Both legs are flung straight up. The toes, lifted off the floor, point at the ceiling, and the pelvis folds and sinks deep. The figure that reproduces, in a standing posture, the manguri-gaeshi done on the tatami tests at once the man’s arm strength and the woman’s flexibility. As one of the flexion positions gathered in the Edo erotic book, tachi-manguri (立ちまんぐり) was devised to answer the taste for this kind of extreme angle.

Tachi-manguri denotes a standing derivative reproducing the manguri-gaeshi, a flexion position of the forty-eight hands. The inserting side, standing on the floor, carries the receiving side’s legs up to the height of the shoulders or neck and flexes the pelvis to a near-vertical angle for insertion. Direct description in classical literature is limited; it is a name re-evaluated in modern position guides and shunga-reconstruction books and introduced as an extreme form of the forty-eight hands.

Etymology

“Manguri” is a slang word of unknown etymon, an in-group term since the early-modern period for the flexion posture of throwing both legs above the head. In the Edo erotic book, the postures that fold the body have several alternative names, such as “daruma-gaeshi,” “sakasa-daruma,” and “kikkō-shibari”; manguri is, within that series, a naming that emphasises the roundness and folded feel of the body. The prefix “tachi” (standing) indicates the branch into the standing lineage that recombines all derivatives of the forty-eight hands, basically lying postures, as standing.

Whether the compound “tachi-manguri” appears as a clearly independent item in Edo-period erotic books is debated, and some commentators regard it as a name reconstructed from the modern period onward. citation needed By Nagai Yoshio’s account, the derivatives of the forty-eight hands vary greatly by edition, and some erotic books call the same kind of flexion-standing by other names, such as “tachi-hanabishi” or “torii-kuguri.”

Structure

The basic posture of tachi-manguri has the receiving side raise the upper body obliquely from supine and carry both legs up over the inserting side’s shoulders. The inserting side, standing on the floor, lifts and embraces the receiving side’s hips and fixes both legs against their own shoulders, neck, and chest. The greater part of the receiving side’s weight is entrusted to the inserting side’s arms and shoulders, while the head remains on the floor or a low stand. The pelvis is folded to near-vertical, and the junction takes an angle parallel to the floor or slightly ceiling-ward.

The height of the carry changes by derivative. The light form, lifting only the hips, keeps a flexion angle nearly equal to that of the lying manguri-gaeshi while raising the freedom of the inserting side’s hips. The heavy form, with both legs fully on the shoulders, supports the receiving side in a near-upside-down hang and demands at once the inserting side’s arm strength and the receiving side’s flexibility. The insertion angle, with the pelvic flexion shortening the vaginal passage, aligns so that the glans bears directly toward the cervix and posterior fornix. Deep insertion is easy, and a composition in which the whole junction faces the camera squarely is formed. The inserting side makes the rhythm by dropping the hips from above downward, enabling thrusts that take gravity as an ally.

Movement and support

Tachi-manguri belongs to the group of positions hard to maintain even within the forty-eight hands. Because the receiving side receives their weight at the neck and shoulders, it requires the support strength of the neck and the flexibility of the abdominal muscles and trunk. The inserting side, embracing the receiving side’s hips and buttocks with both arms, requires the leg strength to support their own weight and the partner’s with both legs. Long maintenance is difficult, and in erotic-book illustration too it tends to be drawn as a short-duration set posture.

There are mainly two types of support. The first is the “half-carry type,” which leaves the receiving side’s head on the floor or cushion and carries up only the pelvis and both legs; this lightens the inserting side’s burden and becomes a sustainable posture if the receiving side’s upper body is entrusted to the edge of a sitting bench or bed. The second is the “full-carry type,” which lifts even the receiving side’s upper body fully off the floor and holds as a complete standing position close to the ekiben (carry position). The latter is substantially a flexion variant of the ekiben position, and the boundary between the two is continuous.

Reception psychology

Tachi-manguri is a position whose essence is the visual and psychological asymmetry that the extreme posture calls forth. The receiving side entrusts the freedom of the body completely to the inserting side and cannot intervene in the rhythm by their own hip movement. This strongly foregrounds the structure of domination and subordination, maximising the psychological binary of “the side folded / the side folding” that the flexion-position group of the forty-eight hands holds in common.

In modern adult video and adult expression, tachi-manguri is often referred to by colloquialisms such as “standing manguri-gaeshi” and “vertical manguri.” In practice it is often used for a short finish cut, and its character as a staging presenting the performer’s bodily ability visually is foregrounded. In that deep insertion and the square-to-camera presentation of the junction hold simultaneously, it is positioned as a position advantageous for picture-making in shooting. In large-breast and enormous-breast works, the composition in which the breasts flow over the face from the pelvic flexion is preferred, and tachi-manguri is used as a derivative that stages that composition three-dimensionally. In projects casting flexible or gymnast-type performers, the spread angle with both legs carried up is treated as a highlight.

Derivative forms

As neighbouring positions of tachi-manguri, the following forms can be cited. The manguri-gaeshi is the basic form done in a lying posture; the flexion angle of the pelvis is equivalent, but the inserting side too kneels on the floor. The ekiben is a standing position fully lifting up the receiving side; if the flexion is shallow it is distinguished as ekiben, if deep as tachi-manguri. The kannon-biraki takes the spread axis as its main feature and is distinguished from the flexion axis.

In the framework of the forty-eight hands, derivatives recomposing the flexion positions of the lying posture into standing are often spoken of with the prefixes “tachi-” (standing) or “sakasa-” (inverted). Tachi-manguri occupies a place within that naming system as the direct standing-ization of the manguri-gaeshi.

Cultural references

Tachi-manguri appears with low frequency as a directly independent item in Edo erotic books, but shunga depicting flexion-standing are found in several editions such as Makura Bunko and Endō Nichiya Nyohō-ki. The erotic-book illustrations of Katsushika Hokusai and Utagawa Kunisada contain scattered scenes of a standing posture carrying a woman’s legs high, which modern forty-eight-hands research describes with modern names such as “tachi-manguri” and “tachi-hanabishi.”

From a folklore viewpoint, it is pointed out that the flexion posture of flinging both legs high functioned in the Edo erotic book as a ritual gesture making clear the roles of “the side folded / the side folding.” Tachi-manguri fits within the playful naming system of the forty-eight hands as a derivative that develops this rituality into the standing space. In the context of the modern forty-eight hands revival and shunga re-evaluation, it is often introduced as an example of an extreme form.

See also

• Manguri-gaeshi
• Ekiben
• Kannon-biraki
• Forty-eight hands
• Flexion position