© 2010 James Welker

TRANSFIGURING THE FEMALE: WOMEN AND GIRLS ENGAGING THE

TRANSNATIONAL IN LATE TWENTIETH CENTURY JAPAN

BY

JAMES WELKER

DISSERTATION

Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements

for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in East Asian Languages and Cultures
with a minor in Gender and Women’s Studies
in the Graduate College of the
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2010

Urbana, Illinois

Dissertation Committee:

Professor Ronald P. Toby, Chair

Associate Professor Karen L. Kelsky, Director of Research
Associate Professor Martin F. Manalansan, IV
Assistant Professor Robert T. Tierney
 ABSTRACT

This dissertation examines three spheres of women and adolescent girls who overtly

challenged gender and sexual norms in late twentieth century Japan: the women involved in the

!man ribu [women’s liberation] movement and the rezubian [lesbian] community, as well as

young women artists and girl readers of what I call queer sh"jo manga [girls’ comics]. The

individuals in these three spheres found the normative understanding of “women” untenable and

worked to destabilize it in part through “transfiguring” elements appropriated from a loosely

defined West. Based on both archival research and interviews, this dissertation specifically

focuses on uses, effects, and experiences of transfiguration both within and beyond these spheres.

The primary chronologic focus of this study is the 1970s and 1980s, when these three spheres

emerged, then variously flourished, faltered, fragmented, and took on new forms. At times, I do,

however, trace threads both backward to the beginning of the twentieth century—to point to

deeper transnational roots than may be immediately apparent—and forward to the beginning of

the twenty-first century—to show some of the effects of the cultural work of these women and

girls.

The introduction situates this project within existing scholarship and introduces

“transfiguration,” the central concept I use to frame this study. Chapter two, “Trajectories,”

provides histories of the three spheres at the heart of this work. Chapter three, “Terminology,”

draws on archives stretching back to the beginning of the twentieth century to trace the

transnational etymologies of three terms used within and about these spheres: “!man ribu”

[women’s lib], “rezubian” [lesbian], and “sh"nen ai” [boys’ love]. Chapter four, “Translation,”

examines direct translations and other transfigurations of early radical feminist writing from the

US, the landmark texts Our Bodies, Ourselves (1971) and The Hite Report (1976), as well as

ii
twentieth century literature with an eye toward acts and impacts of translation. Chapter five,

“Travel” considers the effects of real and vicarious voyages both on these spheres and on the

individuals within them. Finally, the conclusion offers reflections on how engagements with the

transnational shaped the ribu, rezubian, and queer sh"jo manga spheres, the women and

adolescent girls within them, and, ultimately, the meaning of “women” in Japan.

This dissertation shows that, while some women turned to what they perceived as an

advanced West for solutions to or an escape from local issues, most were firmly focused on the

local—even as they selectively adapted, even celebrated, Western practices. For the majority of

even the most radical women, the Western turn was not a turn away from Japan. Rather, it was

integral to being a modern woman within Japan. More significantly, among women and girls in

the !man ribu movement, the rezubian community, and the queer sh"jo manga sphere—and,

ultimately, beyond it—the act of transfiguring Western cultural practices into something locally

meaningful, as well as the products thereof, resulted not just in change at the individual and

community level, but the transfiguration of the category “women” in Japan. This more expansive

notion of the female accommodated not merely a significantly increased number of public roles

not bound to being a mother or a wife but a greater diversity of gender and sexual expression.

iii
For the women in Japan who have imagined different worlds
and strived to create them

iv
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

First and foremost, I offer my profound gratitude to all the women and men in- and

outside of Japan who made this project possible by allowing me to interview them, lending or

giving me materials, answering my questions, providing invaluable introductions to others, or by

offering timely words of support and advice. I am only able to mention some of them by name,

but I am truly grateful to them all, including Akiyama Y!ko, Amano Michimi, Azuma Reiko,

Yumi Doi, Hara “Minata” Minako, Ikegami Chizuko, It! Bungaku, It! Tari, Izumo Marou, the

late Kitamura Mitsuko, Noriko Kohashi, Audrey Lockwood, Miki S!ko, Nakanishi Toyoko,

Nakano Fuyumi, Sheila Michaels, Linda Peterson, Lora Sharnoff, Nanbara Shir!, Sawabe

Hitomi, Takagi Sawako, Takashima Rika, Tanaka Mitsu, Larry Taub, and Yonezu Tomoko.

In addition, I am deeply grateful to the members of my dissertation committee for their

support, encouragement, and advice at various stages of this project. I have had the good fortune

to take courses with each of them and benefitted greatly from their intellectual insights and

passion. My sincere thanks to Karen Kelsky, my director of research and advisor as well as the

person whose enthusiasm about my project brought me to Illinois; to my dissertation committee

chair, Ronald Toby, who gave me a far deeper appreciation for the complexity of Edo period

Japan and, whether he planned it or not, helped me better understand its relevance to the modern

and contemporary Japan that is my primary interest; to Martin Manalansan, who shared his time

and his expertise on the globalization of gender and sexualities and who gave up an entire day to

come to my two-hour defense; and to Robert Tierney, who joined the faculty in EALC the same

year I entered the PhD program, and who has always shown a great deal of interest in the

development of my research.

Other faculty at Illinois, as well as many colleagues and friends have helped me write

v
grant applications, responded to chapter drafts, generously provided materials and research tips,

made essential introductions, and otherwise been extremely encouraging. For this I am grateful

to Jeffrey Angles, Tomoko Aoyama, Julia Bullock, Beverley Curran, Erica Friedman, Patrick

Galbraith, David Goodman, Barbara Hartley, Louise Haynes, Ishida Hitoshi, Sho Konishi, Wim

Lunsing, Vera Mackie, Claire Maree, Mark McLelland, Mia Nakamura, Nito Mayumi, Elizabeth

Oyler, Rio Otomo, Deborah Richie, Misumi Sadler, Setsu Shigematsu, Katsuhiko Suganuma,

Sugiura Ikuko, Taniguchi Hiroyuki, Kathleen Uno, Tomomi Yamaguchi, and Tomiko Yoda.

Among them, I am particularly thankful to Mark McLelland and Beverley Curran whose

encouragement about and interest in my research came at just the right time for me to realize

something like this was even possible. I am also thankful to Takemura Kazuko at Ochanomizu

University for agreeing to serve as my advisor in Japan, and to the Institute for Gender Studies

for allowing me to affiliate there.

I presented portions of chapter three at IGS Kenky"kai 2008 (January 2009, Ochanomizu

University, Tokyo), at Revisiting Postwar Japan as History: A Twenty Year Check-Up on the

State of the Field (May 2009, Sophia University, Tokyo), the Japan Workshop (University of

Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, January 2010), and at the Association for Asian Studies Annual

Meeting (March 2010, Philadelphia). Chapter four began as a presentation at AsiaPacifiQueer 3

(December 2003, University of Melbourne). My thanks to the organizers, my fellow panelists,

and members of the audience. I am also grateful for the feedback I received on chapters three and

four from the members of the Dissertation Writing Workshop in the Department of History in

fall 2009 and spring 2010, and to Professors Lillian Hoddeson and Mark Steinberg, who kindly

allowed me to be an interdisciplinary interloper from another department.

