Editing Homosexuality in Japan (section)

=== Social role play in man and boy roles ===

Traditional expressions of male to male sexual and romantic activity were between a man who had gone through with his coming of age ceremony, and a male youth who had not.<ref name=":schallow"/><ref name="Leupp"/>

In his introduction to ''The Great Mirror of Male Love'', Schallow writes, "a careful reading of nanshoku okagami makes clear that the constraint requiring that male homosexual relations be between an adult male and a ''wakashū'' was sometimes observed only in the form of fictive roleplaying. This meant that relations between pairs of man-boy lovers were accepted as legitimate whether or not a real man and a real boy were involved, so long as one partner took the role of 'man' and the other the role of 'boy.{{'"}}<ref name=":schallow"/>
 
In ''Two Old Cherry Trees Still in Bloom'', the protagonists are two men who have been in love since they were youths. The "man" in this relationship is 66, and the "boy" in this relationship is 63.<ref>''Two Old Cherry Trees Still in Bloom, The Great Mirror of Male Love''. Paul Gordon Schalow (trans.) p. 181.</ref>

In the realm of male kabuki (as opposed to "boy" kabuki), Saikaku writes,<ref>''Kichiya Riding a Horse, The Great Mirror of Male Love''. Paul Gordon Schalow (trans.) p. 215.</ref><blockquote>now, since everyone wore the hairstyle of adult men, it was still possible at age 34 or 35 for youthful-looking actors to get under a man's robe...If skill is what the audience is looking for, there should be no problem in having a 70 year old perform as a youth in long sleeved robes. So long as he can continue to find patrons willing to spend the night with him, he can then enter the new year without pawning his belongings.</blockquote>The protagonist of Saikaku's ''An Amorous Man'' hires the services of a "boy" who turns out to be ten years his senior, and finds himself disappointed.<ref name="Leupp"/>

In the ''Ugetsu Monogatari'', written by Ueda Akinari (1734–1809), the story ''Kikuka no chigiri'' is commonly believed to be about a romantic relationship between two adult men, where neither obviously holds the sociosexual role of ''wakashū'', though they do structure it with their age difference in mind, using the "male love" terminology "older brother" versus "younger brother".  In the story of Haemon and Takashima, two adult men, they also use this terminology, and Takashima additionally presents himself as a ''wakashū''.<ref name="Leupp"/>

Mentions of men who openly enjoy both being the penetrating and penetrated partner are not found in these works, but are found in earlier Heian personal diaries, like in the diary of [[Fujiwara no Yorinaga]], who writes on wanting to perform both the penetrative, and the receptive, sexual role. This is also referenced in a Muromachi era poem by the Shingon priest Socho (1448–1532).  This may indicate that the mores surrounding appropriate homosexual conduct for men had changed rapidly in the course of one-to-two centuries.<ref name="Leupp"/>