Same-Sex Desire in Pre-Feudal and Feudal Japan
This writing examines forms of intimacy, erotic attachment, and emotional bonds between people of the same sex in pre-feudal and feudal Japan. Rather than projecting modern categories of sexual identity onto the past, these essays trace how desire was structured through age, rank, ritual, and social obligation. Drawing on court diaries, poetry, religious writing, and later warrior culture, the series explores how same-sex relations could be visible, tolerated, or strategically obscured without being named as identity. Together, these writings argue that queerness in pre-modern Japan was lived relationally—through practice and attention—long before it was understood as a category of self.
Why “Homosexuality” Is the Wrong Word (and Why We Still Use It)
The term “homosexuality” does not fit pre-modern worlds shaped by rank and relation rather than identity. This essay examines why the word is historically anachronistic, why scholars still use it, and how translation, legibility, and compromise shape the study of same-sex desire.
Erotic Pedagogy: Sex as Moral Formation Among Samurai
Here is a ~300-character SEO blurb, tight and search-friendly:
This essay explores how sex between men functioned as moral training among samurai. Rather than indulgence or identity, erotic intimacy shaped loyalty, discipline, and character, binding younger warriors to seniors through obligation, restraint, and ethical formation within warrior culture.
Loyalty, Love, and Death: Eroticism in Warrior Ethics
Here is a ~300-character SEO blurb, precise and clean:
In medieval Japan, erotic intimacy between warriors reinforced loyalty rather than undermining it. This essay explores how love, attachment, and the constant presence of death shaped warrior ethics, binding fealty to emotional discipline, endurance, and the moral demands of service.