Despite the fact that I've now managed to deconstruct Roberts' "Growing Up Manly: Male Samurai Childhood in Late Edo-Era Tosa" into one post about the ceremonies and rites of samurai childhood and another about the depression of Sasaki Takayuki's father, I originally pulled the article from my reference library to share the portion on same-sex relationships as an addendum to this post.
Roberts' paper adds two additional dimensions to the previous post: relationships between boys who are relatively close in age to one another, and the amount of family involvement required in such relationships.
Spacing and annotations mine.
Youths often formed intimate bonds, and individual exchanges of oaths testifying to devotion between senior and junior youths who developed romantic and sexual relationships were quite common.
These relationships often deeply involved the parents, whose permission was sought by suitors. This permission was important because it helped to ensure a serial monogamy in these relations and thereby to prevent disruptive conflicts between suitors that might lead to domain punishments.
Domain punishments are a very bad thing, not just for the individuals involved but often also for their families. They occur when young samurai are up to no good, as defined under the social and moral codes of the time, and their antics happen to draw the attention of domain officials.
One example Roberts gives is that of a young samurai and his friends appealing to his father, a government official, regarding government affairs in "an overly forceful and disrespectful manner" - both rude and outside their station, and therefore very much frowned upon.
Other reasons could involve strife caused by (failed) relationships, fighting between different groups of boys, and all manner of other bad teenage samurai behavior.
Punishments could range from public shaming for the offender to repercussions to the position of the offender's father to being expelled from the domain. Not good. Do not recommend.
The evidence of Mori Hirosada's diary suggests that such relationships were common among youths from their early to late teens.
At age 16, his adopted son, Hirotake, "became infatuated with Watanabe Yakuma's son and heir, Kichitaro." While Hirotake waited at home with seven friends, two others went to Yakuma to declare Hirotake's love. Yakuma said that although he had no objections, his son might already be involved with someone else. He would check with his son and respond later.
As it turned out, Kichitaro, who was 15, already had a lover in another youth who was unwilling to let go, so the father told Hirotake to "please stop thinking about" Kichitaro. Hirotake did so, and the matter ended peaceably.
A similar incident in another Mori household in the kin group, one that did not resolve so cleanly, reveals how extensive kin networks could be affected by youthful emotions.
In that case, 19-year-old Mori Jujiro showed up at the house of Ishikawa Sozaemon and stated his desire to have a lover's relationship with his son Ichinosuke. The father said he was favorable to the idea and "thought highly" of Jujiro but he was presently busy with domain business. He promised to check later with his son and sent Jujiro home.
As it turned out, his son was already in a relationship with a youth from the Kataoka family.
Jujiro thought that the father told him at this point that he should "wait until a way could be opened up," suggesting perhaps that the Kataoka would give up the relationship, but this only complicated the situation. Soon members of the Mori, Ishikawa, and Kataoka kin groups gathered to discuss the situation, but none gave in.
This was the kind of conflict that would attract domain attention. When punishment appeared in the offing, the kin groups invited in outside mediators who resolved things by having the Kataoka youth give up his relationship with the young Ichinosuke and Jujiro promise not to press his suit: in effect a divorce all around.
This is a soap opera and a half and I would definitely watch the Netflix adaptation.
Personal honor was bound up in these youthful love relationships. This honor might lead to fights, and a youth's honor was also tied to that of his kin group, both factors that encouraged families to become deeply involved in the management and outcomes of these relationships.
This gives you a much better idea of why Kondo Isami might have been so concerned about relationships within the Shinsengumi, especially with the potential to cause honor-driven infighting among a group of well-armed young men.
You don't want the last order of business during your commanders' meetings to be "A pulled his sword on B because they're both in love with C" unless you take something for headaches first, and anyway there are probably more pressing matters to attend to.
Intimate relationships were thus made in familial and social contexts but they were generally understood to be temporary, usually ending when the younger partner grew into adulthood.
Although such relationships often created long-term bonds of friendship even after they ended, one more incident from Hirosada's diary reveals complications that might arise when a youth exited a relationship.
In 1769 when Fukuoka Kyuhachiro "had his genpuku ceremony and became a man," he sent notice via a friend to his adult lover that he wished to end the relationship. The lover did not want to end the relationship, and it took a number of people to finally get him to agree.
However he still would not return the written oath that Kyuhachiro had given him, and this oath "had many ridiculous things in it. Allowing it to remain would be very problematic for Kyuhachiro's future." Quite possibly it contained promises to obey the lover even if the lord's government ordered otherwise - a display of ultimate devotion, but one that could prove fatal if made public during adulthood. Finally after much negotiation the lover returned the oath.
If one might trust period literature, Kyuhachiro's love troubles were, by no means, unique. Ihara Saikaku published "The Great Mirror of Male Love" in 40 chapters beginning in 1687, a collection of tales of male-male relationships, many of which end tragically.
