by John Man
And the point was love, not sex. Homosexuality was considered by many men the purest form of bonding—long lasting, intense, meaningful; based on mutual trust and the highest forms of honor. Men also claimed that sex between an older man and a teenager was not in any way corrupting, but a natural expression of love, based on mutual regard. In Japan, such practices were accepted both among samurai, of high social status but often less well off, and nouveau riche townsmen, of low social status but with wealth and scope to indulge their interests.
For homosexuals, whether samurai or townsmen, there were many books defining the proper conduct of male love, which ideally linked a teenage boy with an older lover. The relationship was as sexual and romantic as any between the sexes, and to a gay samurai infinitely preferable. In a book of homoerotic tales,2 I found these words: “Male love is essentially different from the ordinary love of a man and a woman . . . Woman is a creature of absolutely no importance; but sincere pederastic love is true love.” Such commitment demanded all the hard work of a heterosexual relationship. “A young man should test an older man for at least five years,” wrote Yamamoto Tsunetomo. “Furthermore the older man should ascertain the younger’s real motives in the same way.”
The best-known book on gay love was Ihara Saikaku’s Nanshoku Okagami (The Great Mirror of Male Love),3 with its subtitle The Custom of Boy Love in our Land, a collection of forty tales published in 1686. Saikaku (he is always referred to by his given name) was the first Japanese writer to live exclusively on his earnings, because he knew how to appeal to a readership intrigued by sex. He was part of the “floating world” of society, fun, prostitution and theater that characterized high life in Kyoto, Edo and his native Osaka. His market for this book was the samurai and townsmen who patronized Kabuki. His aim was to entertain, and he did so by overstatement and literary allusion and clever arguments; this is not a great revelation by a gay writer, but a professional author eager to exploit sexuality in all its accepted forms. He distinguishes between bisexuals and fully committed gays, so-called woman haters, who were of course a minority, and therefore had to be promoted by Saikaku as people of culture and discernment, in a word, connoisseurs. Male love, he argues, preceded heterosexual love, had Chinese precedents, was practiced all over the world, and was therefore nobler and more sophisticated than male-female attachment. “A woman’s heart can be likened to the wisteria vine: though bearing lovely blossom it is twisted and bent. A youth may have a thorn or two, but he is like the first plum blossom of the new year exuding an indescribable fragrance. The only sensible choice is to dispense with women and turn instead to men.”
As for the relationship between samurai and boy lover, he insists that it should be both moral and formal, with an exchange of written and spoken vows, and occasionally some sort of self-mutilation as a proof of sincerity. If a rival made a bid for a boy, the older man would expect to fight to save his honor. Ideally, the older man (the nenja) provided social backing, emotional support and a model of manly behavior. In return, the boy (the wakashu) was supposed to be a good student of the samurai lifestyle and ideals. His age was indicated by his hairstyle: a shaven crown with a forelock at eleven, the sidelocks cut off square at fourteen, and a completely shaved head at eighteen to proclaim adulthood and the end of being a wakashu. So the affair was as fleeting as youth itself. While it lasted, it was based on the model of a male-female relationship, with the literally and socially “superior” male penetrating the “inferior,” “passive” “female.” Since the relationship had all the intensity of a heterosexual one, infidelity might inspire equivalent jealousy in the older man and occasionally terrible acts of vengeance.
It was not all about adult-boy relationships, though, nor was it all fun and high ideals. In Kabuki theater, the use of boys to play the women’s roles was banned in the 1650s, after which all roles were played by men. Homosexuality and prostitution were part and parcel of the system, which had its share of exploitation, hypocrisy and tackiness. The road to stardom, in Kyoto as in Hollywood, often started on the casting couch and led back to it, with increasing desperation as time went by. As Saikaku wrote, “since everyone wore the hairstyle of adult men, it was still possible at age thirty-four or thirty-five for youthful-looking actors to get under a man’s robe. How strange are the ways of love!”
