This lecture will explore wakashu, or male youths, and suggest that they can be seen as constituting a third gender in the Edo-period sex/gender system. The talk will also untangle three relatively distinctive meanings of the word “wakashu”: 1) as a pubescent pre-adult male who could engage in both heterosexual and homosexual relations, 2) as the junior partner in a nanshoku, or male-male sexual relationship, and 3) as another term for kagema, or male prostitutes connected to the kabuki stage. The paper will demonstrate the relative clarity that prevailed in the representation of wakashu up until the mid-eighteenth century, and then the gender ambiguity that appears in several of the works of Suzuki Harunobu and some of his contemporaries. Such ambiguity lessens in popular imagery by the end of the century, but a new kind of cross-dresser, the haori geisha, becomes prominent in the Bunka-Bunsei eras (1804-1829).

Reception following lecture.

This event is sponsored by the Asian and Middle Eastern Studies Program Rudelson Fund; and co-sponsored by the Asian and Middle Eastern Languages and Literatures Department.