{"id":1609,"date":"2025-10-26T17:52:55","date_gmt":"2025-10-26T17:52:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/world\/?p=1609"},"modified":"2025-11-22T20:34:56","modified_gmt":"2025-11-22T20:34:56","slug":"from-saikaku-to-today-a-literary-lens-on-japans-queer-identities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/world\/2025\/10\/from-saikaku-to-today-a-literary-lens-on-japans-queer-identities\/","title":{"rendered":"From Saikaku to Today: A Literary Lens on Japan\u2019s Queer Identities"},"content":{"rendered":"

“‘Why in the world did \u2018the man who loved love\u2019 waste such vast quantities of gold and silver on his myriad women, when the only pleasure and excitement to be found is in male love?”1<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n

The concluding words to Ihara Saikaku\u2019s introduction of his work The Great Mirror of Male Love (Nanshoku Okagami) encapsulates his message. Why love women when you can love men? His work, which chronicled forty stories of male\u2013male sexuality, enjoyed broad appeal and faced little controversy at publication.2<\/a> <\/sup>In today\u2019s Japan however this is difficult to imagine, with contemporary lawmakers describing same-sex relations as \u2018unproductive\u2019 and threatening a \u2018breakdown of the family.\u20193<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n

Through various literary works, Sabine Fr\u00fchst\u00fcck surveys the iterations of queer identities that \u2018ultimately lead to today\u2019s LGBTQIA+ community,\u2019 arguing that today\u2019s queer communities in Japan variably \u2018insist on an ordinariness\u2019 and \u2018normalisation\u2019.4<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n

Fr\u00fchst\u00fcck\u2019s starting point, Ihara\u2019s The Great Mirror of Male Love,<\/i> provides an insight into the long tradition of male\u2013male sexual culture present in the warrior class, Buddhist monks, and in the entertainment world. Ihara attempts \u2018to reflect in this mirror all of the varied manifestations of male love.\u20195<\/a><\/sup> In premodern Japan, popular literature incorporated male love as a natural part of the broader literary theme of sexual relationships within society, and as a marker of sophistication and culture.6<\/a><\/sup> For Ihara then, the central tension was not to prove male\u2013male love as natural, but as superior to male\u2013female love.<\/p>\n

From The Great Mirror of Male Love,<\/i> Fr\u00fchst\u00fcck takes us to Mori \u014cgai\u2019s Vita Sexualis (Wita Sekusuarisu).<\/i> Published in 1909, reception to Mori\u2019s novel marked a change in attitudes to same-sex love. The semi-autobiographical novel which detailed the sexual history of the protagonist received backlash and was banned.7<\/a><\/sup> The novel\u2019s title marks this shift as well, with the title being derived from Richard von Krafft-Ebing’s Psychopathia Sexualis<\/i>, which describes same-sex attractions as sexual anomalies and mental degeneration.8<\/a><\/sup> Fr\u00fchst\u00fcck describes this change in attitude as a result of an increase in Western influence.9<\/a><\/sup> Indeed, Mori seems to be influenced by a range of European authors. In a two-part article published in 1902 to 1903, he mentions more than fifty European scholars of sexual psychology, including Sigmund Freud.10<\/a><\/sup> By the 1900s, the \u2018love of beautiful boys\u2019 illustrated by Ihara was replaced by \u2018hentai seiyoku\u2019 or \u2018perverse sexual desire\u2019 which emphasised the physicality of relationships over their spirituality.<\/p>\n

Next in Fr\u00fchst\u00fcck\u2019s survey is Yoshiya Nobuko\u2019s works. Yoshiya was Japan\u2019s first public figure in the twentieth century to openly identify as a lesbian. Notably, she published Flower Tales (Hana Monogatari,<\/i> 1916\u20131924), a collection of short stories centering female romantic friendships, and a novel, Women\u2019s Friendship (Onna no Y\u016bj\u014d),<\/i> serialized in Fujin Kurabu<\/i> (1933\u20131935). The author in her own life delayed \u2018adopting\u2019 her partner as a means to civil union to advocate for same-sex marriage.11<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n

