Male Colors: The Construction of Homosexuality in Tokugawa Japan

MALE COLORS

MALE COLORS

The Construction of Homosexuality in

Tokugawa Japan

GARY P. LEUPP

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS

BERKELEY LOS ANGELES LONDON

The costs of publishing this book have been defrayed in part by the 1994 Hiromi Arisawa Memorial Award from the Books on Japan Fund with respect to Encounters with Aging: Mythologies of Menopause in Japan and North America, published by the University of California Press. The Fund is financed by The Japan Foundation from generous donations contributed by Japanese individuals and companies.

University of California Press Berkeley and Los Angeles, California

University of California Press, Ltd.

London, England

© 1995 by

The Regents of the University of California

First Paperback Printing 1997

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Leupp, Gary P.

Male colors: the construction of homosexuality in Tokugawa Japan / Gary P. Leupp.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index.

ISBN 0-520-20900-1 (alk. paper)

1. Homosexuality, Male—Japan—History. 2. Japan— History—Tokugawa period, 1600-1868. 3. Japan—Social life and customs.

I. Title.

HQ76.3.J3L48 1995

306.76'6'0952—dc20 94-40395

CIP

1-95

Printed in the United States of America 987654321

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984. @

Contents

Contents

Illustrations

Introduction

Chapter One The Pre-Tokugawa Homosexual Tradition

The Continental Traditions: China and Korea

Earliest Japanese References: Male-Male Sex at Court

Monastic Homosexuality

Homosexuality Among the Samurai: The Influence of Feudalism

Homosexuality Among the Samurai: The Influence of Monastic Pederasty

The Character of Pre-Tokugawa Nanshoku

Chapter Two The Commercialization of Nanshoku

The New Order and the Rise of a Culture of Prostitution

Homosexuality and Bourgeois Culture

Chapter Three Tokugawa Homosexual Culture

The Prevalence of Bisexuality

The Active-Passive Dichotomy

The Object of Desire

Egalitarian Homosexual Relationships

Social Status and Sexual Roles

Chapter Four Social Tolerance

Acceptance and Criticism

Nanshoku and the Law

Nanshoku and Violence

Chapter Five Nanshoku and the Construction of Gender

Three Distinctive Features of Nanshoku

The Fascination with Androgyny

The Acceptance of Male Sexual Passivity

Women’s Roles and the Insertee’s Role

Women’s Iro

The Taboo Against Male-Male Fellation

Nanshoku and Heterosexual Romance

Conclusions and Speculations

Appendix

List of Characters

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Illustrations

vii

Introduction

It is no secret to any careful student of Japanese society in the Tokugawa period (1603-1868) that during these two and a half centuries male homosexual behavior was extremely common, at least in towns and cities. Sex between males was not only widely tolerated among the articulate classes but positively celebrated in popular art and literature. Homosexual behavior was formally organized in such institutions as samurai mansions, Buddhist monasteries, and male brothels linked to the kabuki theater. It was, indeed, a salient feature of mainstream culture.

The generous vocabulary of terms relating to male-male sex in early modern Japanese reflects a society at ease with the phenomenon. Anyone perusing the abundant primary and secondary sources will encounter numerous allusions to the male eros (nanshoku); the way of youths (wakashūdō, often abbreviated as jakudo or shudō);¹ the way of men (nandō); the beautiful way (bidō); and the secret way (hidō). All these are euphemisms for male-male sex, conforming to certain specific conventions.

Such references occur not only in places one would most expect to find them—works on the history of sex life,² the history of manners,³ and the history of prostitution, as well as in com pilations of erotic prints—but also in local histories, works of art history, studies of the popular theater, biographies, diaries, law codes, personal testaments, medical treatises, popular fiction, travelogues, humorous anecdotes, and satirical poetry. The ubiquity of such allusions confirms that homosexuality was more than a marginal phenomenon in Tokugawa Japan; rather, it was a highly conspicuous, central, institutionalized element of social life.

