The first missionaries in Japan: culture shock
On 15 August 1549, the day of Mary’s Assumption, the first three Jesuits arrived in Japan.Footnote 1 Francis Xavier (1506–52) and Cosme de Torres (1510–70) were accompanied by Brother Juan Fernandez (1526–67). All three are well-known for having started the process of accumulating European knowledge about Japan and the Japanese, and each has left their own testimony. Although the Jesuit literature on the topic has downplayed their dismay at what they found to be normal at the other end of the world, their reactions can only be characterised as simple culture shock. In his first letter to his confrères in Europe, Xavier reported on what he had seen in the monasteries of Kagoshima, the castle town of Kyushu’s southernmost domain of Satsuma. It stood to reason that, having arrived in Japan without being merchants, the Jesuits would start by searching out the company of those who as shepherds of their flocks were of status comparable to what they themselves held in Europe.
Life in a Japanese monastery turned out to be an eye-opening experience. It was all Xavier could do not to lose his temper when he wrote about his colleagues, the ‘bonzes, who are much given to the sins that are abhorred by nature. The bonzes even confess to it and don’t deny it. This is universally recognized and clear to everyone, whether they be men, women, young or old’.Footnote 2 It was especially the openness with which these ‘sins against nature’ were committed in Japan that shocked Xavier and his companions. They knew, of course, that such sins were committed in Europe as well, but if so they were always subject to the most rigorous secrecy, for to confess to them in public carried the death penalty in most places. A few lines later, Xavier admits to having spoken his mind on the matter:
We have often told the bonzes that they should not commit such awful sins; but nothing we tell them has any effect, all they do is laugh at us without being ashamed to hear themselves scolded for such an ugly sin. These bonzes keep many young boys in their monasteries, who are the sons of noblemen and whom they teach to read and write and with whom they commit their evil deeds. This sin is so widespread that even though everyone agrees it is evil, no-one tries to stop it.Footnote 3
After spending his first year in Satsuma, where he was much disappointed in the bonzes, Xavier travelled by boat to Hirado. He arrived at the beginning of September 1550. From there he planned to find a boat to take him to Miyako (or Kyoto), Japan’s capital city in the Kinai. Having spent two months on the carrack of Francisco Pereira de Miranda, Xavier left his companion Cosme de Torres behind in Hirado and travelled on to Hakata on a Japanese boat. He was accompanied by Brother Juan Fernandez and Bernardo, a samurai boy they had picked up in Kagoshima.Footnote 4 Upon arrival in Hakata, the group made their way to a nearby Zen temple of the Rinzai sect. Having come from India, the homeland of Buddhism, the Jesuits were well-received by the temple’s superior. Again, however, Xavier could not restrain his anger at seeing the bonzes teaching ‘ugly and shameful sins’ to young boys staying in the temple. Refusing to eat the fruits that were offered, Xavier could not help himself and started to berate the bonzes in a loud voice for their shameless behaviour.Footnote 5
The Hakata monks were dumbfounded at Xavier’s sudden abuse of their hospitality and amazed at the vehemence of their guest’s outburst. Some were laughing in embarrassment, others did not know where to look. Seeing he had outlived his welcome, Xavier left quickly and caught a boat at Hakata to bring him to a port on the coast of Western Honshū, such as Esaki from where the men could reach Yamaguchi on foot.Footnote 6 The three men, poorly dressed, had great difficulty finding lodgings when they reached the castle town of Daimyo Ōuchi Yoshitaka (1507–51). After a long search they were received in the house of a man called Uchida, who would later be baptised Thomé, their first convert in the city.
Again, the fact that they had come from the country of the Buddha’s birth worked as advertising. So many people seemed eager to hear the new teachings that Xavier decided to stay a while and preach before going on to the capital. Twice a day, the men went out into the street to choose a crossing where a large number of passers-by would be able to hear their message.Footnote 7 Fróis summarises the report that Fernandez gave him of their days on the streets of Yamaguchi, telling the people of the town they were committing three sins: worship of idols, the abominable sin and the sin of abortion and infanticide.Footnote 8
Even Daimyo Yoshitaka was curious to see the foreigners who had come from the land of the Buddha. Fróis reports that Brother Fernandez had told him about the great danger they had courted when Xavier started to lecture and berate the ruler of Yamaguchi himself:
They went in the company of that nobleman [Naitō Okimori]Footnote 9 to a chamber where the king usually received ambassadors and other people from overseas. Appearing in front of him, they prostrated themselves on the tatami mats and twice paid him their respects. The king was in this chamber in the sole company of one of the most important bonzes of that kingdom and the nobleman who had introduced them, but the other rooms and the verandahs outside were packed with knights and other noblemen. After the king had spoken to them in a cheerful manner and had asked them some questions about their journey and about the different countries of Europe and India, he said that he wanted to hear what they had to say about a new law they wanted to preach in his kingdom.
The father [Francis Xavier] then ordered Brother Joao Fernandes to read from their scroll about the creation of the world and the Ten Commandments, which they had prepared in Japanese. Reading about the sin of idolatry and the errors into which the Japanese had fallen, he came to those of Sodom, saying that a man who committed such an abomination was filthier than pigs and worse than dogs and other brute animals. After this had been read to him, it seems that the king became quite concerned and showed in his expression that he took offence at this doctrine, so the nobleman signalled to them that they should go. And so they took their leave from the king who did not even respond at all. For that reason, the brother feared that he would order them to be killed.Footnote 10
Nothing happened. Yoshitaka was evidently too well-mannered to make an issue of the outlandish ideas of some foreign monks dressed as beggars. As in Kagoshima and Hakata, in Yamaguchi too, Xavier soon felt he had outlived his welcome. The little group left the city on 17 December 1550. Again, it was winter when the three men walked from Yamaguchi to Iwakuni, crossing rivers and mountains, sometimes with their legs knee deep in the snow.Footnote 11 In Iwakuni, the Jesuits found a boat to take them to Sakai, where they were lodged in the house of Hibiya Kudō, an important merchant in the China trade.
