But crackdowns on the art form and those who produced and procured it did not begin until the country first begrudgingly allowed the visit of Western powers. Though once considered to be as just another genre of art, shunga was first officially banned by the Shogunate, or the military dictatorship of Japan, in 1722.
One of the practices that faced the wrath of the law was shunga, or traditional Japanese erotica. As Western morality took root in the upper echelons of Japanese society, the government began to outlaw traditional Japanese practices that were perfectly normal to the people but appeared uncultured or strange to foreigners all this, in order to prove to an increasingly curious Western gaze that Japan was just as civilised a society as them. With the arrival of Westerners on the island nation, which had remained closed off from the rest of the world until then, everything changed.
