Out on the global stage: authenticity, interpretation and orientalism in Japanese coming out narratives

In recent years in Anglophone countries and the societies of northern Europe, the \u27coming out\u27 narrative has emerged as the primary genre through which individuals who identify as lesbian and gay narrate their lives. Through the wide reach of western gay print media and also sites on the Internet, this discourse is also gaining ground in societies where \u27sexuality\u27 has not traditionally been a privileged site of \u27identity.\u27 In the 1990s, Japan, like other societies in Asia, underwent a \u27gay boom\u27 in which new, primarily western terminology, began to be deployed in an attempt to describe and speak for previously silenced or ignored sexual minorities. \u27Coming out\u27 (kaminguauto) is now a relatively common term not only in Japan\u27s gay media, but through the work of gay activists such as Itō Satoru, occurs even in mainstream publications such as the Mainichi shimbun. This new visibility of Japanese gay men and lesbians who articulate their identities in a manner very similar to activists in the west has been heightened by two recent English books Queer Japan and Coming Out in Japan. While acknowledging the need to listen to a plurality of voices from Japan, this paper problematises the way in which the coming out narratives in these books have been framed by their western translators. In the introductions to both books, Japan is (once again) pictured as a feudal and repressive society. In their efforts to let the homosexual subaltern speak, the translators fall into the common orientalist paradigm of once more homogenising the Japanese people even as they attempt to use the stories of their homosexual narrators to break down the myth of Japanese homogeneity

Ethical and legal issues in teaching about Japanese popular culture to undergraduate students in Australia

Interest in Japanese popular culture, particularly young people’s engagement with manga and animation, is widely acknowledged to be a driving factor in recruitment to undergraduate Japanese language and studies courses at universities around the world. Contemporary students live in a convergent media culture where they often occupy multiple roles as fans, students and ‘produsers’ of Japanese cultural content. Students’ easy access to and manipulation of Japanese cultural content through sites that offer ‘scanlation’ and ‘fansubbing’ services as well as sites that enable the production and dissemination of dōjin works raise a number of ethical and legal issues, not least infringement of copyright. However equally important are issues to do with the transnational consumption and production of Japanese cultural materials that are subject to different ratings systems and censorship. The sexualised content of some Japanese media, particularly in regard to representations of characters who may ‘appear to be’ minors, has become the site of increased concern in some countries, notably Canada and Australia where fictional depictions of child characters have been included in the definition of ‘child-abuse publications’. The ever expanding scope of this legislation has led to the recent arrest and prosecution of manga and anime fans in both these countries and in the U

\u27Race\u27 on the Japanese internet: discussing Korea and Koreans on \u272-Channeru\u27

This paper investigates discourse about race on the Japanese Internet, particularly regarding resident Koreans and their relationship to the Japanese. One board relating to arguments about Korea on the notorious ‘Channel 2’ BBS, Japan’s most visited Internet site, is investigated, since it is one of the main public forums in which racial vilification takes place, perpetrated by both Japanese and Korean posters. Nakamura’s (Cybertypes) contention that the Internet is ‘a place where race is created as an effect of the net\u27s distinctive uses of language’ is taken as a starting point to investigate the differences between Japanese and Anglophone notions of racial inclusion and exclusion and to draw attention to the particularities of racial discourse that take place in this virtual Japanese space

From Sailor-Suits to Sadists: Lesbos Love as Reflected in Japan\u27s Postwar Perverse Press

This paper looks at a range of narratives positioning women\u27s same-sex sexuality in the popular sexological press of the early postwar period in Japan

Inside Out: Queer Theory and Popular Culture

This paper looks at the proliferation of gay characters and subtexts in late 1990s media

From the stage to the clinic: changing transgender identities in post-war Japan

This paper looks at the transformation of male-to-female transgender identities in Japan since the Second World War. The development of print media aimed at a transgender readership is outlined as is the development of bars, clubs and sex venues where transgendered men sought both partners and commercial opportunities. The origin of various transgender \u27folk categories\u27 such as okama, gei bōi, burūbōi and nyūhāfu is discussed and their dependence upon and relationship to the entertainment world is outlined. Finally, the paper looks at how the resumption of sex-change operations in Japan in 1998 has led to a new public discourse about transgender phenomena that utilises a range of medical terminology. While the recent establishment in Japan of clinics for individuals who consider themselves to be transsexual is an important development, it is argued that other transgenders who identify with indigenous categories are sceptical about the new medical model which they regard as both reductionist and pathologising, and that their experience should not be overlooked when giving an account of constructions of transgender experience in contemporary Japan

A short history of 'hentai'

"A Yahoo search for the Japanese loanword ‘hentai’ produces over 7 million hits ... evidence of the popularity of a genre of erotic manga and anime referred to as hentai or sometimes the abbreviation ‘H’ (pronounced etchi in Japanese) by western fans. ... [The] use of the term hentai to refer to erotic or sexual manga and anime in general is not a Japanese but an English innovation. In Japanese hentai can reference sexual material but only of an extreme, ‘abnormal’ or ‘perverse’ kind; it is not a general category... "AsiaPacifiQueer Network, Australian National Universit

Introduction: Global Coordinates of Internet Histories

This chapter introduces the particular angle and contribution of the Routledge Companion to Global Internet Histories – the imperative to grasp the global character of Internet histories. The Routledge Companion to Global Internet Histories brings together research on local and international internet histories that have evolved in different regions, language cultures and social contexts across the globe. While the internet is now in its fifth decade, the understanding and formulation of its histories outside of an Anglophone framework is very much in its infancy. The emphasis of this volume is on understanding and formulating internet histories outside of the Anglophone case studies and theoretical paradigms that have so far dominated academic scholarship on internet history. Interdisciplinary in scope, the collection offers a variety of historical lenses on the development of the internet: as a new communications technology seen in the context of older technologies; as a new form of sociality read alongside previous technologically mediated means of relating; and as a new media ‘vehicle’ for the communication of content.Australian Research Counci

Alternative Histories of Social Media in Japan and China

The range, importance, and influence of aalternative histories of social media is vital, if we are to understand –– not misconstrue –– the contemporary dynamics of social media. In chapter, which draws on our earlier work aimed at internationalizing Internet studies and reframing the Internet in terms of its global histories (Goggin & McLelland, 2009 & 2017b), we discuss a range of alternative histories of social media outside the usual North American and European paradigms. In particular, we examine two distinct though also related Asian cases: Japan and China. Each case has its own complex dynamics, however there are interesting comparisons and contrasts to be drawn. Taken together, we hope that this two-country comparative discussion illustrates the importance and productiveness of generating alternative social histories to the dominant accounts –– which tend to assume, to their peril, that Western social media platforms and corporations have trumped their non-Western counterparts.Australian Research Counci