Thus, just as one cannot understand the aesthetics, erotics, poetics, morals, even politics of ancient Greece without discussing the nature of Greek homosexuality, one cannot grasp many aspects of Tokugawa society and culture without understanding the specific construction of male-male sexual relationships during this era.¹ Even so, although an increasing number of scholars have addressed questions of gender and sexuality in Japanese history, few have seriously studied the homosexual tradition.²

The hesitation to do so is understandable. The topic of samesex relations remains controversial, both in Japan and in the West, despite the advent of the Queer Studies field in recent years. Scholars who are not gay, nor inclined to identify with much of the Queer Studies scholarship, may have avoided it, fearing that even to broach the subject might lead to assumptions about their own sexuality within a still rather homophobic academe.³ This consideration aside, the Japanese sources are often difficult. Addressing the subject properly, moreover, inevitably means dealing with a formidably substantial, evolving discourse on sexuality elsewhere in world history—particularly in Western classical antiquity. Debates within the field of the history of sexuality are often intense; one who casually begins a paper on some aspect of this history may, in soliciting colleagues’ feedback, come to regret having strayed into a minefield.

I myself have not entered this minefield without some hesitation. My training as a social historian specializing in Tokugawa Japan has allowed me to study the sources and draw some conclusions about the nature of Tokugawa sexuality. It has not, however, obliged me to engage the huge literature on homosexuality produced by historians of other eras and societies, to say nothing of works by scholars in such fields as psychology, anthropology, sociology, and literature. In connection with the present work— the first in-depth examination of male homosexuality in the Tokugawa period in any language—I have familiarized myself with some of this material. But I write primarily as an historian addressing students of Japanese history, not as an authority on the world history of sex.

The idea for this study took shape while I researched a doctoral dissertation on the topic of servants, shophands, and casual laborers in Tokugawa cities.⁴ At that time my problematic had more to do with incipient capitalism than with issues of sexuality. But in studying class relations—specifically employer-employee relationships in Tokugawa urban households—I encountered numerous references to sexual involvements between masters and their manservants, especially in samurai mansions, and was struck by various data that cropped up in my reading.⁵ I learned, for example, that at least fourteen wards⁴ in the metropolis of Edo (modern Tokyo) in the mid-eighteenth century specialized in male sex teahouses,⁵ that nearly six hundred extant literary works of the period dealt with homoerotic topics, and that at least seven of the fifteen Tokugawa shoguns (military rulers) had well-documented, sometimes very conspicuous, homosexual involvements.⁶

The more I read, the more I became persuaded that homosexual behavior was not merely common in Tokugawa society—at least urban society—but normative: the sources express the prevalent assumption that at least urban males were, in general, inclined toward sexual involvements with other males and that such involvements met with widespread tolerance. In particular, the literature candidly acknowledges men’s passion for boys or female-role actors. This is not to say that most men in Tokugawa society lacked sexual interest in women; rather, the sources suggest that heterosexual relationships, including marriage, were widely viewed as compatible, even complementary, with male-male sexual activity. There is some evidence for exclusive homosexuality in Tokugawa society, but male bisexuality appears to have been the rule.

Such hypotheses were not entirely new, but they seemed dramatic enough to warrant a major study.⁷ This book is the result. My discussion is limited, for the most part, to male homosexuality. Nevertheless, this question itself cannot be separated from broader questions of the social construction of gender nor, therefore, from the gamut of female sexual experience. I will thus also have occasion to touch upon Tokugawa lesbianism, though I concede that this topic deserves separate treatment.

In Chapter i I review the ancient Chinese homosexual tradition that influenced Japanese ideas and institutions, examine some of the earliest references to homosexuality in Japan, and describe the emergence of monastic and samurai homosexual traditions in the ancient and medieval periods. I observe that these traditions are to be explained largely by the absence of women in priestly and martial society. In Chapter 2 I discuss how the profound social changes accompanying the establishment of the Tokugawa order facilitated the emergence of a new, uniquely bourgeois homosexual culture centering around male teahouses and the kabuki theater. This homosexuality also resulted in part from a lack of women in early Tokugawa cities, but the tradition remained strong even as the urban sex ratio became more balanced.

In Chapter 3 I discuss the nature of homosexual life and suggest that, though there is some evidence for exclusively homosexual men, bisexuality was far more common. I also examine the role of class, status, and age in the construction of male-male relationships. In Chapter 4 I examine popular attitudes toward homosexuality, noting how an overall climate of social tolerance did not preclude the expression of ambivalent feelings toward it. Here I also examine ruling-class views as reflected in law and the writings of shogunate officials. The relationships between the homosexual tradition, the status of women, the Tokugawa fascination with androgyny, and heterosexual romance are examined in Chapter 5, where I also make some comparisons between the Japanese and other homosexual traditions. In my afterword I summarize my argument and discuss the decline of the homosexual tradition following Japan’s modern opening to the West.