Miyatake Gaikotsu\u2019s Hannannyok\u014d (Thoughts on Hermaphroditism,<\/i> 1922), was a collection of stories that centered sexually and gender nonnormative individuals from a mix of rumors and legends. Distributed under the counter and aimed as much at entertaining readers as at imagining a utopian future of universal hermaphroditism, it echoed contemporary European sexology, such as the works of German researcher Magnus Hirschfeld.12<\/a><\/sup> Reflecting a transnational exchange of ideas, the text shows how early twentieth-century thinkers in both Japan and Europe were beginning to question binary gender and sexual norms.<\/p>\n

Approaching the present day, Being Lesbian (\u2018Rezubian\u2019 to aru to iu koto,<\/i> 1992) by Kakefuda Hiroko critiques \u2018compulsory heterosexuality\u2019 and gave impetus to genres of media specifically catering for sexual minorities. The text preceded the HIV\/AIDS epidemic which enabled network building between previously disparate gay and lesbian groups, as well as reframing discussions about queer identities as a human rights issue.13<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n

Today\u2019s Japan faces a range of issues concerning LGBTQ+ rights. While public sentiment increasingly recognises the discrimination queer people face, and both corporations and lawmakers move toward institutionalising anti-discrimination measures, same-sex marriage remains unrecognised. Stagnant policies continue to shape the ruling parties\u2019 approach to explicit prohibition of sex and gender-based discrimination.14<\/a><\/sup> The recent election of conservative Prime Minister Takaichi Sanae further signals limited prospects for progressive reform.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Ihara Saikaku, The Great Mirror of Male Love<\/i>, trans. Paul Gordon Schalow (Stanford, 1990), p. 56. \u21a9<\/a><\/span><\/li>\n
  2. Sabine Fr\u00fchst\u00fcck, Gender and Sexuality in Modern Japan<\/i> (Cambridge, 2022), p. 144. \u21a9<\/a><\/span><\/li>\n
  3. Ibid, p. 159. \u21a9<\/a><\/span><\/li>\n
  4. Ibid, p. 60. \u21a9<\/a><\/span><\/li>\n
  5. Ihara, The Great Mirror of Male Love<\/i>, p. 56. \u21a9<\/a><\/span><\/li>\n
  6. Ibid, p. 6. \u21a9<\/a><\/span><\/li>\n
  7. Fr\u00fchst\u00fcck, Gender and Sexuality in Modern Japan<\/i>, p. 146. \u21a9<\/a><\/span><\/li>\n
  8. Yoshiyuki Nakai, \u2018\u014cgai’s Craft: Literary Techniques and Themes in Vita Sexualis\u2019, Monumenta Nipponica<\/i>, 35:2 (Summer 1980), p. 228. \u21a9<\/a><\/span><\/li>\n
  9. Fr\u00fchst\u00fcck, Gender and Sexuality in Modern Japan<\/i>, p. 146. \u21a9<\/a><\/span><\/li>\n
  10. Nakai, \u2018\u014cgai’s Craft: Literary Techniques and Themes in Vita Sexualis\u2019, p. 229. \u21a9<\/a><\/span><\/li>\n
  11. Jennifer Robertson, \u2018Yoshiya Nobuko: Out and Outspoken in Practice and Prose,\u2019 in Same-Sex Cultures and Sexualities: An Anthropological Reader<\/i>, ed. Jennifer Robertson (London, 2005), p. 164. \u21a9<\/a><\/span><\/li>\n
  12. Fr\u00fchst\u00fcck, Gender and Sexuality in Modern Japan<\/i>, p. 149. \u21a9<\/a><\/span><\/li>\n
  13. Ibid, p. 152. \u21a9<\/a><\/span><\/li>\n
  14. Ibid, pp. 154\u2013156. \u21a9<\/a><\/span><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    “‘Why in the world did \u2018the man who loved love\u2019 waste such vast quantities of gold and silver on his myriad women, when the only pleasure and excitement to be found is in male love?”1 The concluding words to Ihara Saikaku\u2019s introduction of his work The Great Mirror of Male Love (Nanshoku Okagami) encapsulates his … Continue reading “From Saikaku to Today: A Literary Lens on Japan\u2019s Queer Identities”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":64,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1609","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1609","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/64"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1609"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1609\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1794,"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1609\/revisions\/1794"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1609"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1609"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1609"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}