Hidden Desires: Female-Female Sexuality in Early Modern Japan

Abstract

Female-female sexuality has been largely ignored by scholars because of the complexities and difficulties of proving these relationships, this is the case with many cultures across the world. This study aims to investigate sexual and homosocial relationships between women in Early Modern Japan using primarily art and literature to show how women interacted and how they may have engaged in sexuality with one another, especially in women-only spaces such as the ōoku’s and nun covenants. Moreover, due the idea that female-female sexuality is viewed as masturbation due to the lack of a real phallus, this study investigates the roots of phallocentrist ideas, why this could be the case, and art that contests the phallocentric ideology and the male gaze.