Young gay samurai
The Gay of the Samurai All About Homosexuality, Buddhist Monks, Samurai, and The Tokugawa Middle Class
Remember the popular scene in The Last Samurai where Ken Watanabe and Tom Cruise make sweet, tender love? You don’t? Well, perhaps if the story had been more rooted in reality we could possess seen that happen.
As it turns out, pre-modern Japan was exceptionally accepting, even encouraging, of male homosexuality and bisexuality. Much fancy that time we start out that bushido is actually modern-day made-up bullshit, this might surprise you. To be honest, it surprised me, too. I came upon this data while researching an article (still to come) about the current state of the LGBT community in Japan.
History of Same-Sex Samurai Cherish in Edo Japan
Wakashudo & Connection to Nanshoku
The Edo Period (also called the Tokugawa Era) spans from 1603 to 1868 and saw the emergence of popular figures that all lovers of Japanese society know well: samurai, geisha, kabuki actors, etc. One keyword also emerged in this era: wakashudo (若衆道, sometimes abbreviated as shudo), which we can translate as “the way of the young.” Wakashudo came to indicate the tradition of homosexuality in Japan, spanning from the middle ages up to the Meiji Restoration. However, in order to understand wakashudo, we must take a step back and create a little detour to a concept born from Chinese Buddhism and then imported to Japan:
Nanshoku (男色, literally “male colors”)
While nanshoku (also pronounced danshoku) as a word has been used to refer to male homosexuality (for example in works like Nanshoku Okagami by Ihara Saikaku, translated into English as The Wonderful Mirror of Male Love) between a older dude and a young male child, the origin of the term is found in religion. Nanshoku was imported from China into Japan from monks who had studied Buddhism in China, and it referred to a relationship b
Stories help define us as individuals, a community and a society. I’m always amazed how homosexuality flourished in places that, to us, seem discriminatory or homophobic. Covering the 2016 Tokyo Rainbow Pride march, and general attitudes towards Japanese LGBT people, penner Philip Brasor wrote about how Japanese media possess “always been essential to the reinforcement of these stereotypes.”
In the past, media outlets would obscure participants’ faces, the allow being to protect participants’ privacy, but as Brasor suggests, it also “relieved viewers of the burden of having to admit people who weren’t with the program, so to speak.” No need to worry about checking your attitude if your physician, or neighbour, or family friend is queer or trans.
Funny that same-sex cherish, at least male homosexuality, was once not only celebrated, but a cultural pastime. Published in 1687, Nanshoku kagami, or The Great Mirror of Male Love, was a publication of 40 short stories by Ihara Saikaku.
This was at the height of the Tokugawa period when merchant classes, while still considered lower social status than farmers, were enjoying greater wealth
When you hear the word Samurai I’m sure the first thing that springs to your consciousness isn’t anything remotely related to homosexuality, but love between two male samurai was not only widespread throughout Japan’s history but also encouraged. It’s a very controversial topic and few historians have explored it, but there’s more than enough evidence about gay samurai despite very limited people wanting to talk about it today.
A meeting between a samurai and a kabuki actor.
Nanshoku (literally means “male colors” and shudo (abbreviated from wakashudo — “the way of the young”) are the terms used to point to to male to male sex in ancient Japan, and it was influenced by the equal traditions from China. These terms started to appear in ancient literature, but more commonly during the 11th century. As it was the case in many societies only sexual acts were considered being lgbtq+ or heterosexual, and not the persons performing them.
One of the first definitive references to gay acts in literary arts is in Genji Monogatari (The Tale of Genji) which was written in the preceding 11th century. In one scene a woman is reject
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The cultural differences between Japan and, say, North America are legion. It saves time to count the similarities and just believe that everything else is different. Yet humans are such stupid things that we cannot aide thinking that we are taking the same things for granted. Some of the most frustrating things about talking to Americans is that they take for granted everything they realize apply in Japan and refuse to acknowledge that their beliefs are merely prejudices based on experiences unique to people who own spent their lifetimes in the American culture.
The most noticeable of this example is the American attitudes about sex. Why do American women keep insisting to me that MY girlfriends are faking their orgasms? Firstly, it should not concern them if they are, and secondly, faking orgasms is an American thing. Japanese women fake not having them, not the other way around.
And then there is the “You men don’t understand” tripe. “We women become unwanted attention from men when we go out. You men don’t understand.” Maybe in America. When will American women ever know that Japanese men experience the matching thing?
Japan is one of th