Notes

I write this just to say I think Japan was one of the first to accept gays, naturally. Emphasis on the word naturally. They did not get under the influence of any culture before accepting gay culture.
Ok now moving on.

So I was watching an anime and in it there was a yuri drama play on stage. Then this led me to think about Japan and LGBTs. You know, lesbians gays bisexual transgender, standing for LGBT, a really common english word today you can search it up. Anyway I saw in an anime that high school students actually perform yuri script on stage during festivals and it got me thinking that Japan was one of the most open to homosexuality. Sure I heard stuff about gay samurai during the era and if someone bullshit me saying "oh japan samurai majority of them were gay" without showing any source I would totally believe it. I don't want to speak this for a lot of people but I genuinely think most would get fooled.

Funny because technically they are not fooled.

I'll start from the personal stuff. Remember news we discussed about a lot like how old men goes to thailand and adopted shota to fulfill their fantasy and sexual pleasure or a principle goes to phillipines and had sex with 10k kids? I'm sure 10k kids in an elementary school are not all just shoujou now are they? Yaoi are not just appealing to fujoshi and yuri is actually very common even in western culture where high school or college girls would just kiss each other after having a few shots of alcohol. Point is I feel like Japanese are very open to LGBT even at a young age. Approving a yuri scene in a highschool play, having a gay street, no judging - hell even admiring gay love because they are so in love, had shown that people are comfortable with showing their love in public and comfortable with lgbt around them. Even when I visited Akihabara there was a stereotypical gay dude wearing thin V cuts tight jeans a long women's wallet in his pocket behind, squeezing a friend's ass when the girlfriend was clinging on his arm. How exaggerated was that? I did not one bit. I feel like it might be in the genes man, that lgbt are being accepted so easily; nah I jest, I kid, I'm just joking. Still I can't help but being happy a part of the culture being like this.

Now for hard facts.
Back then Shintoism had said that, I quote, "all sexual love are unconditionally good". Rough translation. Very admirable I should say.
That's before Buddhism. When Buddhism came to Japan, it was part of the teachings in Buddhism that restrict oneself from touching or thinking about women because it was labeled as desire. To abandon all desire is what the Buddhism was after. Gay acts in Buddhism? Widely accepted. Gay acts were not punished in the temples. It was excused and considered as "a lapse in self control". Also "a deed that brings no remorse or hurt anyone, while bringing happiness is a good deed" was a common thing.

Now the section we've all been waiting for. Gay samurais. It's true I'm sure you know. Pre-modern era was actually pretty popular with gay sex amongst men.
2 reasons I can think of:
1) Buddhism *duh*
2) Men women ratio was too big of a difference at the time

If I'm not mistaken I'm talking about the 1650-1750 era. Huge lords and rich people will take in young boys to train them and if they agree, be lovers and perform sexual acts until they grow older. The word for this is wakashudo or 若衆 if you don't understand.

Fun fact: Did you know that the number one cause for revenge killings during this period was discord between two male lovers? Crazy right?

Now we understand why the culture of shotacon is being developed. My guess on loli is because the legal age for marriage in Japan is 16 haha. Surely it's not but the appeal of young cute little things I can understand. The only 2 things separating the lolicons and the pedophiles are 'only look no touch' and loli are not always underage girls just small looking bodies.

I can understand why the laws don't approve lgbt in the modern day. Too much old men. Too little young men that aimed high, mostly because chain restaurants and big companies kill small businesses but that topic's for another day. Too much western influence.
SAD to see Japan turned against lgbt (not really), I'm confident that they will revert it back.

Closing thoughts. With the deep history of gay stuff in your genes I confirm that Japanese NATURALLY accept gay lesbians bisexual, I don't about transgender though but they seem popular from the looks of Japanese people praising how beautiful transgender Thai people are. hurhur~


Of course writing this I had did some research. Was fun. Here's for citation if you interested, a big part of this is from here: https://www.tofugu.com/japan/gay-samurai/