Sex Lives of the Samurai

The samurai are some of the most mythologised people in history, so let's do some myth busting! Kate is joined by Joe Nickols, who co-curated the British Museum's samurai exhibition, to dive into the real lives of the samurai. How much fighting did they actually do? Could women be samurais? And what did they use for lube? Voting is now open for the Listener's Choice Award at this year's Podcast Awards. Click to place your vote on the Spotify mobile app: https://open.spotify.com/s/xhg6PJa This episode was edited by Hannah Feodorov. The producer was Sophie Gee. The senior producer was Freddy Chick. Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe. You can take part in our listener surveyhere https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/6FFT7MK. All music from Epidemic Sounds. Voting is now open for the Listener's Choice Award at this year's Podcast Awards! UK & Ireland listeners please place your vote on the Spotify mobile app here: https://open.spotify.com/s/xhg6PJa Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Kate Lister?

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• 0:38Speaker 01

  MOD.com is changing the way people battle excessive fatigue. Ever hit a wall in the middle of the day and a third coffee just doesn't do it anymore? Here's what's actually happening. Coffee only briefly blocks adenosine, the chemical that tires you out. When it stops working, your system is flooded and you crash. Medafinil is a prescription treatment that works in a completely different way. Medafinil works by stimulating multiple receptors in the brain associated with wakefulness, including dopamine, serotonin, norepinephrine, histamine, glutamate, and orexin. It's a more complete solution that gives you 10 to 12 hours of steady focus and energy.

• 1:21Speaker 01

  To learn more, go to MOD.com. Fill out your intake form, meet with a licensed provider, and if approved, MOD Alert ships straight to your door. Go to MOD.com to get started. That's M-O-D dot com.

• 1:40Kate Lister?

  Hello, my lovely Betwixters. It's me, Kate Lister. Welcome back once again to Betwixt the Sheets, the podcast where we get down and dirty and frankly, far too intimate with history for anyone's liking but our own. But we don't care. Long may we continue. But before we can go any further together, I do have to tell you, this is an adult podcast podcast by adults, adult stories, things, adults away, coming around, adult subjects, and you should be an adult too. Do you feel safer? I feel safer. Right, let's do this together and we will do it safely.

• 2:13Kate Lister?

  The Samurai, the Japanese warrior class. We think of armour, we think of swords, we think of bows and arrows, we think of Keanu Reeves. Or was it, was it Tom Cruise who was being a Samurai? I can't remember, but it's definitely been a lot in Hollywood, haven't they? The Samurai. What do they symbolise? Righteousness, loyalty, honour, respect, honesty, courage, consistency? Or is that just all a Hollywood fantasy?

• 3:03Kate Lister?

  Hello and welcome back to Betwixt the Sheets, the history of sex scandal and society with me, Kate Lister. There is an old saying that you can be a lover or a fighter, but if you were a Samurai, you were expected to be both. Not only were they highly trained martial artists, but they were excellent at administration. So you didn't expect that coming, did you? No, they were good at admin. They were also good at poetry, art, conversation. They were the whole package. And today I'm joined by Joe Nichols, the co curator of the recent Samurai exhibition at the British Museum. Joe is going to tell us all about the Samurai, warts and all. Swords at the ready, everyone. Let's do this.

• 3:49Kate Lister?

  Well, hello and welcome to Betwixt the Sheets. It's only Joe Nichols. How are you doing?

• 3:55Speaker 02

  I'm so well. I'm loving this heat and I'm just thrilled to be here.

• 4:00Kate Lister?

  Well, thank you so much for taking time away from the heat, in the heat, to talk to us. You're here to talk to us about the history of Samurai. And but before we get to that, can I ask you, what is your interest in this? Because you were also the co curator for the British Museum's recent exhibit on Samurai.

• 4:19Speaker 02

  Yes, it was a huge honour to work with Dr. Rossina Buckland and Oleg Benesh on this project. And it's quite funny, my interest in Samurai. I do remember, and I've spoken to Rossina about this, when I was a student studying at SOAS, fresh to university, I was very much like a contrarian. And I, and I was studying Japanese art history and I was like, I'm never going to be interested in Samurai. They're too obvious. It's what everybody comes here to study. But I've just learned that you can't escape your destiny. And so I, I ended up actually learning a lot about all of the parts about Samurai

• 5:02Speaker 02

  that are true, that people don't sort of want to talk about, like about Samurai women, how Samurai are bureaucrats, you know, they're not always fighters, how they had to be artists. And there's all of this other sort of aspects to Samurai that really intrigued me and sort of went against that popular perception. And so when this opportunity came up to work with Rossina on this project, I, I just really wanted to do it.

