25. Chrysanthemums and Golden Bums: Male Love in Pre-Modern Japan
History is Gay
Leigh Pfeffer
4.6 • 536 Ratings
🗓️ 15 October 2019
⏱️ 92 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
That's right, Leigh and Gretchen are back with another delightful look at the history of homosexuality in East Asian history! Episode 3 explored homosexuality in Ancient China but this time, they're heading over to Japan to take a closer look at Buddhism, samurai tradition, and the economy-shaped homosexuality in the Tokugawa shogunate. But it's not all context, you'll laugh along with us at some of the monks' exploits, swoon over romantic queer poetry, and peer into the delights of the floating world. So strap in for an exciting look at the rich history of male and female homosexuality in Japan!
Outline
0:00 – Introduction
6:37 – Main Topic: Male/Male Homosexuality in Pre-Modern Japan
6:52 – Socio-Historical and Religious Context
15:47 – Fun Segment: Word of the Week
25:25 – Earliest References to Male Love in Japan
28:47 – The Monastic Tradition
42:40 – The Samurai Tradition and Undying Devotion
48:44 – The Rise of Kabuki and Commercialized Nanshoku
1:03:00 – Male Love in Popular Tokugawa Literature and Art
1:17:57 – Female/Female Homosexuality in Japan
1:23:43 – Main Takeaways/Conclusions
1:25:29 – How Gay were They?
1:26:40 – Closing and Where to Find us Online
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to History is Gay, a podcast that examines the underappreciated and overlooked queer ladies, gents, and gentle enbies that have always been there in the unexplored corners of history, because history has never been as straight as you think. |
| 0:20.1 | Music My name is Gretchen. |
| 0:34.0 | And I'm Lee. |
| 0:35.1 | And we are back from a very long hiatus. Yes. Hey. Hey, everybody. Thank you for |
| 0:41.9 | being patient with us as we've failed to get on a regular schedule once again. But we're back. |
| 0:49.3 | We promise we're not gone. Life is just messy and busy and super fun. But we have an episode for you, |
| 0:57.5 | and it's Halloween again. So, yay. It's not a Halloween themed episode, but we're just excited |
| 1:04.6 | that it's Spoopy Time. Yes. Spoopy Time is the best time. Yes. I am one of the Spooky |
| 1:09.7 | queers. That is what I am. It's like the only |
| 1:13.3 | holiday I care about. Mood. So this time we're going to be talking about homosexuality in |
| 1:22.9 | pre-modern Japan. Yay! Yeah, this is an episode that we had planned for before we went on hiatus and then went on |
| 1:32.8 | hiatus and then came back to it and went, oh man, I don't remember any of this stuff. |
| 1:37.4 | I've got to reread everything. |
| 1:38.7 | We've got to redo our research. |
| 1:42.6 | Totally. |
| 1:43.4 | Not that we mind. A couple of Ravenclaws are like, oh no, I have to do more work. I have to do more of the homework. I assigned myself. |
| 1:54.5 | Yeah. Right. Because it's not like we're doing this for school. Yeah. This is just fun, kids. |
| 1:59.4 | So yeah, we're going to be going more into detail about homosexuality in Japan in later |
| 2:06.6 | periods in a future episode or two because there's some really fascinating stuff from the |
| 2:10.4 | post-war period, and that will include more focus on the experience of queer women. |
| 2:16.4 | But today's episode will be focusing on medieval |
| 2:19.3 | slash feudal Japan and the way that male male sex and relationships evolved from a monastic |
... |
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