After only a few days rest in this great city, Xavier was introduced by his host to a nobleman in whose train he could travel to Miyako.Footnote 12 It took two days to reach the capital. Xavier and his companions found lodging in the house of the Konishi family, who would later become famous as Christian followers of Hideyoshi. But Xavier’s stay in the capital was to no avail. He travelled to Mount Hiei to get permission to preach from the Buddhist authorities there, but having no gift to present, nobody paid attention to him.Footnote 13 He visited the emperor’s palace and the same thing happened.
The brevity of Xavier’s own report of his stay in the capital, comprising barely ten lines, is testimony of his disappointment with the city, its emperor and its monasteries.Footnote 14 Although Xavier made a visit to the Enryakuji on Mount Hiei, famous for its institutionalised pederasty,Footnote 15 his report makes no mention of witnessing any sins against nature committed there. Presumably, Xavier was no longer surprised that a capital so dilapidated, barren and unsafe would house whatever kind of misconduct and sin. Eleven daysFootnote 16 was all he could take before he decided to take his mission work back to Yamaguchi, which he had found to be wealthier and better governed. First, however, he needed to go back to Hirado to get appropriate gifts for Ōuchi Yoshitaka.
He arrived in Yamaguchi for the second time at the end of April 1551 and was received in audience by Yoshitaka as an ambassador from India. This time, Xavier had changed into better clothes and brought many gifts. Happy with the gifts, Yoshitaka gave Xavier permission to preach in his domain and housed the Jesuits in a temple, where they could not but get into discussions with the local bonzes:
All kinds of people started to come, some to hear about the law of God and to accept it, others to hear something unusual, and others still to see if they would hear something that they could criticize, especially the priests of the land, who have the greatest dislike of our holy Catholic faith, which prohibits everything they do. They are a very carnal people much given to the abominable vice of sodomy, of which they say that it is not a sin; and they have introduced into these lands many other things, all the greatest insults to God. For this reason, they get very excited when they hear us preach our holy Catholic faith.Footnote 17
Xavier left Yamaguchi in September of 1551, leaving Torres and Fernandez to continue the mission there. The Portuguese carrack had arrived in Bungo that year, and Xavier went there to meet his Portuguese friends, Duarte Da Gama and Fernāo Mendes Pinto (1510?–83). The latter tells the unlikely story that, upon meeting Xavier, Ōtomo Yoshishige (1530–87) immediately abandoned his pederastic habits by sending his favourite catamite away.Footnote 18 However, even if unlikely, such a report at least accurately reflects the idea that, according to the Jesuits, Yoshishige should have reacted to Xavier’s presence in this manner.
As can be seen from these testimonies by all three of the first Jesuits in Japan, the one point they made repeatedly concerned the vice without a name, aka the unnatural vice or the abominable one. It was only rarely called sodomy, never pederasty, for that would have been too devastatingly accurate. To these first testimonies, three others of early Jesuits can be added, those of Melchior Nunes Barreto (1520?–71), Fernāo Mendes Pinto and Gaspar Vilela (1526–72). Writing about Xavier’s first visit with Yoshitaka, the first of these three came up with a euphemism we have not encountered before: ‘He reproached the enormous sin to the King of Yamaguchi so vehemently that he was in great danger.’Footnote 19
The last references to this Japanese custom that can be found in the published Jesuit letters,Footnote 20 already far more vague and obscure than the earlier ones, are contained in a letter written by Gaspar Vilela in 1571. Although not part of Xavier’s original group, Vilela was also one of the first missionaries in Japan, having come to the country as the companion of Nunes Barreto in July of 1556.Footnote 21 For completeness’s sake, here are his remarks on two monasteries he had visited in 1561. The first was the Tendai monastery on Mount Hiei, the Enryakuji, that had also been visited by Xavier. Vilela writes: ‘Women don’t go to the monastery on the top of this mountain [full] of bonzes, because their delight in [a woman’s] appearance might lead [the monks astray]. But these [monks] in their blindness commit other great and shameful sins, because the devil keeps the minor sins away from them in order to make them commit the major ones.’Footnote 22
About the great monastery of Shingon Buddhism on Mount Kōya, Vilela writes in the same long letter:
This monastery was founded by a man called Combodaxi [Kōbō Daishi, 774–835]. This title daxi [Daishi] can be translated as Great Master. According to my inquiries, this man was during his life the inventor of the gravest sins among the Japanese, to be more precise: he was the first to invent the nefarious sin in Japan, and having made a pact with the devil, he was able to work many so-called miracles.Footnote 23
After the above testimonies, however, clear references to and explicit condemnations of this particular sin simply disappear from the Jesuit correspondence published in Europe. As shown above, the upper-classes in Japan did not stop this behaviour, and it is unlikely that the Jesuits stopped noticing or condemning it. All we can do, therefore, is conclude that the Jesuits as a group must have decided that it was counter-productive to keep on mentioning this Japanese custom to a European audience. It simply would not do to have a country in the world where such sins were considered normal. If this idea of normality became common knowledge in Europe, financial support for the mission would be likely to dry up completely.Footnote 24
For the moment, then, in the second half of the sixteenth century, it would be more politic for the missionaries to fight the custom on the ground without involving their supporters in Europe in the battle. During the heyday of the Jesuit mission in Japan, i.e. between 1560 and 1610, homosexual behaviour was the one thing that got one very quickly dismissed from all ranks of the Society, be it as ordinary helpers in the Jesuit residences, seminarians in the Jesuit schools or members of the Society itself. The Jesuit Mateo de Couros (1567–1632) wrote on 25 February 1612 in a letter, not meant for publication, enumerating the difficulties the Jesuits faced in recruiting Japanese members of the mission:
Some dōjuku [lit. ‘fellow lodgers’], who before entering our company were wounded by this pest, told me that although naturally revolted by it, they still gave in so that they would not be told they were cowards and sissies. And this vice is so widespread among these people that it seems to me that it is extremely rare to find a boy of twenty who is still free of this contagion, because since being in the womb of their mothers these people carry a notable inclination towards it.Footnote 25
Couros ends his letter with the following conclusion:
From this arises our continuous worry that we should always be on the alert with these dōjuku and the boys that we have in our company, and all in all we cannot avoid much sorrow because of their natural inclination towards this vice. And it is certain that a Japanese is more easily moved by the sight of a well-proportioned boy than by the beauty of a young lady. Thus, it seems that because of this abominable and shameful vice to which the Japanese have an inclination from the time of the cradle, they are for this reason not very suitable to enter the Society, because in truth such bad habits that come in a certain manner so natural to them are almost irremediable.Footnote 26
A Christian samurai
Thus it can be recognised that, seen through the eyes of the Jesuits, the expression ‘a Christian samurai’ is an oxymoron. This is the very crux of the dilemma the Jesuits encountered in Japan. There were many Japanese women who became sincere and even fervent Christians.Footnote 27 The motivations of most of the men who converted, however, were mixed, and opportunities to make money from the foreign trade clearly dominated.Footnote 28 Still, there are a number of examples of the experiment (if one may call it that) of samurai who converted to Christianity.Footnote 29 One of the first of these, an early convert of the missionary Gaspar Vilela, has left us a testimony of his eye-opening experience meeting the Jesuits.
