Nanshoku dates back to the Japanese Sengoku Period (The Warring States) and earlier, and could be widely seen among samurai, monastic orders, and kabuki actors engaged in male prostitution. The practice only began to fade with the Meiji Restoration in the late 1800s, when scrutiny from the West led to a redefining of homosexuality and heterosexuality in Japanese society. Famous historical figures known to have practiced nanshoku include Oda Nobunaga (1534-1582) and his vassal Mori Ranmaru (1565-1582), who perished with him in battle.

During the Tokugawa period, some of the Shinto gods, especially Hachiman, Myoshin, Shinmei and Tenjin, "came to be seen as guardian deities of nanshoku" (male–male love).

While not “out” in our sense of the word, Yoshiya openly lived and was in a committed relationship with her partner, Chiyo Monma, for over fifty years. Notably, Yoshiya had to formally adopt Monma as her “daughter” in order for the two to be legally bound and able to make medical decisions for one another. Even today, without legalized same-sex marriage, queer partners “adopting” one another continues to be one of the few legal loopholes for same-sex relationships in Japan. Yoshiya’s family denies her LGBTQ identity to this day.

She has continued pushing the envelope with transgender rights, after an incident in 2001 when police arrested and detained her within a men’s jail for forty-one days. This prompted a long legal struggle which ended in 2004 when the Tokyo Family Court allowed Carrousel to become one of the first transgender applicants to legally change their sex within the family registers. Unfortunately, legal transition continues to be nigh unreachable for most transgender people who do not pass the court’s rigorous code.

At the age of seventy-eight, Carrousel continues to perform on stage and has enjoyed being cast in femme fatale roles on mainstream television.

Like Togo, Miwa publically came out as LGBTQ at a time when very few were at liberty to do so, let alone entertainers so prominent in the public eye. In addition to his writing and career in music, Miwa is known for his criticism of the government and strong anti-war stance.

Originally closeted, married, and working at a bank, Togo exploded into the LGBTQ rights scene in 1963 and was (unsuccessfully) running political campaigns by the 1970s. On the side, he moonlighted as a bar owner, gay magazine editor, singer, actor, and pornographer. 

Togo was a radical leftist, whose ideologies would be at home with today’s most progressive queer youth, but which put him at odds with the respectability politics of the wider LGBTQ community. A self-proclaimed okama, Togo was an ardent activist for sexual minority issues, ranging from LGBTQ to sex worker rights. His open mockery of the emperor often brought the ire of right-wing parties. His political affiliation, he said, was to the Zatsumin no Kai (Association for Miscellaneous People) and there was seemingly no issue or societal reject he would not rally for.

Nothing in the Kojiki or Nihon Shoki mention anything about homosexuality, unless you count the fact that the first three generations of deities described in the Nihon Shoki are all male. But, maybe this is the point. There is no overt approval of homosexual behavior, but there is no condemnation, either.

The Nazis ruined Brand financially and destroyed his life work. His followers were too afraid to support him.

Some say a fleet of ships is the loveliest

Vision in this dark world, but I say it’s

What you love.

It’s easy to make this clear to everyone,

Since Helen, she who outshone

All others in beauty, left

A fine husband,

And headed for Troy

Without a thought for

Her daughter, her dear parents…

Led astray…

And I recall Anaktoria, whose sweet step

Or that flicker of light on her face,

I’d rather see than Lydian chariots

Or the armed ranks of the hoplites.

He who has seen everything, I will make known (?) to the lands. 

I will teach (?) about him who experienced all things, 

... alike, 

Anu granted him the totality of knowledge of all. 

(…) 

Take and read out from the lapis lazuli tablet 

how Gilgamesh went through every hardship 

(…) 

"Gilgamesh does not leave a girl to her mother(?)!" 

The daughter of the warrior, the bride of the young man, 

Anu listened to their complaints, 

and (the gods) called out to Aruru: 

"it was you, Aruru, who created mankind(?), 

now create a zikru to it/him. 

Let him be equal to his (Gilgamesh's) stormy heart, 

let them be a match for each other so that Uruk may find peace!" 

When Aruru heard this she created within herself the zikrtt of Anu. 

Aruru washed her hands, she pinched off some clay, and threw it into the wilderness. In the wildness(?) she created valiant Enkidu, 

born of Silence, endowed with strength by Ninurta. 

His whole body was shaggy with hair, 

he had a full head of hair like a woman, 

his locks billowed in profusion like Ashnan. 

(…) 

The mother of Gilgamesh, the wise, all-knowing, said to her Lord; 

Rimat-Ninsun, the wise, all-knowing, said to Gilgamesh: 

"As for the stars of the sky that appeared 

and the meteorite(?) of Anu which fell next to you, 

you tried to lift but it was too mighty for you, 

you tried to turn it over but were unable to budge it, 

you laid it down at my feet, 

and I made it compete with you, 

and you loved and embraced it as a wife." 

