This last is not a question that would have troubled, for example, the three great shoguns who unified Japan, Oda Nobunaga, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, or Tokugawa Ieyasu, nor for that matter Miyamoto Musashi, the author of “The Book of Five Rings.” (2) Indeed it has been said that it would never have been asked of a daimyo, “lord”, why he took boys as lovers, but why he didn’t. Known also as wakashudo, “the way of the youth”, it was a practice engaged in by all members of the samurai class, from lowliest warrior to highest lord. Then I ran into the Samurai - the warrior class of Japan, and I ran into something very similar to the relationships that existed in Greece. Because who better to serve together on the field than people who love each other more than anything? Then of course, I ran across the Amazons, who, let’s face it, probably had a high number of lesbians among their ranks.
![historic japanese gay sex art historic japanese gay sex art](https://static.standard.co.uk/s3fs-public/thumbnails/image/2013/06/26/09/art2.jpg)
Or who would desert his beloved or fail him in the hour of danger?”īasically, they used Gay couples as a way to strengthen their military. For what lover would not choose rather to be seen by all mankind than by his beloved, either when abandoning his post or throwing away his arms? He would be ready to die a thousand deaths rather than endure this. “- if there were only some way of contriving that a state or an army should be made up of lovers and their beloved, they would be the very best governors of their own city, abstaining from all dishonour, and emulating one another in honour and when fighting at each other’s side, although a mere handful, they would overcome the world.
![historic japanese gay sex art historic japanese gay sex art](https://gayhighwaymen.files.wordpress.com/2013/11/20131109-201241.jpg)
(Suppose you don’t see women until you come of age, and it’s not very surprising that not all the Spartan men were attracted to just their women.) The Sacred Band of Thebes is also worth mentioning, if only because we get the reasoning from Plutarch that: Greece is a standout - Athens wasn’t the only city-state where men loved men, Sparta is well known for much of the same, and every single one of their men was a soldier. The answer was fairly easy, and I looked at major military cultures around the world. What I wanted to know was how those things could be approached together in a slightly fantasy setting. As with many things, I stumbled across this fact when researching for a character I was writing - I knew my character was gay, and I knew he was an ex-soldier. Whatever the arguments for America’s Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy have been, Gay men in highly militarized scenarios are neither new nor unusual. The “Beautiful Way” of the Samurai - Gay relations in the Japanese Samurai Class.