Shudo

This actually clears things up a bit... The, shall we say, somewhat less than macho - from a purely Western perspective - behavior of Japanese males makes a lot more sense in the context that one of the ideal sexual norms, as recently as about a century ago, was one of homosexuality.

It'd be as if, say, the social customs of ancient Sparta were still the norm in Greece a century ago.

I'd always wondered why Japanese men and boys were so comfortable amongst themselves... [despite the lip serviced derision of the "okama"].

A piece of the puzzle...

Shudo - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

"Shudo (衆道) is the Japanese tradition of age-structured homosexuality prevalent in samurai society from the medieval period until the end of the 19th century. The word is an abbreviation of wakashudo, 'the Way of the young' or more precisely, the Way of young (waka) men (shu). The 'do' is related to the Chinese word tao, considered to be a path to awakening."