The Clash Between Traditional and Contemporary Ideas
The all encompassing term which refers to the non-heterosexual and gender-variant practices and identities that include gay, lesbian, and transgender individuals is kono sekai. The term literally translated in English means “this world,” and is used to refer to the wide variety of gender and sexual subcultures.
Homosexual practice is also found among the Samurai aristocracy in part because of the heavy influence that Buddhism had on their culture specifically during the early stages of the Edo period (1600-1868). Also during this period, “there was no necessary connection made between gender and sexual preference, because men, samurai in particular, were able to engage in both same and opposite sex affairs without being stigmatized.” Because same-sex relationships were governed by a code of ethics, “elite men were able to pursue boys and young men who had not yet undergone their coming-of-age ceremonies, as well as transgender females of all ages from the lower classes who worked as actors and prostitutes.” Although bisexuality in women was practiced, the notion of lesbianism was not documented and there is “no way of cognitively linking both male and female homosexuality.
It was not until the Meiji period (1868-1912) that “Japanese sexuality” was transformed through influence from “the West.” From a male to male perspective, before the Meiji period, the “behaviors between a man and a man dealt with the commitment to spend their lives together, not on their sexual desire.” Current queer expressions were established through postwar sex magazines, coffee shops (danshoku kisssaten), gay bars (gei ba), and various queer organizations.
Read more about this topic: Sexual Minorities In Japan
Famous quotes containing the words clash, traditional, contemporary and/or ideas:
“Saint, do you weep? I hear amid the thunder
The Fenian horses; armour torn asunder;
Laughter and cries. The armies clash and shock,
And now the daylight-darkening ravens flock.
Cease, cease, O mournful, laughing Fenian horn!”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“I conceive that the leading characteristic of the nineteenth century has been the rapid growth of the scientific spirit, the consequent application of scientific methods of investigation to all the problems with which the human mind is occupied, and the correlative rejection of traditional beliefs which have proved their incompetence to bear such investigation.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)
“This socialism will develop in all its phases until it reaches its own extremes and absurdities. Then once again a cry of denial will break from the titanic chest of the revolutionary minority and again a mortal struggle will begin, in which socialism will play the role of contemporary conservatism and will be overwhelmed in the subsequent revolution, as yet unknown to us.”
—Alexander Herzen (1812–1870)
“The true critic is he who bears within himself the dreams and ideas and feelings of myriad generations, and to whom no form of thought is alien, no emotional impulse obscure.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)