Papers by Shu Min Yuen
© 2015 Dr. Shu Min YuenIn the last twenty years, transgender people have acquired increased visib... more © 2015 Dr. Shu Min YuenIn the last twenty years, transgender people have acquired increased visibility in mainstream Japanese society following the introduction of the medical concept of Gender Identity Disorder and the decriminalization of sex reassignment surgery in 1996. From 2004, with the enactment of the “Exceptional Treatment Law for persons with Gender Identity Disorder”, transpeople who have completed sex reassignment surgeries were able to modify their gender in the family register, the instrument par excellence that defines Japanese citizenship. Yet, despite the increasing visibility of transgender issues in society in general, understandings of Female-to-Male (FTM) transpeople continue to remain hazy among the Japanese public, especially when representations of gender variance in the mass media continue to be dominated by male-assigned gender/sexual variants who play up their gender in-betweenness for comic effect. In academia, Japanese publications on the nation’s trans history tend to focus largely on male-assigned gender-variance, while the majority of English-language academic literature on non-normative gender and sexuality in Japan also gravitates towards studies on the gay community and Male-to-Female (MTF) transpeople. This dissertation therefore attempts, for the first time in Western scholarship, to make a direct intervention into the severe lack of representations of Japanese FTM subjects by constructing an archive of Japanese FTM history and culture from the mid-1990s up until the present day. I adopt a multi-method approach in my construction of what I call the “FTM archive”, combining medico-legal discourse analysis with textual analysis of FTM-related television dramas and zines, as well as analysis based on ethnographic fieldwork in the FTM scene that involved participant observation and interviews with cultural producers and participants. This “FTM archive” not only serves as a record of FTM lives; it also, as a research method, seeks to uncover the processes of negotiations that FTM transpeople are constantly engaged in, with both the state and commercial markets, and with these institutions’ regulation of their gendered personhood, in their attempt to claim inclusion as (trans) gender subjects in Japanese society. My research findings reveal that while there is a strong desire among many of my FTM informants to be socially recognized and accepted as “normal” men, many of them also continue to participate regularly in social events organized by, and predominantly for FTM transpeople, to gain a sense of community and belonging to a collective sociality. I argue that this claiming of dual citizenship—a double occupation of “FTM” and “man”, two identity positions that appear to be at odds with each other—demands a (re)conceptualization of trans inclusion that transcends the current language of rights, recognition and equality. This dual position not only troubles the dichotomy of assimilation versus resistance that is commonly found in current citizenship discourse, but can also suggest a new and more ethical way of thinking about transgender citizenship that does not only focus on claiming universal rights, but also remains sensitive to differences (Monro and Warren 2004, 358). In tandem with the political commitment of transgender studies to correct the social injustices and violence that transpeople face (Stryker 2006; Valentine 2007), this dissertation is as much an archiving project, as it is an attempt to critically analyze the (normalizing) discourses of gender and sexuality in contemporary Japan. In doing so, I hope to open a new window into Japanese history by putting back into Japan’s trajectory of postwar modernity the figure of the FTM subject, who has been rendered invisible in dominant narratives of Japanese history. It is only then, I believe, that we can fully engage Japan in the conversation of trans/queer studies with its other Asian and “Western” interlocutors
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New Voices in Japanese Studies, 2021
Area studies has been described as having lost its significance and legitimacy in the 21st centur... more Area studies has been described as having lost its significance and legitimacy in the 21st century globalised world. However, research has shown that the strengths of area studies—empirical research and context-sensitive knowledge—remain relevant not only in helping us to understand our contemporary world, but also in challenging the hegemony of theories and concepts developed in Euro-American contexts that have come to dominate both academic and general writing. In this paper, I draw on my research on the transgender community in Japan—an area of study that is relegated to the margins of both Japanese studies and trans studies—to show how the tools of area studies play an important role in expanding the conceptual boundaries of trans studies, and how the lens of transgender can expand or complicate existing knowledge on the culture and society of Japan. I highlight how Japanese transgender identities and cultures are shaped not only by global processes, but also legal, medical, cul...