In writing a study of this kind, one is constantly reminded of the inadequacy of traditional English vocabulary to discuss the history of sexuality. The term homosexuality itself, which has been with us barely a century, initially referred to a posited psychological condition in which the sexual instinct becomes focused primarily upon members of one’s own sex.⁸ But in various historical situations, men who preferred or enjoyed heterosexual intercourse also engaged in sex with other males—for ritualistic reasons (such as the male cult prostitution of the ancient Near East), for reasons of deprivation (as among the Caribbean pirates of the seventeenth century), or (particularly in cultures lacking a homophobic tradition) simply because male-male sex was a physically possible and potentially pleasurable option.⁹ The same motivations exist today.

No single form of sexual desire necessarily underlies the homosexuality of such situations. In some societies, a male’s wish to engage in a particular act (such as oral or anal sex) or to have sex with a partner of a particular age, ethnicity, or body type may be as important as the issue of the partner’s gender. Historians must therefore initially apprehend homosexuality not as an ahis- torical psychological condition but as behavior—a range of acts that may, in different contexts, signify significantly different constructions of sexual desire.

Sigmund Freud regarded the sexual impulse or instinct as a force independent of any given sexual object. Though he attempted to explain modern forms of homosexuality (inversion) in culturally specific terms (a childhood fixation of the male upon his mother, followed by self-identification with the mother and narcissism), he also noted that all men are capable of homosexual object selection.¹⁰ He observed that male-male sex was an institution endowed with important functions in classical (European ) cultures and hinted that, if the topic were studied in historical context, the pathological features might be separated from the anthropological.¹¹ This amounts to a suggestion that what is pathological (i.e., relating to disease or abnormality) in some cultures might in others represent no such abnormality but indeed might be produced and encouraged by the dominant culture. Even so, rather than invoking the posited classical, non-patholog- ical homosexuality in support of a value-neutral anthropological approach to modern inversion, Freud and some of his disciples assumed that the latter was a psychological condition to be treated and, if possible, cured.¹²

Even neo-Freudians such as Jacques Lacan, who would not regard homosexual desire as pathological, nevertheless explain it through reference to the Oedipus complex, conceptualized as a universal stage in the development of the individual. However, as French anti-psychiatry-movement theorists Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari emphasize, this complex itself is unique to modern capitalist society and the patriarchal family system underlying it.¹³ We have learned a great deal since Freud’s day about homosexual behavior in both past and present societies, and we now more clearly understand that the sexual impulse evolves according to different rules in these different societies. As Maurice Godelier wrote, It is not sexuality which haunts society, but society which haunts the body’s sexuality.¹⁴

One might add, with Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, that life is not determined by consciousness, but consciousness by life. Study of the real life-process of human beings allows us to demonstrate the development of the ideological reflexes and echoes of this life-process.¹⁵ Social structures such as family, class, and state shape sexual feelings, and in any class society the ruling elite determine what attitudes toward, and analyses of, sexual feelings and behavior will be widely articulated and promoted. Thus, in studying male-male sex in any historical context, we must examine how class-bound social structures, as well as ruling-class ideology, encourage particular forms of sexual desire and influence sexual behavior.¹⁶ We must attempt to explain the meaning of the specific construction of homosexual behavior in given past

societies and contribute to the emergence of what David Halperin calls a "radical, historical sociology of psychology/’

¹⁷

Rejecting, then, any depiction of homosexuality as a specific, ahistorical psychological condition, I nevertheless find it difficult to abandon the term homosexuality itself. There are no particularly attractive substitutes, although I will also use the recently popular if inelegant term male-male sex. In this work, both words should be understood to refer to some kind of sexual attraction or sexual intercourse between males. And, because I am writing in English and wish to avoid monotony, I find myself obliged to employ some other terms that, although somewhat tendentious, would be difficult to avoid without constructing a forbiddingly technical new lexicon. Rather than overusing such unwieldy expressions as transgenerational homosexuality, I employ words such as pederasty and catamite when they seem applicable. I use sodomy only when quoting hostile (e.g., Jesuit) sources or when translating the similarly derogatory Sino-Japa- nese term keikan.

