Wakashu
- Japanese: 若衆 (wakashu or wakashuu)
Wakashû refers generally to a young man, prior to the age of genpuku, who therefore has not had his forelocks cut/shaved off yet. The term can also refer more specifically to the younger partner in a samurai pederastic relationship (shûdô), or to young male actors in kabuki.
Sources such as Ihara Saikaku's Nanshoku Ôkagami ("A Great Mirror of Male Love", 1687) indicate that "in the past" (when is not precisely clear), wakashu were typically "ostentatiously violent, and thus manly,"[1] and that at that time, a young man who was too weak, gentle, or feminine in his manner would find it difficult to find an older samurai with whom to engage in shûdô. This emphasis on martial manliness is somewhat understandable, given the martial nature of life in the Sengoku period, and the idea that wakashû were expected to grow up to become fathers, warriors, and nenja[2] themselves.
Saikaku indicates, however, that by his own time (the Genroku period, 1688-1704), wakashû came to be valued more for their youth, beauty, and artistic abilities (e.g. in dance, music, and poetry), and less for their physical strength or martial prowess, in conjunction with the rise of the feminization of young actors on the kabuki stage.
References
- Maki Morinaga, "The Gender of Onnagata as the Imitating Imitated," positions 10:2 (2002), 245-284.
