Holding the coupling intact, the woman turns her body a half-revolution. Two partners who were just facing each other now face the same way; another half-turn brings them back, and a further half puts them back to back. Edo print designers gave this continuous motion the name of the tidal current that whirls in the Awa strait. Narutomaki (Japanese: 鳴門巻き, “Naruto whirl”) is one of the Edo-period Forty-Eight Hands, a motion-type position in which both partners rotate their bodies while staying coupled, switching continuously between configurations.

Overview

Narutomaki is a leading example of the motion-type within the Forty-Eight Hands. It does not name a fixed body-arrangement; it names the act of moving continuously between several positions without uncoupling. A typical run begins face-to-face (honte or chausu), one partner rotates around the body axis into a side or rear configuration, and the rotation continues back to face-to-face.

Because the Edo erotic albums are still images, picturing narutomaki required either a sequence of panels showing the same two figures, or a single chosen mid-stage with the direction of motion implied by the body-lines. Execution demands synchronised body axes and high coupling-maintenance skill: a sustained erection, pelvic flexibility in the receiving partner, and rough parity of weight and build. Edo text commentaries introduce it as a “master’s technique” (tassha no te), not a beginner’s position.

Etymology

The name comes from the whirlpools of the Naruto Strait between Tokushima and Awaji Island, where the tidal difference between the Inland Sea and the Kii Channel produces large whirlpools at flood and ebb. Long famous in waka, haikai, and topographic prints, the Naruto whirlpools appear in Hiroshige’s Famous Views of the Sixty-Odd Provinces. Edo erotic-book authors noticed the formal similarity between rotating the body while coupled and the spiralling of the strait current, and applied the name, a witty juxtaposition of a vast water-phenomenon with the body’s motion that is typical of the Forty-Eight Hands’ naming principle of borrowing from nature, tools, and gesture.

The food narutomaki (a fish-cake with a spiral surface pattern) also derives from the Naruto whirlpools, but it is a parallel coinage with no derivational link to the position. English has no idiom for it; modern translations render it functionally as rotating or spiral position.

History

The exact date the name entered the erotic books is unclear, but late-Edo Forty-Eight-Hands manuals already record motion-type positions under names like Naruto, Narutomaki, and “whirlpool.” Hokusai’s erotic albums show multi-panel compositions implying body rotation under maintained coupling; these are not all labelled “narutomaki,” but they attempt to fit the continuous turning into one or a sequence of frames. Keisai Eisen’s Keichū Kibun Makura Bunko (1822-1832), built like a translated sexual encyclopaedia, describes the technique of moving continuously through positions while staying coupled, with a tendency to spell out the kinematics in prose rather than image.

The name spilled beyond the erotic books into senryū, comic tales, and sharebon, where narutomaki served as material for joking about prolonged, exhausting intercourse, its reputation as a maritime hazard reinforcing the metaphor of self-loss. From the Meiji period, as erotic books went underground and modern sexology standardised its vocabulary, the proper names of the Forty-Eight Hands left academic and public discourse; motion-type positions were no longer treated as an independent classificatory axis and were described with generic terms like “position change.”

Body mechanics

The motion is defined as a continuous rotation of the two body axes relative to each other while avoiding uncoupling. From a face-to-face start, one partner rotates the upper or lower body ninety degrees into a side configuration, a further ninety into rear-entry, and continues back to face-to-face, completing a 360-degree turn. Maintaining coupling through the rotation requires the inserting partner’s erection angle to follow the turn, a wide range of motion in the receiving partner’s pelvis, lumbar spine, and hip joints, and no large difference in weight or build.

In practical terms narutomaki extends duration and stages off boredom, replacing the discomfort and sensory dulling of a single sustained position with continuous transition. Edo commentaries introduce it as a “master’s” or “long-lasting” technique.

Modern treatment

Postwar sex manuals and weekly-magazine features occasionally cite narutomaki. In the Shōwa sexual culture of the 1970s and 80s it was mystified as an “Edo master’s art,” invoked less as a practical manual than within a nostalgic gaze at Edo culture.

In contemporary adult video, coupled position-changes are rarely filmed in continuous motion, since an accidental uncoupling halts the take; commercial works default to a cut at the transition point. The name narutomaki is seldom used directly, replaced by production terms like “position change.” It surfaces as an Edo-culture proper noun in period-piece concept works and shunga-recreation art projects, where the names of the Forty-Eight Hands are inserted as part of a classical-revival staging.

Period fiction, historical essays, and Edo-themed manga use narutomaki as an emblem of Edo sexual culture. In the literary tradition after Nagai Kafū, the names of the Forty-Eight Hands recur as signs of premodern Japanese sexuality, and narutomaki, with the grandeur of its motion and the elegance of its name, is especially apt for nostalgic reference.

Related terms

• Forty-Eight Hands
• Chausu
• Cowgirl (kijoui)
• Matsubakuzushi
• Rear-seated (haimen-za)
• Shunga
• Ukiyo-e