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Asian Anthropology, 2020
Abstract In the last twenty years, Japanese transgender people have acquired increased visibility... more Abstract In the last twenty years, Japanese transgender people have acquired increased visibility in mainstream Japanese society. Notwithstanding that, female-to-male (FTM) trans people continue to be misunderstood by the Japanese public, and largely underrepresented in Anglophone academic scholarship. This paper therefore seeks to account for one aspect of FTM cultural life in present-day Japan that has largely remained invisible to mainstream society. Drawing on my fieldwork at FTM drinking parties in Tokyo between 2013 and 2019, I demonstrate how seemingly trivial drinking events not only play an important role in fostering a sense of community among their participants, but also enable the claiming of transgender cultural citizenship in a conservative state like Japan, which only recognizes a narrowly defined notion of transgender.
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East Asian Journal of Popular Culture, 2016
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Women's Studies International Forum, 2014
Synopsis Until recently, men's cooking in postwar Japan has almost always been associated wit... more Synopsis Until recently, men's cooking in postwar Japan has almost always been associated with the professional realm. In December 2008, a Tokyo Walker article on the “sudden increase” (Andō, 2008) in the number of men making and bringing their own bentō (boxed lunch) to work sparked a new discourse of the cooking man—that of the bentō danshi (lit. bentō ‘boy’). The simple and healthy everyday meals that the danshi make in their clean and neat home kitchen are clearly distinct from the bold and adventurous 'men's cooking' ( otoko ryōri ). Furthermore, given the common perception of bentō–m aking as feminine-work in Japanese society, might this suggest that Japanese men and/as a result of their kitchen work are becoming more feminized? In this paper, through a textual analysis of cookery books, websites and television programs that are targeted at, or sell the image of the bentō danshi and the cooking danshi , I argue that the nurturant and ‘feminized’ masculinity that is presented in the bentō danshi discourse constructs and comprises a newly emerging ideal masculinity in contemporary Japan.
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New Voices in Japanese Studies, 2021
Area studies has been described as having lost its significance and legitimacy in the 21st centur... more Area studies has been described as having lost its significance and legitimacy in the 21st century globalised world. However, research has shown that the strengths of area studies—empirical research and context-sensitive knowledge—remain relevant not only in helping us to understand our contemporary world, but also in challenging the hegemony of theories and concepts developed in Euro-American contexts that have come to dominate both academic and general writing. In this paper, I draw on my research on the transgender community in Japan—an area of study that is relegated to the margins of both Japanese studies and trans studies—to show how the tools of area studies play an important role in expanding the conceptual boundaries of trans studies, and how the lens of transgender can expand or complicate existing knowledge on the culture and society of Japan. I highlight how Japanese transgender identities and cultures are shaped not only by global processes, but also legal, medical, cultural and social conditions specific to Japan. I argue against the assumed universal applicability of Eurocentric conceptualisations of gender/sexual non-conformity, and in doing so I call attention to the ways in which the fields of transgender studies and Japanese studies can enrich each other. More than ever in these precarious times, we need to emphasise the strengths and overcome the weaknesses of our field(s), so that we may be better equipped to turn marginality into possibility.
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Asian Anthropology , 2020
In the last twenty years, Japanese transgender people have acquired increased visibility in mains... more In the last twenty years, Japanese transgender people have acquired increased visibility in mainstream Japanese society. Notwithstanding that, female-to-male (FTM) trans people continue to be misunderstood by the Japanese public, and largely underre- presented in Anglophone academic scholarship. This paper there- fore seeks to account for one aspect of FTM cultural life in present-day Japan that has largely remained invisible to main- stream society. Drawing on my fieldwork at FTM drinking parties in Tokyo between 2013 and 2019, I demonstrate how seemingly trivial drinking events not only play an important role in fostering a sense of community among their participants, but also enable the claiming of transgender cultural citizenship in a conservative state like Japan, which only recognizes a narrowly defined notion of transgender.
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East Asian Journal of Popular Culture, 2016
This article addresses a conspicuous phenomenon within the burgeoning cute cultures of contempora... more This article addresses a conspicuous phenomenon within the burgeoning cute cultures of contemporary Japan – namely, pre-adult women adopting a fashion style that is simultaneously cute and hyper-sexy. While both cuteness and hypersexuality stand in contradiction to the norms of Japan’s patriarchal gender system, public amalgamations of these two elements constitute a trend initiated by and for some contemporary young Japanese women. Through a series of ethnographic observations and theoretical reflections, the authors aim to uncover how the initially subcultural cute fashion phenomenon was brought to public attention by incorporating hyper-sexy elements into a ‘sexy’ facade that publicly signalled these young women taking control of their own sexuality. Such a transformation not only works to reclaim these practitioners’ sexual identities as women, but may also destabilize prevailing perceptions of acceptable (or desirable) feminine behaviour through the very instruments of sexuality that are readily produced and made available in the heterosexual consumer market.
