A waterbird dips its neck into the surface, a brief gesture. Edo erotic albums laid that motion over a man crouching low to enter the woman and called it Kamo-no-irikubi (Japanese: 鴨の入首, “duck’s neck entry”). A typical instance of the Edo naming sense that likens animal gestures to sexual positions, it is among the more refined names of the forty-eight hands.

Kamo-no-irikubi is one of the forty-eight-hands positions, in which the inserting partner, from a deeply crouched posture, enters diagonally toward the receiving partner’s hips as if thrusting the neck out. The name copies a duck dipping its head underwater to forage, the man’s bent upper body and forward-leaning entry likened to the long neck of the duck. It is recorded in the albums as an irregular derivative between rear-entry and side-lying.

Etymology

The name copies the foraging gesture of long-necked ducks (mallard, spot-billed duck) plunging the head into the water. Edo album animal-naming divides into a mammal-and-amphibian lineage (dog, frog, cat, octopus) and a bird lineage (duck, swallow, crane); kamo-no-irikubi is typical of the latter. Irikubi (“neck-entry”) is a noun for the act of thrusting the neck in, used in carpentry for a joint that inserts timber, and circulating in Edo usage as a general term for inserting or driving in. As a position name it folds both the insertion of the male organ and the man’s forward lean into the single word “putting the neck in.” The same name appears in albums of the Moronobu lineage and is carried on by Eisen and Kunisada; the coiner is unknown, the name settling through the hands of several artists and writers during the codification of the repertoire.

Movement

The receiving partner lies on the side or half-turned to a rear-oblique posture; the inserting partner kneels and sets the hips against the side or back of the receiving partner’s hips, bending the upper body deeply over the back and thrusting the head forward over the receiving partner’s shoulder. Entry runs at a distinctive diagonal from the side of the hips upward, which realises the “neck thrust in diagonally” sense of the name. Leg arrangement varies in the albums: legs together in side-lying, or the upper leg raised for easier reception, the former close to side-lying, the latter a half-side-lying close to matsubakuzushi, the boundary shifting continuously with the depth of the man’s lean. The diagonal upward angle has the glans rub the side and front walls of the vagina obliquely, a third friction axis distinct from frontal rear-entry (inu-kake lineage) and from face-to-face missionary. Album captions use phrasing like “a flavour unlike the usual, striking diagonally,” suggesting the peculiarity of the angle was empirically recognised.

In classical texts

Kamo-no-irikubi is often placed in the middle of the forty-eight-hands albums. The image is typically a side composition of the man folded deeply over the body, his long topknot and shoulder line evoking the curve of the duck’s neck. In the Utamaro lineage, the woman’s face peering from under the man’s arm is favoured, the closeness of the two faces answering the “neck thrust in” name. The Makura Bunko entry is said to carry a caption likening the man’s hip-twisting entry from above to a duck putting its head in to forage, cited in scholarship as a typical case of the playful naming that overlays animal gesture directly onto a human position.

Reception

The psychology of kamo-no-irikubi sits between the animal instinctuality of rear-entry and the intimacy of face-to-face. The man is behind, so gaze rarely meets, but his forward lean brings the face near the woman’s cheek, ear, and neck, generating a closeness rivalling face-to-face: a rare position in which non-frontal arrangement and exchange of intimacy coexist, positioned in album captions as “the play of intimates.” Contact with the neck, nape, and ear is easy, so kissing and whispering proceed alongside coupling. The inserting partner is forced into a somewhat strained forward lean, so long holds are difficult, and the albums picture it as a tasteful gesture between brief passages of motion.

The name is rarely used in modern AV or doujin works, the configuration reproduced instead as combinations of gesture (“entering diagonally from behind and licking the ear,” “rear-entry with a kiss over the shoulder”). In Japanese-style and period works, the original name is occasionally cited in the forty-eight-hands revival.

Cultural note

The kamo-no-irikubi name emblematises the refined side of Edo animal-metaphor naming. Alongside the blunt mating-posture metaphors of dog and frog, the bird metaphors of duck, crane, and swallow capture a posture’s dynamic feature in one word, valued in forty-eight hands scholarship as literary naming. That Edo city-dwellers, observing waterbirds in daily life, brought that visual memory into the naming of a sexual position speaks to the cultural ecology of an era mixing rural and urban culture. Even after the marginalisation of the nomenclature in the Meiji period, refined names like kamo-no-irikubi were handed down among collectors and shunga scholars.

Related Terms

• Matsubakuzushi
• Side-lying (sokui)
• Inu-kake
• Back position
• Forty-eight hands
• Shunga