MASCULINITY, MALE LOVE, HOMOPHOBIA AND ANDROGYNY IN JAPAN:

                                             A REVIEW ESSAY ON

 

Review of The Love of the Samurai: A Thousand Years of Japanese Homosexuality.

By Tsuneo Watanabe and Jun'ichi Iwata. Translated by D.R. Roberts.

Gay Men's Press, London, 1989.

 

Reviewed by Walter L. Williams in The Journal of Men's Studies 1992.

 

 

         Within the last decade, scholarly study of the acceptance of

homosexual behavior and gender variance in many non-Western cultures

has advanced considerably. The most recent research has focused upon

Asia. Paul Gordon Schalow has translated Ihara Saikaku's 17th century

literary masterpiece on male-male love in Japan. Books by Serena

Nanda on India, Bret Hinsch on China, Peter Jackson on Thailand,

Stephen O. Murray on the Asian-Pacific islands, and Walter L. Williams

on Java, have all helped to fill out our knowledge of androgyny and male

homosexuality in these lands. Unfortunately, only a few essays have

focused on homosexuality among women; a major study on lesbianism in

non-Western cultures remains to be done.

         This book, which attempts to cover the history of male-male love

in Japan from the 16th to the 20th centuries, has been compiled by

Tsuneo Watanabe, using earlier essays written by Jun'ichi Iwata in the

1930s, and translated into English by D.R. Roberts. Besides

sexuality, this book tells us a lot about masculinity and homophobia.

Sometimes patterns in our own society become more clear when analyzed

from the perspective of a different culture.

This book focuses on feminity among males. Watanabe offers an

interesting argument that men in modern societies have given up "the

right to be feminine." In contrast to pre-modern Japan, where males

who dressed as women in kabuki theater were honored, and where even

samurai warriors wore makeup and dressed androgynously, 20th century

Japanese men have adopted the Western view that only women are

supposed to exhibit beauty. Men are told that they should possess

what they want (ie: a beautiful woman), rather than to be beautiful

themselves. This transformation of beauty into a feminine attribute

"is in reality a limitation or reduction of the domain of masculinity

itself.... [It is] the body itself which modern civilization refuses

to allow to men... and demands of men that they be only an active,

invisible and disembodied spirit" (p. 130). Modernization has meant

that men have had to renounce androgyny. Watanabe sees an unconscious

desire of many men to break out of this increasingly restricted

masculine role, which explains the anxiety that "normal" men have

about transvestites and gays: "What they see in 'perverts' with so

much aversion is the external projection of their own self-image" (p.

128).

         Watanabe concludes that homophobia arises from a detest of the

notion that a man would offer himself "as a beauty... as a passive

object of desire" (p. 131). Yet, the impact of gay liberationist

ideology and gender studies is beginning to challenge this.

By making androgyny more socially acceptable, he suggests,

transgender acceptance and gay liberation can help all men in

reconnecting with their full human potential. Just as lesbians have

greatly aided all women through their activist contributions to the

feminist movement, "male homosexuality, too, will be an essential

catalyst in the development of all men, helping in the

re-eroticization of the male body" (p. 135).

         In order to help develop this re-eroticization of the male body,

Watanabe has provided an overview of the history of male homosexual

attractions in Japan. The earliest Christian missionaries in Japan

reported in horror the widespread social acceptance of male-male sex,

especially among Buddhist monks. With Buddhism not being condemnatory

toward homosexuality, and with male monks being prohibited from even

touching a female, it is not surprising that same-sex relationships

were common. Demographic factors also played a role. Unlike Europe,

whose population had been reduced by numerous plagues, witchhunts,

wars, and massacres of dissenters, and which encouraged procreation in

order to produce soldiers and settlers for its expanding colonial

empires, Japan was a non-expansionist island with limited space. As

population numbers reached an optimal point for the land available,

there was pressure to reduce population growth. Abortion,

infanticide, and non-reproductive forms of sexual expression were

demographically useful means of keeping the population stable.

         In this context, a Jesuit missionary wrote about homosexuality,

"Nobody, neither man nor woman, young or old, regards this sin as

abnormal or abominable; this sin is well known among the bonzes

[Buddhist monks], and is even a widespread custom amongst them"

(p. 20). Another missionary wrote about the monks: "The abominable

vice against nature is so popular that they practice it without any

feelings of shame. They have many young boys with whom they commit

wicked deeds." (p. 20). Each monk was assigned a boy (age 10 - 17) as

his pupil, and many of these teacher-student pairs became lovers.

         The Mahayana Buddhist Rishu-kyo sutra states "voluptuousness

is pure... desire is pure... physical pleasure is pure.... All

creatures are in essence pure." (p. 46). Since the body was not

despised, as in Christianity, but was seen to be sacred, the sexual

act was considered the holy union of two bodies (p. 44). Monks wrote

numerous poems of love expressed toward their student/boyfriend, and

this intimate loving relationship underlay the Buddhist system of

education.

