The receiver lies on her back and raises one leg high. The other leg lifts a little off the floor and hangs in the air, so the two legs rise toward the ceiling and evoke the open V of a pine needle. Edo erotic-book artists called this variant uki matsuba, the floating pine-leaf. Derived from the pine-leaf collapse, it occupies a place among the half-side postures of the forty-eight hands.

Uki matsuba is one of the forty-eight hands, describing a form in which the receiver, lying supine, raises one leg high and lifts the other off the floor as well. It is a variant of the pine-leaf collapse, a decorative name in which both legs suspended in the air add a sense of floating to the parent posture. The partner takes a half-side position to the side or at an angle, passing one leg under the receiver’s hips to enter.

Etymology

“Floating pine-leaf” (uki matsuba) is a derivative naming of the principal posture, the pine-leaf collapse. The pine-leaf collapse raises one of the receiver’s legs high so the two legs open in a V likened to a pine needle (the paired needles of the pine), the representative example of the half-side postures. The “floating” prefix marks the derivative that lifts the leg further off the floor.

Prefixes such as “floating,” “standing” and “inverted” that often attach to the catalogue’s names function as modifiers of directional deviation from a base posture. The floating pine-leaf is understood as the “horizontal floating type” of the pine-leaf collapse. The system of derivative naming in Edo erotic books varies from edition to edition, and some books call the same posture by other names such as the “rising pine-leaf.” Late-Edo erotic books including Pillow Library show the name; whether it was already an independent entry in the earlier stage of Hishikawa Moronobu’s work is disputed, and the origin of the name is estimated at the mid-to-late Edo period.

Movement

The base posture starts from the supine missionary. In the standard pine-leaf collapse the partner shoulders one of the receiver’s legs while the other stays extended on the floor. In the floating pine-leaf the leg that would otherwise stay on the floor also lifts off it, which is the distinguishing trait of the variant.

Both of the receiver’s legs are suspended in the air, supported by the partner, who holds the upper (shouldered) leg with one hand and the lower leg or hips with the other. The receiver yields the support of both legs entirely to the partner, depending on the partner’s strength for most of her own weight. With both legs floating, the body line is cut off from the floor, and a pictorially floating posture results.

Penetration, as in the pine-leaf collapse, comes from the angle of a twisted half-side posture. Because the upper leg rises high, the side of the pelvis opens wide and the glans aligns to brush the lateral wall of the vagina diagonally. With both legs floating, the position of the receiver’s hips is freer, and the partner can adjust the angle finely. At the same time the receiver’s support depends entirely on the partner, testing the partner’s strength and ability to hold the posture.

Treatment in classical sources

Illustrations of the floating pine-leaf are often placed in the middle of forty-eight-hands albums. The image conventionally shows both of the receiver’s legs floating, with the union at centre frame. Lifting both legs off the floor produces a pictorial sense of the body suspended in air, reinforcing the metaphorical source of the name. Captions carry phrases such as “both legs floating in the air” and “aligned like the tips of pine needles,” making the visual character of the floating legs explicit. Utamaro-line albums render the fingers and toes in fine detail, foregrounding the decorative quality of the aligned legs; Hokusai-line albums use the floating legs and the partner’s arms as geometric composition lines.

Reception

The floating pine-leaf adds the suspension of both legs to the base traits of the pine-leaf collapse: the distinctive angle of penetration, the twist of the receiver’s hips, and the intermediate quality between face-to-face and side contact. With both legs off the floor, the receiver yields most of her body to the partner and the balance of power takes on a clearer asymmetry. The receiver commits to a passive role while the partner takes responsibility for fully holding the body. The “floating” of the name evokes both a freedom unbound by the floor and a passivity dependent on the partner, an ambivalent pairing.

Physically, the free adjustment of the pelvic angle allows fine variation of where the glans contacts the vaginal wall, and the deliberate variation of friction angle, coupled with the partner’s hip movement, produces a qualitative diversity of stimulation. Edo erotic-book commentary carries phrases such as “lifted and freely changing the angle,” suggesting that this angular freedom was recognized in practice.

Variants and adjacent postures

The floating pine-leaf sits within the half-side group centred on the pine-leaf collapse. The pine-leaf collapse is the standard form, raising one leg high while the other stays on the floor; the floating pine-leaf lifts both legs off the floor; the standing pine-leaf is the upright variant; and the side position is the standard form in which both partners lie on their sides, losing face-to-face contact. The distinguishing feature of the floating pine-leaf is that it keeps the base structure of the pine-leaf collapse while adding pictorial buoyancy through the floating legs. As the decorative name suggests, it is a variant whose primary aim is pictorial and artistic effect rather than a functional difference in the act itself.

The borrowing of a plant name for a sexual posture displays the delicacy of natural observation in Edo townsman culture. The pine is universal in the Japanese landscape, and the visual association of its needle shape with the arrangement of the legs embodies a literary naming that runs continuous with nature. In modern AV and adult expression the name is rarely used, with current terms such as “pine-leaf collapse,” “half-side position” and “single-leg-raised” doing the work; Japanese-style and period works occasionally cite the original name in a forty-eight-hands revival context.

Related terms

• Pine-leaf collapse
• Side position
• Missionary position
• Kannon-biraki
• Forty-eight hands
• Shunga