Note, finally, that none of the justifications and writings are from the point of view of the younger partners. This was, at heart, a relationship based on power. No one asked teenage boys what they thought about being on the receiving end. That something was amiss is suggested by the fact that in the Meiji era after 1868 the fashion for male/male sex went into sudden decline.
Whatever their views, Japanese homosexuals in the mid–nineteenth century had none of the social inhibitions that have characterized gay relationships in the West. Any male relationship might find sexual expression. Tradition emphasized the importance of love between Buddhist clergy and samurai, or between priests and their young acolytes. Despite the priestly renunciation of worldly pleasures, love (so its practitioners argued) could lead to spiritual enlightenment. Loyalty of a religious intensity combined with sex: that forged a bond of a strength hard for non-Japanese to imagine.
So did Saigo and Gessho have a sexual relationship? Perhaps. It would not have mattered. But I think not, because of their ages, their circumstances and their characters. Saigo was thirty, Gessho forty-five, and both were outside the worlds in which homosexuality thrived. Besides, for Saigo, sex was never a dominant aspect of life. His brief youthful marriage was over, unmourned; sex would not have been the defining characteristic of his commitment to Gessho. The question has no answer, because no one knows. But in the end, who cares? There was so much more going on.
Was there anything else in Kyoto likely to tempt Saigo from the ways of virtue? Not much, I think.
I was with my guide Noriko, walking steeply up narrow streets toward Gessho’s temple, when a kimonoed figure with piled-up hair shimmered across the road like a ghost. A geisha, who would not have been out of place in Kyoto when Saigo was here. Well, not quite a geisha. “She’s only a maiko, an apprentice,” said Noriko. “And it’s afternoon, so she has no makeup on.” She still had a long, hard and expensive road ahead of her. To buy her kimonos and decorations she would have to spend about $15,000 and her training would be rigorous. This was (and is) a profession, nothing to do with prostitution, everything to do with performance art—the exact ways to greet and sit, the learning and presentation of songs and dances by the score, the precise gestures in the making, pouring and presentation of tea, the symbol of the best of Japanese etiquette: grace, politeness, respect.
“Why would anyone do this?”
“Well, a geisha can earn about $1,500 a day. Rich businessmen, politicians . . . For them it is a status symbol.”
“We have nothing similar in the West.”
Noriko, who had spent years in London, thought for a moment. “Maybe an equivalent would be hiring a ballet dancer to perform at a private party.”
Even that wouldn’t quite measure up, actually. A geisha was and is a girl of many qualities: stamina, physical and social skills, and (I was surprised to learn) intelligence, because they were and are good at conversation. “They study newspapers every day, and are expected to be able to talk about everything, politics, history, drama. Even a girl of eighteen, like that maiko, should sound like an educated woman of twenty-five or thirty.” And, of course, the art of conversation demands another virtue: discretion. “These girls are very secretive. They never talk about what was talked about.”
But surely this is not a real life? What happens to them?
“At about thirty, it seems that they all start to think: should I stay in or get out? Get married, or do something completely different, like teaching? But you can stay as long as you want, as long as you can still find employment, unless you get married. Then you have to quit.”
“But it’s not really a preparation for marriage, is it?”
“No. It’s not like a finishing school. They don’t learn about cooking or housekeeping.”
Saigo was not attracted to the world of geishas. His divorce had left him wary of women. “I have kept a monk’s vows as regards women,” he wrote. “I have no desire to marry again.” This would not remain true, on either count, because later he would remarry, and have two mistresses, and father children; but always sex, love and marriage took second place to whatever else was going on in his life, which at this moment involved some very discreet politicking on his lord’s behalf.
Noriko and I had reached a flight of limestone steps leading up to a portico with upturned eaves. Behind was Gessho’s temple, Kiyomizu, one of Kyoto’s finest and most famous, a place of huge wooden beams and overarching roofs and timber platforms jutting from the steep forested slope that rears up like a breaking wave and falls to Kyoto below. The place dates from the eighth century, when a priest first found the spring of “clear water” which gives the site its name, and dedicated the temple to Kannon, the god or goddess (he or she can be either) of mercy, seeing and hearing all with his/her eleven heads. Almost inevitably, given its wooden structure, the original temple fell prey to fire, to be replaced by the present seventeenth-century one. The temple is the quintessence of history, and therefore an essential educational experience. We could hardly walk for schoolkids, snatching pictures on their mobiles. When Gessho was here, it was a sanctuary of chants and bells, well clear of the city.