• 5:29Kate Lister?

  So for people listening, and I'm not sure that anybody's out there who's never even heard of the Samurai, but just in case, just in case there's one out there, who are the Samurai?

• 5:41Speaker 02

  It's a great question, and it was really the starting point of the exhibition, because the word Samurai is really this global word. And it's kind of a catchall term. And so the term Samurai probably wasn't actually used by the group of people we refer to as Samurai.

• 6:01Kate Lister?

  Oh.

• 6:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's, it's, it's a term that is probably applied to them much, much later. Samurai comes from the verb sabarao, which means to serve, and was likely ascribed actually to only lower ranking warriors. They would have used terms like bushi, musha, mononofu to describe this, this group of warrior people. So what we refer to as the Samurai actually has this sort of thousand years history where they are changing and evolving.

• 6:38Kate Lister?

  Wow.

• 6:39Speaker 02

  Responding to different cultures and influences. So they're not this sort of monolithic group. But what we refer to Samurai are the sort of, this warrior class that really gets established in the 1600s by the shogun or the de facto ruler of that period of time called Tokugawa Ieyasu. And before then, these warriors had existed. They sort of emerge at the beginning of the 11th century as mercenary warriors, and they were fighting on behalf of imperial courtiers. And so there's this period of time where they are fighting on the battlefield.

• 7:20Speaker 02

  And then there's a great victory for Tokugawa Ieyasu in 1603, the Battle of Sekigahara. And he is then able to establish this new sort of structure of society where he consolidates a class of warriors. And they really become bureaucrats. So then about 250 years of unadulterated peace. And so there isn't any, any conflict or war. They are at the apex of society. They're the top of the food chain, so to speak.

• 7:52Kate Lister?

  What do you mean that they're bureaucrats? Like trying to put that together, a Samurai and a bureaucrat? Like trying to picture a Samurai with a spreadsheet and like trying to organise, putting meetings in your diary? What do you mean that Samurai is a bureaucrat?

• 8:07Speaker 02

  But that's essentially what they, they are doing. They are government officials, they're sort of civil servants, they're making sure the country is running.

• 8:15Kate Lister?

  No.

• 8:16Speaker 02

  Yeah. So Tokugawa Ieyasu, he is the shogun, so he's at the top. And then Japan itself is then divided up into a number of different domains, which are then ruled by a lord or a daimyo. And then each of these domains has its, it's kind of like a federalised state, its own laws and regulations. And so under the daimyo, there's then a selection of Samurai who are enacting all of these decrees. They're working as judges, they're part of the police, they're often doing like surveys of land, they are doing kind of, they're mapping their domains.

• 8:59Kate Lister?

  Wow.

• 9:00Speaker 02

  There are all of these different roles that they participate in that are very kind of bureaucratic.

• 9:06Kate Lister?

  Joe, I have been grossly lied to by Hollywood.

• 9:12Speaker 02

  Well, yeah, I mean, it is so interesting. I mean, but you also haven't been lied to by Hollywood. There is this period of time where there are these warriors on the battlefield. It's incredibly brutal, very, very bloody. But that all stops in the 1600s and it doesn't return until the sort of tumultuous end of the Tokugawa period, when there are these rebellions against the Tokugawa rule. And it all changes once again. So for about 250 years, there is no, there are, there's no fighting.

• 9:46Kate Lister?

  Would a comparison, a bit of a clunky one maybe, but would a comparison be like the knights in European history that like they are this warrior class, but like ultimately they're sort of presiding over lands and people. And a lot of that is going to be, as you say, bureaucratic administration.

• 10:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, it's not a sort of kind of far off analogy. I mean, particularly in the way that we romanticize the samurai. I think it's very similar to the way that the knights get romanticized. And so there's this really interesting kind of relationship between, you know, the Victorian ideals of chivalry that become really popular at the end of the 19th century, beginning of the 20th century, and then how the samurai gets sort of recoded as this sort of valorous, honorable.

• 10:36Kate Lister?

  Bloody Victorians again.

• 10:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, there's this, there's this global trend at the end of the 19th century of chivalry. And there are people who start to write about the samurai in this very kind of romanticized viewpoint. Yeah, including Nito Be Nanzo, who is the one who writes the book Bushido, The Soul of Japan, or The Soul of the Samurai. And that's sort of really where it, it, it comes from, this idea of sort of unwavering loyalty.

• 11:08Kate Lister?

  Was that a 19th century text?

• 11:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, so it was first written in America in English in 1899. And it was really a way for Nito Be to create this kind of comparison between the samurai and the knights. And it was a way to kind of defer some kind of cultural colonialism of saying, you don't really need to colonize us, you know, we have a similar thing, we have a similar ethos going, we're the same. And it wasn't really based on historical precedent. And when it was translated into Japanese in 1910, a lot of Japanese historians were like, what is this? Where is this coming from? This isn't like.

