Male colors: the construction of homosexuality in Tokugawa Japan

Tokugawa Japan ranks with ancient Athens as a society that not only tolerated, but celebrated, male homosexual behavior. Few scholars have seriously studied the subject, and until now none have satisfactorily explained the origins of the tradition or elucidated how its conventions reflected class structure and gender roles. Gary P. Leupp fills the gap with a dynamic examination of the origins and nature of the tradition. Based on a wealth of literary and historical documentation, this study places Tokugawa homosexuality in a global context, exploring its implications for contemporary debates on the historical construction of sexual desire.Combing through popular fiction, law codes, religious works, medical treatises, biographical material, and artistic treatments, Leupp traces the origins of pre-Tokugawa homosexual traditions among monks and samurai, then describes the emergence of homosexual practices among commoners in Tokugawa cities. He argues that it was "nurture" rather than "nature" that accounted for such conspicuous male/male sexuality and that bisexuality was more prevalent than homosexuality. Detailed, thorough, and very readable, this study is the first in English or Japanese to address so comprehensively one of the most complex and intriguing aspects of Japanese history

"One drink from a gourd": Servants, shophands and laborers in the cities of Tokugawa Japan. (Volumes I and II).

During the Tokugawa period of Japanese history (1603-1868), hereditary, lifetime, and corvee forms of labor were gradually replaced by free wage-labor. While scholars to date have documented this transition in connection with village communities, this study describes the urban labor force of servants, shophands, day-laborers and manufacturing operatives. It suggests that changes in the nature of this labor force anticipated, and served as models for, later changes in the character of agrarian labor. The massive scale of urban construction over the course of the seventeenth century made reliance upon the traditional corvee inadequate and impractical. The Tokugawa regime and various domains were obliged to recognize free, hired "day-laborers" to supplement, and eventually supersede, peasant conscripts. Meanwhile, for their own political reasons, the authorities banned hereditary service in both samurai and commoner households, facilitating the appearance of short-term employment seasons, labor brokers and employment agencies. Relations between employers and employees were based ultimately on a cash nexus, and were often cool and impersonal, if not hostile. In manufacturing operations, capitalistic productive relations, based upon wage-labor in the strict Marxian sense, also emerged in Tokugawa cities. When Japan began to industrialize in the Meiji era, she had at hand not only a suitable peasant labor force, but also an urban proletariat already accustomed to the discipline of wage-labor.Ph.D.Asian historyUniversity of Michiganhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/162220/1/8920576.pd

Male Colors: The Construction of Homosexuality in Tokugawa Japan (Book Review)

Author Institution: University of Kansa