A boat leaving harbour: onto the lingering trace of that gesture the Edo painter overlaid the afterglow of the bedchamber.

Defune (出船, “outbound boat”) is one of the withdrawal-type derivative positions in the forty-eight hands, naming as a position the reverse action of its paired irifune (inbound boat). It denotes the form in which the inserting side, like a boat leaving harbour, gradually separates the body from the receiving side while maintaining the joining. A classical position name positioned in the Edo erotic book as a gesture framing the end of coitus, in some editions it also appears in a compound notation combined with a rear-entry application, as “defune ushiro-tori.”

Overview

Defune is one of the positions by verb-like naming peculiar to the Edo erotic book, fixing as a position name a series of gestures in which, after the joining, the inserting side gradually separates the body. The basic posture varies by edition: it may denote, as a face-to-face derivative, the gesture of withdrawing from the missionary, or, in the rear-entry series, the gesture of dissolving the joining while the inserting side draws the hips backward. In the latter usage the compound name “defune ushiro-tori” is recorded.

The pairing of irifune and defune is a manifestation of a naming consciousness that frames the beginning and end of the joining by name, and is a representative case of verb-like binary opposition in the position-name system of the forty-eight hands. This symbolises the naming consciousness of the early-modern Japanese erotic-book culture, which grasped coitus as a continuous series of gestures and gave a proper name to each phase.

The hip gesture of the inserting side was likened to the gentle pull of a boat leaving harbour. In the Edo-period port, the scene of a boat quietly leaving the harbour in time with the ebb and flow of the tide was part of the everyday landscape, and the grace of withdrawal containing the trace of that gesture is overlaid onto the gesture of dissolving the joining.

Etymology

“Defune” (also idefune) originally is an everyday word for a boat leaving harbour, or for the departing boat itself. An everyday item of vocabulary in Edo-period shipping, it appears frequently, paired with irifune, in the ledgers of cargo-ship wholesalers, in senryū, and as a season-word in haikai. The four characters “defune irifune” were a common idiom denoting the bustle of a port town. The name defune in the forty-eight hands is a naming that likens the hip gesture of the inserting side dissolving the joining to the action of a boat leaving harbour. The subject that “goes out” is the boat (the body and phallus of the inserting side), and the “harbour” is the body and receiving part of the receiving side, forming a figurative structure in complete symmetry with the paired irifune.

The old reading “idefune” was much used in waka and haikai, sung as a scenic element in forms like “yūzukuyo / idefune miyuru…”. The name defune in the Edo erotic book diverts such classical poetic words to sexual representation, and is one representative case of the borrowing of poetic words in forty-eight-hands naming. There is no corresponding position name in the English-speaking world; modern translations sometimes use a rendering or transliteration like departing-boat position or defune, but because the word depends strongly on the proper context of the Edo erotic book, a strict corresponding translation does not hold.

History

Formation in the Edo erotic book

The name defune is a position name appearing intermittently in forty-eight-hands erotic books since Hishikawa Moronobu, often placed within the paired structure with irifune. Hayashi Yoshikazu’s Edo Enpon Kenkyū reads the irifune-defune pair as “a device incorporating the narrativity of the joining into the system of the forty-eight hands.” citation needed In the editorial composition of forty-eight-hands erotic books, the construction placing irifune near the opening and defune near the close is an expression of narrative editing that likens one erotic book to one night’s intercourse. By placing between irifune and defune various applied positions, the standard, the tea-mill, the matsubakuzushi, and the kannon-biraki, the single erotic book forms a complete story from the beginning to the end of the joining.

Compound with ushiro-tori

The usage of defune includes the compound form “defune ushiro-tori” combined with a rear-entry application. Ushiro-tori is the general term for rear-entry in the Edo erotic book, denoting the group of positions in which the inserting side joins from behind the receiving side. Defune ushiro-tori denotes the gesture in which the inserting side gradually draws the hips back while maintaining the rear-entry joining, positioned as a transitional position heading toward the dissolution of the joining. This compound naming shows that the position names of the forty-eight hands were a literary system that did not denote a single fixed static posture but combined multiple names to express a continuous series of dynamic gestures. Compound names like “defune ushiro-tori” and “irifune honte,” while making translation into a modern position-classification system difficult, are also an index of the literary richness of the Edo erotic book.

Publication control and marginalisation

Amid the publication control of the late Edo period and the regulation of manners from the Meiji period onward, the proper-named positions of the forty-eight hands went underground, and defune too was marginalised to the antiquarian-book market and the sphere of a few enthusiasts. In modern love-making guides it is rare for the name defune to be taken up independently, and where the irifune-defune pair is introduced, it is customary to refer to it summarily as “an Edo name depicting the gestures before and after the joining.” Amid the advance of postwar shunga studies, the proper-named position group of the forty-eight hands was re-evaluated from scholarly and cultural-historical viewpoints through the work of Shirakura Yoshihiko, Hayashi Yoshikazu, and Nagai Yoshio, and defune too has come to be referred to within this re-evaluation as one example of the verb-like binary opposition of forty-eight-hands naming.

Form and gesture

Basic posture

The basic posture of defune varies by edition, but in the face-to-face case the receiving side takes the supine position and the inserting side takes a knee-standing or hip-set posture between the legs of both. From the joined state, the gesture in which the inserting side gradually draws the body backward is the core of defune. In the rear-entry case, the receiving side takes the all-fours or prone position and the inserting side, knee-standing behind, gradually draws the hips back from the joined state; this is called “defune ushiro-tori.”

Withdrawal and movement

The core of the movement of defune lies in the slow drawing of the hips toward the dissolution of the joining. Not the final phase of vigorous thrusting, but the gesture of gradually separating the body while keeping the afterglow of the joining, is what the position name originally means. In this gesture is reflected a sensibility peculiar to the Edo erotic book, which grasped coitus not pointwise as a single joining and ejaculation, but as a continuous series of gestures including the drawing-together that leads to the joining and the withdrawal that dissolves it. The afterglow after ejaculation, the reluctance of dissolving the joining, and even the gesture of laying the body back down on the bedding, are grasped in a series as the gestures of coitus.

Derivatives

As derivatives of defune, multiple variants are recorded in the erotic books: the rear-entry-application defune ushiro-tori, the standing-application tachi-defune, and “defune jausu” (a form in which the receiving side gradually separates the body from the cowgirl) led by the receiving side. citation needed These derivatives vary in name and form by edition, and correspondence with modern position classification is difficult.

Reception and meaning

The position name defune, within a naming consciousness that likens the end of the joining to a scenic element of the port, shows that early-modern Japanese sexual representation contained the continuity of time. The gesture of a boat leaving harbour, observed in daily life, becomes the name of the gesture of the end of love-making. The pairing of irifune and defune is also a device for narrativising coitus. One night’s intercourse is grasped as a complete story including the beginning (irifune) and the end (defune) of the joining of two people. This narrativising sensibility differs from the modern clinical, bodily-technical grasp of love-making (the functional description of the three stages of insertion, friction, and ejaculation), and reflects the cultural standpoint of early-modern Japan, which grasped love-making as a ritual and performing-art gesture.

In modern position classification defune is almost never treated as an independent position, but the irifune-defune pair is referred to repeatedly in shunga-studies books and the cultural history of love-making as a symbolic position name of Edo culture. As the pair that most plainly shows the verb-like, narrative, and poetic character of forty-eight-hands naming, it has become a symbolic sign of the bedchamber culture of early-modern Japan.

See also

• Forty-eight hands
• Rear-entry
• Shunga
• Tea-mill (chausu)
• Matsubakuzushi