• 11:50Kate Lister?

  That sounds like the Victorians, which is fuck it, we'll make it up.

• 11:53Speaker 02

  Yeah. And so it's really, it's this really interesting dialogue. And then that's actually been sort of what has kind of sustained our perception of this group of people as eternally loyal, unwaveringly brave people. And what's also really interesting, I think, about the samurai is a lot of the discourse surrounding that is, is based on writings that are done during this Tokugawa period, also known as the Edo period, where people are writing about the battlefield, but they're never actually fighting. They've never fought a battle. They're just romanticizing their own, like, deep history.

• 12:34Speaker 02

  When there were these like huge internal conflicts, these huge civil wars of the 1180s, and then also during the 14 and 1500s, you know, there were these immense battles and people were able to prove their bravery.

• 12:51Kate Lister?

  So was there a way of the samurai then, or is this all a Victorian invention? It doesn't matter what period of history we get somebody on from here. The Victorians will have done a number on them that they're desperately trying to undo. Whether you're Egyptologist, a classicist, someone who's into Rome, a medievalist, everyone's just like, the bloody Victorians did it again. But is there any truth in this way of the samurai thing? Or is that all a Victorian fantasy?

• 13:19Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, one of the things that we talked a lot about in the exhibition and in, in the book that we have that accompanies the exhibition is this idea of where did it come from? This idea of the where the warrior? And it's not sustainable as a historical fact throughout history of, of the samurai. Because, because Japan is so big and that this group of people, the samurai, lasts for so long, they change all the time. And as I say, like, it's this federalized state. And so these warriors are actually, they do have their own codes, but they're more connected to like their interpretation of morality and they're quite localized.

• 14:00Speaker 02

  So it really depends on where you come from, as what values you're going to sustain, what, and how you're going to act for your kind of colleagues, your, your, your sort of cohort of samurai, will really depend on where you're from and what time period you're from. So there is, maybe there is a kind of way of the warrior, but it's not this kind of elongated totalitarian vision. It might just be a moment, it might just be your group of people. So yes and no, I suppose, is my answer to that.

• 14:44Kate Lister?

  I'll be back with Joe after this short break.

• 14:50Kate Lister?

  In case you weren't aware, World Mental Health Day takes place in October. And I don't know about you, but I'm taking this as a reminder to practice some proper self-care. Saying no to plans I don't want to go to, guilt-free snacking and Halloween movie marathons. It's also the perfect time to check in with yourself and your mental health. For many, it can mean taking that step and speaking to a professional who can help and guide you through any difficulties you're having. But often when you try to do that, it's still way harder than it should be. A lot of online therapy platforms don't accept insurance at all, which means even during a month focused on mental health, you're stuck paying out of pocket or signing up for an expensive monthly subscription.

• 15:34Kate Lister?

  This is where Rula comes in. They partner with over 120 insurance plans, making the average copay just $15 per session. That's real therapy from licensed professionals at a price that actually makes sense. Because the whole point of World Mental Health Day is making sure people actually get help, not just think about it. And Rula sticks with you throughout your journey, checking in to make sure your care is actually helping you move forward. With World Mental Health Day this October, it's a good reminder that taking care of your mental health can start with one step. Visit rula.com/shets to get started. That's R U L A dot com slash S H E E T S.

• 16:16Kate Lister?

  You deserve mental health care that works with you, not against your budget.

• 16:24Speaker 01

  MOD.com is changing the way people battle excessive fatigue. Ever hit a wall in the middle of the day and a third coffee just doesn't do it anymore? Here's what's actually happening. Coffee only briefly blocks adenosine, the chemical that tires you out. When it stops working, your system is flooded and you crash. Medafinil is a prescription treatment that works in a completely different way. Medafinil works by stimulating multiple receptors in the brain associated with wakefulness, including dopamine, serotonin, norepinephrine, histamine, glutamate, and orexin. It's a more complete solution that gives you 10 to 12 hours of steady focus and energy.

• 17:07Speaker 01

  To learn more, go to MOD.com. Fill out your intake form, meet with a licensed provider, and if approved, MOD Alert ships straight to your door. Go to MOD.com to get started. That's M O D dot com.

• 17:23Speaker 03

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• 18:02Speaker 04

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• 18:31Kate Lister?

  So how do you go about curating an exhibition on the samurai then? I mean, was most the exhibition you just going, nope, that's not true. Nope, that didn't happen either. How do you curate something from like that's that big a span of history, covering that many areas? Because as you said, that's so diverse. How did you curate that?