His name was Sanga Yoriteru, who was baptised Sancho and was the lord of Iimori in Kawachi.Footnote 30 Yoriteru was a vassal of Miyoshi Nagayoshi (1522–64), who briefly dominated the Kinai or the home provinces around the capital in the mid-sixteenth century. The remnants of Yoriteru’s ‘castle’, mentioned chiefly by Fróis, have not been found. It is known among Japanese historians today as as maboroshi no shiro or the ghost castle. It may not have been as grand an affair as Fróis would have us believe. Yoriteru was baptised in 1563 and became a strong supporter of the Jesuits, building a church and a Jesuit residence, which were destroyed in 1588.Footnote 31
Here is how Fróis reports a sermon given by Dom Sancho in which he recounts his admiration for the Jesuit missionaries who dared come to Japan and preach a law that went completely against ‘the liberties in which we lived’.Footnote 32 It is as if here speaks a Marxist avant-la-lettre, who through the teachings of the Jesuits suddenly came to understand how the alliance of the Buddhist clergy with the samurai class and the ancient nobility provided these upper classes of Japan with countless opportunities to exploit the common people fooled by the ‘eloquence of their words and the ease with which they promise bliss’:
One of the things that makes me greatly admire [the Jesuits] and which serves, again and again, to confirm my faith is the fact of the admirable and marvellous way that God our Lord has used to make his holy law known in these parts close to the Capital.Footnote 33 After all, these teachings are completely at odds with the laws, customs and opinions current in Japan. I say this with the knowledge I have of the pride and vain self-esteem of the Japanese, because I myself have sprouted from the same source and have the same background. Thus, I understand how great and arrogant are the force and power that the bonzes command, and what great respect and credit they enjoy among the population of Japan.Footnote 34
The first point was often made by the Jesuits themselves: that Europe and Japan were opposites.Footnote 35 The Jesuits found themselves confronted by the Buddhist clergy. If the Jesuits had, as they believed themselves to be, been sent to Japan by God, of necessity the bonzes and their teachings originated with the Devil. Dom Sancho continues to expound on the difference between the poverty of the Jesuits in Japan and the riches of the Buddhists:
This respect [for the bonzes in Japan] is rooted in everyone’s high opinion of their doctrine, as well as the close relationship they have with the samurai and the ancient nobility, in the rents they enjoy, the institutions they populate, the rank they hold and the great number of luxurious temples that the people build for them, going to extraordinary expense, because of the respect they have for them and their desire for salvation. The eloquence of the words of the bonzes and the ease with which they promise bliss carries people away and allows the bonzes to commit whatever abominations and sins they wish according to their sensual appetites and the laws of the flesh, meanwhile extinguishing with their diabolical deceit and cunning all remorse anyone’s conscience might bring up.Footnote 36
It is difficult to be sure whether it was, indeed, Dom Sancho who is speaking here or whether Fróis’s Jesuit rhetoric is taking over his speech. But the following seems to be a genuine report of Dom Sancho’s amazement about the way that the Jesuits had started their missionary work in Japan, in a manner completely inappropriate according to the standards of East Asia, whether it was China, Korea, or Japan:
Taking all of what I have said just now into account, I see God our Lord sending us in Miyako, to confound our pride, a foreign priest [Vilela], whose dress, attire, and customs were so ridiculous in our eyes, that when we first saw him he could not serve any other purpose than to make us laugh, scorn and mock him. None of us knew whence he came, whether he had fallen from the heavens or had been born on earth. He seemed to us to be someone who was lacking everything he needed. At least, in order for us to form an opinion about what he had to say, he should have come in the company of some famous scholar on whose recommendation and reputation we might have been prepared to listen to his doctrine.
