Homosexuality and Manliness in Postwar Japan

ISBN-13: 9780415421867 / Angielski / Twarda / 2009 / 272 str.

Jonathan D. Mackintosh

Opis

Japan’s first professionally produced, commercially marketed and nationally distributed gay lifestyle magazine, Barazoku (‘The Rose Tribes’), was launched in 1971. Publicly declaring the beauty and normality of homosexual desire, Barazoku electrified the male homosexual world whilst scandalizing mainstream society. It also sparked a vibrant period of activity that saw the establishment of an enduring Japanese media form, the homo magazine.

This book examines the history of the relationship between male homosexuality and conceptions of manliness in post-war Japan. It provides a detailed account of the formative years of the homo magazine genre in the 1970s, and explores its evolution in subsequent years, analyzing key issues including homophobia; gay liberation; male-male sex, love and friendship; the masculine body; and manly identity. The author investigates the phenomenon of ‘manly homosexuality’, often neglected both in masculinity studies with its assumption of manliness as an exclusively heterosexual quality, and in gay studies with its focus on queer and transgressive gendered identities. Attempting to understand ‘manly homosexuality’ not as part of a conceptual ghetto, but instead situating gay men alongside their heterosexual counterparts to argue that their desires and individual narratives were constructed within, and not necessarily outside of, the dominant narratives of the nation, manliness and Japanese culture.

Spis treści

Introduction  Part 1: Producing Homo  1. Homo ‘Movings’ – Rentaikan and Shiminken  2. White Dreams: The Coming and Going of Porn Americana  Part 2: Confessions - The Buntsuran and The Body  3. Eroto-Morphemic Revolutions of the Everyday  4. Age Differentiation and the Redemption of Men.  Conclusion: Modernity and the Contradictions of Certainty

O autorze

Jonathan D. Mackintosh is Lecturer in Japanese Studies at Birkbeck, University of London, UK. His research interests include gender/sexuality in postwar Japan, masculinities and the body, and historical East Asian diasporic identities.