• 18:52Speaker 02

  Well, it was a long, it was a really long process. But one I am so proud of and I have so many happy memories doing it. I wish it was still on. There were so many aspects that we were trying to get across to people about a different perception of the samurai. So basically, we really wanted to confront a lot of the myths. It was sort of a myth busting exhibition.

• 19:18Kate Lister?

  Yeah.

• 19:19Speaker 02

  The exhibition was really split into three different sections. So the first section, we explored the samurai from their origin. As I say, emerging as these mercenaries at the beginning of the 1000s. And then leading up to this moment of peace. So leading up to the beginning of the 1600s. So we kind of chronicle that period where they are fighting on the battlefield. But it's also really important to note how important culture was to them at that time. You know, they have this code which is called like bun and bu. And so bu is this term which I don't know if anybody would have picked up on one of the terms that I used to describe samurai.

• 20:03Speaker 02

  They were called bushi and it's the same bu and it means kind of war warrior. And so this, this culture of bu is about warcraft and bun is about culture itself. It is the same bun as the word bunka, which actually means culture. And so you have to master both. So you have this, this very cultured group of people and this very kind of ferocious group of people. And they, you have to be able to do both. I sort of described it when I gave tours of like, you know, like today, we kind of think if you're sporty, you can't be arty. But then you actually had to be both. You had to do everything. And then the next part of the exhibition is, is about this time of peace,

• 20:45Speaker 02

  this great peace under the Tokugawa, which lasts from about 1603 to 1868. And then we have a small section on the transformation of society and leading up to the point where the samurai are abolished. And then the last section of the exhibition is really about their legacy. How that image of the samurai then gets proliferated as propaganda in the first half of the 20th century. And then it turns into popular media in the second half. And we sort of land in the present day with video games, anime, fashion, manga, and how it's this, it's this sort of malleable image that's still alive.

• 21:28Speaker 02

  I mean, our closing kind of message of, of the exhibition is of trying to encourage people to play with the image, create a new perception of the samurai trope moving forward. Maybe it's not about a man in armor wielding a sword, which is really what the exhibition was sort of going against. Maybe instead it's about a samurai woman. Maybe it's about a samurai poet. Maybe it's about a low ranking samurai, not just the elite.

• 21:57Kate Lister?

  Because Could women be samurais then?

• 22:01Speaker 02

  Yes, yes. So during this time of peace where the samurai consolidated into a class, and this is during the Tokugawa period from 1603. If you were born into that class of the samurai, you are a samurai. So there are these samurai women and they play very important roles. You know, they are very important people within samurai households.

• 22:31Kate Lister?

  I did not know that. So it's like, it's, it's a class that you're, you're born into. Can you inherit it? So if you're a samurai and if you have children, your children are samurai as well?

• 22:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. Exactly. That's how it's passed on. And so one of the most important functions of a samurai household is to sustain itself both economically and in terms of longevity. And so there's a lot of anxiety about having children

• 23:02Speaker 02

  and ensuring that this, this household can, can last.

• 23:07Kate Lister?

  I didn't know that. I thought that like a samurai was, was like, it was like being a knight that you train for it and then you become a samurai. I had no idea that you could be born into it and pass on your samuriness. That's fascinating.

• 23:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. I mean, that's how it was for about 250 years.

• 23:26Kate Lister?

  Were there famous samurais then? Do we know some of the names that, that survive?

• 23:30Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. I mean, in terms of famous samurai, obviously during this Tokugawa period, we have lots and lots of names because if you are the head of a clan, like a daimyo, if you're the head of a domain, we, we know your name and, and your family history is very well charted. You really, to, to be an important samurai, you had to have this family lineage to, and you would often have to prove that you were a samurai. And so people would make family scrolls about who you were related to, stretching back hundreds of years to really justify your place in society.

• 24:10Speaker 02

  So we have all of these genealogical hand scrolls as well that have been passed down to us. And then there are famous warriors from further back who do these brave and noble deeds and they become kind of the marvel superheroes of their day. So there's the civil wars of the 1180s called the Genpei Wars. And they become this kind of fertile ground for stories and prints. And so for example, there's a very famous warrior called Minamoto no Yoshitsune. And he's probably the most famous warrior of all time.

• 24:56Speaker 02

  And he becomes this icon of like the Kabuki stage of many Japanese prints and stories and books. And yeah, there's this, and he features even on like accessories.

• 25:11Kate Lister?

  Wow.

• 25:11Speaker 02

  And famous exploits of him. In, in the, in the exhibition, we actually had a sugiroku, which is a board game where you could play the life of Minamoto no Yoshitsune. And so it was a bit like snakes and ladder. So you roll dice and you move through the famous exploits of this warrior. And you kind of imagine yourself as these people.