Much of the research for this dissertation was made possible thanks to a Fulbright-Hays

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Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad grant. I am also grateful for generous funding I received

while at the University of Illinois that allowed me to focus on research and coursework, as well

as to present my research at many conferences, including a Foreign Language and Area Studies

fellowship and conference travel grants through the Center for East Asian and Pacific Studies, a

fellowship as well as research and conference grants from the Department of East Asian

Languages and Cultures, a fellowship from the Foreign Language Building (now the School of

Literatures, Cultures, and Linguistics), and conference grants from the Graduate College and the

Association for Asian Studies.

Several graduate students and others at the University of Illinois kept me company,

offered me moral support, suggestions, commiseration, critiques, help with drafting grant

applications, and so forth over the past five years, especially Ryan Jones, Jerome Ng, Rebecca

Nickerson, Josie Sohn, and E.K. Tan. Caroline McKenzie has been there for me since before I

was a graduate student the first time. Louise Heal made getting my Master’s Degree in Japanese

Studies a lot more fun than it would have been otherwise. And my family has cheered me on

from the sidelines even if they can never quite put a finger on what it is I am

researching—probably more my fault than theirs. I am immeasurably thankful to them all.

Finally, my endless gratitude is owed to Jotaro Arimori, for checking my translations, for

so often knowing just the right word in English, for repeatedly looking things up for me when I

should have done it myself, for patiently answering my questions, sometimes the same ones

again and again when I failed to write down what he told me the first (and sometimes second)

time, and for his support, encouragement, and love from well before I even considered pursuing

the path that brought this dissertation into being.

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 TABLE OF CONTENTS

A NOTE ON LANGUAGE AND NAMES ...................................................................... ix

CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION..................................................................................1

CHAPTER TWO: TRAJECTORIES ................................................................................33

CHAPTER THREE: TERMINOLOGY ............................................................................79

CHAPTER FOUR: TRANSLATION .............................................................................146

CHAPTER FIVE: TRAVEL............................................................................................216

CHAPTER SIX: CONCLUSION ....................................................................................257

WORKS CITED ..............................................................................................................264

viii
 A NOTE ON LANGUAGE AND NAMES

Japanese words are transliterated into Roman letters using the Hepburn system, with

macrons used to indicate long o and u sounds, except for words and place names commonly used

in English. In Japanese, which does not place spaces between words, multi-word terms

transcribed from European languages are often, if inconsistently, separated with a black dot—a

nakaguro—to indicate a separation between words. To give a sense of the inconsistency of

transcription in Japanese, when I transcribe these words into Roman letters, I indicate the

presence or absence of nakaguro with the presence or absence of a space.

Japanese names are given in their natural order of surname preceding given name, except

for references to English writing in which the author has adopted the English name order. In

keeping with Japanese convention, the novelists Mori #gai and Inagaki Taruho, are referred to

by their given names. I have also deviated in the Romanization of names in accordance with

individuals’ spelling preferences. Many individuals in the ribu and rezubian communities used

pseudonyms within the communities. With the exception of those individuals who have since

publicly linked their pseudonym with their real name, I refer to women by the name(s) by which

they were known in the community without indicating whether it is a pseudonym. I indicate

those pseudonyms I assigned by enclosing them in quotation marks the first time I use them.

Finally, while I am uncomfortable with expressions like “female artist,” which tend to

imply a male standard, I make use of such awkward locutions—along with “male journalist” and

so on—when the sex of an individual is relevant but cannot otherwise easily be inferred. I do so

for the sake of readers unfamiliar with Japanese given names, which usually indicate an

individual’s sex.

ix
 CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION

At the opening of the 1970s, certain women and adolescent girls in Japan began to

challenge gender and sexual norms in novel ways. Their various moves for change came on the

heels of over a decade of rapid economic growth, accompanied by increasing consumer comforts

as well as sometimes dramatic citizen protests. Between 1970 and 1971, three new spheres of

women and girls began to take form and to take on the norms that compelled them to be first

passive girlfriends, then “good wives and wise mothers,” forestalling other possibilities.1 These

three spheres—the women involved in the !man ribu [women’s liberation] movement and those

in the rezubian [lesbian] community, as well as young women artists and girl readers of what I

am calling queer sh"jo manga [girls’ comics]—responded to these norms in often quite distinct

ways. What they had in common was, above all, their engagement in acts and activities that

overtly and covertly worked to undermine or circumvent the normative understanding of the

category “women.”2 In addition, these spheres all selectively and creatively deployed

“transfigured” elements—texts, ideas, images, practices, and the like—appropriated from

Euro-American cultures to use as tools to carry out this project. In the following pages, I

examine the ribu, rezubian, and queer sh"jo manga spheres with an emphasis on the use, effects,

and experience of this process of transfiguration both within and beyond these three social

collectivities. Through their creative transnational engagements, building upon the layers of

1
The “good wife, wise mother” (ry"sai kenbo) paradigm dates to the Meiji era and has been linked to both
early modern and modern understandings of Japanese womanhood. See Kathleen S. Uno, “Womanhood, War, and
Empire: Transmutations of ‘Good Wife, Wise Mother’ Before 1931,” in Gendering Modern Japanese History, ed.
Barbara Molony and Kathleen S. Uno (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 2005), 494. Kathleen Uno has
argued that this paradigm “remained influential in Japan into the late 1980s.” See Kathleen S. Uno, “The Death of
‘Good Wife, Wise Mother’?” in Postwar Japan as History, ed. Andrew Gordon (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1993) 303.
2
I use the plural “women” here rather than “woman” in recognition that even narrowly defined categories
such as “women” under a patriarchal system operate in the plural, based on numerous factors including, in the case
of Japan, age, class, educational background, occupation, and ethnic or other social background.

1
transfiguration imbricated in the construction of contemporary Japanese culture, these women

and girls transfigured not just the “foreign” but also the meaning of “women” in Japan.

The primary chronologic focus of my study is the 1970s and 1980s, when these spheres

emerged, then variously flourished, faltered, fragmented, and took on new forms. At times, I do,

however, trace threads both backward to the beginning of the twentieth century—to point to

deeper transnational roots than may be immediately apparent—and forward to the beginning of

the twenty-first century—to show some of the effects of the cultural work of these women and

girls. Like many social and cultural phenomena, the nature of these amorphous spheres makes

them impossible to precisely define in terms of moment of origin or composition, and in the case

of the ribu movement when or whether it has ceased to be. These three spheres’ overlapping

memberships complicates matters further.

