Didn't you know? Homosexuality doesn't exist! (joudan) ^___^

Oooh... my bad. I'll get back on my unicorn, go off to fairy land and hang my head in shame.

I would not doubt if it was canon in RL, too, quite honestly. I know of someone who knows pretty much the entire history of the Shinsengumi, so I may just have to ask sometime. In PMK, though? It's pretty damned obvious

Well, homosexuality was an accepted way of life back then, *especially* among the samurai - there were 'strict' ways to go about it, and that meant that almost always the older, higher status of the two men was the 'top', the younger, less status was 'bottom'. There was no shame in this relationship, it was to be expected, basically. It led to close bonds between fellow samurai and in some cities, there just weren't many eligable women for the samurai to turn to. Male whorehouses were rampant basically until the Meiji Restoration came along, awash w/ Western thoughts that homosexuality was 'bad'.

That does't say that Okita and Hijikata were lovers... but I'd be surprised if they weren't at some time, or Kondou and Okita.

Everything I've read about the historical Okita and Hijikata say they were 'very close'. I would infer from that that they were lovers.

I would too, but until the very lovely pics of them going at it are found and published, I'll hedge my answer a bit.

dude, what? they must be on something.

Yeah, and they're not sharing... though I'm not sure I'd want any of it in the first place if it has that affect on one's brain.

Um. Pulleez. The damn art book distributed by the anime company has pictures of them together!



*sigh*

What is this that you use? Logic? Where's the sense in that???? :-P

Oh, sorry, I'll try to dumb down a little. ^__^

Right. Keep in mind who you're talking to here!

LOL. Like I'd ever have to dumb down to talk to you. Quite the opposite, you probably have to accomodate this high school grad!

Some people are just idiots.

It does seem to be a fatal flaw to humanity. What gets me is, no one's jumped in yet to go 'uhm, excuse me, but are you reading/watching the same series as me?'

That is strange. Amazing how people will look at a non-canon pair of boys and say they are lovers but when it's right in front of them, they deny it. ::shakes head:: Just don't get it.

Well, you know that if you watch the anime carefully, you can see how much they loathe interacting with each other and the caring attitude from Hijikata-san is forced in the later episodes after the battle at the Ikeda Inn. Just look at the way Hijikata-san chased after Souji to get his book of Haiku back! *rolls eyes*

It's too early in the morning to wrap my little brain around this kind of thinking. If *anything* is known about Japanese History, the practices of the Samurai and homosexuality, the mini-history lesson you wrote in response to Kuiama's comment was so very accurate.

And I'll add one more thing:

During those days, before Christianity marched itself into Japan and declared homosexuality to be an awful, dirty sin, the Japanese didn't view same sex relations as being wrong in any way, shape or form. It was an accepted practice and, in some ways, celebrated and encouraged.

Okay, I'm done. *gets off soapbox and crawls back into little hole* :)

During those days, before Christianity marched itself into Japan and declared homosexuality to be an awful, dirty sin, the Japanese didn't view same sex relations as being wrong in any way, shape or form. It was an accepted practice and, in some ways, celebrated and encouraged.

In some cities, there were more whorehouses for you to get some lovely boy ass than there were if you liked women! The only time I noticed the government came down against homosexuality is when various shogun felt that having all the samurai go off w/ rent boys and fight over them was becoming a hassle and distracting the samurai from their jobs, and even then homosexuality was never outlawed (they just made every male of age shave his forehead and silly things like that...).

The Japanese resisted the Western world's opinion on homosexuality until the late 1800's - you read a lot about how the Catholic priests were all offended by the samurai relationships and the rent boys flitting about. Such a shame that they let the Church (in its myriad of forms) twist that way of thinking, that something that was seen as natural and normal became bad.
(can you tell I'm a history/anthro major?)

That said, nope, no way that Hijikata and Okita could be lovers. Nope, not at all. And you're right, they can't stand each other, so Hijikata isn't really fussing over Okita throughout the manga/anime and so forth.

You realize that I've been reading for the past 15 minutes now (and laughing my ass off) and still haven't found the reference you're talking about? My flist just got longer by one, dammit.

And people wonder why the Japanese were so resistant to having Christianity invade the country.

*goes back to search and laugh*

See what you're missing when you hide. ^.~ I must have the wrong flist. I haven't seen anything funny lately. *pouts*

So, no. I disagree with it being "canon". I agree that them being -very- close is canon, but I do believe there is still some ability for interpretation left on the actual relationship itself.

WTF??? Did she see the same anime that I watched?! Wow. Very close. Very, very close. Hmmmm. So, that's what they're calling it these days. *goes off scratching head*

have I told you how much I love you! Just for the fact that you actually know what you are talking about!!!!

Well, I think most of us here try not to shoot our mouths off w/out having some knowledge of the topic. A lot of other people out there could learn from that!

Guh, so is THAT where that horrid shaved head/oiled queue thing came from? Too much long, lustrous boy hair driving the busy samurai to distraction (actually, that bit in Taboo should probably have clued me in, except I couldn't take that movie seriously ...) That's kind of cool, though. And I'm sure it didn't stop anything ^_^

"Very, very close" = the new "like brothers" = the new "cousins"

Whoever this commentor was should really read the manga. It's the closest the creator came to blatantly stating Hijikata/Okita, just short of flat out saying, "Oh, I wasn't around the other night because I was busy getting shtupped by our captain! .. in the ASS. SEXUALLY. With his PENIS." And of course, we all know PMK's mangaka doesn't shy away from teh yaoi, if her hot, sweaty, heart-stoppingly explicit manlove doujinshi is any indication .. which I'm sure it's not.

Actually (and this is just my opinion, I don't really know for sure), I thought the shaved head thing was a sign of respect for old age or such - and the fact that it would be helpful to not have a bunch of hair under the top of a heavy helmet, so it might have some martial implications as well. I must do some research....

But I do know it did in fact become law that every male of adult age had to shave their forelocks during the Tokugawa period. This happened because of the onnagata not shaving their heads so they could better portray women, and there were so many men, including samurai, who would fight for their 'affections' that the law came down in hopes of discouraging the onnagata from being so attractive. Didn't work very well, of course....

What gets me is the fact that this is a story published originally in Japan, by a Japanese person, for a Japanese audience, over something of historical importance and reknown... would she really have to spell things out???? I would think that a lot of Japanese would know about the homosexual relationships back in the day of the samurai because they were so incredibly open about it (it was a fact of life - you liked boys, you didn't. You liked boys a heck of alot, you didn't, you didn't mind them... all of this was perfectly acceptible).

Who knows? It could be that western influence in Japan has made stronger implications necessary. Or rather, I hear much of Japanese youth aren't really as boned up on traditional history as we (westerners) tend to think. Of course, this is just hearsay. But I would certainly think that even in ignorance of homosexual samurai relationships, the fact that this was a medium in which depictions of homosexuality are yet becoming more and more prevalent (land of yaoi, land of yaoi!) means, at least to me, that the implications should have been tip-off enough.

Hopefully, with the slew of yaoi manga being set on the bookshelves here, perhaps one day it'll be enough tip-off for the audiences here as well.

Yeah, I do try to keep in mind that not every generation is very aware of its past, but there seems to be so many remnants from Tokugawa period still floating around in Japan - especially in the art form, that the kids reading it would have *some* sort of clue. At the very least, they'd be more knowledgable about it than American kids, and wouldn't need quite the bashing over the head that some people would here (because there's just no way two men would have an icky physical relationship).