Abstract
This paper aims to analyse the relationship between discourses of gender/sexuality and construction of national identity and normativity in Japan. Firstly, I will analyse discourses of two influential theorists of queer studies, Michel Foucault and Eve K. Sedgwick, examining how Western cultural identity and modernity have been represented through sexuality and geography in their discussion. Secondly, I will review representations of gender and sexual normality and deviances in pre-war Japan, arguing how contradictory discourses and representation of gender and sexual norms were constructed with Japanese national identity through cultural differences between Japan and the West, or Japanese tradition and Westernisation. Finally, I will examine political functions of contradictory discourses of gender/sexual normativity against sexual minorities including within contemporary ‘LGBT-friendly’ discourses in Japanese society. Through these discussions, I will point out: firstly, Japanese modern gender and sexual normativity has been sustained by contradictory discourses and confusing cultural distinctions between Japan and the West, rather than definitive transitions towards Westernisation and clear cultural distinctions between Japan and the West; secondly, how these contradictory discourses of definitions of hetero/homosexuality and differences between Japan and the West have politically functioned against sexual minorities even now. Thus, I suggest that it is more fruitful for sexuality studies in/about Japan to focus on contradictory discourses, their historical and social contexts, and power dynamism rather than seeking the solutions for these contradictions.
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Notes
For problems and criticism against critiques of homonationalism, see (Massad 2016).
Ann Laura Stoler (1995) shows that Foucault’s studies of sexuality characteristically lacked study of Western colonialism, encounters between the West and non-West, and demonstrates that Western technology on sexuality was a production of European colonialism, constructing and governing ‘racial others’ too.
For theoretical attempts to define Japanese queer desire by interculturality, see also Suganuma Katsuhiko’s Contact Moments: The Politics of Intercultural Desire in Japanese Male-Queer Cultures (2012).
For individualisation of homosexuals, see also Kuroiwa Yuichi’s analysis of the representation of ‘sexual perverts’ in ero-guro-nansensu (Kuroiwa 2013).
A close relationship between futurity and ‘queerness’ is not only a characteristic discourse in Japan, although Lee Edelman (2004) asserts that futurity is a heteronormative ideology associated with reproduction. For example, Judith Butler’s argument about the political subversion by gender performativity for political transformation, in Gender Trouble (1990), can be interpreted as futurism through queerness and, notably, José Esteban Muñoz (2009) explores ideas of utopian queer futurism.
A similar narrative is often employed not only by Japanese conservative campaigns but also by sexuality studies on Japan in the English language too. See Diana Khor’s criticisms on discourses from academia in the English languages (Khor 2010).
For example, American-centric narrative and history of LGBT rights employed and promoted by Obama administration resulted in erasing Japanese history of sexual minorities’ struggles in representations of Japanese media. For details, see (Kawasaka 2013).
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Kawasaka, K. Contradictory Discourses on Sexual Normality and National Identity in Japanese Modernity. Sexuality & Culture 22, 593–613 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12119-017-9485-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12119-017-9485-z