• 25:32Kate Lister?

  Oh, was there really are like the celebrities of their day?

• 25:35Speaker 02

  Oh yeah, very much so.

• 25:37Kate Lister?

  Okay. So you mentioned there that, that samurais were expected to get married and to produce lineage. So let's talk a little bit about what a samurai wedding would look like. I mean, presumably then, these aren't necessarily arrangements of love and romance. They are unions of title and property and name.

• 25:59Speaker 02

  Absolutely. And, and that was a really important part for a, a samurai woman was to be able to make a, a good match. You wanted to be able to have prestige through your relationships. And it was, it was very, very important. I mean, this was really, a lot of the focus of samurai parents was to negotiate these relationships. And there are examples actually of young women sort of trialing these relationships out. Like sometimes young women would come and live in the family of their prospective groom to see if it would actually work.

• 26:41Kate Lister?

  No.

• 26:41Speaker 02

  And quite often it didn't. And so they just went back and, and nobody really kind of minded about, about that.

• 26:51Speaker 02

  But that, that's not the case for all of them. I mean, there are some very, very, very high profile matches that happened that, that they would never be undone. So for example, the second shogun Tokugawa Hidetada, his sister was actually married to the emperor Gomizu no. And so that match, which was sort of coordinated by the first shogun Ieyasu, that was a very significant relationship. And so you have these high stakes political marriages. And then you have these other ones on a slightly lower scale. I mean, the samurai are five to 10% of the population. And within that, there are all of these ranks of samurai.

• 27:35Speaker 02

  And your rank of samurai is also dependent on your parents. So it's very hard to move up and down even within the class system. And so these marriages become very, very important points of how you can sort of slightly augment your status within the class. It is really complicated.

• 27:55Kate Lister?

  So what I'm hearing is that it's very complicated, but there's also, there's a lot of order here. There are a lot of rules, a lot of social etiquette. Honor is very, very important to these people. And from what you're saying, marriage and producing children is very important. I'm wondering, what do we know about just the sexual behaviour of people that were samurais? Were they allowed to have things like extramarital affairs, premarital sex? Were they allowed to go to the brothels and misbehave? Or was that just, was that far beneath them and they would never do such a thing?

• 28:30Speaker 02

  Well, if you're a man, you have more leeway than a woman.

• 28:36Speaker 02

  I know.

• 28:37Kate Lister?

  Of course.

• 28:37Speaker 02

  But women do get up to stuff, so it's not, it's not.

• 28:42Kate Lister?

  Good.

• 28:43Speaker 02

  Uh, it's not the end for a woman. But yeah, because of Confucianism, which is the structure of society at the time, men have more freedom to pursue extramarital affairs than than women. So Confucianism is all about obligation and sustaining these kind of social obligations. And so for a woman to have an extramarital affair, that is kind of seen as um the man being unable to sustain his household in the right way. And so um that becomes a a big, a big problem.

• 29:22Speaker 02

  Um. So it's really about trying to sustain um this Confucianist ideal um household, which it's it's very interesting, like Confucianism is all about mapping from large scale relationships, so like the relationship between the ruler and the people all the way down to sort of the micro view of the the family. So you're basically trying to kind of, if you're the man, you're sort of meant to be in charge, and if you are doing your role correctly, every sort of part of your world will reflect these Confucianist ideals. However, if you're, if you're a man, you can go off and have your your extramarital

• 30:05Speaker 02

  affairs, though the samurai are at the apex of society and they are meant to sustain these uh moral virtues and lead by example. And so there are various decrees that uh the shogunate put out there to sort of minimize the lewd behavior of the samurai.

• 30:26Kate Lister?

  From what I know about Japanese history and sex work is they had a system of basically state sanctioned, state run sex work where they have the pleasure quarters uh known as the floating worlds, I think that they they were called. Were um samurai permitted to go to these pleasure quarters? Or would they have more of a system? Did they have concubines, for example? Or was it just everyone's going to behave themselves and we're going to set a very moral example for everybody else?

• 30:55Speaker 02

  No, so it's a complicated question because it really depends on who you are within that samurai world.

• 31:02Kate Lister?

  Yeah.

• 31:02Speaker 02

  So samurai did go to the brothels, the brothel quarter. So for example, um let's take Edo, which is modern day Tokyo, and that used to be where the shogun had uh his castle, his center of government was Edo. And he created a system of alternate attendance. So if you were a lord of a domain, every other year you had to go to Edo to see the shogun, have an audience with him. It was a way for the shogun to keep an eye on everybody, make sure no one's getting up to any revolutionary mischief. Um. And it was also a way to make sure that each lord had to spend money.

