Yet some have noticed that the artists actually carefully employed specific visual devices as gender cues, with certain details intended to distinguish youthful wakashu from other individuals.
Such misidentifications of male adolescents, known as wakashu, in Edo-era prints were long made by many scholars, as the figures were depicted very similarly to young woman, with delicate features and long tied-up hair. late 18th or early 19th century) (image courtesy of the Royal Ontario Museum, ©ROM) Hosoda Eisui, “Wakashu with a Shoulder-Drum” (c.