I will frequently use the Japanese term nanshoku to refer to the specifically constructed homosexuality of premodern Japan. Of the terms for male-male sex cited earlier, this one was probably used most widely in the Tokugawa period. It is written with the characters for maie and color. Since ancient times in China, possibly as a result of the association between women’s cosmetics and eroticism, the latter character has been understood as a euphemism for sex. (Mishima Yukio exploited this association in entitling his novel about modern gay life in Japan Forbidden Colors [Kinjiki]).18 Chinese and Japanese dictionaries include sensual pleasure as one of the definitions of the character, and so, although I have chosen to entitle this study Male Colors, I acknowledge that this may in fact be a rather misleading, too literal translation of nanshoku.

The difficulty in rendering Japanese terms for male-male sex into English is illustrated by the definitions for nanshoku found in standard Japanese-English dictionaries. Kenkyushas New Japanese-English Dictionary defines it as follows:

n. sodomy; pederasty; buggery; a crime against nature; an unnatural act. ka: a sodomite; a pederast; a bugger; (vulgar) a homo; (vulgar) a fairy. o okonau: practice sodomy; go after strange flesh.¹⁹

Nelson’s authoritative Japanese-English Character Dictionary, meanwhile, renders nanshoku simply as sodomy.²⁰

One is struck by the fact that homosexuality does not appear as an equivalent for nanshoku in these reference works, perhaps to convey the archaic quality of the Japanese word. In any case, the definitions given above do more than indicate the dictionary editors’ homophobia; they suggest the problems of political consciousness, accuracy, and style that accompany any effort to describe nanshoku in English.

Of the terms given in the Kenkyusha dictionary, sodomy is inappropriate, partly because its very derivation associates malemale sex with damnation and death. Reflecting a generally homophobic Judeo-Christian tradition, it is offensive to many people, and it would in any case be an inaccurate substitute for nanshoku. Although, unlike homosexuality, it refers only to physical actions and in the context of an historical discussion may conjure up fewer anachronistic images than homosexuality, sodomy can also refer to bestiality or to certain heterosexual acts.

Pederasty, meanwhile, is at least etymologically inoffensive and is a roughly apt description of many nanshoku relationships.²¹ It can serve as an equivalent for other Japanese terms, such as shudō.²² But since nanshoku relationships between adult males separated by only a few years were not uncommon, pederasty is not an accurate translation of nanshoku. Although nearly all references to male-male sex in Japan involve anal intercourse, the term buggery is also unsuitable as an equivalent for nanshoku, not only because many find the word offensive but also because it refers only to a physical act.²³ Japanese terms such as nanshoku, by contrast, sometimes connote an emotional condition, or an etiquette, and stress the refinement and dignity of male-male sex. One need say nothing about the other dictionary definitions.

There simply is no ideal English rendering of nanshoku, and so in this work I will often use the Japanese term and its various synonyms without attempting to translate them. I hope the reader will garner some sense of their nuances through the contexts in which they occur.

Aside from the problems posed by terms for homosexuality in the broadest sense, there are problems in conceptualizing and describing specific sexual acts. Although I recognize that some dispute the accuracy of reference to passive and active roles in homosexual (or heterosexual) intercourse, I find them as appropriate to nanshoku as the more precise dichotomies inserter and insertee or penetrator and penetrated. I therefore use all these sets of terms. The latter may be more suitable than passive and active in describing oral sex, but in Tokugawa Japan the only homosexual act commonly referred to is role-structured anal sex.

For such terms as onnagata, oyama, kagema, and kage-ko, I use cross-dressing actor or cross-dressing male prostitute but also such phrases as female-role actor-prostitute.

Historians traditionally justify their calling by arguing that study of the past helps us to understand and improve the present world. In studying the history of sexuality, we may come to understand how contingent our sexual practices and prejudices are upon transient social institutions. Such an understanding may help, at least in some small way, to dissolve biases and phobias rooted in religious myth and encourage fair-minded people to tolerate sexual diversity in the contemporary world. I have in any case written this book in that hope.