         A number of novels, from the 14th century onwards, show that

boy-love was commonly accepted in other areas of society as well. By

the 15th and 16th centuries, Japan entered a long period of civil

conflicts among samurai warriors. Each samurai took a pubescent boy

as a page and assistant, and many of these wakashu youths became the

lover of their adult samurai sponsor. Since the samurai trained his

wakashu to become a samurai (by about age 23), this homosexual

relationship also fulfilled an educative function similar to the

teacher-student Buddhist tradition.

         Under the shoguns a new art form emerged which celebrated male

beauty. In 1374 an eleven year old boy dancer became the lover of the

shogun, and under the shogun's loving patronage he became a genius

playwright and founder of the No theater for the shogun's court.

         Acceptance of transgenderism became popular in Japan in the 17^th

century through Kabuki, another form of dance that was originally performed

by women. After 1629 Kabuki became popular when young men started performing

it while dressed as women. Many of the more feminine or androgynous male

actors took men as lovers, and started dressing in women's clothes in daily life,

not just on stage. Transvestism entered Japanese popular culture through Kabuki,

and grew to represent traditional Japanese culture in the full flower of its

civilization.

         Shogun Tsunayoshi (ruled 1688-1703) was so fond of homosexuality

that he kept about 150 young male concubines in his palace. He

educated them, and some of them later became leading government

officials. As male love became more popular among the noble

classes, and spread among the merchants and commoners as well, the

authors conclude that 17th and 18th century Japan was a "Golden Age of

homosexuality" (p. 88). The book's numerous illustrations of man-boy

sexual and emotional interactions perfectly demonstrate the authors'

points. Still, for most men their sexuality was bisexual rather than

homosexual or heterosexual. As in ancient Greece, mature men were

expected eventually to take a female wife and produce offspring.

Despite this bisexual ideal, some men continued their sexual

relationships with males (not to mention monks, who never married,

and feminine cross-dressing Kabuki actors), giving evidence of a life-long

gender variance and homosexual orientation among some.

         This social acceptance changed in Japan after 1868, when the

Meiji restoration government embarked upon a strict course of

Westernization. Influenced by Christian missionaries and Japanese

intellectuals who were impressed by the West, the Meiji government

began repressing Buddhism, and also passed a law against sodomy.

However, Watanabe argues that capitalism, rather than Christianity per

se, exerted the biggest influence against homosexuality. As

industrialization revolutionized Japan, and the need for more

population to provide a growing labor force, a new repression emerged

against non-reproductive forms of sexuality. Once Japan embarked on

an expansionist military policy after 1900, even more people were

needed to man the armies and navies, and to staff the large economic

and political bureaucracies necessary for administering an empire.

Every male was needed to be a man, and acceptance of feminine and

Transgendered males gradually ended.

Just as had earlier happened with expansionist industrial capitalist

governments in Europe and the United States, Japan rejected its gender

variant and sexually-diverse heritage in favor of pro-natalist and

anti-homosexual policies imported from the West. The requirements of

being a good citizen in an expansionist capitalist state meant the necessity of

producing more children to add to the growing work force.

         These economic factors, plus continued Western influence, explain

Homophobia and transphobia in contemporary Japan. However, for the

pre-modern era this book demonstrates that Japan deserves to be ranked,

along with the cultures of ancient Greece and the American Indians, as one

of the world's most important examples showing how a society can incorporate

transgenderism and homosexuality into the core of its social organization. As more

research is being done, and more examples of such societies are being

uncovered, it is not transgender and homosexual inclinations that are abnormal in

human behavior, but homophobia and transphobia.

 

REFERENCES

Dynes, Wayne, et. al. eds. Encyclopedia of Homosexuality. Garland,

         New York, 1990.

Herdt, Gilbert. Guardians of the Flutes: Idioms of Masculinity.

         McGraw-Hill, New York, 1981.

_______________, ed. Ritualized Homosexuality in Melanesia.

         University of California Press, Berkeley, 1984.

Hinsch, Bret. Passions of the Cut Sleeve: The Male Homosexual

         Tradition in China. University of California Press, Berkeley,

         1990.

Ihara Saikaku, translated by Paul Gordon Schalow. The Great Mirror of

         Male Love. Stanford University Press, Stanford, Calif., 1990.

Jackson, Peter. Male Homosexuality in Thailand. Global Academic

         Publishers, Elmhurst, N.Y., 1989.

Murray, Stephen O., ed. Oceanic Homosexualities. Garland, New York,

         1992.

Nanda, Serena. Neither Man Nor Woman: The Hijras of India.

         Wadsworth, Belmont, Calif., 1990.

Williams, Walter L. Javanese Lives: Women and Men in Modern

         Indonesian Society. Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick,

         N.J., 1991.

_________________. The Spirit and the Flesh: Sexual Diversity in

         American Indian Culture. Beacon, Boston, 1986. 2nd ed. 1992.