You can get an English translation of his stories here. There's also a trilogy of manga adaptations of some of the stories, done by various artists, published by B'sLovey Comics.
Although Hirosada's diary frequently refers to the emotions of intimate friendship, infatuation, and love that male youths had for each other, it is significant that no such language is used for the relationships between youthful men and women - or for that matter between adult men and women, although records of heterosexual relationships abound in his life and diary. (...) For a man to express his close relationship with another young man made him manly, while doing so concerning women put him in danger of becoming "womanly."
This, I think, is probably the takeaway point here: these relationships were the norm and expected but could obviously cause issues not only for the individuals involved but their families.
It's not so much that Kondo Isami had a homophobia moment, it's that he had a "what will happen to discipline in the ranks" moment. Someone please get him a bottle of Tylenol.
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Cleaning out my movie lists
SciFi List 👽
Barbie Movie List 💖
Barbie List Round 2 📝
Phone Gallery 📷
Off the top of my head ⭐
1920s deep dive 🎞
From an old Tumblr post ⏪
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The Cabinet of Dr.Caligari (1920) 🎞
The Kid (1921)🎞
Häxan (1922)🎞
Hard Luck (1922)🎞
Norrtullsligan (1923)🎞
Aelita (1924)🎞
Sherlock Jr (1924)🎞
The Battleship Potemkin (1925)🎞
Gold Rush (1925)🎞
Body and Soul (1925)🎞
The Big Parade (1925)🎞
Strike (1925)🎞
Faust (1926)🎞
A Page of Madness (1926)🎞
Menilmontant (1926)🎞
Metropolis (1927)🎞
Sunrise (1927)🎞
The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928)🎞
Steamboat Bill Jr (1928)🎞
The Docks of New York (1928)🎞
The Man Who Laughs (1928)🎞
Jujiro (1928)🎞
Zvenigora (1928) 🎞
The Crowd (1928)🎞
The Fall of the House of Usher (1928)🎞
Blackmail (1929)🎞
Finis Terræ (1929)🎞
Un Chien Andalou (1929)🎞
Twentieth Century (1934) 📝
Modern Times (1936) 👍
Gold Diggers of 1935 (1935) 📝
His Girl Friday (1940) 📝
Philadelphia Story (1940) 📝
Citizen Kane (1941) ⏪
Matter of Life and Death (1946) 📝
The Red Shoes (1948) 📝
The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951)👽
Tales of Hoffmann (1951) 📷
An American in Paris (1951) 📝
Earrings of Madame De... (1953) 📝
Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954) 👽
Forbidden Planet (1956) is 👽
1984 (1956) 👽
Mon Oncle (1958) 📝
The Children's Hour (1961) 📷
The Ladies Man (1961) 📝
The Cat Who Wore Sunglasses (1963) 📷
Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964) 💖
Dr. Strangelove (1964)👽
Young Girls of Rouchefort (1967) 📝
Playtime (1967) 📝
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) 📝
Model Shop (1969) 📝
Solaris (1972) 👽
The Godfather (1972) 📝
The Wicker Man (1973) 📷
Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)
Saturday Night Fever (1977) 📝
Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978) 👽
Attack of the Killer Tomatoes (1978) 👽
Heaven Can Wait (1978) 📝
All That Jazz (1979) 📝
Wrath of Khan (1982) 👽
And the Ship Sails On (1983) 📝
Splash (1984) 📝
Pee Wee's Big Adventure (1985) 📝
Wings of Desire (1987) 📝
Akira (1988) 👽
Woman on the Edge of a Nervous Breakdown (1988) 📝
Troop Beverly Hills (1989) ⭐
Edward Scissorhands (1990)💖
Party Girl (1995)📝
Ghost in the Shell (1995) 👽
Watermelon Woman (1996) ⏪
Goodwill Hunting (1997) ⏪
The Royal Tenenbaums (2001) ⭐
Big Fish (2003) 💖
Saving Face (2004) ⏪
Little Miss Sunshine (2006) 📷
Waitress (2007)📝
Pariah (2011) ⏪
Inception (2010) 👽
Ex Machina (2014) 👍
Grand Budapest Hotel (2014) 📷
Tangerine (2015) ⏪
Brooklyn (2015) 📷
Jackie (2016)💖
The Love Witch (2016) 💖
Lady Macbeth (2016)⭐
Handmaiden (2016) ⏪
Moonlight (2016) ⏪
Roma (2018) ⏪
Mama Mia 2 (2018) ⭐
Little Women (2019)💖
Greener Grass (2019) 💖
Knives Out (2019) ⭐
Barb and Star go to Vista Del Mar (2021)💖
White Noise (2022)💖
Do Revenge (2022) 💖
Knives Out 2 (2022) ⭐
X (2022) ⭐
The Wonder (2022) ⭐
Nope (2022) ⭐
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