Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Studies Commons^™

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 …