Initially the most prominent of these spheres, the !man ribu movement first drew

widespread public attention with a protest rally for “women’s liberation” (onna kaih") held in

Tokyo’s fashionable Ginza district on October 21, 1970. Its existence as a “movement” prior to

this is somewhat hazy. Did it begin when ribu’s soon-to-be de facto leader and most prominent

spokesperson Tanaka Mitsu began handing out pamphlets several months earlier? Or did it start

with the small groups, such as Thought Collective S.E.X., which had already formed that year

around the goal of women’s liberation and, often, the belief that a reexamination of sex/sexuality

(sei) was key to accomplishing that objective? Or did it, in fact, come into being at the ribu

retreat held the following year in Nagano, where for the first time hundreds of ribu-identified

women from around the country would meet in person and draw new strength and energy from

each other?

Who precisely should be counted as having been involved in the ribu movement is

2
similarly difficult to enumerate. In most discourse on ribu, whether from within or without, the

movement is positioned as distinct from earlier women’s movements in Japan—a product of a

new generation of women, many of whom were university students or recent graduates. And, yet

some older women, including those involved in earlier women’s activism were directly involved

as well in this new movement. Previous generations of women activists were associated with the

quest for “fujin kaih!,” a term for “women’s liberation” that the ribu women rejected for its

old-fashioned and bourgeois connotations.3 Fujin kaih! in the pre- and postwar—as well as

certain streams of “feminizumu” [feminism] that have become increasingly prominent from the

late 1970s—might best be classified as representing strains of “liberal feminism,” seeking to

expand rights and opportunities for women without attempting to undo the social fabric or

redefine “woman” on a fundamental level.4 By contrast, the ribu women referred to themselves

instead as engaging in “josei kaih!” or, more radically, “onna kaih!.” Both expressions also

mean “women’s liberation,” but the dated term “fujin”—meaning woman or lady, almost

certainly married with children—has been superseded by the relatively neutral term for woman,

“josei,” or its more blunt—and assertive—counterpart, “onna,” neither of which gives an

indication of a woman’s marital status. Fujieda Mioko (1930–), a feminist a generation older

than most in the ribu movement but who later took part in ribu activities, notes that when the

ribu women adopted “onna” as their preferred term, it was widely considered vulgar and some

women experienced a definite resistance to using it. Ribu activists’ choice to dispense with

“fujin” and to call themselves and each other “josei” or “onna” was a declaration of

independence from the roles of wife and mother, and—particularly in the use of “onna”—from

3
See Inoue Teruko, Joseigaku to sono sh"hen (Tokyo: Keis! Shob!, 1980), 178–81.
4
See the discussion of liberal feminism in chapter one of Rosemarie Putnam Tong, Feminist Thought: A
More Comprehensive Introduction, 2nd ed., (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1998).

3
normative notions of femininity.5 Ribu activist Yonezu Tomoko (1948–) explains that “onna”

had a very base image, implying an inferior woman, with no ability, no education, and no career,

in addition to being, in some male discourse, a sexual object. As Yonezu explained to me, it was

precisely because of what “onna” implied that in order “to liberate ‘myself=onna,’ to insist that

‘I’ am not inferior, [we in the movement] used not ‘josei’ but the word ‘onna.’”6 In fact, in

much ribu discourse both words were used almost but not quite interchangeably, but, as I

understand it, with “onna” conveying a greater sense of power and pride than “josei.” In addition,

toward the end of 1970, under circumstances that will be examined in chapter three, these

women came to identify themselves and their movement with the terms “!man ribu” and “ribu.”

While ribu activists were concerned with many of the same issues as earlier women’s

movements, such as motherhood and discrimination, what set this new movement apart was the

centrality given to sex and sexuality in their discourse of women’s and personal liberation. This

foregrounding of women’s sex and sexuality, more than anything else, that helps to link the ribu

sphere with the concerns of the rezubian and queer sh"jo manga spheres. While many of the

perhaps hundreds of small ribu groups around the country were loosely networked and dialogued

via exchange of mini-komi [“mini communications,” that is, newsletters/zines], as well as at

various gatherings and events, there have been no definitive tallies of groups or their

memberships.7 For the purposes of this study, women who at any point affiliated with a ribu

5
Fujieda Mioko, “Nihon no josei und!: ribu saik!,” Joseigaku nenp" 11 (1990): 3.
6
Yonezu Tomoko, interview with author, June 2009.
7
Yonezu has estimated the number of groups around the country to be in the hundreds at the movement’s
peak. Cited in Muto Ichiyo, “The Birth of the Women’s Liberation Movement in the 1970s,” in The Other Japan:
Conflict, Compromise, and Resistance Since 1945, ed. Joe Moore (Armonk, N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe, 1997), 158.
Mini-komi, Japanese shorthand for “mini communication,” are periodicals produced regularly or irregularly
and ranging in appearance and scope from simple newsletters to glossy magazines. The earliest of these were often
hand-written and mimeographed rather than word-processed and photocopied. In the ribu sphere, members of one
group sometimes published essays in the mini-komi of others, and cross-promotion and analysis of the contents of
the mini-komi of other groups was a staple of the genre within the ribu sphere.
Mini-komi were first used in the student movement of the 1960s. Primarily distributed among members and

4
group or participated in a ribu event or even identified with the ribu movement from afar might

be considered in some way a part of the ribu sphere.

In spite of—or perhaps because of—its infusion in the first half of the 1970s by a degree

of energy, enthusiasm, and spirit that words can hardly begin to capture, the ribu movement

began to lose steam in the middle of the decade. And while feminist activism has continued in

various forms, involving many of the same women, the word “ribu” lost its cachet and had

largely faded from public discourse by the end of the 1970s. Some ribu women would go on to

identify as “feminisuto” [feminist] after that word was reclaimed in the late 1970s, while other

ribu women were to reject both the idea of “feminizumu,” which they perceived to be more

academic than activist, and the related field of women’s studies (joseigaku). My focus in this

project is on the discourse of the ribu sphere, rather than the strains of feminism that developed

later. And, although I do situate ribu within a loosely defined notion of feminism and trace

certain threads from ribu forward into later feminist activities, it is beyond the scope of my

project to tease out the distinction between ribu and other feminisms, which is largely

idiosyncratic—as is clear from later reflections on ribu by former activists.8

Just two months after that first ribu demonstration in October, artist Takemiya Keiko

published a short sh!nen ai [boys love] manga narrative in the commercial press, marking the

emergence of a new genre of sh!jo manga depicting boy-boy rather than boy-girl romance, a

new genre around which fans and other artists would coalesce.9 But perhaps this queer sphere

began in actuality with the serialization in 1974 of Hagio Moto’s sh!nen ai tale The Heart of

shared with other groups, some ribu mini-komi were available at a limited number of leftist bookstores. Not yet
completely supplanted by the internet, today some mini-komi can be found at women’s centers as well. A sense of
the diversity of mini-komi as well as of the scope of the ribu community can be had by perusing the writing
produced by a seemingly endless number of groups contained in the oversized, three-volume collection, Mizoguchi
Akiyo, Saeki Y!ko, and Miki S!ko, eds., Shiry! Nihon "man ribu shi, 3 vols. (Kyoto: Sh!kad! Shoten, 1992–1995).
8
I found this to be the case both in interviews conducted with activists and in the many roundtable
discussions and other essays that have been published.
9
Takemiya Keiko, “Sanr"mu nite,” in her Sanr"mu nite (1970; Tokyo: San Komikkusu, 1976).

