Penis Parinirvana  

From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia

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Penis Parinirvana is a shunga first exhibited at the Shunga: Sex and Pleasure in Japanese Art exhibtion at the British Museum in 2014. It is a parody of the death of Buddha, in which Buddha is phallus-headed, surrounded by vulva-headed women.

This is an hilarious and inventive – not to say scurrilous – parody of the sacred Buddhist subject of the Buddha's death and passing into a state of nirvana (‘nothingness’). Conventional painted versions of the subject have survived in quite large numbers in Japan, dating from the late 11th century onwards. They were displayed in temples each year for rituals held on the anniversary of the Buddha’s passing, traditionally the fifteenth day of the second month. Here the ‘Penis Buddha’, with golden skin, reclines on a dais resting his ‘head’ on one arm, the same pose taken by the Buddha Shakyamuni in conventional versions. Women with vulva faces gather round to lament, in company with paired couplings of various animals and vegetables. Two penis mourners stand in place of Buddhist guardian kings. At the back, pine trees and a river painted on a screen represent the sal trees and Badaiga River of tradition. Between the trees at the back are two esoteric deities with multiple vulva-heads and multiple arms that hold sex toys in place of their normal attributes.[1][2]

It has similar vulva figures to those in The Hell of Great Heat.