This study has benefited enormously from comments, suggestions, leads, criticisms and shared research from many friends and colleagues, including Sandra Buckley, Margaret Childs, David Greenberg, Bret Hinsch, Earl Jackson, Jr., William Johnston, Neil Miller, Stephen O. Murray, Greg Pflugfelder, Paul Schalow, Laurence Senelick, Howard Solomon, John Soit, Taira Masayuki, Tao Demin, Tono Haruyuki, and Walter Williams. I alone, of course, am responsible for the contents.

I would also like to express my thanks to Sheila Levine, Laura Driussi, Scott Norton, and all at University of California Press, who have been wonderfully supportive throughout this project; to Christine Cavalier, for her expert photographic work; and to the students who have studied in my various Japanese history courses at Tufts University, especially my seminar on gender and sexuality in Japanese history. Their broad minds, hard work, and enthusiasm are a constant inspiration. Most of all, I thank my wife Mari for her encouragement and Sophie and Erik just for being themselves. May they inherit a more tolerant and rational world.

1 This term may also be pronounced shūdō.

2 sei seikatsu shi

3 fuzoku shi

4 machi or chō

5 nanshoku jay a

Chapter One

The Pre-Tokugawa

Homosexual Tradition

[Japanese Buddhist priests] are drawn to sins against nature and don’t deny it, they acknowledge it openly. This evil, moreover, is so public, so clear to all, men and women, young and old, and they are so used to seeing it, that they are neither depressed nor horrified.

Francis Xavier, 1549

The Continental Traditions: China and Korea

One must assume that male homosexual behavior, however specifically constructed, occurs to some extent in every society, in every era. But the historical record concerning its occurrence, forms, and conventions in early Japan is rather obscure. Although the unified Japanese state emerged in the mid-fourth century, Japan’s historical record is, at least by East Asian standards, rather short. The first extant mytho-historical text, the Kojiki (Record of ancient matters) was completed as late as AD. 712, and our first clear references to sex between males appear only in the late tenth century.

In China, by contrast, tales of courtly homosexuality date back to the sixth century B.C. Thus, it is not surprising that the Japanese, who from the sixth century A.D. borrowed much of their higher civilization from their continental neighbor, should have adopted varions elements of the Chinese homosexual tradition. Even the term nanshoku itself is simply the Japanese reading of the Chinese nanse, which bears the same meaning.¹

Long before the Tokugawa period, the Japanese had come to believe that they had learned nanshoku from the Middle Kingdom. The attribution, questionable though it may be, is of great importance in understanding the evolution of the homosexual tradition. Many societies have regarded the male-male sexuality in their own midst as a foreign import, and their view of homosexuality has been influenced by the nature of their relations with the foreign country concerned. The ancient Hebrews associated homosexuality with the pagan Egyptian and Canaanite cultures;² the ancient Greeks believed they had learned pederasty from the Persians;³ medieval Europeans regarded sodomy as an Arab peccadillo introduced into their culture by returning Crusaders.⁴ Many English of the Renaissance were convinced that the un- mentionable vice had reached their islands from abroad; depending upon the state of their international relations, they blamed Castile, Italy, Turkey, or France.⁵

In all of these cases, homosexuality was linked with rival or enemy cultures. Such associations did not necessarily lead to a negative view of male-male sexuality itself; the Greeks, for example, accepted paiderastia despite its putative origins in an enemy land. Still, Greek men regarded the insertee role in anal sex as far more suitable for Persians than for themselves. In Athens, male citizens were forbidden to prostitute themselves; the city’s male brothels were largely peopled by foreign boys.⁶

The Japanese, unlike these other peoples, associated nanshoku with a neighboring empire only rarely seen as threatening—and one acknowledged, moreover, to have provided the models for much of Japan’s high culture. The degree of Japanese respect for China varied through time, but the grandeur of this historical legacy was seldom questioned.⁷ Nanshoku, viewed as a component of this heritage, was a refined thing, a teaching or way.¹ Even during periods of tension with the Chinese empire, the Japanese never seem to have abandoned their tolerant attitude toward nan- shoku. And regardless of the state of Sino-Japanese relations, the Japanese nanshoku tradition drew heavily upon that of the Chinese. Tokugawa works on the topic repeatedly allude to famous homosexual relationships in the Chinese past, to continental ho- moerotic literature, and to Daoist and yin-yang theories of sexuality. Thus, a brief survey of the Chinese homosexual tradition seems appropriate at the outset of this study.⁸

