Organizer: Joshua S. Mostow, University of British Columbia
Chair: Maribeth Graybill, Swarthmore College
This panel proposes to examine issues surrounding the representation of gender and sex in the Japanese cultural sphere. One impetus for this panel is the sudden explosion of interest in and publishing about Japanese erotic art (shunga), both in Japan and abroad. Many of these discussions ignore both the ideological function of this new fad in contemporary Japanese society, and how this function may be different from that held by the same art in other countries. There has been as well a tendency to isolate shunga within its historical moment and a refusal to consider it within any of the frameworks constructed by historical materialism, feminist theory, or by discussions about pornography. This panel will look at erotica, the representation of women, and the representation of the feminine, from the early modern up to the post-war period. Moving in roughly chronological order from the early modern period, through the construction of the modern Japanese nation-state in the late 19th/early 20th centuries, and up to the post-war period, the panelists are dedicated to working together to explore the role of gender and sex in post-colonial and post-modern discourses.
The Anatomy of the Youngman
Joshua S. Mostow, University of British Columbia
The study of nanshoku, or "male love," has taken on a new respectability in Japan. This new status is evidenced by such publishing events as a special issue of Bungaku recently devoted to the topic. In North America and Europe the approach to this topic comes primarily from the work done in gay studies. What both approaches share is the tendency to superimpose modern concepts of homosexuality/dôsei-ai onto the pre-modern or early modern field. And while their ideological motivations are very different, both approaches result in the renewed marginalization of women. This result is particularly clear in discussion of wakashû, or pubescent youths, who are described by modern scholars almost exclusively as the junior member of a pederastic couple. Yet in fact many depictions of wakashû present them as sexual partners to both men and women. Rather than using the framework of "homo-" and "hetero-sexuality," early Edo culture (focusing specifically on the 17th century) allows us the opportunity to think beyond sexual dimorphism. Accordingly, by examining the visual and verbal texts of Hishikawa Moronobu and Ihara Saikaku, I will show that the pederastic definition of the wakashû is necessarily partial, and explore the idea of the wakashû as a "third gender."
The Reception of Shunga in Contemporary Japan
Kaori Chino, Gakushûin University
In very recent years within Japan a movement has come about to study Edo period shunga (erotic art) in a positive light, and to celebrate it as a refined "art" (geijutsu). Within this, what we might call "celebratory discourse on shunga," the world that shunga represents and the actual world of the Edo period are frequently conflated and confused. To the eyes of those grown used to see modern, violent pornography, the sexual world that Japanese shunga represents may appear beautiful, gentle, and pacific. However, the creating of a world that is visually "beautiful, gentle, and pacific" is a kind of convention that arose in Japan from before the Edo period, and it is clearly a mistake to be under the impression that it is reflection of the way things actually were in the Edo period.
Based on this kind of misunderstanding, the contemporary discourse on shunga celebrates the Edo period society that gave birth to shunga, which in turn allows for a celebration of the entirety of Japanese culture prior to contact with the West and modernity. In other words, the celebratory discourse on shunga becomes the celebratory discourse on Japanese culture, and fulfills the function of promoting Japanese cultural nationalism.
The Image of Women in Modern Japanese-Style Painting (Nihonga): Its Political
Role and Function
Shinobu Ikeda, Chiba National University
Art in modern Japan was reformulated based on the introduction of Western European artistic concepts and genres. Within this reformulation, the genre called "Japanese (Style) Painting," or nihonga, based on both its themes and expression, can be thought of as carrying out the function of urging on the broad Japanese domestic audience the formation of a fixed image of their own country, Japan. In this paper, I will examine the political role that the genre of Nihonga bore, based on a comparison with "Western (Style) Painting," or yôga. I will pay particular attention to the images of women. In Nihonga's images of women-the setting in which women are placed, their poses, their costumes, and especially their expression-we can recognize specific characteristics that differ from "Western Painting." What the Nihonga genre manifested and supported, based on the joining together of patriots and beautiful women, was to praise both as precious natural resources, while at the same time implanting throughout the citizenry the consciousness of guarding those resources.
Demand for Love and Community of Sympathy: Nationalism and Femininity
Naoki Sakai, Cornell University
In the modern nation-state formation, an individual's belonging to the nation is often expressed by her or his act of positing her or himself as a subject who represents her or himself to the nation and who inversely represents that community to her or himself. What is invoked in this process of self-representation is the sense of fraternity and national sympathy, thanks to which an isolated individual can feel in communion with the nation as a whole. Partly because of its etynoms which suggest brotherhood and the alliance of men, fraternity has rarely been understood in relation to the roles of female figures. This paper tries to discuss the significance of what may be referred to as femininity in the visual representations as well as femininity's function in the imagination of the national subjectivity. It will focus on the formation of a nation as a community of sympathy, the cinematic presentation of national memory, and the importance of the female gaze in the imaginary evocation of national fraternity. I would also like to suggest that femininity in the visual field cannot be immediately ascribed to the gender identity of women but is defined differently in each instance according to the configuration of given power relations. The materials to be analyzed will include Japanese films and literary texts from the 1930s through to the 1960s