1st Edition

The Routledge Companion to Gender and Japanese Culture

Edited By Jennifer Coates, Lucy Fraser, Mark Pendleton Copyright 2020
    444 Pages 9 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    444 Pages 9 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    This Companion is a comprehensive examination of the varied ways in which gender issues manifest throughout culture in Japan, using a range of international perspectives to examine private and public constructions of identity, as well as gender- and sexuality-inflected cultural production.



    The Routledge Companion to Gender and Japanese Culture features both new work and updated accounts of classic scholarship, providing a go-to reference work for contemporary scholarship on gender in Japanese culture. The volume is interdisciplinary in scope, with chapters drawing from a range of perspectives, fields, and disciplines, including anthropology, art history, history, law, linguistics, literature, media and cultural studies, politics, and sociology. This reflects the fundamentally interdisciplinary nature of the dual focal points of this volume—gender and culture—and the ways in which these themes infuse a range of disciplines and subfields.



    In this volume, Jennifer Coates, Lucy Fraser, and Mark Pendleton have brought together an essential guide to experiences of gender in Japanese culture today—perfect for students, scholars, and anyone else interested in Japan, culture, gender studies, and beyond.

    Contents

    Introduction: Gender and Culture in Japan Today

    Jennifer Coates, Lucy Fraser, and Mark Pendleton

    Part I: Theorizing and Historicizing Gender and Japanese Culture

    1. Gendering Modern Japanese History: An Historiographical Update

    Barbara Molony

    2. Gender in Pre-Modern Japan

    Rajyashree Pandey

    3. Debates in Japanese Feminisms

    Ayako Kano

    4. Gender and Language

    Miyako Inoue

    5. Masculinity Studies in Japan

    Emma E. Cook

    6. Transgender, Non-binary Genders, and Intersex in Japan

    S. P. F. Dale

    7. Gender and Ethnicity in Urban Japan

    Jamie Coates

    Part II: Home, Family, and the "Private Sphere"

    8. Gender and the Koseki

    David Chapman

    9. Attitudes to Marriage and Childbearing

    Ekaterina Hertog

    10. Family, Inequality, and the Work-Family Balance in Contemporary Japan

    Aya Ezawa

    11. Intimacy in and Beyond the Family

    Allison Alexy

    12. Rural Gender Construction and Decline: Negotiating Risks Through Nostalgia

    Anna Vainio

    13. Changing Folk Cultures of Pregnancy and Childbirth

    Manami Yasui, Translated by Lucy Fraser and Madelein Shimizu

    14. Religion and Gender in Japan

    Yumi Murayama and Erica Baffelli

    Part III: Work, Politics, and The "Public Sphere"

