Kagema
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Kagema (陰間) is a Japanese term for historical young male sex workers. Kagema were often passed off as apprentice kabuki actors (who often engaged in sex work themselves on the side) and catered to a mixed male and female clientele. For male clients, the preferred service was anal sex, with the client taking the penetrative role;[1]: 109 homosexual fellatio is almost unmentioned in Edo period (1603–1867) documents.[1]: 121–122
Kagema who were not affiliated with an actual kabuki theatre could be hired through male brothels or teahouses specializing in kagema.[1]: 69–72 Such institutions were known as kagemajaya (陰間茶屋, lit. 'kagema teahouse'). Kagema typically charged more than female sex workers of equivalent status,[1]: p111 and associated notes and experienced healthy trade into the mid-19th century, despite increasing legal restrictions that attempted to contain sex workers (both male and female) in specified urban areas and to dissuade class-spanning relationships, which were viewed as potentially disruptive to traditional social organization.[1]: 70–78, 132–134
Many such sex workers, as well as many young kabuki actors, were indentured servants sold as children to the brothel or theater, typically on a ten-year contract.[1]: 69, 134–135 Kagema could be presented as yarō (young men), wakashū (adolescent boys, about 10–18 years old) or as onnagata (female impersonators).[1]: 90–92
This term also appears in modern Japanese homosexual slang.
Gallery
[edit]- A kagema sits upon his elder patron's lap. Miyagawa Isshō, Spring Pastimes, 1750
See also
[edit]References
[edit]Bibliography
[edit]- Bernard Faure "The Red Thread" 1998.