design here belongs to the wider tradition of Edo shunga in which voyeurism, parody, and comic narrative are interwoven, and the series is one of his most important contributions to the erotic print genre.