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Concept
Homosexuality in Japan
Summary
Records of men who have sex with men in Japan date back to ancient times. Western scholars have identified these as evidence of homosexuality in Japan. Though these relations had existed in Japan for millennia, they became most apparent to scholars during the Tokugawa (or Edo) period. Historical practices identified by scholars as homosexual include 衆道, 若衆道 and 男色.
The Japanese term 男色 is the Japanese reading of the same characters in Chinese, which literally mean "male colors". The character 色 (color) has the added meaning of "lust" in both China and Japan. This term was widely used to refer to some kind of male-to-male sex in a pre-modern era of Japan. The term 衆道 is also used, especially in older works.
During the Meiji period nanshoku started to become discouraged due to the rise of sexology within Japan and the process of westernization.
Modern terms for homosexuals include literally "same-sex-love person", "kettle"/"cauldron",
slang interchangeably used for gay men, drag queens, gender nonconforming men and transgender women, gay, ホモ or "homosexual", "pot"/"pan",
slang for "gay women", ビアン/レズ and "lesbian".
History of Japan
Historically, the Shinto religion "had no special code of morals and seems to have regarded sex as a natural phenomenon to be enjoyed with few inhibitions." While Shinto beliefs are diverse, Japanese Shintoism does not condemn homosexuality. A variety of obscure literary references to same-sex love exist in ancient sources, such as Japanese mythology, but many of these are so subtle as to be unreliable; another consideration is that declarations of affection for friends of the same sex were common.
Nevertheless, references do exist, and they become more numerous in the Heian period, roughly in the 11th century. For example, in The Tale of Genji, written in the early 11th century, men are frequently moved by the beauty of youths. In one scene the hero rejects a lady and instead sleeps with her young brother: "Genji pulled the boy down beside him ...
Official source
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