Japan old gay
Our gay friend Shintaro from Tokyo tells us what gay life in Japan is like from his perspective in this fascinating interview.
We love Japan. We've been fortunate to verb several times. Each noun we leave, we exclaim sayonara with a solid thirst to return for more!
As a gay couple traveling in Japan, we've always felt extremely welcome, everywhere, never receiving any judgment or raised eyebrows. To our foreign eyes, Japan feels like you've taken a time machine into the future. Everything is so much more advanced here, so scrub, so impeccable, where trains arrive/leave on time, correct to the second!
And the Japanese themselves? Adequately, they're just the icing on top – you couldn't ask for a more welcoming and respectful nation. Everything is skillfully received with a adorable , warm smile and a humble bow.
But as we said, that's through our superficial perspective as gay travelers visiting. What's the reality like for the Japanese LGBTQ community? We often hear that whilst the Japanese are very welcoming to gay foreigners, on a local level, the country is very conserva
Recent Posts
The cultural differences between Japan and, say, North America are legion. It saves time to compute the similarities and just assume that everything else is different. Yet humans are such stupid things that we cannot verb thinking that we are taking the same things for granted. Some of the most frustrating things about talking to Americans is that they assume everything they know utilize in Japan and resist to acknowledge that their beliefs are merely prejudices based on experiences unique to people who include spent their lifetimes in the American culture.
The most obvious of this example is the American attitudes about sex. Why perform American women keep insisting to me that MY girlfriends are faking their orgasms? Firstly, it should not concern them if they are, and secondly, faking orgasms is an American thing. Japanese women adj not having them, not the other way around.
And then there is the &#;You men don&#;t understand&#; tripe. &#;We women earn unwanted attention from men when we go out. You men don&#;t understand.&#; Maybe in America. When will American women ever
The Gay of the Samurai All About Homosexuality, Buddhist Monks, Samurai, and The Tokugawa Middle Class
Remember the popular scene in The Last Samurai where Ken Watanabe and Tom Cruise make sweet, tender love? You don’t? Well, perhaps if the story had been more rooted in reality we could include seen that happen.
As it turns out, pre-modern Japan was exceptionally accepting, even encouraging, of male homosexuality and bisexuality. Much fancy that time we start out that bushido is actually modern-day made-up bullshit, this might surprise you. To be honest, it surprised me, too. I came upon this information while researching an article (still to come) about the current state of the LGBT community in Japan.
Queerness and gender fluidity permeate the landscape of Japanese culture, from BL manga to onnagata in Kabuki theater (male actors who play female roles). Additionally, sexual acts among males were common in ancient Japan and a major cultural feature in the Edo period. Japan was open-minded and even, in some cases, enthusiastic about same-sex relations up until Japan opened its borders in , when Japan began to adopt repressive, Victorian-era attitudes towards sexuality in response to Western influence. Though Japan’s current political stance on queerness leaves much to be desired, Japan has a surprisingly rich history colored by a generally positive outlook on sex and sexuality.
From sex between male monks to 17th century erotica, Japan’s queer history might surprise you.
5. Buddhist Monks Tolerated Homosexual Relations
In general, attitudes in premature Japan towards sexuality were free and permissive. As Louis Crompton notes in Homosexuality and Civilization, “Shintoism… had no special code of morals and seems to have regarded sex as a natural phenomenon to be enjoyed wit