During the Edo period in Japan (1603–1868 CE), wakashu were adolescent boys who comprised an intermediary gender as sexual companions for affluent men and women. The wakashu
had not yet participated in the male “coming-

of-age” ceremony known as genpuku, and they conveyed their sexual subjectivity by shaving away a portion of their crown to create a forelock while sporting androgynous kimonos. For the cultivated homosexual client, the
most desirable wakashu were receptive youth between the ages of fifteen and eighteen, though many made themselves available as sexual partners until around the age of thirty. The catalog of Japanese homoerotic prints known as nanshoku do not depict identifiable individuals, though many did portray renowned figures from Japanese literature. Suzuki Harunubo’s image reimagines the classical courtier Kaoru from the eleventh-century Genji Monogatari, or The Tale of Genji, as a samurai wakashu. During Harunobu’s time in the mid-eighteenth century, boys who were training
to enter Japan’s warrior class were frequently enticed into sexual relationships with their samurai masters.

Suzuki Harunobu, Young Samurai Viewing Cherry Blossoms
as a Mitate [an analogy] of Prince Kaoru, woodblock print, 1767–69. Courtesy the Royal Ontario Museum, item 926.18.10.

Sources: Leupp, Gary P. Male Colors: The Construction of Homosexuality in Tokugawa Japan. University of California Press, 1997. Mostow, Joshua and Asato Ikeda. A Third Gender: Beautiful Youths in Japanese Edo-period Prints and Paintings (1600–1868). Toronto: Royal Ontario Museum, 2016. Pflugfelder, Gregory M. Cartographies of Desire: Male-Male Sexuality in Japanese Discourse, 1600–1950. University
of California Press, 1999.