But not at all suitable for clandestine meetings. Prince Konoe, the link between court and temple, could meet Gessho innocuously enough in Kiyomizu (or rather in Gessho’s sub-temple, of which he was head). But to meet Saigo, Gessho would walk a couple of kilometers to the southwest, to another complex of Zen Buddhist temples and sub-temples, Tofuku. Today, it is surrounded by the city; but in Saigo’s day it was isolated, because it was here, east of the Kamo River, that the bodies of executed criminals were dumped; few wanted to come this way, or penetrate the surrounding forest. Why would they when they would not be allowed into the temple complex?
Behind a gateway so gorgeous, immense and ornate that it is now an official national treasure lies the Abbot’s Hall, with formal gardens of raked pebbles and checkered stone squares and azalea shrubs. Deeper into the temple, covered bridges and gates lead to twenty-five sub-temples, all hidden enclaves where the public doesn’t go. One is the Hokoshui sub-temple, approached through a door held shut by a chain that rattles over a cog wheel. A maze of paths and trim hedges runs away up a hillside under overarching trees and past stone benches, all designed to empty the mind and encourage concentration. Here there was a teahouse.
A shaven-headed monk, with a powerfully handsome face and an aura of Zen calm, explained through my guide Noriko how perfect this secluded spot was for furtive meetings and secret talks. “This place was sponsored by the Shimazu family, and it had its own police, so even if the shogun’s police wanted to arrest someone, they could not gain entry. The teahouse? Oh, after the restoration, when the Shimazus lost influence, the money stopped, and the teahouse fell into disrepair. It was over there”—he pointed to a space in the woodland—“but it collapsed, and there’s no trace of it anymore. It was called Collecting Firewood. Firewood is like knowledge, you see. You can collect it all you like, but if you don’t know how to use it, it’s useless.”
So for a month whispers trickled from Saigo into Gessho’s ear in the shadowy garden of Hokoshui, from Gessho to Konoe as the courtier visited his family graves in Kiyomizu, and from there into the galleries and painted rooms of the imperial palace. All seemed well. In March 1858 Saigo left for Edo, sure that Keiki was about to be nominated as the shogun’s heir.
Not so. There was a countercurrent, much stronger than the current generated by Saigo. It came from the man who was soon to be Japan’s most powerful figure, Ii (pronounced “ee-ee”) Naosuke, the Ii family being the long-established rulers of Omi (roughly present-day Shiga prefecture). His aim was to kill off any move toward imperial independence and to shore up shogunal authority. Under his influence, a draft edict which might have strengthened the pro-Keiki gang was amended so that it simply urged the shogun to move fast to name an heir, any heir. Shortly afterward, in May 1858, Ii was appointed “great elder” of the Council of Elders—a sort of deputy to the shogun, the ailing Iesada, and in effect regent. He ordered approval of the stalled Harris Treaty, rejected Keiki, named a new heir and ordered Keiki’s top supporters to be placed under house arrest.
Panic in the ranks of Satsuma. Saigo vanished posthaste to Kagoshima to consult Nariakira, who a week later sent him back to Kyoto to find some way of regaining influence. In the stifling heat of high summer, he started to arrange meetings to bring himself up to date and work out plans of action.
Then: catastrophe upon catastrophe.
Back in Kagoshima, Nariakira, still in the prime of life at forty-nine, had fallen ill with fever and diarrhea. Shortly after midnight on August 24, he realized that he was dying and summoned his senior aide. With a two-year-old son who was too young to inherit, he authorized his retired father to nominate as heir either Hisamitsu, his former rival and half-brother, or Hisamitsu’s son, Tadayoshi. He died later that morning.
