![old japanese gay sex art old japanese gay sex art](https://img.theculturetrip.com/450x/smart/images/56-3635772-14271562826f0d38aa5d44485d9835564ebdb8672d.jpg)
A gay subculture flourishes, with many artists playfully shifting and layering identities, mainly through the internet. Same-sex marriage is not legal in Japan today, although it was debated in the legislature in 2015 and some cities have allowed partnership certificates for same-sex couples. And it was then in the late 1860s, as Japan rushed to adopt Western technology and forms of government, that it also imported more rigid Western notions of gender and permissible sexual expression. The Edo period ended after Japan was humiliated by demands from a militarily superior West – the black ships of Commodore Perry wrested concessions from a country that had once confined Western traders to offshore islands. The notion of age of consent did not exist in Edo Japan, he said, and was imported later. Chagnon said marriages and sexual liaisons took place at an earlier age than the present day, partly because people died so much younger, often by their late 30s. The curators consulted social workers and lawyers during the original exhibit, held at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, to make sure the work was not considered child pornography. The exhibition raises and confronts questions of pederasty or exploitation, given that wakashu were sexually available after puberty, younger than would now be considered the age of consent. The only print showing two naked women is ambiguous, with art historians uncertain whether it suggests mutual desire. There is virtually no depiction of lesbianism, since women were not granted the sexual freedoms men were. Men are usually in charge, both in pursuit of sexual partners and in sexual positions, except for experienced women who pursue younger wakashu. Any hint of adult male-male sex was confined to outcast groups such as Kabuki actors, said Michael Chagnon, the curator of exhibit interpretation at the Japan Society, although homosexuality was practiced among samurai for centuries and commercialized during the Edo period.