5
Thomas, which is far better remembered and has sometimes (erroneously) been called the

beginning of the genre.10 Or, we might say it really came together with the female middle and

high school students who, in thrall to the work of Hagio and others, formed the vast majority of

participants at the first “Comic Market” event in Tokyo in 1975. The publication in October

1978 of the premier issue of June, the first commercial magazine focused on the new genre that

would at last allow fans around the country to communicate with each other as well as with some

of their favorite artists, might also be said to mark a beginning of sorts.

The queer sh!jo manga sphere is far and away the largest of the three spheres under

consideration in my project, and the most challenging to define. Based on mere readership of

queer sh!jo manga, a majority of adolescent and even pre-adolescent girls from the 1970s

onward would fall into this camp, as well as a number of boys and adult women and men. In the

1970s, these texts were drawn by some of the most popular—and mainstream—sh!jo manga

artists, who over the course of the decade, developed a degree of celebrity in popular culture.

Some of the pioneering boy-boy romance manga printed by commercial presses were themselves

discussed enough in the popular media to stimulate curiosity across a broad spectrum of the

population.11 Rather than the casual or simply curious reader, I provisionally delimit the queer

sh!jo manga sphere to encompass those passionate readers who read such texts repeatedly, who

sought out new ones, who bought or borrowed magazines such as June and Allan (Aran) catering

to fans of sh!nen ai manga, and who may have written in letters to these magazines, sharing their

thoughts about these texts and related topics with other readers, artists, and editors.12 While I

10
Hagio Moto, T!ma no shinz! (1974; Tokyo: Sh!gakukan, 1995).
11
Articles discussed the sh!nen ai genre in high- and lowbrow magazines alike. See, for instance, the
lowbrow treatment of the genre in Bish!nen-dan, “Ima, kiken na ai ni mezameru toki……ka na?” Takarajima
(December 1979); and the highbrow in Hagio Moto and Yoshimoto Hiroaki, “Jiko hy!gen toshite no sh!jo manga,”
Yuriika 13, no. 9 (July 1981), especially 89–92.
12
June even ran a letters column called, in English, “Readers’ Writers’ and Editors’ Bedroom.”

6
will primarily focus on the production and consumption of manga, similar narratives appeared in

prose form in these and other magazines, leading by the early 1980s to periodicals dedicated to

them, such as Sh!setsu June [June fiction]. As evident in letters and editorial content in the pages

of June and Allan, and in letters from female readers in homo magazines like Barazoku [Rose

tribe], as well as later during the gay boom of the 1990s, this fandom also extended beyond just

the consumption of works produced locally by women and by the late 1970s incorporated

representations of homosexuality produced by homo men in Japan as well as gay art, fiction,

pornography, and reportage from and about gay cultures abroad.

This sphere was not simply one of reception and interpretation, however. I also count

artists as integral. Born at roughly the same time as most ribu activists as well as the women who

established the rezubian community, the professional artists who developed sh!nen ai and other

commercial queer sh!jo manga saw themselves as intervening with the genre in readers’ lives,

liberating sh!jo readers from normative restrictions that positioned females as passive players in

the romance script, as well as innocent and uninterested in sexuality. For this reason, some artists,

later specifically identified the genre as “feminisuto” in effect—although not all feminists or

former ribu activists agree.13 This also helps explain why girls who would grown up to identify

as “rezubian” or otherwise queer found sh!nen ai texts particularly influential to them during

their formative years.14 Artists were not just creating queer texts with readers in mind, however,

13
See, e.g., Takemiya Keiko, “Josei wa gei ga suki?” Bungei shunsh" 71, no. 6 (June 1993). Mizoguchi
Akiko describes the male-male homoerotic genre of yaoi—which developed in part out of sh!nen ai—as a
lesbian-feminist genre. See her “M!s!ryoku no potensharu: rezubian feminisuto janru toshite no yaoi,” Yuriika 39,
no. 7 (June 2007). By contrast, while she was herself formerly a devoted reader of the genre, former ribu activist
Nakano Fuyumi, for instance, sees “yaoi,” a queer sh!jo manga genre discussed below, as discriminatory toward
women by denying them affirmation through their narrative absence. See Nakano Fuyumi, “Yaoi hy!gen to sabetsu:
onna no tame no porunogurafii o tokihogusu,” Josei raifusutairu kenky" no. 4 (November 1994). While most former
ribu activists were already in their twenties when the earliest queer sh!jo manga was produced, and thus, they say,
too old to have read it at the time, several with whom I have spoken indicated that they had been fans of the genre,
and one woman had even published yaoi novellas.
14
See, for instance, the discussion of these texts in Aniisu, “Komyuniti no rekishi, 1971–2001: nenpy! to

7
but also actively engaged in exchange with readers, including responding to letters from fans and

even incorporating fan suggestions into their own work. Further blurring the distinction between

artist and reader, the girl readers themselves were also actively producing drawings, manga

narratives, and stories on sh!nen ai and other queer themes, both for sharing among friends and

broader readerships. Indeed, reader submissions formed a significant part of magazines like June,

which ran regular features in which readers could have their work critiqued by professionals.

Finally, a further step removed from the commercial sphere, the production and consumption of

queer sh!jo manga has from the beginning constituted a large part of the amateur manga scene,

which revolves around the Comic Market. It was the Comic Market that, by the end of the

decade, fostered the emergence of the more graphic, less plot driven male-male erotic genre of

yaoi, still primarily drawn by and for adolescent girls and young women. From early on, yaoi

often involved the parodying sh!nen manga [boys’ comics], and their refiguration into

male-male romance narratives. While classic sh!nen ai texts remained (and remain) popular, this

more literary style was ultimately overtaken by texts favoring sexual over narrative climax. Yaoi

consumption and production came into its own in the 1990s as a commercially viable genre,

increasingly called “b!izu rabu” [boys love] and “BL” (pronounced “bii eru”) and increasingly a

global phenomenon.15

A full year after the sh!jo manga magazine with Takemiya’s sh!nen ai narrative hit the

intaby! de furikaeru” (Summer 2001): 35. Elsewhere I speculate that these early sh!nen ai works were influential on
women who would later identify as “rezubian” or otherwise queer because of their openness to “lesbian” readings,
while the few female-female narratives to be found in the 1970s and early 1980s were largely dark and unappealing.
See James Welker, “Beautiful, Borrowed, and Bent: Boys’ Love as Girls’ Love in Sh!jo Manga,” Signs 31, no. 3
(2006).
15
As discussed in chapter three, distinctions are sometimes made between yaoi and BL, but for the
majority of casual readers the terms are roughly synonymous. On BL as a global phenomenon, see Andrea Wood,
“‘Straight’ Women, Queer Texts: Boy-Love Manga and the Rise of a Global Counterpublic,” Women’s Studies
Quarterly 34, no. 1/2 (2006). Around 2000, a global fandom emerged centering around the consumption of images
of female homosexuality in sh!jo manga, which has been labeled “yuri” (lily). The primary audience for yuri is a
mix of heterosexual men and variously queer women.

