Samurais gays

If we should forget it, it will not be possible for us to maintain the decencies, nor gentleness of speech, nor the refinements of polite behavior. However, then you have nothing left to lay down for your master. Yamamoto Tsunetomo had this to say about the quandary:.

Genji for his part, or so one is informed, found the boy more attractive than his chilly sister. Indeed, Mount Koya became synonymous with shudo in the poetry and prose of medieval Japan. Genji pulled the boy down besides him. Nonetheless legend has it that he learned about the joys of nanshoku in China universally renowned from ancient times for its rich homoerotic tradition, ranging from imperial favorites at the court to sanctioned boy-marriages for the commoners and then implanted the practice in Japan upon his return.

Despite his fulminations, the practice continues unabated, supported by the logic that the monkish vows of chastity apply to the love of the opposite sex only, as expounded by the writer and poet Kitamura Kigin seven hundred years later:.

Gay love in Japan

Great as his religious and linguistic achievements were he also translated the sacred texts from Chinese into Japanese, and devised the first Japanese alphabetwe have no basis to credit him with the introduction of male love as well. Koya may be doubtful, the prevalence of that love in Buddhist monasteries is not.

In the abbeys of Kyoto and Kamakura, and in the world of the nobles and the warriors, lovers would swear perfect and eternal love relying on no more than their mutual good will. The history of male love in Japan however both predates and outlasts the samurai period.

The Japanese as well as the Greeks equated the love between a man and a beardless youth with all that was best in human nature, seeing it at times as the path to such ideals, and at other times as the goal itself. The samurai often called it bi-do, “the beautiful way”, and guarded the tradition jealously.

Unfortunately, but not surprisingly, little has been translated to date, however recent scholarship in gay studies is beginning to make up for past neglect. Beyond that, what is important to us is not ever to forget, even to our last moment, the spirit of shudo.

These two titles will have samurais stand alone as examples of classical Japanese homoerotic literature rendered in English, but hundreds of works remain to be translated, including a great number of kabuki and noh plays. Myths about the Samurai: Myth #26 - Samurai were all macho, masculine and heterosexual False — Homosexuality was an integral part of samurai life and was actively and cooperatively practiced.

At that time the youth would receive the tonsure a cutting of the forelocks to simulate a receding hairline, a symbolic grasp for status in a society in which people to this day compare birth dates in an effort to establish pecking order and become available in turn for taking the role of the adult in other shudo relationships.

One of the effects of this pacification was the gay in the samurai and influence of the warrior class. It is therefore understood to be both something pleasant and unpleasant. Though its prehistoric origins are invisible to us, written records exist starting with the Heian Peace and Tranquility period A time of enlightened rule, this era, marked by the founding of the great imperial capital at Kyoto, saw a flowering of culture and civic life.

While the history of Japan through the end of the sixteenth century is one of warring feudal lords, with the ascendance of Tokugawa Ieyasu to the shogunate in the strife came to an end, and the country entered a period of tranquility that was to last two hundred and fifty years.

This led to close associations between the Bushidō samurai code, nationalism, and homosexuality. The younger samurai would receive education and abide by the centuries-old values of respect to the elderly and feudal deference, while the older samurai would receive unquestionable loyalty (also in honor-related quests, like duels and fights) and some gay extra favors.

Simonides, in a famous drinking song from the fifth century BCE declares:. This way must be truly respected, and it must never be permitted to disappear. Moreover, nanshoku flourished during the time of the Sino- and Russo-Japanese wars, due to the association of the warrior code of the samurai with nationalism.

If it is not so it becomes a matter of shame. Paradoxically, wakashudo was both integral to the tradition of unqualified devotion that a retainer had to have towards his lord, and at odds with it.