The World's Shortest Playful Erotic Literature, "Suetsumikka": A Fragment of the Light Sexual Expression Culture of the 1970s

The World's Shortest Playful Erotic Literature, "Suetsumikka": A Fragment of the Light Sexual Expression Culture of the 1970s
The title of the magazine's small project, "Suetsumikka," which is a collection of only the shortest erotic phrases from willow poems, is delightful at first, and it well expresses the relaxed eroticism of the 1970s. In just a few words, the willow leaves only a hint of sexiness and a grin, and leaves the rest to the reader's imagination. By not giving a lengthy explanation, the imagination is rather left to the imagination in the margins. The shortness of the story was both the humor of the project itself and a pun on the urban culture of the time.
The name "suetsumibana" actually has a very long historical context. In the Edo period (1603-1867), the "Sotsuzumikka" was a collection of willow poems that included only those poems about love, sexual customs, and the underbelly, which were called bareku. The first volume was published in 1776, and it is said to have been so popular that sequels were published thereafter. The name of the magazine in the 1970s was a playful homage to this Edo tradition when it named its erotic suibanku project "suetsumibana.
Furthermore, the word suetsumibana is derived from the name of an unattractive princess in the Tale of Genji, and is linked to the redness of her long, drooping nose, which is another name for safflower. This name later became the title of a collection of erotic willow poems, and in the Showa era (1926-1989), it was also passed down as the name of an amorous willow book. In light of this lineage, the stylish project of the world's shortest erotic haiku collection was also an attempt to incorporate the lighthearted traditions of Edo's ballet haiku and Showa's erotic willow into a minimalist modern sense.
At the time, Japanese society was in the midst of a period of deregulation and relaxation of restrictions on sexual expression, and there was a strong sense of fashion in the hint of a short phrase rather than its explicitness. Suezumika, which conveys sexuality in a few words, symbolizes such urban maturity and a sense of humor, and conveys the freedom and soft playfulness of the magazine culture of the 1970s.