8
bookstores, a twenty-one-year-old woman used a message-exchange notebook in the back of an

adult bookstore near Tokyo’s Shinjuku Station to find other women who, like her, were “rezu”

[lez]. This was first step in the creation of Wakakusa no Kai [Young Grass Club], an

organization later identified as the beginning of Japan’s “rezubian komyuniti.” Yet, as much as

the group’s founder later tried to reach out to women around Japan through advertisements and

media appearances, is it fair to call describe the women cramming her post office box with letters

a “community”? Self-identified rezubian feminisuto [lesbian feminists] would later criticize the

group, perhaps unjustly, for being little more than a glorified dating service. For some, the

emergence of rezubian-feminisuto activism in the mid-1970s itself constituted the beginning of

the rezubian community.

The use, dating largely from the 1990s, of the word “komyuniti” among self-identified

rezubian and other women in Japan seems, on one level, to include all women in Japan

romantically or sexually attracted to other women and who participate in the community by, for

example, attending community events, subscribing to a community publication, or going from

time to time to a community space. So defined, the true origins of this community become more

ambiguous than the narrative dating the community back to just Wakakusa no Kai. While there

were no women-only “rezubian bars” prior to the 1980s, there was, in fact, a limited bar scene

dating back at least to the 1950s, including, by the 1960s, bars featuring “dandy beauties” (dans!

no reijin)—women in male drag—which drew on the popular appeal of the Takarazuka Revue

and similar all-female musical theater troupes.16 While such bars catered to an ostensibly

heterosexual crowd, women attracted to other women could go there to meet others like

16
Histories of these bars can be found in Shiba Fumiko, “Sh!wa rokuj" [sic] nendai rezubian b"mu,” in
Tanbi sh!setsu, gei bungaku bukkugaido, ed. Kakinuma Eiko and Kurihara Chiyo (Tokyo: Byakuya Shob!, 1993);
and Toyama Hitomi, “Dans! no reijin no jidai,” in her Miss dandi: otoko toshite ikiru joseitachi (Tokyo: Shinch!sha,
1999).

9
them—whether they identified as josei no homo [female homos] or d!seiaisha [homosexuals]; or,

by the late 1960s, as resubian, rezubian, or rezu; or none of those. There is evidence to suggest a

sense of camaraderie and connectedness among these women created at least a limited sense of

community.17 Nevertheless, the founding of Wakakusa no Kai in 1971 was a milestone: this was

the first time a small group of women attempted to establish a tangible space of their own—if

only at monthly tea parties—where, shielded from the outside world, they could meet others like

them. In recognition of this, and in parallel with my studies of the ribu and queer sh!jo manga

spheres established by and for women at the beginning of the 1970s, I follow histories produced

within the rezubian community itself in situating Wakakusa no Kai as its symbolic starting

point.18

A majority of those generally included in discourse within and about the rezubian

community are unmarried, female-bodied women who identify as “rezubian.” For the sake of

simplicity, I use “rezubian” to point to members of this loosely defined community rather than

the identities claimed by specific individuals. Although this runs the risk of erasing those who

differ from the majority, the women whose experiences and discourse I directly examine in this

research have claimed the label “rezubian” for themselves. Yet, I also acknowledge that the

community has always been diverse. While Wakakusa no Kai was criticized by rezubian

feminisuto for admitting married women, who were benefiting from rather than working to quash

the patriarchal system, over 21 percent of respondents in a mid-1980s survey of community

members conducted by rezubian feminisuto were either currently married or had divorced,

suggesting that they were a significant presence in the community.19 This survey itself assumed

17
See for instance the roundtable discussion, Saij! Michio et al., “Zadankai: josei no homo makari t!ru,”
F"zoku kagaku (March 1955).
18
E.g., Aniisu “Komyuniti no rekishi,” 29.
19
This survey, discussed in greater detail in chapter four, was distributed through rezubian groups and bars,

10
participants to be “rezubian.”20 Later surveys in community publications would not always be so

identitarian, often asking rather than assuming the identities of those who counted themselves as

members of the community; and respondents included those who identified themselves as

bisexual or asexual, or as female-to-male or male-to-female transgender.21 The commercial

rezubian magazine Anise also regularly featured columns by male-to-female transsexual and

self-identified rezubian feminisuto Mako Sennyo. The rezubian feminisuto movement itself

emerged largely out of the ribu movement and included women for whom being a rezubian was

a political choice rather than rooted in an innate desire for other women—at times a major point

of contention. And, in spite of sometimes profound wounds felt on account of their invisibility or

the harassment they occasionally felt from other ribu activists, ribu women who also identified

as rezubian represent a clear point of overlap between the ribu and rezubian spheres.

The rezubian community really came into its own in the 1990s, with new organizations,

events, and spaces, sometimes created in cooperation with the gei community. This development

built on the foundations laid by rezubian in the 1970s and 1980s and was aided by changing

economic and social conditions that made it easier to reject a heteronormative life course, as well

as by a “gay boom” (gei b!mu) in the media—a boom which developed in no small part as a

result of queer sh"jo manga fandom in the previous two decades.22

and advertized in the correspondence sections of a limited number of magazines See Hirosawa Yumi [Sawabe
Hitomi] and Rezubian Rip!to-han, “Rezubian rip!to: Nihon de hajimete! 234-nin no rezubian ni yoru sh!gen,” in
Bessatsu Takarajima, no. 64, Onna o ai suru onnatachi no monogatari (Tokyo: JICC Shuppankyoku, 1987), 151,
157.
20
Question two in the aforementioned survey asks, “At what age did you realize you were a rezubian (a
woman who loves women)?” See ibid., 284.
21
For instance, the first question in a survey included in a special feature on community history in the
commercial rezubian magazine Anise asks, “What sexuality (sekushuariti) do you identify as?” See Aniisu,
“Komyuniti no rekishi,” 72. Similar questions appear in surveys printed in other issues of the magazine.
22
The gay boom is sometimes considered to have started with the publication of a special “Gay
Renaissance” issue of the young women’s magazine Crea (Kurea, 1989–), whose readers grew up reading sh"jo
manga, including sh"nen ai. See Kurea, “Gei runessansu ’91,” special feature, February 1991. For a discussion of
the gay boom, see Wim Lunsing, “Gay Boom in Japan: Changing Views of Homosexuality?” Thamyris 4, no. 2
(1997).

11
Transfiguration

Each of these spheres is at once a local construction and a product of transnational flows.

The now global “boys love” manga sphere—with its amateur and commercial translations and

dubs of Japanese manga and anime into many Asian and European languages, as well as

innumerable original works—is considered in the discourse of its consumers and producers to

have emanated from Japan. And, indeed, sh!nen ai manga and its successors are indisputably a

product of a confluence of events and conditions in Japan. Yet, an examination of the origins and

development of queer sh!jo manga in Japan demonstrate that it arguably would not have come to

be, at least not in the form it took in the 1970s, without the influence of translated literature.

