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Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

Selected Works

Japan

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Writing The Love Of Boys: Origins Of Bishōnen Culture In Modernist Japanese Literature, Jeffrey Angles Dec 2010

Writing The Love Of Boys: Origins Of Bishōnen Culture In Modernist Japanese Literature, Jeffrey Angles

Jeffrey Angles

Despite its centuries-long tradition of literary and artistic depictions of love between men, around late nineteenth-century Japan began to portray same-sex desire as immoral. This book looks at the response to this during the critical era of cultural ferment between the two world wars as a number of Japanese writers challenged the idea of love and desire between men as pathological. Angles focuses on key writers, examining how they experimented with new language, genres, and ideas to find fresh ways to represent love and desire between men. He traces the personal and literary relationships between contemporaries such as the poet …


From Undemocratic To Democratic Civil Society: Japan's Volunteer Fire Departments, Mary Alice Haddad Jan 2010

From Undemocratic To Democratic Civil Society: Japan's Volunteer Fire Departments, Mary Alice Haddad

Mary Alice Haddad

How do undemocratic civic organizations become compatible with democratic civil society? How do local organizations merge older patriarchal, hierarchical values and practices with newer more egalitarian, democratic ones? This article tells the story of how volunteer fire departments have done this in Japan. Their transformation from centralized war instrument of an authoritarian regime to local community safety organization of a full-fledged democracy did not happen overnight. A slow process of demographic and value changes helped the organization adjust to more democratic social values and practices. The way in which this organization made the transition offers important lessons for emerging democracies …


U.S.-Japan Women’S Journal, Special Issue On Itō Hiromi, Jeffrey Angles Dec 2006

U.S.-Japan Women’S Journal, Special Issue On Itō Hiromi, Jeffrey Angles

Jeffrey Angles

Itō, born in 1955 in Tokyo, is one of the most important and dynamic poets of contemporary Japanese literature. After her sensational debut in the late 1970s, she emerged as the foremost voice of the wave of women's poetry that swept Japan in the 1980s, writing about the female body, sexuality, abortion, migration, and international displacement with a frankness that revolutionized the way that poetry was being written in Japan. This journal consists of a number of new analytical essays by several young researchers of Japanese literature about Itō's contributions to modern Japanese literature and feminine self-expression. It also contains …


Twentieth Century Economics Of Child-Rearing In Japan, Michele Gibney May 2005

Twentieth Century Economics Of Child-Rearing In Japan, Michele Gibney

Michele Gibney

In order to explain the falling Total Fertility Rate (TFR) in Japan, it is necessary to look at the social factors affecting women and raising children in Japan. By examining historical factors surrounding women in Japan—their education, their presence in the workforce, and the cultural stigmas attached to their stereotypical representation—I will attempt to describe the deteriorating TFR in Japan as an economic problem with political and social repercussions. In conclusion I will also try to provide a prognosis and a recommendation for a solution.


Enjo Kosai: Brand Name Marketing, Michele Gibney Nov 2004

Enjo Kosai: Brand Name Marketing, Michele Gibney

Michele Gibney

Media is a contributing factor in creating a market for the prostitution of minors in Japan today. Media creates an image to which the girls aspire by placing the trendiest items in the hands of music and movie idols who the girls look up to . The drive to then own these trendy, and expensive, products forces the girls into marketing their bodies to strangers. Though in many ways media can be seen as the root of all evil through print and film advertisements, there are some forms of media which work as a caution instead of an encouragement to …