Is チェリーボーイ wasei-eigo?


Is the word チェリーボーイ (Eng. "cherry boy", meaning "male virgin") a genuine
loanword from English, or is it wasei-eigo?

I would have thought it to be a genuine loanword, but [the sources cited on
English.SE here](https://english.stackexchange.com/a/290782/) seem to indicate
that the word was in use in Japan by the end of WWII (c. 1945), but is only
attested in English back to the 1970s. This suggests that "cherry boy" might
actually be a "reverse" loan of the wasei-eigo back into English, kind of like
"salaryman" and "office lady". The relative frequency of these words
(incredibly low in English; somewhat higher in Japanese) also sort of points
in this direction.

[語源由来辞典 says](http://gogen-allguide.com/ti/cherry_boy.html)
『「チェリーボーイ」は和製英語と思われがちだが、アメリカでも用いることはある』, but the mere fact that the word is
_used_ in English does not necessarily indicate that it _isn't_ wasei-eigo
(again, like "salaryman").




The oldest confirmed sighting I have for the term in Japanese is a [1972
song](http://www.showapops.com/wiki/index.php?title=%E3%83%86%E3%83%AC%E3%83%95%E3%82%A9%E3%83%B3%E3%83%BB%E3%82%B7%E3%82%B9%E3%82%BF%E3%83%BC%E3%82%BA).
This raises the question of whether the term was introduced to Japan by
American soldiers [during the Vietnam
war](https://books.google.com/books?id=HRsWBAAAQBAJ&pg=PA31&lpg=PA31&dq=%22A%20World%20of%20Hurt%22%20%22cherry%20boy%22&source=bl&ots=sTyxKKN7qt&sig=Pe_rB4oQT3Pyoo8D7Fk2sEJYmgM&hl=ja&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiU3ozD0rvJAhXE1h4KHR8pA5QQ6AEIGzAA#v=onepage&q=%22A%20World%20of%20Hurt%22%20%22cherry%20boy%22&f=false),
as one comment has pointed out. Even more intriguing is the earliest citation
for it on Google Books: the gay poet Royston Ellis's book _The Cherry Boy_
(Turret, 1966), followed by Lance Taunton's _Cherry Boy_ (Windsor House,
1970), which is apparently gay erotica. A bit of Googling seems to
[confirm](http://www.odps.org/glossword/index.php?a=term&d=8&t=2754) that
"cherry boy" was period slang in the gay community.

But this doesn't rule out wasei-eigo. This still might be the result of some
Japanese schoolboys irresponsibly granted access to an English dictionary,
since according to 渋谷知美『日本の童貞』, the 日本チェリーボーイ倶楽部 was founded in 1956. However,
I'm not entirely sure of the provenance of this claim, as the book's sole
source for the club is a 1996 article in a weekly tabloid. (By the way, that
book points out that the Japanese language didn't even have a term for male
virginity until the 1920s.)