The rezubian community in the 1990s came to resemble lesbian communities elsewhere,

with pride events (“puraido ibento”), film festivals, and rezubian spaces that might seem at first

glance to have been directly imported as part of what has been called “global queering.”23 As

noted above, however, these practices clearly built on the foundations laid by both the rezubian

community and the queer sh!jo manga sphere. The rezubian community of the 1970s and 1980s,

including both the ostensibly non-political Wakakusa no Kai and the decidedly political rezubian

feminisuto, built on the decades of transnational discursive exchange that had developed into

contemporary understandings of gender and sexuality in general, as well as more specifically,

what it meant to be a “rezubian.”

Finally, nowhere have there been more vehement denials of foreign influence than those

23
The term “global queering” can be dated at least to Dennis Altman’s 1996 article, “On Global
Queering,” Australian Humanities Review 2 (July–August 1996), which, via a discussion of the globalization of gay
and lesbian culture, offers a critique of “queer theory” and its disruption of attention to activism in lesbian and gay
studies. Demonstrating the interest in Japan in this discourse, Altman’s subsequent provocative article on this form
of globalization, “Global Gaze/Global Gays,” GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 3, no. 4 (1997), was
published in Japanese the same year as the original, as “Sekaiteki na manazashi, zen’iki-ka suru gei,” trans.
Matsumura Tatsuya, Gendai shis! 25, no. 6 (May 1997). A synopsis of this discourse and Altman’s role therein, can
be found in Jon Binnie, The Globalization of Sexuality (London: Sage, 2004) 37–42.

12
coming from the ribu community and its feminist heirs regarding the origins of the ribu

movement. Although few in Japan would refute that the “feminizumu” of the late 1970s and

beyond was in no small part a product of translation and travel, outspoken ribu leaders such as

Tanaka Mitsu and Miki S!ko have repeatedly and to this day continued to insist that the ribu

movement was simply a local reaction to local conditions for women, and to deny that its

emergence was inspired by the second-wave feminist movement in the United States. Tanaka,

Miki, and others are correct to reject the idea, first circulated in the press by way of an

introduction of !man ribu in 1970, that the movement was a mere import. And yet, such an

insistence forecloses an examination of ribu discourse as, in part, a result of active engagement

with feminists and feminist thought from the United States and elsewhere, thus obfuscating a key

site of feminist agency in 1970s Japan. This agency is manifest not merely in women’s seeking

of information and ideas from abroad that might be of use in their own struggles. It is also

evident in the way that women selected and adapted this information to suit their needs and

interests, as well as the sharing by women in Japan of their own experiences and ideas with their

counterparts abroad, demonstrating that, however imbalanced, this was not an import of ideas but

an exchange.

To begin to unravel these multiplex webs linking girls and women as well as ideas and

images across borders and across time, I deploy the concept of “transfiguration” as a way to

think about these relationships and the changes they have brought about. At its most basic, I use

transfiguration to refer to a change in form in the process of crossing from one culture to another.

In so doing, I am drawing both on the term’s constituent parts: trans (across) and figure (form),

as well as the meaning of the whole term (a change in form or appearance). The notion of

transfiguration has had some rather dramatic uses. In the Bible, it is one of the miracles of Jesus,

13
who is seen by several of his apostles to be “transfigured”—his raiment turned bright white and

his countenance glowing—when speaking to Moses and Elijah on a mountaintop.24 More

recently, in J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series, “transfiguration” refers to spells that change the

shape of an object—or a person—into something entirely different, such as a pupil into a frog.

According to the character Minerva McGonagall, a professor at the fictional Hogwarts School of

Witchcraft and Wizardry, “Transfiguration is some of the most complex and dangerous magic”

students learn at the school.25 Transfiguration as I use it, however, is in no way miraculous or

magic, but it is at once very powerful and the effect of the workings of power, both within the

cultures of origin and of reception, as well as between the two.

I borrow the kernel of my own use of transfiguration from Dilip Gaonkar and Elizabeth

Povinelli, who use the idea of transfiguration as part of an effort to elucidate “the circulatory

matri[ces], both national and global, through which new discursive forms, practices, and artifacts

carry out their routine ideological labor of constructing subjects who can be summoned in the

name of a public or a people.”26 They posit that more productive than continued attention to

“meaning and translation” as a means to understand the workings of transnational flows would

be a focus on the circulation, transfiguration, and recognition of “cultural forms.”27 They call

specifically for “form-sensitive analyses of [these] public texts, events, and practices” that

highlight the conditions whereby they are transfigured to take on recognizable forms within

cultures of circulation and in the process of public-making.28 They ultimately see a focus on

transfiguration as means through which to map the “generative matrices” themselves—and the

24
See Matt. 17:2 (King James Version).
25
J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (London: Bloomsbury, 1997), 100.
26
Dilip Parameshwar Gaonkar and Elizabeth A. Povinelli, “Technologies of Public Forms: Circulation,
Transfiguration, Recognition,” Public Culture 15, no. 3 (2003): 386.
27
Ibid., 387, 392–94.
28
Ibid., 386.

14
workings of power within them.29

While they never offer a precise definition of transfiguration, they use it to index

processes of change. I would like to refine the usage of this idea of transfiguration via an

expansion of sorts. As I understand it, transfiguration sets in motion “ripples of change” that do

not end with the newly (re)invented “thing” that has been transfigured.30 Thus, to me a focus on

transfiguration calls on us to examine the effects of those changes. I would also like to draw

attention to the subjects of transfiguration. That is, if things—texts, practices, individuals—are

transfigured as they transit from culture to culture, there must be actors who are

engaged—consciously or unconsciously—in the act of transfiguring. Like Gaonkar and Povinelli,

I too am interested in the workings of power, specifically both the power that the women and

girls in the ribu, rezubian, and queer sh!jo manga spheres seek to confront or circumvent via

transfiguration, as well as the power they draw on and exert in so doing. Accordingly, in my

wish to highlight the subjecthood of these women and girls, my own use of transfiguration also

calls on us to identify acts of change. Finally, transfiguration, as I use it, has no fixed direction or

terminal point. These ripples of change can extend indefinitely in any direction, including back to

the culture whence the transfigured thing originated or on to a third culture. Thus, an

examination of transfiguration in the (re)production of cultural forms has no logical or fixed

stopping point and might take us in surprising directions.

There are, of course, myriad other ways to describe cultural change concomitant with

flows of things and of people. Yet, none adequately encapsulates transfiguration as I have just

outlined it. Some frequently used terms, such as “localization” and “glocalization,” give the

29
Ibid., 394, 396.
30
I borrow the term “ripples of change” from a documentary about a young Japanese woman who traveled
to New York City and came to discover the ribu movement almost twenty years after it faded from public discourse:
Ripples of Change: Japanese Women's Search for Self, directed by Nanako Kurihara (Japan/US: Women Make
Movies, 1993.)