• 31:44Speaker 02

  So they had to fund all of their retinue of samurai uh to come to E- Edo. Um. And so this meant that Edo was filled with samurai and men. It was actually known as the city of bachelors. And so a lot of these samurai would go to uh the brothel quarter. Um. But what's interesting is before you enter into it, you have to take off your swords, which are the symbol of your status as samurai. And so when you go into the brothel quarter, you kind of become this kind of liminal person. Everybody's sort of treated the same. You lose your sort of signifiers, um which I do think is is quite interesting.

• 32:27Speaker 02

  It's it's this other world, as you say, this floating world where everything kind of um uh is a melange of pleasure. You're not really within time and space. You're outside of the sort of normal rules of society.

• 32:43Kate Lister?

  What about same-sex relationships?

• 32:46Speaker 02

  There are a lot of same-sex relationships. Um. It's really interesting in in this time in Japan, there's there's really no kind of transphobia or homophobia at all. Um, and sex is very available. It's very kind of open. And yeah, there's, there are these two ways. So we've talked about the way of the warrior. There's also the way of youths, uh which is uh like nanshoku. And then there's the way of women. And what's interesting about the way of women is it's not about uh how to conduct yourself for uh marriage or for your wife or to get pregnant or things like that.

• 33:30Speaker 02

  That's sort of seen as a very kind of like perfunctory relationship. You know, it serves its purpose to sustain your family. This way of the women is really about your conduct with sex workers. And, you know, as you say, uh, there's this whole world in the brothel district and you have to purport yourself in a particular manner. It's not just I will pay money and I will be able to acquire the services of these sex workers. I have to actually show that I am somewhat cultured. Um. And there are actually different ranks of sex workers. And and the same can be said for the way of youths or the way of um same male to male relationships. There's, there's very little writing on uh female to female relationships. It's really male to male.

• 34:16Speaker 02

  And there are these books where they talk about debates around which way is better, the way of youths, i.e. male to male relationships, or the way of women, male to female relationships. And a lot of these debates kind of go without an answer. And really, everybody is partaking in all of these all the time. Like, you, you, there, there wouldn't have been a man historically in this time who would not have had a relationship with another man.

• 34:56Kate Lister?

  I'll be back with Joe after this short break.

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• 36:04Kate Lister?

  Hello, betwixters. I'm jumping here because I have some very exciting news. Betwixt the Sheets has set up camp on YouTube. That's right, it took us a while, but we are there now. So if you are the kind of person who likes to see your podcasts as well as hear your podcasts, you can now go and find us right there, and the link is in the show notes. And please remember to like and subscribe because the people in charge of the money really do like that.

• 36:33Kate Lister?

  Right, let's get on with it.

• 36:45Kate Lister?

  You said there that it's called the way of youths. Does that suggest that what we're looking at here is sort of like we had in the Greek world and the Roman world, a sort of system of almost like institutionalized pederasty, where it's an older man with with a pre-adolescent boy? What exactly is going on here?

• 37:05Speaker 02

  It's very, very complicated. So most, well, all men would go through a period of time where they were sort of another gender. They're called wakashu, and they have a different hairstyle, they have different clothing, they have a very socialized role. And and this is really where you kind of, and and when you go through this at the end, you then become a man. And and that's shown by having your hairstyle changed again. So um the hairstyle that a wakashu would sport, you'd have these forelocks on your head and a little bald pate in the middle. And when you're a man, these forelocks are removed, and then you just have this bald pate on the top of your head.

• 37:49Speaker 02

  Um. And these forelocks are really, really desirable. And actually, one of the ways to sort of discourage people's obsession with um attractive youths, particularly um young actors, um or um particularly as well, these kind of um very attractive men that were used to actually sell like things like incense. They became really desirable uh people, and they were causing a frenzy. Um. And so we we can see in various edicts, uh they demand that these people cut off their forelocks. So that's a way to kind of police people's obsession with sex.

• 38:32Speaker 02

  But it's never, there are never any edicts that are discriminating kind of. Specific sexual acts, and I think that's a big difference between Europe and Japan. I mean, what's interesting about what you say about this idea of pederasty, these youths are often going beyond sort of being just teenagers. There are some examples actually of lords banning certain individuals or certain groups at certain times from shaving off their thorlocks early. And so there are various examples of these wakashu living up to ages of 25, 30 before becoming adults.

• 39:12Speaker 02

  And then also we have examples of like young love, like teenagers participating in this. So, you know, there are sometimes there are like other 16 year olds to 16 year olds expressing their unwavering love to each other. And it was a very kind of like public relationship as well. Like parents would be asked if, you know, this samurai boy could go out with their samurai son. You know, there were these sort of really interesting relationships.