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Women's Studies International Forum Vol. 44, May 26, 2014
Until recently, men’s cooking in postwar Japan has almost always been associated with the profess... more Until recently, men’s cooking in postwar Japan has almost always been associated with the professional realm. In December 2008, a Tokyo Walker article on the “sudden increase” (Andō, 2008) in the number of men making and bringing their own bentō (boxed lunch) to work sparked a new discourse of the cooking man—that of the bentō danshi (lit. bentō ‘boy’). The simple and healthy everyday meals that the danshi make in their clean and neat home kitchen not only distinguishes them from the bold and adventurous ‘men’s cooking’ (otoko ryōri), the common perception of bentō–making as feminine-work in Japanese society further suggests that Japanese men and/as a result of their kitchen work may be becoming more feminized. In this paper, through a textual analysis of cookery books, websites and television programs that are targeted at, or sell the image of the bentō danshi and the cooking danshi, I argue that the nurturant and ‘feminized’ masculinity that is presented in the bentō danshi discourse constructs and comprises a newly emerging ideal masculinity in contemporary Japan.
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Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, Sep 6, 2011
With the official recognition of sex-reassignment surgery in 1996, the concept of Gender Identity... more With the official recognition of sex-reassignment surgery in 1996, the concept of Gender Identity Disorder (GID), i.e. a disjuncture between one’s biological sex and gender identity, became accepted as medically correct in Japan. Since then, media representations and popular perceptions of gender/sexual variants have tended to revolve around notions of ‘illness’ or ‘disorder’, where they are often perceived as souls ‘trapped’ in the wrong bodies. While some people have benefitted from the medical discourse and are happily settled in their new identities across the gender border, there certainly are gender/sexual non-normative people who do not fit into the pathological category of GID. Using award-winning drama Last Friends as its main text of analysis, this paper seeks to highlight the difficulty, if not impossibility, of classifying one’s gender and sexuality into clear-cut polarized categories of male/female, heterosexual/homosexual and homosexual/transsexual. Once the basis of the male/female dichotomy is ruptured, other categories that have this divide as their foun- dation will also start to destabilize. Coming more than a decade after the re-legalization of sex- reassignment surgery, I argue that Last Friends plays an important role in questioning the gender status-quo and opening up a new path for articulating gender diversity on Japanese mainstream television.
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Asian Studies Review, Mar 1, 2011
In the last ten years or so, interest among the Japanese in their Korean neighbour has increased ... more In the last ten years or so, interest among the Japanese in their Korean neighbour has increased significantly. Yet, before the Korean Wave hit Japan in the early 2000s, Kusanagi Tsuyoshi, member of popular Japanese boy-band SMAP, had already de ́buted and gained popularity as Chonangang, his Korean alter-self. From releasing a Korean pop-music single to interviewing South Korean Presidents on Japanese national television, it is undeniable that Kusanagi (and Chonangang) has brought Korea closer to the hearts of the Japanese. In this paper, I argue that Kusanagi’s performances of and as Chonangang create a polyglotic, hybrid identity that functions as a ‘‘third space’’ through which notions of an underlying, essential Japanese (and Korean) identity can be destabilised. Beyond mere entertainment, Kusanagi’s adoption of an identity position that is neither Japanese nor Korean, yet also both Japanese and Korean, enables the articulation of difference and hybridity which, I contend, has direct relevance to Japan–Korea and Japanese–resident Korean relations.
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Book Chapters by Shu Min Yuen
Routledge Handbook of Japanese Media, 2018
This paper focuses on a self-published lifestyle magazine Laph, produced by and for Female-to Mal... more This paper focuses on a self-published lifestyle magazine Laph, produced by and for Female-to Male (FTM) transpeople in Japan. Through a textual analysis of the back issues of Laph, as well as by drawing upon my fieldwork at the magazine, I examine the production and representation of FTM masculinity in the magazine. I argue that the strategies adopted by the magazine in its construction of FTM and FTM masculinity can be read as an attempt by a group of people who have fallen outside the norm in both mainstream society as well as in the (existing) FTM community, to access and place themselves in (rather than resist) the realm of the “normal” from which they have long been excluded. Through the case of Laph, I hope to complicate current understandings of mini-komi or zine publications, and propose a (re)conceptualization of these self-produced media beyond notions of resistance.
