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One type of “perversion” in particular was an ero-guro favorite: the underground world of male cross-dressed prostitutes. These men were referred to in press reports as “new kagema” (kagema being an Edo-period term for cross-dressing male prostitutes, closely aligned with the Kabuki theater). Pflugfelder points out that “popular writings construed the male-male erotic subculture of the contemporary cityscape as a shadowy and secret world,”106 and hence it was ideal ryo-ki territory. Articles about this subculture, albeit stressing the criminal and pathological nature of its demimonde, also directed readers where to find it.

78 A curious result of this imperative was that husbands tended to be represented in rather infantilized terms in these narratives. Wives were exhorted to become “mothers” to their impetuous and selfish husbands and to manage their bad behavior. 79 The fact that wives needed to be offered instruction in how to love their husbands itself suggests that for some wives at least love was not a spontaneous or preexisting emotion. Hence the mutuality of the marital relationship that in principle at least was fundamental to the Western romantic love ideology was not a part of the Japanese iteration of “love” in the context of marriage.

Women in the Confucian system were generally regarded as subordinate in their relationships to men and hence the statement “I love you” spoken by a woman to a male lover would have seemed presumptuous and highly inappropriate. ”39 To make this rendition intelligible, we need to consider the long history of shinju- or “love suicides” in Japanese romantic fiction where the heroine (or sometimes both partners) kill themselves for the sake of a love that is unacceptable to society. In these fictions the tension was between giri, that is, obligations due to family and society, and ninjo- or the human feelings felt by the couple.