• 39:43Kate Lister?

  Oh, wow. That's very open, isn't it? That's very just woven into the warp and weft of society.

• 39:49Speaker 02

  Yeah. But then there are some samurai parents and there are some examples of parents recognizing that actually having this like desirable wakashu might bring in sort of unnecessary unwanted attention. And so they rush their child through to become an adult very early. So you might have, you know, an adult looking man who is like 15, 60, because they don't want any kind of like lecherous older samurai going after their child. They want to get this child into marriage, into the next stage of their world. There is, there are, I can't deny there are some kind of pederastic elements to it.

• 40:31Speaker 02

  Of this older figure should educate this younger person. That, I mean, it goes in many different ways.

• 40:38Kate Lister?

  That was integral to samurai culture, was it then? This, that there would be an older man who would, like, what, like apprentice? A young man, is he training him to be a samurai and that sex would have been a part of that exchange?

• 40:50Speaker 02

  I think it's more about kind of cultivation. It's about this kind of conduct. They would go and be trained in kind of martial pursuits, kind of like a school. So that would be outside of this kind of relationship. This is more about how to be elegant. And actually, it's really interesting, the relationship between the younger person's conduct, the wakashu's conduct would also reflect on this older lover who was called a ninja. And so it was really important for the ninja's reputation to be able to have an elegant match. And, and actually, there are often, there are examples in records of two older people

• 41:31Speaker 02

  fighting over these young youths and some even murder their love rivals. You know, it become, it's a very sort of important and it's of emotional aspect of samurai society. But what is really interesting as well is that there's a real kind of manliness associated with it. So there's a kind of a virility associated with these male to male relationships, you know, that are kind of out in public and people know about them. Whereas you wouldn't speak openly, publicly, candidly about male to female relationships. That might make you look a bit feminine.

• 42:09Kate Lister?

  Wow. Is that where we get the word ninja from? Is that what a ninja is? A ninja is the older partner in a same sex relationship in Japan?

• 42:18Speaker 02

  No, ninja and nangia are slightly different.

• 42:22Kate Lister?

  Too good to be true, I thought that one.

• 42:24Speaker 02

  And there's a lot of really interesting discourse about ninja at the moment. If you're, if you're interested in that, then, you know, some people really are questioning whether ninja ever even existed and whether it's just kind of a legendary attribute for a different, for a specific moment in time. There's a lot to unpack here.

• 42:43Kate Lister?

  Wow. So do we have examples then of older men in relationships with one another? Or was it always an older man and a younger man, this kind of dominant and submissive dynamic? Was there examples of two older men being in love with one another?

• 42:56Speaker 02

  I mean, a lot of these relationships that are established are kind of meant to sustain themselves into adulthood. I mean, there might not be a sexual component with them later, but there's this alleged dynamic that kind of continues afterwards. And what is interesting is people have found images of two adult men in flagrante together. So the making and production of sexual images is prolific. We have so many pictures of historic Japanese sex and erotica. It was a huge part of the publishing industry. And so they are clearly very rare examples.

• 43:39Speaker 02

  And so Tim O'Screech and Ellis Tinios have worked together on a project and they've found definitely in 2004, I think, when they published this research, they had discovered some, and so there may be more now. And I've spoken to other academics within the field who have this feeling that these relationships as adults did carry on. And actually, there's a really, really brilliant book called Cartographies of Desire, Male to Male Relationships, I think it's called, and by Gregory Hugfelder.

• 44:17Speaker 02

  And in it, he describes not necessarily samurai relationships, but longer term relationships between townspeople that are same sex, that kind of carry on. And a lot to do with like transgender relationships as well. I mean, there's some really, in it, there's some really fascinating descriptions of the penal code that very much changes after the Tokugawa period ends. So in the late 1800s, when it's far more kind of based on like a sort of Anglo-American code of conduct, the sort of Christian morality.

• 44:56Speaker 02

  And, you know, there are records of police finding transgender women in long term sort of married relationships with, with men. And he writes about how some, because it was very expensive as well to have certain gendered children that sometimes if you had a girl or that you might raise that girl as a boy, because then you wouldn't have to pay a dowry. And also vice versa, there are also instances of boys being raised as girls as well. So, yeah, it was a very kind of different perception of gender. But that's really kind of outside of the samurai. That's much more about townspeople farmer conduct.

• 45:42Kate Lister?

  That's fascinating. That really is. So as a final question then, although I could talk to you about this for just for forever, what happened to the samurai? Do we still have samurai?