Vocabulary: Anu, Aruru and Ninurta were mesopotamian gods. 

Gilgamesh, written in  Akkadian in the Cuneiform  scripture from around 2100 BCE

Just as day began to dawn 

Gilgamesh addressed his friend, saying: 

"Enkidu, your mother, the gazelle, 

and your father, the wild donkey, engendered you, 

four wild asses raised you on their milk, 

and the herds taught you all the grazing lands. 

May the Roads of Enkidu to the Cedar Forest 

mourn you 

and not fall silent night or day. 

May the Elders of the broad city of Uruk-Haven 

mourn you. 

May the peoples who gave their blessing after us 

mourn you. 

(…) 

May the bear, hyena, panther, tiger, water buffalo(?), jackal, 

lion, wild bull, stag, ibex, all the creatures of the plains 

mourn you. 

May the holy River Ulaja, along whose banks we grandly used to stroll, mourn you. 

May the pure Euphrates, to which we would libate water from our waterskins, mourn you. 

May the men of Uruk-Haven, whom we saw in our battle when 

we killed the Bull of Heaven, 

mourn you. 

May the farmer ...,who extols your name in his sweet work song, 

mourn you. 

May the ... of the broad city, who ... exalted your name, 

mourn you. 

May the herder ..., who prepared butter and light beer for your mouth, mourn you. 

May ..., who put ointments on your back, 

mourn you 

(…) 

May ..., who prepared fine beer for your mouth, 

mourn you. 

May the harlot, ... you rubbed yourself with oil and felt good, 

mourn you. 

May ...,... of the wife placed(!) a ring on you ..., 

mourn you 

May the brothers go into mourning over you like sisters; 

... the lamentation priests, may their hair be shorn off on 

your behalf. 

Enkidu, your mother and your father are in the wastelands, 

I mourn you ..." 

"Hear me, O Elders of Uruk, hear me, O men! 

I mourn for Enkidu, my friend, 

I shriek in anguish like a mourner. 

You, axe at my side, so trusty at my hand-- 

you, sword at my waist, shield in front of me, 

you, my festal garment, a sash over my loins-- 

an evil demon!) appeared and took him away from me! 

My friend, the swift mule, fleet wild ass of the mountain, 

panther of the wilderness, 

Enkidu, my friend, the swift mule, fleet wild ass of the mountain, 

panther of the wilderness, 

after we joined together and went up into the mountain,

Queer Easter ’22 Queer and History Track 

fought the Bull of Heaven and killed it, 

and overwhelmed Humbaba, who lived in the Cedar Forest, 

now what is this sleep which has seized you? 

You have turned dark and do not hear me!" 

But his (Enkidu's) eyes do not move, 

he touched his heart, but it beat no longer. 

He covered his friend's face like a bride, 

swooping down over him like an eagle, 

and like a lioness deprived of her cubs 

he keeps pacing to and fro. 

He shears off his curls and heaps them onto the ground, 

ripping off his finery and casting it away as an abomination. 

Just as day began to dawn, Gilgamesh ... 

and issued a call to the land: 

"You, blacksmith! You, lapidary! You, coppersmith! 

You, goldsmith! You, jeweler! 

Create 'My Friend,' fashion a statue of him. 

... he fashioned a statue of his friend. 

His features ... 

...,your chest will be of lapis lazuli, your skin will be of gold." 

(…) 

"I had you recline on the great couch, 

indeed, on the couch of honor I let you recline, 

1 had you sit in the position of ease, the seat at the left, so the 

princes of the world kissed your feet. 

I had the people of Uruk mourn and moan for you, 

I filled happy people with woe over you, 

and after you (died) I let a filthy mat of hair grow over my body, 

and donned the skin of a lion and roamed the wilderness."

Same-sex attraction was a deeply taboo topic at the time; the word “homosexuality” would not even exist for another two years, when it was coined by the Austro-Hungarian writer Karl-Maria Kertbeny. So the ideas in Ulrichs’s speech — that such attraction was innate, and that those who experienced it should be treated the same as anyone else — were revolutionary.

His remarks preceded by more than 100 years the Stonewall riots in New York in 1969, which are widely seen as the start of the modern L.G.B.T.Q. rights movement.

They helped inspire the rise of the world’s first gay rights movement, 30 years later in Berlin.

They foreshadowed the imposition of a sodomy law across the German Empire that would later be used by the Nazis to target gay men, thousands of whom were killed in concentration camps.

In 1931, she had her fourth surgery, to transplant a uterus and construct a vaginal canal. This made her one of the earliest transgender women to undergo a vaginoplasty surgery, a few weeks after Erwin Gohrbandt performed the experimental procedure on Dora Richter.

Elbe's immune system rejected the transplanted uterus, and the operation and a subsequent surgical revision caused infection, which led to her death from cardiac arrest on 13 September 1931, three months after the surgery.

Elbe's story was published in the book and the movie "The Danish Girl" based on her diaries. Read the book.