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are you worthy to be a samurai?
by Chip Daniels
At the time William and Mary were busying themselves to overthrow England's King James II and while the early American settlers were forming the first colonies in the New World, Japan was enraptured in a ten-volume illustrated publication entitled Glorious Tales of Homosexuality (Ihara Saikaku, 1642-1693). Don't you just love it!
From 1186 to 1868, the samurai class controlled Japan through the governance of a series of shoguns. It was during this period when the custom of homosexuality became popular under the name of shudo. Originating with the customs of Buddhist monks and their students, the Samurai class are particularly notable for their enthusiasm for relationships with wakashu, young men between the ages of fourteen and nineteen. Such relationships were common but not only for the classes of Samurai and monks, the bourgeois class and the townspeople also celebrated these glory days.
As with Saikaku's writings, about five hundred other books about homosexuality were published in Japan over three centuries ago. The Japanese cultural tradition of homosexuality reached its golden age during this period. Check out Tsuneo Watanabe's book, The Love of the Samurai: A Thousand Years of Japanese Homosexuality (Gay Men's Press, London; 1989), where he compares Japan to ancient Greece. Have you heard about Saikaku's erotic novel, The Life of an Amorous Man? While the heroines in his other work are quite often dishonored as a result of their love, Saikaku's gallant, young heroes in his Samurai gay tales keep their honor throughout. Bushido, indeed!
Unfortunately the golden age eventually came to a close with the beginning of the Meiji Restoration. The rejection of this cultural tradition started with westernization, reason enough to have kept Japan closed to the outside world! Though homosexuality may have fallen out of fashion for a while we all know that it didn't last long.
Now, get on down to ni-chome and find your own samurai!
Additional Reading:
The Code of the Samurai, Professor A.L. Sadler,
Charles E. Tuttle Company, Rutland, Vermont, 1988
Hagakure: The Book of the Samurai, Tsunemoto Yamamoto, Kodansha International, Tokyo, 1979. (Originially published in 1716.)
Gay Tales of the Samurai, compiled by Henry M. Christman, Alamo Square Press, San Francisco, 1995. (Translated works by Ihara Saikaku.)
Don't forget the works by modern Japanese writer, Yukio Mishima who chose seppuku as his manner of death in a sensational suicide in 1970 to dramatize his dedication to Samurai culture.