• 45:52Speaker 02

  No, so at the end of the Tokugawa period, so this 1868 date, the shogun actually sort of resigns, resigns power, and then there's a big shift in society. And that's really the beginning of the end for the samurai. Like the, the social structures of society completely change, the society gets rewritten. And by 1876, all of the privileges that the samurai had that were social were taken away. So like the permission to carry two swords, which was the prerogative of the samurai, is completely removed. And that's sort of really seen as the, the final end of the samurai.

• 46:34Speaker 02

  But they, they live on in images, in the power of their legacy. You know, as, as we started on this call, you know, the word samurai is totally global. Everybody's heard of it. Everybody's probably seen a samurai film or a sword or knows something about them. And so they can't, they do still exist, but very much within us.

• 46:57Kate Lister?

  Hmm. Jo, you have been wonderful to talk to. Thank you so much. And if people want to know more about you and your work, where can they find you?

• 47:05Speaker 02

  They can find me on Instagram at jo nicols, J O E N I C K O L S. And then also at jo nicols.com. Again, nicols is spelt slightly differently, N I C K O L S. But this has been amazing to talk to you about. I mean, there's so much in the history of Japanese sex and it's really a burgeoning field. As I say, like the sexual imagery, which is known as shunga or spring pictures during most of 20th century, up until the 90s, it was, even in Japan, it was seen as inappropriate to sort of look upon these works. So it's only really since the 90s that people have really been able to sort of openly talk

• 47:50Speaker 02

  about these kinds of topics. And I'd also really recommend, if you're interested, to look at the British Museum. We've just had samurai and we had a section on samurai sex. And so in the samurai book, there's a section on that. But also we had an exhibition in 2013 called Shunga. And that's all about this sexual imagery and it's so interesting. So I'd really recommend if you're interested by either one of those, those books. And these kind of sexual imagery, they were collected by samurai. So even if, I mean, one of the other really interesting things, just to talk, go very briefly back to, you know, were the samurai allowed to go to these kind of brothel quarters?

• 48:32Speaker 02

  And, you know, if you were high ranking, if you were a daimyo, you wouldn't really be allowed to go there. You had to purport yourself in this sort of very erudite manner, but you might collect sexual imagery. And so that would be how you would sort of vicariously go into these spaces and have, yeah, we know, we know of many daimyo who were sponsors of painters who would do that. And actually, I was reading recently, again, this is Tim O'Screech's work, who describes a shogun building a tea house, which is where you would go and meet a sex worker in the shogunal palace gardens.

• 49:14Speaker 02

  And he had this vicarious visit and it really caused a bit of a stir. People were like, you shouldn't really be doing this. So there's this really interesting relationship between status, sex, rank, and how you sort of navigate these obligations. So it's, it's a fascinating world.

• 49:35Kate Lister?

  That is fascinating. Jo, will you come back again and talk to us about this? Because this, it's just, it's endlessly interesting, this.

• 49:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, and I haven't even told you what they used for lube. So, you know, there's so much to talk about.

• 49:49Kate Lister?

  No, you haven't. No, you've got to tell us that before you go. What did they use for lube?

• 49:55Speaker 02

  Well, in one of the earliest images, as I say, there are these like depictions of sex that stretches back way before the Tokugawa period. There's this 14th century scroll of a priest penetrating a young acolyte and he uses clove oil. But we actually know from during the Tokugawa period.

• 50:17Kate Lister?

  It's a bit burny.

• 50:18Speaker 02

  Well, they would apparently even after sex, they would then warm their bottoms on a brazer as well to help all the after effects. But, but in the Tokugawa period, they actually used this really interesting mixture of hibiscus root, seaweed and egg white. And this could actually be made into, it could be dried into a powder and then it would be reactivated by your saliva. So it's, they have all of these really interesting.

• 50:47Kate Lister?

  Wow.

• 50:48Speaker 02

  I know, I know, I know, I know. Shocking.

• 50:51Kate Lister?

  That's incredible. Jo, I think we've got, you can't do any better than that. We're going to have to leave it on that note. That was amazing. Thank you so much for coming by and I've no doubt we will see you again soon.

• 51:02Speaker 02

  I would love that. This has been so fun. Thank you so much.

• 51:08Kate Lister?

  Thank you for listening and thank you so much to Jo for joining us. And if you liked what you heard, don't forget to like, review and follow along wherever it is you get your podcasts. And if you'd like us to explore a subject, if you'd just wanted to say hello, then you can email us at [email protected]. This podcast was edited by Hannah Fyodorov and produced by Sophie G. The senior producer was Freddy Chick. Join me again, Betwixt Ashits, History of Sex, Scandal and Society, a podcast by History Hit. This podcast contains music from Epidemic Sound.