Two pairs of legs cross on the bedding in a shape the Edo-period printmaker recognised as the form of pine needles. The position has a long lineage running through the forty-eight hands tradition, the shunga print catalogue, and contemporary sex-instruction literature. Matsubakuzushi is the modern Japanese name for the position; the Edo-period name was kata-sugashi, with the change of name reflecting a shift in how the same form was visualised and described.

Overview

Matsubakuzushi (Japanese: 松葉崩し, matsubakuzushi; English working translations: V-position, matsuba position; Edo-period name: 肩すかし, kata-sugashi) is the sex position in which the receiving partner lies on the back and rotates the upper body roughly 90 degrees toward one side, with one leg raised onto the inserting partner’s shoulder or upper arm and the other leg extended onto the bedding. The inserting partner kneels half-facing-forward at the side of the receiving partner, with the two pairs of legs forming a four-line-cross arrangement that the Edo-period observers compared to the V-shape of pine needles (松葉, matsuba, the needle-pair leaves of the pine tree).

The position is one of the recurring entries in the Japanese forty-eight hands (四十八手, shijūhatte) traditional sexual-position catalogue, and is documented in shunga prints from the 1670s onward (in the work of Hishikawa Moronobu, Suzuki Harunobu, Katsushika Hokusai, Kitagawa Utamaro, and others). The position’s relation to the broader half-side (sokui) and missionary (seijoui) categories is intermediate — it is, in the position-classification vocabulary, a half-side (hansoku-i) variant of the missionary, with the receiving partner’s torso rotation distinguishing it from full missionary and from full side-position.

Three structural-features distinguish matsubakuzushi from neighbouring positions. First, the receiving partner’s pelvic rotation, which produces a different angle of penetration than full missionary. Second, the contact-pattern between the inserting partner’s pubic region and the receiving partner’s clitoral region, which the position’s geometry brings into closer-and-more-frequent contact than full missionary does. Third, the partial-rather-than-full body contact between the partners, which makes the position less physically demanding than missionary and more readily sustained for extended duration.

Etymology

The compound matsubakuzushi is built from 松葉 (matsuba, “pine needles”, referring specifically to the V-shaped pair of needles that grow joined at the base in pine species) and 崩し (kuzushi, “to break / to vary / to alter from the standard form”). The construction kuzushi in this sense is standard Edo-period Japanese, used in compounds like agura-kuzushi (“varied cross-legged sitting”), seiza-kuzushi (“varied formal-sitting”), and similar. The compound matsubakuzushi therefore reads “the V-shape (pine-needle-shape) variant” of the position-classification it varies.

The Edo-period name for the same position was kata-sugashi (肩すかし, “shoulder-evasion”), drawn from the wrestling-vocabulary name for a sumo move in which the wrestler evades the opponent’s push by turning sideways. The Edo-period playful wordplay-and-visual-pun convention paired sumo-vocabulary with sexual-position-vocabulary in a humorous register, and kata-sugashi fits within that tradition as the corresponding sexual-position name. The modern name matsubakuzushi replaced kata-sugashi in the late-19th and early-20th centuries, and the renaming reflects a shift toward direct visual-description naming — the V-shape that the legs form is the immediate referent of the modern name, while the sumo-pun of the Edo name requires the listener’s familiarity with sumo terminology.

History

Edo-period: the forty-eight hands

The Japanese forty-eight hands (shijūhatte) tradition organises sexual positions into a numbered catalogue, drawing the structural model from the forty-eight hands of sumo wrestling (the catalogue of recognised sumo techniques). The catalogue is documented in Koi no Mutsugoto Shijūhatte (Forty-Eight Hands of Love-Whispers) and other Edo-period erotic-instruction publications dating from the 1670s, with Hishikawa Moronobu’s illustrations the canonical iconographic source. The tradition placed kata-sugashi — what we now call matsubakuzushi — as one of the catalogue’s positions, in the half-side variant register.

In the Edo-period shunga print tradition, the position appears repeatedly in the work of major shunga artists. The reason for the position’s frequent appearance, beyond its inclusion in the forty-eight hands catalogue, is compositional: where the missionary position generates a horizontal-axis composition that fills the page-width with a single body-line, the matsubakuzushi position generates a diagonal-axis composition that distributes the bodies across the page in a more dynamic visual pattern. Print-artists working with the more compositionally-demanding multi-figure shunga compositions found the position’s diagonal-axis useful for filling the page in visually-active ways.

Modern: renaming and recodification

In the Meiji and early-Shōwa periods, the position’s name shifted from kata-sugashi to matsubakuzushi. Several factors drove the change: the decline of sumo’s central place in Japanese popular culture (which made the sumo-wordplay less immediately legible), the modernisation-period preference for direct-descriptive naming over wordplay-naming, and the increasing standardisation of the position-vocabulary in late-19th and early-20th-century sexual-instruction literature.