However, God our Lord to mock our pride and arrogance, gave him as a companion Brother Lourenço whom you can see over there saying his prayers in this church. He is blind in one eye and not able to see much with the other. [God] asked him to come to us with a guitar, playing in the streets and in people’s homes, a stick in his hand and the guitar hanging on his side, singing for a living. He was not even from around here, but from faraway Hizen, the boondocks of Japan, of low birth, and what is more, in order to convince us of matters so far removed from what we had ever heard and so different from our own ideas, [God sent us someone] unadorned by any learning, someone who had never studied, who did not have eyes to learn even the simplest characters, disfigured in his face, badly dressed and of such an uncouth appearance that my boys upon seeing him fled from him in fear.Footnote 37
The new doctrine had come dressed in the words of a low-class minstrel, a street singer whom Xavier himself had recruited on his travels through Kyushu.Footnote 38 Originally known as Ryosai,Footnote 39 Lourenço (1524?–92) may have received his early education from the bonzes. That Xavier’s message especially resonated with him was the first lucky break for the Jesuits in Japan. As Dom Sancho acknowledges here, most of the early conversions in Japan were due to his facility with words as a professional storyteller who accompanied himself on the shamisen or biwa. Most likely the publication on the mission press of the famous Japanese warrior classic Heike Monogatari in the vernacular of the time also goes back to the skills Lourenço already possessed when he met Xavier in 1551.Footnote 40 His voice somehow compelled people to listen:
When we started, just to while away the time, to listen to him, the first thing he told us was that the deities we worship are demons and enemies of the human race, that all the sects and doctrines we live by are false, and that not only in this way no-one could be saved, but that in protecting and following them, we would expose ourselves to eternal torments [in hell]. Furthermore, he told us very plainly: ‘the bonzes who are your masters and elders, and whom you respect so much and give so much credit are nothing but shysters, instruments of the devil. Their lives are loathsome, their deeds worthy of rebuke and chastisement. Your ways of proceeding, even though you may be samurai or noblemen, are deficient in reason and true nobility, because of the catamites you keep for your recreation, something which the bonzes pretend is honest and decent, but [in reality] is a most serious and abominable sin. Until you die you should not have more than one woman, who cannot be sent away just to marry someone else; you cannot kill whomever you would like; and you cannot lend money with interest or take things for yourself that belong to others.Footnote 41
The conclusion of Dom Sancho/Sanga Yoriteru is that the morality preached by the Jesuits was superior to the one that was current in Japan in his own time. Homosexuality tops his list of sins, followed by adultery, gratuitous killing, usury and theft. Clearly, then, there were samurai who agreed with the Jesuits. The question was only: could they remain samurai after converting? Oda Nobunaga (1534–82) never took the Jesuits seriously enough to understand the nature of the challenge they presented to his way of life. Both Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1536?–98) and Tokugawa Ieyasu (1543–1616) understood that the influence of the Jesuits needed to be curbed or they would end up destroying Japan’s religious heritage. But it was only under the second and third shoguns of the Tokugawa dynasty, Hidetada and Iemitsu, that the Jesuit challenge was considered a personal attack on the lifestyle of the upper class in Japan.
Warrior societies
The second half of the Muromachi period (1336–1573) was the time when these types of relationships are known to have been most widespread in Japan.Footnote 42 Even so, historians of Japan still resist the idea of institutionalised homosexual behaviour, such as found in late Muromachi and early Tokugawa Japan, the more so because subsequent generations in Japan have tried their very best to wipe out the traces of this institution.Footnote 43 Here, I will limit myself to giving my interpretation of the facts recorded in the official sources. It is important that the reader realise that I am not accessing secret sources no one has seen before. On the contrary, I am just culling facts from the most common materials for Tokugawa history to put them into a new conceptual framework.
It is tempting to use the expression ‘male rape’ to describe this typical samurai form of sexual violence, but ultimately it needs to be rejected.Footnote 44 Our concept of rape is predicated upon two criteria: first the lack of consent to the sexual relationship by the violated party, and second the disapproval by the outside world of the violence implied in the relationship. Neither of these characteristics existed in samurai society, where undergoing violence was an accepted way to prove one’s manhood. To bear the pain involved in the consummation of such male-male sexual relationships, on the contrary, was expected, even considered rewarding from the standpoint of the boy who was initiated into the world of the male adults. It was also considered negligible and unimportant on the part of his relatives who organised and pushed the relationship.Footnote 45 No cases are known, for example, of the boys or any of their relatives protesting against the violence implied in these couplings.
Still, understanding the contemporary acceptance of samurai sexual violence does not prevent us from recognising the psychological damage it all too often inflicted, and its influence on the behaviour of the samurai later in life. The first consequence of this samurai custom was that such relationships were self-perpetuating, with violence undergone passively in one’s younger years resulting in actively engaging in similar violence later on. Second, the large number of examples of samurai who, having been exposed to sexual violence at a very young age, would commit suicide later on seems to suggest a link between the two events. If it were possible to do an accurate survey of samurai suicides, it is my feeling that those who were exposed to sexual violence before the age of ten were significantly more prone to commit suicide one or two decades later than those who had been better prepared for such service by becoming pages at a later age.
Thus, violence was an accepted part of samurai daily life, whether sexual or gladiatorial. The coming-of-age ceremonies the samurai observed were organised around these forms of violence. When a samurai boy’s hair was coiffed with a forelock around five or six years old, he was considered ready for service, including service as a sexual object. To impress the seriousness of the occasion upon him, the boy would also celebrate his ceremony of yoroi kizome, the first wearing of armour, at the same time.Footnote 46 When, five to ten years later, the forelock was cut at his genpuku ceremony he was considered ready to perpetrate violence himself, both in the bedroom and on the battlefield. During the Warring States era, the first task of the new adult after the genpuku ceremony was to confirm his worthiness of this status by taking his first enemy head.
In this context it is rewarding to compare the Japanese samurai with other warrior societies in Europe (the Spartans), Africa (the Azande), South America (the Yanomamo) and New Guinea (the Marind-anim and several other tribes, such as Sambia, the Baruya and the Gebusi). All of these can throw light upon the warrior society of the Azuchi-Momoyama period in Japan. To a greater or lesser degree these five cultures show similarities that must be inherent to their social organisations, for they cannot be explained by cultural transmission. With the Spartans and the Marind-anim, Japanese warriors have in common a senior/junior warrior pair system, which is cemented by a strictly vertical sexual relationship, in which the older partner injects his martial excellence through his semen into the anus of the junior partner.