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Online Publication by Shu Min Yuen
Japanese Media and Popular Culture: An Open-Access Digital Initiative of the University of Tokyo, 2020
Citizenship has generally been conceptualized (mainly in ‘Western’ political theory) as socio-pol... more Citizenship has generally been conceptualized (mainly in ‘Western’ political theory) as socio-political membership, associated with rights and responsibilities. More recently, feminist and poststructuralist scholars, among others, have sought to expand the concept of citizenship beyond notions of civil, political and social rights as theorized by T.H Marshall to include the cultural dimension (cultural citizenship), consumption (consumer citizenship) and intimacy (sexual/intimate citizenship). This in effect encourages and enables a rethinking of citizenship “within the context of larger forms of social membership than nation-states” (Richardson and Monro 2012, 61). From these works that seek to critique and expand the conventional conceptualization of citizenship, it emerges clearly that citizenship is not merely a status that is granted, which a set of rights accompany. Rather, it is a form of negotiation between the self and the state, through active participation in the public sphere.
Sites of popular culture and subculture can be locations from which one’s claims to citizenship rights are exercised. I follow Aihwa Ong’s (1996, 738) conceptualization of cultural citizenship, which she defines as the “cultural practices and beliefs produced out of negotiating the often ambivalent and contested relations with the state and its hegemonic forms that establish the criteria of belonging within a national population and territory.” In this entry, I explore the negotiations of belonging and inclusion by a group of gender minorities through their engagement/participation in the cultural sphere. I use the case of a Female-to-Male transgender idol group, Secret Guyz, to illustrate how their performances and promotional activities can function as acts of civic engagement that enable the claiming of particular transgender rights—such as the right to transgender expression—which have been denied in the official discourse of transgender in Japanese society.
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Conference Presentations by Shu Min Yuen
Paper presented at the 22nd Biennial Conference of the Asian Studies Association of Australia, Un... more Paper presented at the 22nd Biennial Conference of the Asian Studies Association of Australia, University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia, July 3-5, 2018.
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Paper presented at Gender/Sexuality in Motion: Migrants Searching One’s Own Place in the Asia-Pacific Conference, International Christian University, Tokyo, Japan, February 10, 2018.
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The increasing global outsourcing of healthcare services in the last decade has seen an unprecede... more The increasing global outsourcing of healthcare services in the last decade has seen an unprecedented number of people travelling across national borders to access medical procedures, ranging from dental care to organ transplants. In Asia, Thailand has become a popular destination for international medical travellers, with its hospitals treating over a million foreigners every year (Wilson 2011, 123). Among these tourist-patients are Japanese transgender people seeking affordable bodily modification and sex reassignment surgeries. For example, at Kamol Cosmetic Hospital, an internationally renowned hospital for sex reassignment surgery in Bangkok, Japanese transgender patients comprise 30% of its international transgender patients (Kamol 2014, 35). Despite these emerging trends in the movements of Japanese transpeople across gender and national borders, research in queer, migration and tourism studies have yet to adequately address this new phenomenon.
In this presentation, I focus on Female-to-Male (FTM) transpeople in present-day Japan, and explore how their movement across national borders intersects with their movement across gender borders. I draw on my analysis of narratives written by Japanese FTM transpeople on their medical travel, as well as interviews with those who have travelled to Thailand for gender reassignment to explore how transnational mobility—which in turn is contingent upon one’s financial capacity—shapes and is shaped by (desires for) gender transition. How did they experience travel? Who gets to travel and who doesn’t? By examining medical travel—one of the most common patterns of cross-border practice among Japanese FTM transpeople—this paper aims to contribute to a better understanding of transgender mobilities, a currently under-theorized area of research. I argue that this will have implications for studies on queer migration, which has mostly focused on gay and (sometimes) lesbian cross-border practices in the ‘western’ context and left transpeople out of the picture.
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Since the 2000s, the rise of medical tourism as a lucrative industry in Thailand has seen an incr... more Since the 2000s, the rise of medical tourism as a lucrative industry in Thailand has seen an increased movement of Japanese transgender medical “tourists” to the country to seek bodily modification surgeries. While it is commonly assumed that these patient-tourists will return home once their condition is treated, my research in the Japanese Female-to-Male (FTM) community reveals that many of such former transgender medical ‘tourists’ return frequently to Thailand, often for vacations, or as brokers (atendo) who arrange sex-reassignment surgery trips to Thailand for other transpeople, hence shuttling regularly between Japan and Thailand. Some others settled permanently in Thailand, establishing families with local Thai people. However, these voices are, more often than not, left unheard. Little is known about the lived experiences of this group of mobile/migrant FTMs who not only cross gender boundaries, but also geographical and socio-political borders.