    15. Gender and the Law: Progress and Remaining Problems

    Stephanie Assmann

    16. Gender and the Workplace

    Helen Macnaughtan

    17. Sex Work

    Toru Takeoka

    18. Gender, Labour, and Migration

    Helena Hof and Gracia Liu-Farrer

    19. Women in Electoral Politics

    Emma Dalton

    20. Demanding Publics: Women and Activism

    Chelsea Szendi Schieder

    21. Lesbians and Queer Women in Japan

    Jane Wallace

    Part IV: Cultures of Play: Leisure, Music, and Performance

    22. Gender and Musical Subcultures in Japan

    Rosemary Overell

    23. Gender in Digital Technologies and Cultures

    Jennifer Coates and Laura Haapio-Kirk

    24. Women and Physical Culture in Japanese History

    Keiko Ikeda

    25. Myths of Masculinity in the Martial Arts

    Oleg Benesch

    26. The Continuum of Male Beauty in Contemporary Japan

    Masafumi Monden

    27. Performing Gender: Cosplay and Otaku Cultures and Spaces

    Emerald King

    Part V: Cultural Production: Literature, Cinema, and Popular Culture

    28. Gender in Japanese Literature and Literary Studies

    Laura Clark and Lucy Fraser

    29. Gender and Poetry

    Andrew Campana

    30. Gender, Manga, and Anime

    Grace En-Yi Ting

    31. Cuteness Studies and Japan

    Joshua Paul Dale

    32. Gender and Visual Culture

    Gunhild Borggreen

    33. Gender, Media, and Misogyny in Japan

    Sally McLaren

    34. Representing Girls in Cinema

    Kate Taylor-Jones and Georgia Thomas-Parr

    35. Gendered Desires: Pornography and Consumption

    Alexandra Hambleton

    Part VI: Texts and Contexts: Case Studies

    36. Gendered High and Low Culture in Japan: The Transgressing Flesh in Kawabata’s Dance Writing

    Fusako Innami

    37. Genre and Gender: Romantic Friendships and the Homosocial Imperative in the Ninkyo (Chivalrous) Genre Film

    Isolde Standish

    38. Girls with Arms and Girls as Arms in Anime: the Use of Girls for "Soft" Militarism

    Akiko Sugawa-Shimada

    39. Beyond the "Parasite Single"

    Lynne Nakano

    40. Japanese Gay Men’s Experiences of Gender: Negotiating the Hetero System

    Thomas Baudinette

    Biography

    Jennifer Coates is Senior Lecturer in Japanese Studies at the School of East Asian Studies, University of Sheffield. She is the author of Making Icons: Repetition and the Female Image in Japanese Cinema, 1945–1964 (2016), as well as journal articles and book chapters on cinema and audiences in postwar and contemporary Japan. Her current ethnographic research project focuses on early postwar film audiences in Japan.



    Lucy Fraser is Lecturer in Japanese at The University of Queensland, where she teaches Japanese literature, popular culture, and language. She researches fairy tale studies in Japanese and English, with particular interests in ideas of gender and animals in retellings of folktales and traditional stories. She is the author of The Pleasures of Metamorphosis: Japanese and English Fairy Tale Transformations of “The Little Mermaid” (2017). She has translated short stories by writers such as Kawakami Hiromi and Hoshino Tomoyuki and literary and cultural studies criticism by scholars such as Kan Satoko, Fujimoto Yukari, and Honda Masuko.



    Mark Pendleton is Lecturer in Japanese Studies at the University of Sheffield. A cultural and social historian by training, his research interests lie in modern and contemporary Japan, East Asian memory studies, and transnational histories of gender and sexuality. He has published in a number of academic journals including Japanese Studies and Asian Studies Review , and has contributed book chapters on topics related to historical justice and memory, transnational sexual politics in East Asia, and Japanese dark tourism. He is a member of the editorial committee of leading history journal History Workshop Journal .

    "The Routledge Companion to Gender and Japanese Culture is an unprecedented collection of new and updated accounts of original texts which constitutes the most comprehensive overview of both classic and contemporary scholarship in the field of gender and culture. This interdisciplinary-based volume analyzes the distribution of power across genders from all aspects of life in Japan and challenges us to re-examine the crossroads of culture and gender."

    Hideko Abe, Chair and Professor, East Asian Studies, Colby College

    "At last, a handbook on Japanese gender. And one which is both comprehensive and up-to-date in terms of coverage, methodology and theory. This should rightly go straight on to the reading lists of anyone teaching courses on contemporary Japan."

    Roger Goodman, Nissan Professor of Japanese Studies, University of Oxford

    "The Routledge Companion to Gender and Japanese Culture offers a wide range of refreshing and critical perspectives on genders and Japanese culture. Particularly impressive is how this volume tackles the complex intersecting issues of gender, race, ethnicity, class, and others. It is informative, accessible, essential reading for anyone who wishes to have a comprehensive understanding of genders in Japan."

    Kazue Harada, Assistant Professor of Japanese, Japanese Language and Culture, Miami University, Ohio

    "The Routledge Companion to Gender and Japanese Culture is an important and useful resource with a broad scope of essays from accomplished scholars. This vital collection faithfully reflects the history of the field and paves the way for future research and pedagogy on gender and society in Japan."

    Kathryn Hemmann, Assistant Professor, Japanese Literature and Popular Culture, George Mason University