Cartographies of Desire: Male-Male Sexuality in Japanese Discourse, 1600–1950

by Gregory M. Pflugfelder

In this sweeping study of the mapping and remapping of male-male sexuality over four centuries of Japanese history, Gregory Pflugfelder explores the languages of medicine, law, and popular culture from the seventeenth century through the American Occupation.

Pflugfelder opens with fascinating speculations about how an Edo translator might grapple with a twentieth-century text on homosexuality, then turns to law, literature, newspaper articles, medical tracts, and other sources to discover Japanese attitudes toward sexuality over the centuries. During each of three major eras, he argues, one field dominated discourse on male-male sexual popular culture in the Edo period (1600-1868), jurisprudence in the Meiji period (1868-1912), and medicine in the twentieth century.

This multidisciplinary and theoretically engaged analysis will interest not only students and scholars of Japan but also readers of gay studies, literary studies, gender studies, and cultural studies.

Genres: Japan, History, Nonfiction, LGBT, Japanese History, Gender, Sexuality

416 pages, Paperback

First published January 9, 2000

Reviews

[Tocotin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book. Lots of interesting information (I didn’t know Edo authorities tried to ban mixed bathhouses as early as 1790s!). Very disciplined and precise, but nonetheless vivid and clear language. Wide scope of reference, from popular literature to medical tracts to legal texts. Also, last but not least, there is a lot of understanding and compassion towards the subject(s) being researched.

The best thing about this book is that it clearly shows the shift in traditional attitudes towards male homosexuality (and in rare cases, female – the author says that he is writing about men, but being a decent human being, I guess, he can't resist presenting relevant stuff about women too) in pre-modern and then modern Japan – and that it wasn’t such a clear opposition between traditional tolerance and Western-based discrimination, but rather a matter of one’s age, societal role and standing. In other words, if you were a feudal lord and didn’t f*ck your pages, your retainers thought you were weird; and if you were a page and f*cked by your lord and liked it (the sex, not the lord!), your friends thought you were weird.

Then the Westerners came with their civilization, and things got generally more f*cked up and weird, at least for the upper classes. The lower classes continued to get their fun or/and monetary gains in the old feudal way, but as usual, nobody cared.

If you are interested in the subject and have no access to Japanese literature on the subject, this is THE book to go to. Wholeheartedly recommended. <3

[Michael Choi · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an exceptionally well-researched book exploring the niche history of Japan revolving around male-male sexuality--the author makes the intentional usage of such term clear from the onset (along with various other caveats and limitations of the study). Though it is impossible to summarize the trends of a period in monolithic terms (which concern is also shared by the author), the book flows from the gradual transition of how the Japanese society treated this controversial topic from Edo period to the early 20th century.

Interestingly, the topic of male-male sexuality has become more controversial as Japan entered into modernity. During Edo period, male-male sexuality was predominantly the province of the warrior-class elites: the samurai. The "way of the youth" (wakashudo) was viewed as a quasi-mentor relationship between the older lover (nenja) and youthful object of desire (wakashu). With obvious similarities to the ancient Greek pederasty, this practice was also deemed sacrosanct where the participants were awarded badges of honor and military valor. That said, the practice was scrutinized by the officials at times, though the interesting difference between the regulatory regime of the Japanese official and that of their Western counterparts is that the former tended to regulate the social milieus where such acts tended to occur (perisexual) and not the act itself. For instance, kabuki theater was one such milieu where centralized scrutiny was prevalent.

Moving into the Meiji era, male-male sexuality became more of a hot button issue, still not necessarily because of the abhorrence that the act itself engendered, but rather the barbarism associated with such pre-modern practices, i.e., the unenlightened acts carried out by outdated social elite. Equipped with the language and epistemology of the modern West, the officials began cracking down on the Japanese form of male-male sexuality, though there were many loopholes and contradictions early on, a par for the course for any early implementation of regulations.

Towards the first half of the 20th century, male-male sexuality became an object of scientific inquiry, specifically for the burgeoning community of Japanese sexologists. These sexologists were understandably heavily influenced by their Western counterparts. The intellectual class during this time, which comprised both sexologists and writers, began to re-characterize the traditional and indigenous forms of male-male sexuality in modern terms rooted in clinical pathology. Notwithstanding the increasingly negative connotation ascribed to the topic, there were some communities of same-sex lovers (doseiaisha) that began to appear in the fringes of society, paving the way for the modernization of the study of this topic that is still in the works today.

Overall, a very interesting read that is replete with references to primary sources. It was also interesting to note how progressive(?) the Japanese were when it came to this topic, especially compared to their East Asian neighbors for whom conservatism rooted in strict adherence to Confucianism would have forbidden the topic from even being part of public discourse.

[Dasha · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pflugfelder argues that sexuality in Japan was a constructed phenomenon unique in time and place and undergoing various changes. He uses the metaphor of map-making to place male-male sexuality within its own context and understanding, rather than apply modern concepts such as “homosexuality” to the past. He supports this argument by investigating discourses produced in the legal, medical, and popular realms over the Edo, Meiji, and twentieth-century periods. In contrast to a lot of research on Europe, it is popular discourses that dominated discourses on sexuality beginning in 1600. The commercial market allowed a variety of books, texts, and poetry to proliferate and many of them focused on the “way of loving youth.” Religions, including Shinto, Buddhism, and Confucianism, largely had little to say about male-male sexual acts. For example, Shinto noted that after male-female sex, men were required to purify themselves in order to enter a temple. No such prescription existed for male-male relations. As such, regulation in this period stemmed from the “perisexual” context rather than worrying over the actual acts themselves and this was often classed as legislation. For example, castle towns focused on dissuading same-sex relations among samurai to prevent horizontal bonding and the countryside targeted peasants who needed to keep their energy on agricultural work. It is during the Meiji period that legal discourses attempt to regulate sexualities in order to counter ideas of “barbarism” and introduce “civilization” to the country through nationwide legislation that included censorship of popular discourses such as the Senryuu. The twentieth century is when male-female relations became the idealized relationship, beneficial to individuals and the nation. Much of this borrowed, but did not always mirror, western sexologists. Transgenerational relationships and respectable male-male sexualities became medicalized and pushed to the margins of Japanese societies. Pflugfelder provides a detailed study that demonstrates how male-male sexuality mapped onto society over time and place and emphasizes the unique language and designations provided to these relationships over time.
I think that this book uses an accessible structure to demonstrate the changes in medical, legal, and popular discourses over three fluid periods of time in Japanese history. I particularly liked the focus on eastern religious systems. For one, a reader gleans how religions like Confucianism was deeply embedded in popular, medical, and legal discourses, often in non-explicit ways. Moreover, it shows a strong contrast to institutions like the Catholic Church that took a more active role in shaping ideas of sexuality and morality as we see in colonial holdings such as South Africa or even in Brazil, where the church, while quiet, underpinned many of the moral arguments presented by the Brazilian governments.

[Virgowriter (Brad Windhauser) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lot of interesting info and co text for useful queer discourse.

[abby]

read for history of popular culture and everyday life in japan

[Snail in Danger (Sid) Nicolaides]

Available from Hillman.