By using the case study of Japanese FTM transgender medical tourists-migrants, this paper seeks to provide an in-depth exploration of the experiences of medical tourists beyond the hospital. I argue that the patterns of mobility of my FTM informants reveal a complex trajectory of queer migration that complicates the standard understandings of rural-to-urban queer migration, or even Judith Halberstam’s (2005) reconceptualization of such movements: leaving the rural home for the city, and then returning home. Through this paper, I aim to enhance (and complicate) current approaches to Asian migration through the case of a mobile group of gender and geo-political border-crossers who transcend the binaristic categories of “tourist” and “migrant”.
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In the last twenty years, Japanese transgender people have acquired increased visibility in mains... more In the last twenty years, Japanese transgender people have acquired increased visibility in mainstream Japanese society. Notwithstanding that, understandings of Female-to-Male (FTM) transpeople continue to remain hazy among the Japanese public, and largely unaccounted for in both Japanese and Anglophone academia. This paper therefore seeks to account for one aspect of FTM cultural life, and explore how the production and consumption of this cultural life allows us to see the workings of FTM people’s negotiations with the state apparatuses. I draw on my fieldwork in what I call the “FTM scene”—a loose network of FTM individuals and organizations, institutions such as bars, clubs and restaurants, events and gatherings such as drinking parties and club nights, as well as FTM media and businesses—and demonstrate how the FTM scene not only plays an important role in fostering a sense of community among its participants, but also enables the negotiation of FTM people’s civic inclusion and autonomy. While consumption certainly lies at the center of scene activities—and indeed, the participants’ ability to participate is contingent on their spending power—I use the case of the drinking party to urge us to think beyond the binary of consumption as necessarily depoliticizing, versus consumption as necessarily leading to minority sexual rights.
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The 1990s and early 2000s saw a burgeoning gay and lesbian market in many Euro-American societies... more The 1990s and early 2000s saw a burgeoning gay and lesbian market in many Euro-American societies. This has led to warnings from scholars about the myth of this “pink economy”, which while appearing to affirm the sexual identities of gay and lesbian people, can also bring about new exclusions, for recognition is now dependent on one’s financial capacity to buy one’s way into the market (Bell and Binnie 2000; Richardson 1998; Wilson 2009). Within the context of Asia, however, where queerness continues to be policed and managed by the state, some scholars have pointed out that it is in fact consumption in the commercial scene that enables the formation of a “queer autonomy” (Jackson 2011; Yue 2011). In this presentation, I seek to extend this recently emerging scholarship on queer consumption in Asia by drawing on my research in the Japanese Female-to-Male (FTM) transgender scene. I argue that especially for those FTM transpeople who have been excluded from the official discourse of (trans) gender, consumption and commercialization—rather than signaling a form of depoliticization—can be a vehicle for materializing FTM cultures and communities. In doing so, I hope to show how the conflict between public/politicization and private/commercialization that seems to dominate current (western) literature on sexual and consumer citizenship may be problematized and, perhaps, reconciled.
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This paper examines the constructions of masculinity in a Japanese Female-to-Male (FTM) transgend... more This paper examines the constructions of masculinity in a Japanese Female-to-Male (FTM) transgender magazine Laph. Found in 2010, and branding itself as a “Men’s trendy magazine for FTM”, Laph is the only surviving lifestyle magazine for FTM transpeople in present-day Japan. Focusing on lifestyle issues such as occupations, relationships and fashion, and using the medium of photographs, the zine attempts to present the ordinary, everyday lives of FTM people as it is. Through a textual analysis of the back issues of Laph, as well as by drawing upon my fieldwork at the magazine, I explore the strategies that are deployed in the doing/making of one’s masculinity, and show how the elements of ‘FTM masculinity’ that the zine constructs as ‘normal’ strongly echo hegemonic masculinity in postwar Japanese society. I argue that this can be seen as an illustration of an attempt by a group of marginalized transpeople—marginalized by both mainstream society and the existing FTM community—who have been excluded from the ‘normal,’ to access the ‘normal’, for survival and for social membership. An analysis of the conceptions and constructions of gender among female-assigned transpeople can not only bring us to an understanding of these masculinities at the margins, or in Raewyn Connell’s (1993) terms, “subordinated masculinities”, it can also shed light on the dominant form of masculinity that while continuing to exert its influence on those marginal masculinities, is also simultaneously being “stretch[ed] and resist[ed]” (Yau 2010, 4) by those at the periphery.
