Queer Voices from Japan: First Person Narratives from Japan's Sexual Minorities (New Studies in Modern Japan) - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0739121596 ISBN 13: 9780739121597

Publisher: Lexington Books, 2007

Synopsis

Queer Voices from Japan examines the wide range of queer voices in Japan, and the longevity that these minority communities have enjoyed in society. Mark McLelland, Katsuhiko Suganuma, and James Welker bring together historical and contemporary narratives that contribute to the study of sexual identities in Japan. These essays trace the evolution of queer voices in Japan with analyses of the presence of homosexuality in the Japanese Imperial Army, the development of Japan's first gay bars, and same-sex experiences in the pre- and post-war periods. This book offers a variety of perspectives including a range of male-to-female and female-to-male transgender voices and experiences. The broad scope of this volume makes it an invaluable text for understanding the development of Japanese sex and gender categories in the twentieth century. Queer Voices from Japan is a compelling read that will appeal to those interested in Asian studies and human sexuality.

About this title

About the Author:

Mark McLelland is lecturer in sociology in the School of Social Science, Media, and Communication at the University of Wollongong. Katsuhiko Suganuma is a doctoral candidate in the Department of English with Cultural Studies at the University of Melbourne. James Welker is a PhD student in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Review:

With Queer Voices of Japan Mark Mclelland, James Welker, and Katsuhiko Suganuma have put together a marvelous collection of first-person accounts of queer lives since World War II which deserves to be on the reading list of every course dealing with the study of sexuality. The book offers an impressive variety of memoirs, interviews and roundtables, many of them stunning, moving, raw and original. (Sabine Frühstück, University of California, Santa Barbara)

Queer Voices from Japan gives an informative and trustworthy account of Japanese GLBT people. It has brought into the light of day many voices which had almost disappeared from history. (Gay and Lesbian Review)

This book is one of these hard-to-put-down collections of essays making original intellectual contributions that would be impossible to condense into a standard social history, converying a plurality of perspectives on queer issues in Japan....the current volume is a laudable collaborative work which involves numerous translators, editors and contributors, all of whom have come together to produce an excellent queer handbook of postwar Japanese society. (Japanese Studies, Vol. 29, No. 3)

The sincerity and the courage with which the ditors undertook this project, to say nothing of the importance of the collected materials for related academic fields, cannot be overestimated...[it is] a highly informative collection [that] can be seen as an ambitious forerunner to a wider and more extensive archival project to come in the future....A great contribution to the English-speaking academic community....the wide variety of collected materials is truly informative and can provide an excellent source with which to deepen the understanding of Japanese queer cultures. (Akiko Shimizu Social Science Japan Journal, October 2008)

The editors have performed an invaluable service to the field in making these texts by and about queer Japanese people available in English for the first time. Their choice of materials is wide-ranging and representative of many important sectors of the queer community in Japan. This collection fills a major gap, and does so with style, sensitivity, and understanding. (Karen Kelsky, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)

About this edition

• Publisher: Lexington Books
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 0739121596
• ISBN 13: 9780739121597
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 372
• Editor: Mark McLelland, Katsuhiko Suganuma, James Welker