ated in the large and beautiful traditional garden, was a little pre-war house in pure Japanese style. Taro's mother suggested that the two of us live there, instead of the main house.

He was homosexual. Whether the family knew it or not I am not sure. The matter was not discussed. The chances are it would not have mattered very much to them anyway, for among older Japanese the attitude towards homosexuality is very permissive. They may view such behavior as slightly eccentric, or as being a rather dull way of living, but there seems not to be any moral judgment involved. What the individual chooses to do is his own affair-that is, unless he happens to be the eldest son. In that case he must marry, so as to carry on the family name, although in his married life he still has a large degree of sexual freedom.

Things began to go badly for the two of us before long. Tarō was strictly a playboy. His English studies and his work at the University were never allowed to interfere with amusement. Furthermore, it was perfectly clear that his feeling for me was not at all serious. He had in his mind as his ideal the image of a young European boy he met while skiing one winter vacation. And I found it jarring when he would whip out a guitar and sing nasal cowboy ballads to me, expecting I would respond in kind. But perhaps I expected too much from an eighteen year old boy. Anyhow, we broke up, and I went to live with the other boy of the two I had selected from my ad.

This was both better and worse. For, although he was temperamentally and intellectually more interesting, Tatsuo was not homosexual. Perhaps he was not, at eighteen, anything else either. He would ask me to dance with him some evenings, in our little six-mat room, but there was nothing too unusual in that. (Men dance together in

public tea-houses all the time, without any particular homosexual implication. Social life in Japan is so predominantly male, due to the still inferior position accorded to women, that the average man naturally gravitates to male companionship. Their dancing together is simply one expression of their being together.) But Tatsuo and I became great and affectionate friends, with no secrets from each other whatever. However, you might be more interested in hearing more about life among homosexuals in Japan than in my private life there. For instance, Gay Bars. These are now very commonplace in all of the larger cities. Everyone knows about them and thinks nothing of it. I was trying to locate one in Kobe about which I had heard, but was having difficulties. All addresses are difficult in Japan. No one ever seems to know where anything is, except more or less by accident.

In desperation I went into a shop and asked the elderly saleslady if she knew where it was, naming the place." "Oh." she said in loud tones, as if it were the most ordinary request on earth, "you mean the Gay Bar." Whereupon she took me outside and very politely led me part of the way, making sure I was headed in the right direction.

The postwar development of the Gay Bar is just one more phase of the Americanization which I found so deplorable, and probably the outcome of Western influences absorbed during the Occupation. The old, controlledand-supervised houses of prostitution were closed. This put the girls into the streets, as always happens after such moves. Now there are two types of Gay Bars-"Boy-style" and "Girlstyle." In these latter are found the very effeminate types, often dressed as girls who are all too willing to go up to the second floor to "accommodate." These seem to attract the men who

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