The Companions

Miyagawa Choshun
(1682–1753)

A younger and an older samurai relax in an intimate scene typical of the intergenerational love relationships that were the norm between novice samurai and their elders. Passages in Hagakure, the eighteenth century warrior manual, indicate that it was expected for a novice samurai to have only one lover.

Individual panel from an erotic painting on silk done at the end of the eighteenth century, reprinted (courtesy of Dr. Richard Lane) in The Love of the Samurai, a Thousand Years of Japanese Homosexuality by Tsuneo Watanabe and Jun’ichi Iwata.

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