Rich historical records from pre-modern Japan allow us to imagine ‘sexuality’ despite the absence of an explicit lexicon referring to it. The chapter examines three systems of thought: the Kami (Deities) Way, Mahayana Buddhism, and Confucianism. The Kami Way was the native cult and the spiritual foundation for Japan’s first state. Inscribed in its texts such as the Kojiki (Records of Ancient Matters, 712 CE) are vivid descriptions of deities’ bodies and performances steeped in symbolic meanings. Buddhism’s treatment of sexuality varied as widely as its diverse offerings of doctrines and practices. At least for the priestly figures, however, it denounced desire for and intercourse with women but affirmed sex with men. Confucianism, which arrived from the continent alongside Buddhism, taught social order and disapproved of all human relations, including sexual ones, that threatened the stable moral order and the gender hierarchy. The three systems of thought operated symbiotically, and reflected and shaped social rules, norms, and power relations of a given historical moment. Mostly more celebratory than condemning of the sexual body, pre-modern sources have no vocabulary for virginity as a boundary to be guarded or conquered, nor a body-altering institution such as the castration of eunuchs.

This chapter explains how the Meiji Restoration embodied two profound contradictions. The new government described its actions and policies both as a “revival of ancient kingly rule” (ōsei fukko), but also as a revolution (isshin). These phrases were in nominally in opposition: fukko referred explicitly to the ancient past, while isshin declared on the contrary, that all was being made new. That contrast reveals how Meiji leaders embraced radical reform, but connected it to the renewal of ancient ways. While describing reform as ancient, the government also reconciled a celebration of Japanese uniqueness with the adoption of Western ideas and technologies. Government discourse therefore contained the dual tensions of “new vs. ancient” and “foreign vs. uniquely Japanese.” As this chapter reveals, these tensions are most evident in the iconography of Japanese banknotes, where the government sought to craft a national history that was both distinctly Japanese and analogous to Western models. The banknotes were thus simultaneously an emulation of the West and a celebration of ancient Japanese legends.