Kagema (陰間) were male entertainers and sex workers – usually teenagers but often quite a bit older but made up to look like adolescents – in Edo period Japan whose clients were largely adult men.

Some kagema were kabuki actors who moonlighted as prostitutes. For them, the stage frequently became an opportunity to advertise their charms, and audiences frequently became rowdy, and brawls occasionally broke out, over the favours of a particularly handsome young actor. This led, in part, to the shogunate to clamping down on kabuki in 1652.

Japanese theater | Sexuality in Japan | LGBT history | History of human sexuality | Prostitution