15
impression of a wholly one-way and finite process, when, even in the face of disjunctures and

imbalances, purely one-way flows are rare in any context.31 Many of the ways this process of

change in transit is framed developed out of studies of colonial and post-colonial societies.

Fernando Ortiz’s notion of “transculturation,” for instance, describes a process whereby a people,

deracinated by force or by choice, come into contact with another culture and go through a

period of “deculturation,” the loss of culture, and “acculturation,” its acquisition. This may lead

to novel cultural forms, or “neoculturation.”32 Mary Louise Pratt situates transculturation within

what she calls the “contact zone”—“the space of colonial encounters”—and highlights the

inherent agency of colonized peoples in this process. The “subordinated or marginal groups,” she

writes, “select and invent from materials transmitted to them by a dominant or metropolitan

culture.”33 This agentic process of selection and (re)invention has also been described as one of

“hybridization,” “syncretism,” and “creolization” to reflect how the cultural forms and practices

created by a combination or a collision of cultures are neither purely local nor left unchanged in

the transit(ion) from culture to culture.34 Although useful in some contexts, such terms tend to

assume a colonial or post-colonial power relationship. And while they have been adapted for

other contexts, they continue to lack both the simplicity and the open-endedness of

transfiguration.

This flexibility helps transfiguration function as a heuristic device to elucidate varied

facets of transnational cultural flows. Transfiguration tells us to look for changes in transit, and

31
Arjun Appadurai writes that these flows “of objects, persons, images, and discourses” occur in “relations
of disjuncture.” See Arjun Appadurai, “Grassroots Globalization and the Research Imagination,” Public Culture 12,
no. 1 (2000), 5.
32
Fernando Ortiz, Cuban Counterpoint: Tobacco and Sugar, trans. Harriet de Onìs (1940; Durham, N.C.:
Duke University Press, 1995), 98, 102–3.
33
Mary Louise Pratt, Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation (London: Routledge, 1992), 6.
34
For an often cited example of the use of application of hybridity to the post-colonial context with an
emphasis on the agency of people in post-colonial cultures in the selection and adaptation the culture of their former
colonizers, see Homi K. Bhabha, The Location of Culture (London: Routledge, 1994).

16
to pursue them beyond any initial change because the process is not finite. It does not limit the

kinds of changes it indexes to objects or ideas or practices. Anything and anyone can, and often

does, change in transit. It makes no assumptions about relations of power—and yet attention to

transfiguration can shed light on such relations. In its use as an active verb, it reminds us that

these changes are the result of acts, often conscious, sometimes deliberate. Accordingly, it tells

us to seek out these agents and to query their motivations. It is in this way that I put

transfiguration to work in the pages that follow to help unravel the formation and development of

the ribu, rezubian, and queer sh!jo manga spheres.

Locating This Study

This project is situated both within the burgeoning body of scholarship at the intersection

of globalization studies and gender and sexuality studies (sometimes framed as queer studies),

and within Japan studies. Scholarship on globalization’s relationship to gender and sexuality has

largely focused on either transnational feminist networks or on sexual minorities.35 This work

has amply illustrated how ideas and images crossing national and cultural borders have led to

profound changes in the experience of being a woman or being a man. Critically, this scholarship

has shown that communities of like-minded individuals, such as feminists or members of sexual

minority groups, are often the agents of these changes in a process that has frequently been
35
Studies focused on transnational networks include Myra Marx Ferree and Aili Mari Tripp, eds., Global
Feminism: Transnational Women’s Activism, Organizing, and Human Rights (New York: New York University
Press, 2006); Mary E. Hawkesworth, Globalization and Feminist Activism (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield,
2006); Valentine M. Moghadam, Globalizing Women: Transnational Feminist Networks (Baltimore, Md.: Johns
Hopkins University Press, 2005); Nancy A. Naples and Manisha Desai, eds., Women’s Activism and Globalization:
Linking Local Struggles and Transnational Politics (New York: Routledge, 2002). Those focused on sexual
minorities include Leila J. Rupp, Sapphistries: A Global History of Love between Women (New York: New York
University Press, 2009); Tom Boellstorff, The Gay Archipelago: Sexuality and Nation in Indonesia (Princeton, N.J.:
Princeton University Press, 2005); Megan J. Sinnott, Toms and Dees: Transgender Identity and Female Same-Sex
Relationships in Thailand (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2004); Martin F. Manalansan, IV, Global Divas:
Filipino Gay Men in the Diaspora (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2003); and Arnaldo Cruz-Malavé and
Martin F. Manalansan IV, eds., Queer Globalizations: Citizenship and the Afterlife of Colonialism (New York: New
York University Press, 2002).

17
referred to as “globalization from below.”36 Though invaluable, this work tends to concentrate

on either networks or communities in either feminist or queer spheres, thus obscuring often

complex links among them and their cumulative social effects.37 As a result, these studies fail to

adequately address how transnational flows of ideas and images are fundamental not just to

women’s rights or sexual minority identities and practices but to the re-envisioning of

fundamental categories such as “women,” the examination of which is the crux of my own

project. My focus on the queer sh!jo manga sphere also draws attention to the vital role of

adolescents that has been overlooked in this literature. This is a particularly striking omission

given that, as Penelope Eckert’s studies of linguistic change demonstrate, “adolescents are

society’s transition teams, reinterpreting the world, resolving the old with the new...culture with

culture, local with transnational.”38

While scholarship on transnational feminist networks has demonstrated the critical role of

networks in social change, as studies of sexual minorities show, compelling evidence of the lived

effects of transnational flows is to be found in the local. Moreover, by focusing on local practices,

my project contributes to the “disrupt[ion of] the universalizing tendencies of…academic and

activist discourses.”39 Japan is a crucial site for this kind of study due to its own role as a “center

of globalization” and as a filter for “Western” cultural products prior to their transfiguration

elsewhere in Asia and globally.40 Given the influence of Japanese popular culture in Asia and

36
Valentine Moghadam asserts, however that globalization from below is not spontaneous but rather is
“engendered” by globalization from above. See Moghadam, Globalizing Women, ix.
37
See Mark McLelland and Romit Dasgupta, “Introduction,” in their Genders, Transgenders, and
Sexualities in Japan (London: Routledge, 2005), 5.
38
Penelope Eckert, “Language and Adolescent Peer Groups,” Journal of Language and Social Psychology
22, no.1 (2003): 115.
39
Evelyn Blackwood, “Transnational Sexualities in One Place: Indonesian Readings,” Gender & Society
19, no. 2 (2005): 221–22.
40
See Harumi Befu, “Globalization Theory from the Bottom Up: Japan’s Contribution,” Japanese Studies
23, no. 1 (2003); and Koichi Iwabuchi, Recentering Globalization: Popular Culture and Japanese Transnationalism
(Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2002).

