way so as to get access to some particularly rare volumes.

It was almost four years before I had enough money saved up and everything arranged for my return to Japan. Four years is either a long time, or not a long time, depending on how you look at it. At any rate, it was quite long enough for much change to have taken place. Whether I had done the most changing, or whether Japan itself had altered is hard to say, but I noticed differences right away.

For one thing, Americanization of the Japanese people had assumed almost epidemic proportions. Western movies, Western music, American slang, beisuboru, had taken possession of the younger generation almost completely. Or, at any rate, far too much for my taste. Everywhere I went they would say, "Oh, you're American. Then, jitterbug for us! Sing us some cowboy songs!" And they couldn't believe it when I told them I had no idea as to how to jitterbug, or to sing cowboy songs. "But you're American," they would protest, incredulously.

I visited the southern islands, traditional home of homosexual love. There I found Americanization far less pervasive. The hectic Gay Bars of Kobe, Yokohama and Tokyo are almost nonexistent. And in Kyoto I visited a Shinto Temple which for two thousand years has been the reputed meeting place for men who sought love from men. There, just off its quiet forecourt, and apparently attached to the Temple, is a little wine shop where today those who seek manly love still meet.

But I could not remain long there. My place was back at the University, where I would be doing graduate work, and I wanted to go about finding a Japanese boy to live with. In a way this is not so difficult to manage, if one is not too particular. Except that I am. I very much wanted a lover who took love seriously. The cute little "Business Boys" who focus around

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the hotels where Westerners (with money) are found, or around the Gay Bars and parks had no attraction for me at all.

This Westerners-with-money deal had, for me, an ironic twist, for I very soon discovered that it would not do for me to go to the ordinary places where homosexuals in the big cities congregate. If I did so I ended up with nothing but a succession of propositions from "Business Boys," who had the firm conviction that all Americans were rich. And worse even than that aspect of it was the fact that so many of them were not even homosexually inclined. In a certain sense you might say they are a little like the American hustlers who claim they just go out for the money in it, but there is a difference. The "Business Boys" simply look on their activities as a perfectly legitimate way of making a living, having the attitude: if that is what the customers want, then, please them.

As a result of this situation I found I must go to the places frequented by well-to-do Japanese men and boys, and where Westerners were infrequent, and not particularly welcomed because of the atmosphere they often brought along. The whole thing was very frustrating. So I resolved to place an ad in a newspaper.

This is by no means unusual in Japan. A number of the newspapers and magazines regularly carry advertisements for homosexual partners in terms little disguised, if at all. But my ad merely asked for a university student to share living quarters. From more than one hundred replies received I selected twelve for interviews. Of this group there were two I found appealing.

Taro lived with his family while attending the University. He wanted to improve his English conversation and learn more of the West. The semiWestern style family mansion clearly indicated their wealth. Back of it situ-

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