Most of the earliest references to homosexuality in China refer to relationships between emperors or other rulers and their favorites.² The latter were sometimes eunuchs, "ravishing boys,’³ or studymates of about the same age as the royal patron; many were appointed to official posts or came to wield political power indirectly. The Han Fei Zi, written before 233 B.C., refers to a sexual relationship between Duke Ling of Wei (534-493 B.C.) and his minister Mizi Zia.⁹ Other late Zhou works record such loves as that of Prince Zhongxian of Chu for the young scholar Pan Zhang. Falling in love at first sight, these two were as affectionate as husband and wife, sharing the same coverlet and pillow with unbounded intimacy for one another.¹⁰ The fourth-century relationship between Prince Ai of Wei and his minister Lung Yang resulted in the term lungyang as a synonym for male-male sexuality.¹¹

All of the adult Former Han (206 B.C.-A.D. 8) emperors had male favorites: Gao (r. 206-195 B.C), according to the Historical Records,⁴ was won by the charms of a boy named Ji, and Hui (r. 194-188 B.C.) had a boy favorite named Hong. Neither partner, notes the work, had any particular talent or ability; both won prominence simply by their looks and graces.¹² Emperor Wen (r. 179-157 B.C.) developed a passion for a boatman named Deng Tong, and a castrated actor shared the bed of Emperor Wu (r. 140-87 B.C). The most celebrated imperial homosexual relationship was that between Emperor Ai (r. 6 B.C.-A.D. 1) and the boy Dong Xian. According to History of the Han,⁵ the emperor, called to a meeting while lying with his lover, cut of his sleeve rather than stir the boy from his sleep. Subsequently the term duanxiu (cut sleeve) became synonymous with homosexuality throughout East Asia.¹³

Such relationships became so prevalent as to warrant a special section in the Shiji and other historical works. The Shiji chapter begins with the observation, It is not women alone who can use their looks to attract the eye of the ruler; courtiers and eunuchs can play at that game as well. Many were the men of ancient times who gained favor in this way.¹⁴ Here and elsewhere one finds no condemnation of homosexual activity as such, although the author implicitly criticizes rulers for favoring base or unsuitable partners.

Evidence of homosexual relationships among the literati as well as the nobility dates from at least the third century A.D. An early anecdote describes how the philosopher Xi Kang (223-262) and the poet Yuan Ji (210-263) were observed having sex at the home of a mutual friend by the friend’s inquisitive wife. Their talents are much greater than yours, the wife is supposed to have told her husband. They must have befriended you for your knowledge.¹⁵ This reference, though humorous, suggests a tolerant and matter-of-fact attitude toward homosexuality among this class.

There seems to be evidence for homosexual relationships involving such poets and scholars as Li Bo (d. 762), Bo Juyi (772—846), Su Dongpo (1036-1102), and others in the Tang (618-907) and Northern Song (960-1126) periods.¹⁶ By the Qing period (1644-1912) the term Hanlin feng (tendency of the academicians, literally tendency of the Hanlin [Academy]) had been added to the long list of synonyms for male-male sexuality.¹⁷

Meanwhile, one finds increasing evidence of homosexuality among ordinary people. From the Tang period on, men of the southern coastal provinces acquired a reputation for homosexual interests; Fujian, with a tradition of maritime homosexuality, produced many eunuchs for the court, and homosexual marriage became common there. An older partner known as the qidi (promised elder brother) acquired a boy-bride called a qixiong (promised younger brother) in an arrangement approved and celebrated by the latter’s family. When the boy reached adulthood, his brother would arrange his marriage to a woman and pay the expenses. Apparently, involvement in such a relationship did not adversely affect one’s prospects for heterosexual marriage.¹⁸

The spread of male prostitution provides additional evidence for male-male sex among the common people. A work written early in the Northern Song period describes a honeycomb maze of alleys in a quarter of the capital Kaifeng, where customers go to … men who sell their bodies. There were also restaurants where male prostitutes plied this trade.¹⁹ In the Zhonghe era (1111-1117), however, for reasons that remain unclear, such prostitution was forbidden. Henceforth, according to the law, male prostitutes were to be punished with one hundred strokes of a bamboo rod and a hefty fine.²⁰

The law seems to have been observed in the breach, however, and in the Southern Song period (1127-1279) male prostitution flourished more than ever. Outside the new capital of Hangzhou, a homosexual red-light