With the Azande, the Japanese have in common a system of pages sworn to absolute secrecy and obedience to their lord.Footnote 47 With the Yanomamo and the Marind-anim, Japanese warriors share a disdain for women.Footnote 48 As a consequence, all three warrior societies treat their women as cattle. The warriors from New Guinea may present the case closest to the one in Japan, as both societies also share initiation ceremonies, sexual violence, head hunting and even things that at first sight would seem to be details, such as a concern with hair styling.Footnote 49 Here, we will be looking for the inner logic that determines cultural expression in these warrior societies. This analysis, in turn, may help us flesh out this account of the Japanese case, which in its own contemporary sources is already heavily censored and in its later description by historians hampered by long-standing as well as modern taboos.
Marvin Harris has supplied the most convincing formulation of the similarities of warrior societies in their attitudes towards women. Warrior cultures, he points out, tend to reinforce and feed upon themselves: ‘the fiercer the males, the greater the amount of warfare, the more such males are needed. Also, the fiercer the males, the more sexually aggressive they become, the more exploited are the females’.Footnote 50 It is important to keep in mind, Harris stresses, that there is nothing inherently inevitable or typically ‘male’ about this. Customs such as male monopoly over weaponry, the training of males for bravery and combat roles, female infanticide and the training of females to be the passive rewards for ‘masculine’ performance, patrilineal bias, prevalence of polygyny over polyandry, competitive male sports, intense male puberty rituals, ritual uncleanliness of menstruating women, bride-price etc. all are common in societies geared for warfare.Footnote 51 Most of these findings can be illustrated with examples from samurai society, which practised polygyny well into the nineteenth century.Footnote 52
The belief that senior warriors can transmit their martial valour through their semen is known from Spartan and Papuan warrior societies. The Graeco-Roman scholarship that connects these beliefs with Spartan education started with a seminal article published by Erich Bethe in 1907, which now, more than one hundred years later, is still cited as basic to understanding Spartan society and early Greek (or Dorian) warrior culture:
[Bethe] suggested … . that the Dorians could have regarded semen as … . ‘the vehicle and special condensation of the soul’ and the injection of semen per anum as a means whereby the excellence (arete) of the erastes [the pitcher], specifically his military excellence, might be transmitted in a quasi-magical way to the eromenos [the catcher]. This, Bethe proposed, was the earthy physical reality behind the idealisation of the pederastic relationship purveyed by the extant literary sources, sources which were reflecting an increased civility and growing distaste for homosexual anal intercourse.Footnote 53
It may be possible to connect this type of thinking to the Japanese vocabulary for semen and anal intercourse. The Japanese word for semen is seishi, a Sino-Japanese compound, written with a first character which can be read tamashii [often translated as ‘spirit’ or ‘soul’] and a second character denoting a diminutive.Footnote 54 Furthermore, anal sex, as Gary Leupp has pointed out, is rendered with the compound saibi ‘written with the characters “to plant” and “tail”, recall[ing] the notion, common in some other societies, that anal sex with a boy confers manly qualities upon him and indeed is essential for his growth’.’Footnote 55 Even the Jesuits in Japan were familiar with this kind of thinking. Mateo de Couros, for example wrote in 1612: ‘And in order to persuade the boys to surrender themselves, the bonzes write that those who are revolted by [sodomy] will be cowards in war and feeble at heart.’Footnote 56
Going back to Bethe’s original article, we find this further elaborated: ‘The characteristics of the superior man, his heroism, his ἀρετή [virtue] are transmitted in some fashion to his lover through the sexual act. For that reason, it is society itself that insists, and the state that forces upon excellent men [the obligation] to love boys. For the same reason, boys offer themselves up to heroes.’Footnote 57 What is exceptionally perceptive in Bethe’s analysis is his distillation of this custom from later literary sources produced by a more settled society that is already starting to show disapproval and distaste for it.
A similar evolution can be discerned in the Japanese literary sources on male-male contacts. Writers on the topic usually concentrate on the so-called ‘love affairs’ between men, usually an older and a younger man who sometimes even enter contractual relationships called gikyōdai (‘honorary brotherhood’). Note that the syllable ‘gi’ (here translated as ‘honorary’) is written with the same character as ‘gimu’ (duty) and ‘giri’ (sense of justice), indicating that such contractual relationships involve important duties that have nothing to do with the enjoyment of the sex involved, duties very similar to those to one’s ‘real’ family members. Such duties may include taking care of one’s partner’s family members but are especially powerful motivators when avenging the wrongs done to the partner and/or his family. Uji’ie Masato gives many examples of samurai losing their lives because of their relentless pursuit of such duties.Footnote 58
What one usually does not see, however, in such descriptions of male-male relations during the early half of the Edo period is an awareness that these gikyōdai relationships must be considered the occasional roses growing on an immense garbage pile of habitual predatory practices by the strong upon the weak in Tokugawa society.Footnote 59 I use here the now virtually outdated term ‘Tokugawa society’ on purpose, rather than the more current qualifier ‘Edo’ (as in: Edo period), for it was the Tokugawa shoguns who were the trendsetters and main perpetrators of the culture of sexual violence perpetrated on young boys that was carried over from the warring states period into that of seventeenth-century Japan.