The news reached Saigo in Kyoto eleven days later. He had only been back in the city two weeks.
7
THE WAY OF THE WARRIOR: BUSHIDO
WITH THE END OF THE “WARRING STATES” PERIOD IN THE years after 1600,1 the Tokugawa shoguns who unified Japan brought not only peace but remarkable stability through an equally remarkable self-imposed isolation. From near-anarchy the country turned to its opposite, imposing on itself what one scholar has called “the most artificially and politically planned and structured society in Japanese history.”2
The most famous, and still puzzling, consequence of the peace was the rejection of firearms. The new rulers knew the power of the gun only too well, because in the crucial battle of Nagashino in 1575 sword-wielding cavalry had been shot down by a torrent of fire from muskets introduced by Portuguese traders. You might think this would have inspired the development of effective firearms. Quite the contrary. Ieyasu, the second Tokugawa shogun, centralized the manufacture of guns, with the government as sole purchaser. But with no enemies, government purchases declined to almost zero. Why this happened is much debated. One reason was the recognition that the gun made for social instability; another had to do with the Japanese fear of invasion and of gunpowder—remember the Mongols!—and the consequent rejection of foreign influences. Firearms, the symbols of barbarism, became detestable, samurai swords the guarantee of freedom and purity. As an island culture, Japan could turn fear into policy. It retreated from gunpowder, and into itself, for 250 years.
In one of the most extraordinary episodes in history, contacts with foreign powers went into reverse and virtually ceased. Christian missionaries had been effective for over fifty years, but Ieyasu turned against them. Converts were martyred by the thousand and missionaries banished, many of those who hung on being tortured and murdered. In 1639 the shogun slammed the door: no Japanese could leave, no foreigners could enter, and all foreign trade was restricted to one port, Nagasaki, which was under the government’s direct control. Almost every European power gave up. Only the Dutch remained, effectively imprisoned on a little island off Nagasaki. Foreign influence and products became mere trickles, leaking in from Nagasaki, from Korea and—crucially for our story—from China, tiptoeing in along the newly conquered Ryukyu Islands to Kyushu, Saigo’s home province, in the far south. Two hundred years later, the “closed country” policy had become as fixed as holy writ, and Japan had fallen far behind “barbarian” powers in science, industry and military technology.
On the other hand, there were advantages. Japan preserved its independence from colonization; it maintained a remarkable social cohesiveness, undisturbed by class warfare; and despite its conservatism and the supposed inferiority of merchants, the economy grew strong
, with signs of things to come: the house of Mitsui (yes, the forefather of today’s corporation) gave away umbrellas as “free gifts” to people caught in the rain. In the early nineteenth century Japan was both a living fossil and also well prepared for change.
Low-level violence, too, declined, at least officially. According to the Tokugawa military code, “The governors of provinces and other lords are forbidden to engage in private disputes.” Ieyasu decreed the destruction of all nonresidential castles, an order fulfilled with remarkable speed, mostly within days. Local communities lost their traditional independence. Merchants knew their place: they made and lent money, and encouraged the arts, but kept out of government. Religion was not a threat, since Buddhism made no serious claim to govern. The provincial and local rulers—the daimyos—though allowed to preserve their current defense levels, were forbidden to build ships, or extend their armies, or declare war. They had to undertake time-consuming, expensive stays in Edo, where they set up households and engaged in ceremonies of excruciating tedium and complexity. Ostensibly, all this was to show their loyalty; in fact they had no choice because their households in the shogunal capital were in effect hostages. Violence was severely punished. A Buddhist priest recorded what happened when some villagers fought over water for irrigation: “The 83 farmers of the Sesshu Province who were involved in the fight over water were executed . . . Even a thirteen-year-old youth was executed as a surrogate for his father.” Overall, if a recurrent cliché in official documents is to be believed, people were grateful for “the peaceful tranquility of the land.” The Tokugawa peace froze Japan in its tracks, in a system that balanced top-down control and bottom-up independence, with the samurai acting as middlemen and enforcers.