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Papers by Shu Min Yuen
Book Chapters by Shu Min Yuen
Online Publication by Shu Min Yuen
Sites of popular culture and subculture can be locations from which one’s claims to citizenship rights are exercised. I follow Aihwa Ong’s (1996, 738) conceptualization of cultural citizenship, which she defines as the “cultural practices and beliefs produced out of negotiating the often ambivalent and contested relations with the state and its hegemonic forms that establish the criteria of belonging within a national population and territory.” In this entry, I explore the negotiations of belonging and inclusion by a group of gender minorities through their engagement/participation in the cultural sphere. I use the case of a Female-to-Male transgender idol group, Secret Guyz, to illustrate how their performances and promotional activities can function as acts of civic engagement that enable the claiming of particular transgender rights—such as the right to transgender expression—which have been denied in the official discourse of transgender in Japanese society.
Conference Presentations by Shu Min Yuen
In this presentation, I focus on Female-to-Male (FTM) transpeople in present-day Japan, and explore how their movement across national borders intersects with their movement across gender borders. I draw on my analysis of narratives written by Japanese FTM transpeople on their medical travel, as well as interviews with those who have travelled to Thailand for gender reassignment to explore how transnational mobility—which in turn is contingent upon one’s financial capacity—shapes and is shaped by (desires for) gender transition. How did they experience travel? Who gets to travel and who doesn’t? By examining medical travel—one of the most common patterns of cross-border practice among Japanese FTM transpeople—this paper aims to contribute to a better understanding of transgender mobilities, a currently under-theorized area of research. I argue that this will have implications for studies on queer migration, which has mostly focused on gay and (sometimes) lesbian cross-border practices in the ‘western’ context and left transpeople out of the picture.
By using the case study of Japanese FTM transgender medical tourists-migrants, this paper seeks to provide an in-depth exploration of the experiences of medical tourists beyond the hospital. I argue that the patterns of mobility of my FTM informants reveal a complex trajectory of queer migration that complicates the standard understandings of rural-to-urban queer migration, or even Judith Halberstam’s (2005) reconceptualization of such movements: leaving the rural home for the city, and then returning home. Through this paper, I aim to enhance (and complicate) current approaches to Asian migration through the case of a mobile group of gender and geo-political border-crossers who transcend the binaristic categories of “tourist” and “migrant”.
Sites of popular culture and subculture can be locations from which one’s claims to citizenship rights are exercised. I follow Aihwa Ong’s (1996, 738) conceptualization of cultural citizenship, which she defines as the “cultural practices and beliefs produced out of negotiating the often ambivalent and contested relations with the state and its hegemonic forms that establish the criteria of belonging within a national population and territory.” In this entry, I explore the negotiations of belonging and inclusion by a group of gender minorities through their engagement/participation in the cultural sphere. I use the case of a Female-to-Male transgender idol group, Secret Guyz, to illustrate how their performances and promotional activities can function as acts of civic engagement that enable the claiming of particular transgender rights—such as the right to transgender expression—which have been denied in the official discourse of transgender in Japanese society.
In this presentation, I focus on Female-to-Male (FTM) transpeople in present-day Japan, and explore how their movement across national borders intersects with their movement across gender borders. I draw on my analysis of narratives written by Japanese FTM transpeople on their medical travel, as well as interviews with those who have travelled to Thailand for gender reassignment to explore how transnational mobility—which in turn is contingent upon one’s financial capacity—shapes and is shaped by (desires for) gender transition. How did they experience travel? Who gets to travel and who doesn’t? By examining medical travel—one of the most common patterns of cross-border practice among Japanese FTM transpeople—this paper aims to contribute to a better understanding of transgender mobilities, a currently under-theorized area of research. I argue that this will have implications for studies on queer migration, which has mostly focused on gay and (sometimes) lesbian cross-border practices in the ‘western’ context and left transpeople out of the picture.
