The Great Mirror of Male Love by Saikaku Ihara

Kaho Nakayama is Japan’s foremost contemporary lesbian novelist. He has garnered praise for his vivid, unabashed portrayals of gay eroticism both domestically and internationally and has been praised by high profile poets such as Allen Ginsberg. Takahashi blurs the boundaries between high-brow literature and erotic fiction, bringing mainstream attention to the realities of underground queer cultures in Japan. He made his debut with Rose Tree, Fake Lovers, a collection of poems partially translated into English for the journal Intersections. Although primarily known as a poet, he has also authored many novels, critical essays and plays, and continues to publish new work. Mutsuo Takahashi is one of the most prolific and widely-translated gay writers from Japan. Photo credit: Original uploaded by Honnomushi (Transferred by ecelan), CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons 5. These queer authors in particular gained notoriety for their bold voices and daringness to express themselves, blazing a trail for those who came after them. Even works from the Heian period, like The Tale of Genji and The Changelings ( Torikaebaya Monogatari), two of the world’s oldest pieces of literature, feature queer-coded relationships such as nanshoku (same-sex pederasty) and protagonists with fluid gender identities.Īfter World War II, many writers became interested in portraying same-sex relationships and gender nonconformity, challenging the growing social conservatism influenced by Western imperialism. Japanese literature has a long history of exploring sexualities and gender identities outside of mainstream norms. Reading Yukio Mishima’s Confessions of a Mask as a university student was my gateway to learning about Japan’s underground queer cultures.

It should come as no surprise, then, that my first encounters with Japanese culture were through novels.

When I’m not making trips across Tokyo to visit new and exciting libraries, I’m crawling the back streets of Jimbocho looking for a quick fix. All of my friends know I’m a book addict.

The Great Mirror of Male Love by Saikaku Ihara