However, since for several decades following this edict, publishing guilds saw fit to send their members repeated reminders not to sell erotica, it seems probable that production and sales continued to flourish. After this edict, shunga went underground. The Kyōhō Reforms, a 1722 edict, was much more strict, banning the production of all new books unless the city commissioner gave permission. While other genres covered by the edict, such as works criticising daimyōs or samurai, were driven underground by this edict, shunga continued to be produced with little difficulty. There were repeated governmental attempts to suppress shunga, the first of which was an edict issued by the Tokugawa shogunate in 1661 banning, among other things, erotic books known as kōshokubon ( 好色本) (literally "lewdness books"). Thanks to woodblock printing techniques, the quantity and quality increased dramatically. The style reached its height in the Edo period (1603 to 1867). Through the medium of narrative handscrolls, sexual scandals from the imperial court or the monasteries were depicted, and the characters tended to be limited to courtiers and monks. At this point, it was found among the courtier class. The Japanese influences of shunga date back to the Heian period (794 to 1185). Besides " shunga" literally meaning a picture of spring (sex), the word is also a contraction of shunkyū-higi-ga (春宮秘戯画), the Japanese pronunciation for a Chinese set of twelve scrolls depicting the twelve sexual acts that the crown prince would perform as an expression of yin yang. He, like many artists of his time, tended to draw genital organs in an oversized manner, similar to a common shunga topos. Zhou Fang, a notable Tang-dynasty Chinese painter, is also thought to have been influential.
Shunga was heavily influenced by illustrations in Chinese medicine manuals beginning in the Muromachi era (1336 to 1573). Shigenobu - Man and woman making love by Yanagawa Shigenobu