Hidetada’s kinju
As the second shogun of the Tokugawa dynasty (1564–1868), Tokugawa Hidetada was often put in situations where his most faithful followers ardently wished him to satisfy his sexual urges with their sons.Footnote 60 Such relationships, once established, would in principle guarantee lifetime employment for the submitting partners.Footnote 61 For that reason, between 1605 and 1623, a steady stream of (presumably handsome) young men passed through Hidetada’s quarters. In the latter year, Hidetada transferred the shogunate to his successor Iemitsu, by then nineteen years old and quite capable of taking over such onerous duties. In fact, Iemitsu is known to have found a solution for the associated fatigue by often switching from being the pitching to being the catching partner in these couplings.Footnote 62 Hidetada himself died nine years later, at age fifty-three, possibly of exhaustion.
With Hidetada setting the trend and Iemitsu following in his footsteps, this type of social advancement became the norm in the Tokugawa hierarchy among Ieyasu’s direct descendants.Footnote 63 What is more, this path to the top of the hierarchy was, like so many Tokugawa innovations, copied and multiplied at the local level, with the two hundred and fifty (or so) daimyo replicating this moral example with their own versions of what can only be called their boy harems. The difference was that, at the domanial level, the stakes were so much lower, and therefore there was a much greater variety in the sexual preferences of the daimyo. Some of them were enthusiastic and consistent emulators of the Tokugawa example, while others showed a more eclectic sampling of the sexual possibilities open to them.Footnote 64
Today, the predicament in which European authors knowledgeable about Japan found themselves can only be imagined. For Japan truly was a country in which contemporary European morality was turned upside down, and its downside up, or so it must have seemed.Footnote 65 Living in the seventeenth century, how could any of the missionaries who were still alive write about what they knew to be true in Japan? In all of Europe, there would have been no understanding for such a blasphemous situation as the missionaries had found. Happily, times have changed. Today, it is to be hoped, the general reading public is at least superficially familiar with the discipline of anthropology which has shown, over the past two centuries, that no one should be surprised to find humans doing, somewhere in the world, whatever they are capable of doing. The general public has also become familiar with the findings of psychologists and biologists that homosexual behaviour is a common feature of all human societies and among many (most?) animal species as well.
The world of the samurai was a frightening place for everyone involved. Hostage-giving and -taking was a way to assure both parties of a certain degree of trust. Such hostages often served very close to the ruler of the country, the first shogun Ieyasu or his successor Hidetada. These men lived in a world where they were the alpha males surrounded by different groups of other males of varying status and power. Physically closest to them were kinju or kinji, two words used interchangeably, and both written with the same first character for ‘close-by’.
Kinji is the more neutral word for attendant, its second character simply meaning ‘to serve’. Kinju (also kinjū) is written with a second character meaning ‘to learn’ and therefore suggests more the idea of an ‘apprentice’. Both words are also often replaced in our sources by the simple expression go-soba which literally indicates someone ‘next to His Hallowed Presence’. More specific jobs among the kinju were performed by the gozenban and the chōzuban, the former referring to the boy/man who brings the shogun his food and the latter the boy/man who helps him with washing his body.
A hint of the duties involved in serving a master like Hidetada can be found in the Japanese-Portuguese dictionary compiled by the Jesuits and printed in Nagasaki in 1603–4. Under the entry for NHacudŏ 若道 [modern transcription: nyakudō], or Vacaxu no michi [wakashū no michi, i.e. the Way of the Catamite], we find the Portuguese explanation: ‘sodomy or evil sin’. Especially interesting is the example the dictionary gives of an expression in which the word is used: Nhacudŏuo tatçuru [modern transcription: nyakudō wo tatsuru]. This is explained in Portuguese as: Ser paciente neste abuso, ou peccado mao, como por officio, which can be translated as ‘allow oneself to be sodomised, for example as part of one’s official duties’.Footnote 66
These boys or men (the distinctions we make were not important in this world) would eventually make careers as Hidetada’s pages, who were organised in the hanabatake-ban or ‘flower-bed guard’.Footnote 67 later known as the the koshōgumi or Inner Guard. Others were promoted to the shoinban or Body Guard, or even further away to the ōban or Great Guard.Footnote 68 What is especially shocking to the modern reader of the Tokugawa source materials is the extremely young age at which some boys would become kinju, and so became exposed to habitual (but often at first unexpected) sexual violence on the part of the person they were to serve. Just looking at those below the age of ten, there exist records for one three-year old,Footnote 69 two five-year olds,Footnote 70 three six-year oldsFootnote 71 and two nine-year olds joining Hidetada’s kinju. Footnote 72 For Iemitsu’s kinju, there are records for two five-year olds,Footnote 73 one seven-year oldFootnote 74 and one eight-year old.Footnote 75 From the fact that, at any one time, there were more than one hundred kinju,Footnote 76 it is clear that our records of such details are incomplete.
What is more, a surprising percentage of the biographies of the kinju as they have come down to us omit either the boy’s age at the time he received his employment, or either one of the dates of his birth or death. This happens so frequently and without any explanation by the later editors of the biographies that it looks very much as if this was done as a matter of policy in order to make a statistical analysis of the average age of the kinju upon their employment impossible. I conclude, therefore, that the records referred to above either slipped by the editorial censor or were included for other reasons which are no longer possible to ascertain today. In general, the biographies show how much Tokugawa society had already turned away from this custom by the late eighteenth century when these materials were given their final shape.Footnote 77
The best that can be done, therefore, are anecdotal references. These, however, should suffice to provide an idea of the atmosphere around Hidetada and his successor the third Shogun Iemitsu during the three decades between 1605 and 1635. A hostage was often made member of the kinju. An entry for 1601 has:
In the spring of this year a [black] seal letter addressed to Lord [Nabeshima] Naoshige came [from Edo] confirming [our family’s] rights to the domain,Footnote 78 with a follow-up wishing that both lords, father and son, make a trip to court, send Her Ladyship with Tokunaga Hō’in to live in Edo, and someone wishing to serve [the Tokugawa].
