Nasty Boys or Obedient Children? Childhood and Relative Autonomy in Medieval Japanese Monasteries

What constituted a child in a Buddhist monastery? How were boys treated, what was the nature of same-sex relations between boys and their superiors, and how did boys find space for autonomous action? This chapter, by Or Porath, highlights the fluidity of the child category, determined as it was not by biological age but by cultural demands. It delves into medieval treatises, one heavily influenced by Confucian values and another written by the monk-poet Sōgi, that shed light on the ideal boy and the disobedient boy, and it argues that the monastic boy oscillated between extremes of sacred and profane, occupied multiple social roles, and preoccupied himself with a variety of morally conflicting activities.