Under the Foot Warmer (Kotatsu)- repro

Under the Foot Warmer (Kotatsu), marked here as a reproduction, is one of the twelve sheets in Keisai Eisen's shunga set known as 12 Shunga. The kotatsu - a low table with a charcoal brazier underneath and a heavy quilt draped over the top - was, and is, the central piece of domestic equipment for surviving an Edo winter, and it appears throughout the print tradition as both a sign of cosy domesticity and, in shunga, as a discreet enclosure inside which any number of bodily activities can be hidden. Eisen's composition exploits the quilt as an internal framing device: the upper bodies of the lovers emerge above the cover while everything below is buried in the warm interior of the kotatsu, leaving the viewer to read the composition between what is visible and what is implied. As with most of Eisen's shunga, the original sheets are now rare and the print preserved at ukiyo-e.org (Eisen Keisai, 12 Shunga, Under the Foot Warmer) is from a later facsimile of the set. Stylistically the print is consistent with Eisen's mature Edo ukiyo-e: elongated proportions, confident contour drawing, and a saturated palette of indigo, black and vermillion. The sheet is a useful example of how Eisen used the most quotidian objects of Edo daily life - the cooking pot, the umbrella, the foot warmer - as the structural devices of his erotic compositions.