When his Lordship heard all this, he issued an order to his second son Heishichi [1584–1624], who at that moment was eighteen years old and the heir of Ogawa Ichizaemon, called Ogawa Hansuke Naofusa. [Lord Naoshige ordered that] he should take his original name of Nabeshima once more, and sent him to Edo, where he was loved by the then shogun Lord Hidetada, who made him serve as his kinju, following this up with the title of Izumi no kami and five thousand koku in Yahagi [in Katori–gun] in Shimōsa, allowing him the use of the character tada from his own name, thus changing his name to Tadashige.Footnote 79
Thus, Naoshige’s second son, who had already been adopted into the Ogawa family, was forced to leave his adoptive family to become a hostage for the Nabeshima family’s loyalty to the Tokugawa. Elsewhere, in Tadashige’s biography, it is reported that he had arrived in Edo as a hostage in 1600. The Veritable annals add that he had already received his 5,000 koku from Hidetada by the end of that same year.Footnote 80 Eight years later, we understand that all was not well with Tadashige’s health, for he received permission to retire from Hidetada’s service and return to his older brother in Higo.Footnote 81
Apart from being extremely prestigious, it was also extremely dangerous to hold the position of kinju. A violent death was all too often associated with this form of employment. Even to be a servant of the kinju was dangerous. One of the first mass killings mentioned in the Veritable annals after Hidetada had become shogun occurred on 12 July 1605. On this occasion, servants of Hidetada’s kinju clashed in Edo with foot soldiers or ashigaru of Hidetada’s older brother Yūki Hideyasu. The brawl left twenty-three men dead in the street.Footnote 82 Clearly, these men were acting out the resentment Hideyasu must have felt about the elevation of his younger brother, which had just occurred one month earlier, on 2 June.Footnote 83
To be one of Hidetada’s (or later Iemitsu’s) favourites was gratifying and conferred power, of course, but it was also fraught with the risk of having that favour temporarily or permanently withdrawn. Hidetada could be moody, and it was easy to incur his displeasure. Aoyama Yukinari seems to have been particularly adept at weathering Hidetada’s temper. Born of an ancient Tokugawa retainer family, the fourth son of Aoyama Tadanari, Yukinari started his career as one of Hidetada’s kinji. Footnote 84 In June of 1604, it is recorded that he had incurred the future shogun’s displeasure,Footnote 85 but he was back in favour seven months later.Footnote 86 The Veritable annals do not mention the reasons for Hidetada’s displeasure, nor why he relented so soon afterwards.
Ten years later, in June of 1614, Yukinari was again out of favour. This time, the reason is given. Yukinari had gone, without asking permission, to Odawara where Ōkubo Tadatsune was lying on his deathbed.Footnote 87 The Veritable annals have it that
the rumour is that Tadatsune was in the habit of giving out office in exchange for sexual favours and if a person was tractable and obedient, he could depend on various others to help him. In this way, in spite of his young age, Tadatsune had acquired a great deal of power and was surpassing Honda Sado no kami Masanobu, who was becoming more jealous by the day and even had intimated to his friends that he wished and was planning for his [Tadatsune’s] death.Footnote 88
Two other kinji, Morikawa Shigetoshi and Kusakabe Masafuyu, were punished for the same reason. So, there is a record of at least four names of people who had been part of a secret cabal close to the shogun and were, through sexual favours, beholden to support each other. Again, however, Hidetada’s displeasure did not last long, for within a year we find Yukinari back on campaign with him.Footnote 89 Afterwards his stock kept on rising until he was allowed to establish his own lineage in 1619.Footnote 90 When Hidetada’s death was announced in 1632, Yukinari was one of only five retainers who received one thousand bars of silver from the ex-shogun’s inheritance.Footnote 91
Other kinju were not as lucky or adept in weathering Hidetada’s moods. For an example of a tragedy caused by Hidetada’s jealousy, we turn to Naruse Masatake, the third son of Naruse Masakazu.Footnote 92 Masatake had served Hidetada since the age of five. By the time he got into trouble in 1615, after twenty-five years at the centre of power, he had since 1606 been one of six hanabatake-bangashira, the commanders of Hidetada’s mounted guards. Since 1611, he is frequently mentioned as a confidential messenger between Ieyasu and Hidetada.Footnote 93 In 1615, when Hidetada made a visit to the imperial court, Masatake accompanied the shogun. In secret, however, he had brought along his lover, an exceedingly handsome youth by name of Oyama Yoshihisa.Footnote 94
Masatake had relatives among the samurai women serving Empress Shinjōtōmon’in,Footnote 95 and so he and his lover were invited to the women’s quarters in the palace. Because of Yoshihisa’s beauty, many young palace women came out to see them and make merry. In this way, Hidetada’s visit became the talk of the capital, rumours of which later reached Ieyasu’s ears in Sunpu. As a result, Masatake was put under the supervision of Andō Shigenobu and Yoshihisa under that of Doi Toshikatsu.Footnote 96 Five months later, on 16 January 1616, Masatake and Yoshihisa were forced to commit seppuku in two separate temples, the Kichijōji and the Shinchionji.Footnote 97 Evidently, Hidetada had refused to come to his lover’s aid.Footnote 98
A particularly revealing incident is reported for 25 June 1619: ‘Today, the young lord [Iemitsu] while on his way to the bath room in Edo Castle killed with his bare hands Gozaemon (1600?–19), the eldest son of his personal retainer Sakabe Sago’emon Masashige,Footnote 99 because he frequently committed impertinencies.’Footnote 100 This incident was likely included in the Annals to show how Iemitsu, even though only fifteen years old, was not someone to take an insult lightly. Koike Tōgorō reads this passage as an example of how the personal connection forged through sex between samurai was a sort of wager or bet, liable to end in violent bloodletting.Footnote 101 The story has a truly melancholic ending. Twenty-three years later, in an entry for 1642 after Iemitsu had finally produced a son to succeed him, the Veritable annals report about the murdered man’s father:
