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From the medieval period, if not earlier, the Japanese considered homosexual acts and relationships as simply a matter of taste or preference, and as something which simply varied from person to person, and over time. While Confucian teachings place a strong emphasis on family, and on proper relationships with one's parents, spouse, and children, there was no parallel in Japanese tradition to the biblical bans on such activities. The specific mode of ''shûdô'' male-male relationships, particular to the samurai class, emerged in the medieval period, and by the Edo period was likely seen as a firmly entrenched traditional custom.<ref>[[Eiko Ikegami]], ''Bonds of Civility'', Cambridge University Press (2005), 269-270.</ref>
From the medieval period, if not earlier, the Japanese considered homosexual acts and relationships as simply a matter of taste or preference, and as something which simply varied from person to person, and over time. While Confucian teachings place a strong emphasis on family, and on proper relationships with one's parents, spouse, and children, there was no parallel in Japanese tradition to the biblical bans on such activities. The specific mode of ''shûdô'' male-male relationships, particular to the samurai class, emerged in the medieval period, and by the Edo period was likely seen as a firmly entrenched traditional custom.<ref>[[Eiko Ikegami]], ''Bonds of Civility'', Cambridge University Press (2005), 269-270.</ref>
Particularly popular among ''[[kabukimono]]'' and other individuals on the peripheries of the [[mibunsei|class system]], ''shûdô'' is said to have raised anxieties among Tokugawa authorities at the beginning of the Edo period, as individuals often obeyed stronger loyalties to their romantic/sexual partners than to the normal feudal structure. An incident in [[1612]] is an example of precisely the sort of thing the shogunate was worried about: a ''kabukimono'' who served a samurai lord as a lowly servant killed that lord, as revenge for the lord's execution of another ''kabukimono'' - a close friend, perhaps a lover - sometime previously.<ref>Ikegami, 263.</ref>
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