ABSTRACT

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.

chapter |7 pages

Introduction

Gender and culture in Japan today
Edited ByJennifer Coates, Lucy Fraser, Mark Pendleton

part I|71 pages

Theorizing and historicizing gender and Japanese culture

chapter 1|11 pages

Gendering modern Japanese history

A historiographical update
ByBarbara Molony

chapter 2|9 pages

Gender in pre-modern Japan

ByRajyashree Pandey

chapter 3|9 pages

Debates in Japanese feminism

ByAyako Kano

chapter 4|10 pages

Gender and language

ByMiyako Inoue

chapter 5|10 pages

Masculinity studies in Japan

ByEmma E. Cook

chapter 6|9 pages

Transgender, non-binary genders, and intersex in Japan

ByS. P. F. Dale

chapter 7|11 pages

Gender and ethnicity in urban Japan

ByJamie Coates

part II|74 pages

Home, family, and the “private sphere”

chapter 8|9 pages

Gender and the Koseki

ByDavid Chapman

chapter 9|14 pages

Attitudes to marriage and childbearing

ByEkaterina Hertog

chapter 11|10 pages

Intimacy in and beyond the family

ByAllison Alexy

chapter 12|10 pages

Rural gender construction and decline

Negotiating risks through nostalgia
ByAnna Vainio

chapter 13|11 pages

Changing folk cultures of pregnancy and childbirth

ByManami Yasui, Lucy Fraser, Madelein Shimizu

chapter 14|9 pages

Religion and gender in Japan

ByYumi Murayama, Erica Baffelli

part III|73 pages

Work, politics, and the “public sphere”

chapter 15|11 pages

Gender and the law

Progress and remaining problems
ByStephanie Assmann

chapter 16|11 pages

Gender and the workplace

ByHelen Macnaughtan

chapter 17|10 pages

Sex Work

ByToru Takeoka

chapter 18|10 pages

Gender, labour, and migration in Japan

ByHelena Hof, Gracia Liu-Farrer

chapter 19|11 pages

Women in electoral politics

ByEmma Dalton

chapter 20|9 pages

Demanding publics

Women and activism
ByChelsea Szendi Schieder

chapter 21|9 pages

Lesbians and queer women in Japan

ByJane Wallace

part IV|60 pages

Cultures of play

chapter 22|9 pages

Gender and musical subcultures in Japan

ByRosemary Overell

chapter 23|11 pages

Gender in digital technologies and cultures

Edited ByJennifer Coates, Laura Haapio-Kirk

chapter 24|10 pages

Women and physical culture in Japanese history

ByKeiko Ikeda

chapter 25|9 pages

Myths of masculinity in the martial arts

ByOleg Benesch

chapter 26|9 pages

The continuum of male beauty in contemporary Japan

ByMasafumi Monden

chapter 27|10 pages

Performing gender

Cosplay and otaku cultures and spaces
ByEmerald King

part V|81 pages

Cultural production

chapter 28|11 pages

Gender in Japanese literature and literary studies

ByLaura Clark, Lucy Fraser

chapter 29|9 pages

Gender and poetry

ByAndrew Campana

chapter 30|9 pages

Gender, manga, and anime

ByGrace En-Yi Ting

chapter 31|11 pages

Cuteness studies and Japan

ByJoshua Paul Dale

chapter 32|9 pages

Gender and visual culture

ByGunhild Borggreen

chapter 33|11 pages

Gender, media, and misogyny in Japan

BySally McLaren

chapter 34|10 pages

Representing girls in cinema

ByKate Taylor-Jones, Georgia Thomas-Parr

chapter 35|9 pages

Gendered desires

Pornography and consumption
ByAlexandra Hambleton

part VI|47 pages

Texts and contexts

chapter 36|9 pages

Gendered high and low culture in Japan

The transgressing flesh in Kawabata’s dance writing
ByFusako Innami

chapter 37|9 pages

Genre and gender

Romantic friendships and the homosocial imperative in the ninkyō (chivalrous) genre film
ByIsolde Standish

chapter 38|8 pages

Girls with arms and girls as arms in anime

The use of girls for “soft” militarism
ByAkiko Sugawa-Shimada

chapter 39|9 pages

Beyond the “Parasite Single”

ByLynne Nakano

chapter 40|10 pages

Japanese gay men’s experiences of gender

Negotiating the hetero system
ByThomas Baudinette