Masashige had been present at the birth of the present shogun [Iemitsu]. For that reason, he was ordered to serve as the one to carry the newly born Ietsuna on his first shrine visit. He was eighty years old at this time. Masashige’s son Gozaemon had also served this shogun since his infancy. And although they did get along well, he had for some reason turned his back on an order, which had led to him being killed. Masashige knew that this world is but transient and had passed the months and years sickly and hidden away. Etc. etc.Footnote 102
Clearly, the way to survive in this environment was to let the shogun do as he wanted, whatever one’s personal feelings. An entry for 31 July 1624 has:
Because the shogun would be late getting up the next morning, everyone was free. The kinjū were all in the vicinity of His Lordship. In the ōhiroma, a certain Yugeta ShichinosukeFootnote 103 bore a grudge towards Akita Nagato no kami Suetsugu and killed him. The tsukai-ban Amano Sazaemon KatsuariFootnote 104 saw him sitting on top of the corpse and called out: ‘You have killed a man in the castle! What are you going to do about it?’ He had barely said these words when Yugeta killed himself on the spot.Footnote 105
And one for 13 December 1627:
This evening, in the Nishinomaru, the hanabatake-ban a certain Naramura Magokurō was holding a grudge, he said, against his fellow kinjū a certain Kizukuri SaburōzaemonFootnote 106 and a certain Suzuki Kyu’emonFootnote 107 and cut them down. When Kyu’emon dripping with blood tried to get away from there, he stumbled over a lantern and extinguished it. His cohorts having lost their way in the dark all made a great tumult. At that time, Soga Gonzaemon ChikasukeFootnote 108 was trying to cut down and stop Magokurō; he received deep cuts in his left arm and right thigh. Chikasuke’s father Kitarō Hisasuke,Footnote 109 being a member of the shoinban, was not in the immediate vicinity, but hearing the voice of his son and seeing Magokurō speeding away and his son in pursuit, took part in the chase, and father and son were together able to catch Magokurō. Later the shogun called Hisasuke and had him relate the events of that night and praised him for his bravery. Chikasuke’s income was increased with 200 koku. Magokurō was put under the supervision of Nagai Shinano no kami Naomasa and was made to commit suicide on the thirteenth day. His older brother Magoshichirō was attaindered, because he had been present on the spot as well. Saburōzaemon was chased from court and Kyūemon died of his wounds. A cohort by name of Kurahashi Sōsaburō TadatakaFootnote 110 had also been present and had tried to catch Magokurō, but, as he had been wounded in twenty-four spots, in the end had to leave Magokurō’s arrest to Gonzaemon Chikasuke and his father.Footnote 111
A violent lot, these kinju, all too quick to take revenge for a perceived insult. Superior blades made their relationships especially dangerous and fragile. Blood and semen ran together in this environment. No wonder that very few Japanese historians have wanted to make studies of these men.Footnote 112
Francis Xavier’s prophecy
Two months after Xavier had left Japan in the middle of November of 1551, he wrote a personal letter to the General of the Society Ignacio de Loyola himself, dated 29 January 1552. From this letter it can be deduced that he was still trying to digest what he had seen in Japan. Knowing about the secret habits of God’s European servants, he wrote to his superiors that they should be very careful in deciding who was to be sent from Europe to Japan:
Because they make their living from it, the bonzes will not tolerate it when [the missionaries] say that [bonzes] cannot save souls from hell, while they keep on advocating for the sin against nature which is so widespread among them. [Our missionaries] will have much trouble with this and will be persecuted in a grand manner because of it and other reasons. I wrote to Father Master SimonFootnote 113 and in his absence to the rector of the College of Coimbra that they should not send from there anyone to these universities [i.e. Buddhist temples] who are not approved by your Grace personally.Footnote 114
This was a personal communication, not for everyone’s eyes. The passage is lacking, for example, in the letter Xavier wrote, on the same day, to ‘the Jesuits of Europe’.Footnote 115 Although Xavier writes in this letter to Loyola that he has informed his fellow Jesuit Simão Rodrigues as well, looking closely at this letter from Xavier to Rodrigues, it becomes clear that, here too, this paragraph is missing. Xavier simply writes that the Japanese mission is not for the ‘old who lack physical energy, nor for the young who lack experience’.Footnote 116 He encourages Rodrigues to send to Japan ‘those who have finished their studies’.Footnote 117
However, as can be read in the letter to Loyola quoted above, Xavier knew well that, on the one hand, some European clergymen might be led into awful temptations in Japan, temptations that would send them straight to hell.Footnote 118 On the other hand, with the perspicacity worthy of a future saint, he prophetically predicts that Jesuit missionaries will be persecuted in a grand manner in Japan if they make it their business to root out the sin that bears no name. It would take more than sixty years before this prophecy came true. But by the time he wrote the letter from which this quotation is taken, Xavier had already left Japan. He would not return to the country. These words, therefore, represent his last words on the subject.Footnote 119
The sexual behavior of the samurai described in this essay had a well-understood function as an instrument of establishing hierarchical relations, which stood in opposition to any procreative function. The Jesuit missionaries in Japan were of course aware of this, and we have documented the culture shock concerning this situation displayed by Francis Xavier and his companions upon their arrival in Japan. This was probably the most difficult hurdle the Roman Catholic missionaries encountered in Japan. To be successful, they either had to accept this samurai custom or change samurai society. Everything they professed, however, from the concept of original sin to the essential nature of the relationship between husband and wife as a procreative union, pleaded against acceptance of the situation they found in Japan. So, set out to change the samurai they did. The result was a war of ideologies that led to the excesses of torture and death that have been described elsewhere.Footnote 120
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