The mid-20th-century postwar Japanese sex-instruction-literature tradition adopted matsubakuzushi as the standard name. By the AV-industry development of the 1970s and 1980s, the position’s name was firmly matsubakuzushi, and the position itself was a recognised entry in the position-vocabulary that AV-industry production drew on. Eromanga and adult publications followed the same naming, and the position is now one of the most-recognised forty-eight-hands-tradition positions in contemporary popular Japanese sexual-vocabulary.

Mechanics and reception

The position’s mechanical features have been a topic of contemporary sex-instruction literature, with consistent points emerging across the Japanese-language reference works.

The pelvic-rotation of the receiving partner produces a different angle of penetration than full missionary. The internal vaginal contact pattern shifts toward the anterior wall (the side of the vagina toward the pubic bone), and the position has been described in sex-instruction literature as one suited to G-spot stimulation. The literature’s claims about specific anatomical effects vary, but the geometric difference from missionary in the angle of penetration is a structural feature of the position rather than a contested-claim.

The contact between the inserting partner’s pubic region and the receiving partner’s clitoral region is, in the position’s standard geometry, more sustained and more frequent than in full missionary. The inserting partner’s pelvic position relative to the receiving partner’s brings the two regions into contact during continuous movement, and the resulting clitoral stimulation is one of the position’s commonly-cited features in contemporary sex-instruction literature, with the position frequently described as one in which simultaneous orgasm is more readily achievable than in full missionary.

The body-contact pattern is partial rather than full. The two bodies meet only across a portion of their surfaces — the pelvic-region junction, the inserted leg, and the side of the receiving partner’s torso — rather than across the whole body-front of full missionary. The reduced contact pattern makes the position less physically demanding than missionary for extended duration, and reduces the load on the inserting partner’s upper body. Sex-instruction literature recommending the position for couples seeking longer-duration intercourse cites this feature.

Variants

Several recognised variants of matsubakuzushi operate in contemporary position-vocabulary.

Tachi-matsuba (standing matsuba): the receiving partner lies on the edge of the bed or sofa with one leg raised onto the standing inserting partner’s shoulder. A standing variant of the matsubakuzushi base, popular in AV scene-construction for the camera-angle flexibility it offers.

Ne-matsuba (lying-down matsuba): the receiving partner lies fully supine without the half-side rotation, with one leg raised onto the inserting partner’s shoulder. Closer to a missionary variant than to the matsubakuzushi proper, with the boundary between the categories somewhat fluid.

Yoko-matsuba (sideways matsuba): the receiving partner lies fully on the side with both legs in a V-shape. Closer to a side-position (sokui) variant than to the matsubakuzushi proper.

The variant-relations to the historical forty-eight hands catalogue’s “matsuba” / “matsuba-gaeshi” / “matsuba-nobashi” entries are not in fully-reliable correspondence with the contemporary names. Contemporary sex-position vocabulary has reorganised the older Edo-period naming, and the question of which contemporary variant corresponds to which Edo-period catalogue entry is a Japanese-cultural-history research topic rather than a settled lexicographic point.

Position in adult-content production

In contemporary AV production, missionary, woman-on-top, and doggy-style constitute the standard three primary positions used for extended scene-coverage. Matsubakuzushi sits in the special-position / applied-position category — used for scene transitions, for compositional variation, and for short-duration scenes, with typical scene-duration in the 30 seconds to 2 minutes range. AV-industry production grammar treats the position as a transitional or contrast-element within the production, rather than as the primary scene-form.

In eromanga and doujinshi production, the position’s diagonal-composition advantage from the shunga tradition continues to make it useful. Manga-format adult publishing benefits from compositions that fill the page with visually-active line patterns, and the matsubakuzushi’s diagonal-axis distribution offers compositional possibilities that the horizontal-axis missionary does not. Works specifically engaging with the forty-eight-hands tradition or with period-set Japanese-historical settings sometimes name the position explicitly in dialogue or caption, drawing on its classical-vocabulary status.

In contemporary mainstream Japanese sexual-instruction-and-women’s-magazine literature (the anan sexual-special-issue tradition, online women’s-lifestyle-and-sexual-wellness publications such as Laundry Box), matsubakuzushi appears as one of the most-frequently-recommended positions in try-with-your-partner feature articles. In the contemporary domestic Japanese-speaking sexual-vocabulary, matsubakuzushi is one of the most-recognised forty-eight-hands names, with the position’s combination of accessibility, historical-and-aesthetic depth, and its specific reception-mechanics making it a stable presence in the genre’s standard recommendations.

Related Terms

• Missionary (seijoui)
• Woman-on-top (kijoui)
• Doggy-style (back position)
• Side position (sokui)
• Mortar-and-pestle (chausu)
• Shunga
• Forty-eight hands
• Kannon-biraki (V-spread)