By using the case study of Japanese FTM transgender medical tourists-migrants, this paper seeks to provide an in-depth exploration of the experiences of medical tourists beyond the hospital. I argue that the patterns of mobility of my FTM informants reveal a complex trajectory of queer migration that complicates the standard understandings of rural-to-urban queer migration, or even Judith Halberstam’s (2005) reconceptualization of such movements: leaving the rural home for the city, and then returning home. Through this paper, I aim to enhance (and complicate) current approaches to Asian migration through the case of a mobile group of gender and geo-political border-crossers who transcend the binaristic categories of “tourist” and “migrant”.
A new discourse of the cooking man emerged recently with the bentō danshi (literally boxed-lunch 'boy') boom. Sparked by a Tokyo Walker article in December 2008 on the “sudden increase” in the number of men making and bringing their own bentō (boxed lunch) to work (Tokyo Walker, 9 December 2008), the boom not only boosted the sales of lunchboxes targeted at men, it also generated an increased media interest in these cooking danshi. Be it in news articles on the phenomenon or in the publications of cookery books and manuals for the bentō danshi, the image of the cooking men portrayed is (usually) a young, single, unmarried man who cooks in a home kitchen (as opposed to the professional kitchen in earlier discourse), and whose cooking is fuss-‐free, simple, fast, healthy, cost-‐saving and trendy. The simple, everyday meals that these danshi make distinguish them from ‘men’s cooking’ (otoko ryōri) which tend to emphasize on adventure, wildness and dynamics. Given the common perception that bentō is usually made by the mother/wife for the children and husband, does the popularization of the bentō danshi or danshi-‐style cooking suggest some form of feminization of men?
In this paper, I am interested in analyzing the intersections of food preparation and kitchen labor with masculinity in Japanese mass media. How is masculinity articulated in narratives on cooking, in particular, danshi-‐cooking in the mass media? How we can understand the changing notions of masculinities in late 20th century, early 21st century Japan through the bentō danshi boom? Through a textual analysis of narratives of men and masculinity in cooking books, websites and television programs that are targeted at, or sell the image of danshi-‐cooking, I will argue that the masculinity that is presented in the bentō danshi discourse falls into the larger shifts in notions of ideal masculinity in contemporary Japan. Unlike the ‘corporate warriors’ of the earlier generation, the cooking danshi, although still fulfilling his role as a breadwinner, embodies ideals such as family-‐ orientation and non-‐aggressiveness. Situated within the context of present-‐day Japan, the bentō danshi boom highlights the changing notions of ideal masculinity, beyond that of a mere ‘feminization of men’.
I adopt a multi-method approach in my construction of what I call the “FTM archive”, combining medico-legal discourse analysis with textual analysis of FTM-related television dramas and zines, as well as analysis based on ethnographic fieldwork in the FTM scene that involved participant observation and interviews with cultural producers and participants. This “FTM archive” not only serves as a record of FTM lives; it also, as a research method, seeks to uncover the processes of negotiations that FTM transpeople are constantly engaged in, with both the state and commercial markets, and with these institutions’ regulation of their gendered personhood, in their attempt to claim inclusion as (trans) gender subjects in Japanese society.
My research findings reveal that while there is a strong desire among many of my FTM informants to be socially recognized and accepted as “normal” men, many of them also continue to participate regularly in social events organized by, and predominantly for FTM transpeople, to gain a sense of community and belonging to a collective sociality. I argue that this claiming of dual citizenship—a double occupation of “FTM” and “man”, two identity positions that appear to be at odds with each other—demands a (re)conceptualization of trans inclusion that transcends the current language of rights, recognition and equality. This dual position not only troubles the dichotomy of assimilation versus resistance that is commonly found in current citizenship discourse, but can also suggest a new and more ethical way of thinking about transgender citizenship that does not only focus on claiming universal rights, but also remains sensitive to differences (Monro and Warren 2004, 358).
In tandem with the political commitment of transgender studies to correct the social injustices and violence that transpeople face (Stryker 2006; Valentine 2007), this dissertation is as much an archiving project, as it is an attempt to critically analyze the (normalizing) discourses of gender and sexuality in contemporary Japan. In doing so, I hope to open a new window into Japanese history by putting back into Japan’s trajectory of postwar modernity the figure of the FTM subject, who has been rendered invisible in dominant narratives of Japanese history. It is only then, I believe, that we can fully engage Japan in the conversation of trans/queer studies with its other Asian and “Western” interlocutors.