ĭuring the Meiji period nanshoku started to become discouraged due to the rise of sexology within Japan and the process of westernization. The term shudō ( 衆道, abbreviated from wakashudō 若衆道, 'the way of adolescent boys') is also used, especially in older works. This term was widely used to refer to some kind of male-to-male sex in a pre-modern era of Japan. The character 色 ('color') has the added meaning of ' sexual pleasure' in both China and Japan. The Japanese term nanshoku ( 男色, which can also be read as danshoku) is the Japanese reading of the same characters in Chinese, which literally mean 'male colors'. Historical practices identified by scholars as homosexual include shudō ( 衆道), wakashudō ( 若衆道) and nanshoku ( 男色). Though these relations had existed in Japan for millennia, they became most apparent to scholars during the Tokugawa (or Edo) period. Western scholars have identified these as evidence of homosexuality in Japan.
Records of men who have sex with men in Japan date back to ancient times. Kitagawa Utamaro, 'Client Lubricating a Prostitute' (while another peers through), late-eighteenth-century print, F.