18
beyond, as well as the networking of queer and feminist activists in Japan with activists

elsewhere in Asia, which has yet to receive significant academic attention, my project lays some

of the necessary groundwork for studies of Japan’s own role in the transnational diffusion of

sexual and gender practices.41

Further, my work synthesizes and contributes to scholarship on three dynamic and

diverse communities of women in Japan who, “turn[ed] to the foreign…to resist gendered

expectations of the female life course.”42 In her study of women’s “narratives of

internationalism” in the late twentieth century, Karen Kelsky analyzes the experiences of women

longing to be in or somehow belong to the West itself.43 By contrast, most women in these three

spheres looked to the global—for them, usually the West—while remaining primarily focused on

and committed to the local. Prior academic and popular analyses of the ways in which women in

Japan have collectively resisted social norms have noted, often in passing, the use of Western

ideas and images in the ribu movement, the rezubian community, and the queer sh!jo manga

sphere.44 Yet, with the exception of Ishida Minori’s recent work on the origins of sh!nen ai

41
Cindy Patton, for instance, notes that Taiwanese feminism draws heavily from both American and
Japanese feminism. See Cindy Patton, “Stealth Bombers of Desire: The Globalization of ‘Alterity’ in Emerging
Democracies,” in Cruz-Malavé and Manalansan, Queer Globalizations. More recently, exchange between Korean
and Japanese lesbian activists and politicians, including Otsuji Kanako, who in 2007 became Japan’s first open
lesbian candidate for a national office, was repeatedly discussed on the Japanese blog Delta G
(http://www.delta-g.org/) and the Korean blog Lzine (http://www.lzine.net/) between 2007 and 2008.
42
Karen Kelsky, Women on the Verge: Japanese Women, Western Dreams (Durham, N.C.: Duke
University Press, 2001), 2.
43
Ibid., 3.
44
Discussion of an interest in Western feminism among ribu activists can be found in academic and
popular discussions of the ribu movement, but it is always positioned as having been discovered after the emergence
of the ribu movement—rather than simultaneous with it, which, as I demonstrate below, is what actually happened.
Recent studies of ribu include Setsu Shigematsu The Women’s Liberation Movement in Japan (Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, forthcoming), and “Tanaka Mitsu and the Women’s Liberation Movement in Japan:
Towards a Radical Feminist Ontology” (PhD diss. Cornell University, 2003); Nishimura Mitsuko, Onna (ribu)
–tachi no ky!d!tai (korekutibu): nanaj" nendai "man ribu o saidoku suru (Tokyo: Shakai Hy!ronsha, 2006); and
Kan! Mikiyo, ed., Ribu to iu “kakumei”: kindai no yami o hiraku (Tokyo: Inpakuto Shuppan Kai, 2003). Recent
studies of the rezubian community in the 1970s and 1980s include Sugiura Ikuko, ed. Nihon no rezubian komyuniti:
k!jutsu no und! shi (Tokyo: privately printed, 2009); and Iino Yuriko, Rezubian de aru “watashitachi” no sut!rii
(Tokyo: Seikatsu Shoin, 2008). Finally, notable studies of queer sh!jo manga include Ishida Minori, Hisoyaka na
ky!iku: “yaoi/b!izu rabu” zenshi (Tokyo: Rakuhoku Shuppan, 2008). Fujimoto Yukari, Watashi no ibasho wa doko

19
manga, none extensively engages with women’s acts of transfiguration, and none of the

scholarship focuses on the relationship between this transformative appropriation and women’s

identities or the communities they constructed.45

Finally, while linkages are at times drawn between these three communities, this study is

unique in its focus on their commonalities, even as it remains aware of the sometimes vast

differences between them. Indeed, in its attention to the distinct challenges each of these diverse

communities posed to gender and sexual norms—both through their activities and by their very

existence—this study foregrounds how these groups collectively—if unconsciously so—worked

to unsettle “women” as a coherent category.46 As Tani Barlow argues in her study of Chinese

feminisms, and as this dissertation demonstrates, the category “women” always fails to

adequately represent the people it purports to encompass.47

Approach and Limitations

In order to shed light on women’s transnational engagements and concomitant

transfiguration of selectively imported elements from Western cultures in late twentieth century

Japan, in this study I examine three distinct if overlapping socio-cultural spheres. As noted above,

the ribu, rezubian, and queer sh!jo manga spheres all emerged at the same moment—when

increasingly prosperous conditions made it possible for more women to choose paths outside the

ni aru no? Sh!jo manga ga utsusu kokoro no katachi (Tokyo: Gakuy! Shob!, 1998), especially section three; and
Akiko Mizoguchi, “Male-Male Romance by and for Women in Japan: A History and the Subgenres of Yaoi
Fictions,” U.S.-Japan Women’s Journal 25 (2003).
45
Ishida, Hisoyaka na ky!iku.
46
Chandra Mohanty, for instance, has famously criticized Western feminist discourse on Third World
women for its “assumption of women as an already constituted, coherent group…regardless of class, ethnic, or racial
location, or contradictions.” See Chandra Talpade Mohanty, “Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and
Colonial Discourses,” in her Feminism without Borders: Decolonizing Theory, Practicing Solidarity (Durham, N.C.:
Duke University Press, 2003), 21.
47
Tani E. Barlow, The Question of Women in Chinese Feminism (Durham, NC: Duke University Press,
2004).

20
normative life course—and they all challenged gender and sexual norms for women through acts

of transfiguration. Further, most activists and artists who established these spheres are of the

same generation, having grown up in the first two decades or so after the war, while the sh!jo

manga readers I discuss predominantly belonging to the subsequent generation. To give a sense

of this generationality, I indicate birth (and death) years for individuals linked to these spheres

when possible. To some extent, these spheres also overlap not just in age but in terms of actual

membership, most prominently in the rezubian feminisuto movement and among the subsequent

generation of rezubian who were readers of queer sh!jo manga and related publications.

Still, this is unquestionably an awkward juxtaposition. These three spheres are ultimately

incommensurate on a number of levels. Women in ribu and the rezubian feminisuto segment of

the rezubian community were overtly political, while other rezubian and queer sh!jo manga

artists and consumers generally were not. Ribu received significant media attention in the early

1970s, while the other spheres remained under the radar until later. The rezubian community and

the queer sh!jo manga sphere are stronger now than they were during the period under

consideration here, whereas, depending on whom you ask, the third, ribu, either ended around

1975 or lingered on perhaps into the 1980s, possibly longer. Finally, queer sh!jo manga fandom

was and is vast and diverse, whereas the rezubian and ribu communities are—or were—more

limited in scope and population.

Nevertheless, by juxtaposing these three spheres that were most actively engaged in

challenging or circumventing gender and sexual norms in the 1970s and 1980s, I can offer a far

more complete mapping of changes in the understanding of “women” than would be possible

were I to focus on a single sphere. One side effect of this awkward juxtaposition, however, is a

lack of balance in some chapters in the treatment of each sphere. This is in part a reflection of the

21
kinds of resources available for the three spheres (discussed below), and in part a reflection of

differences in their scale and composition. I believe, however, that conclusions I am able to draw

more than compensate for occasionally unavoidable disparity.

I examine these communities from a number of different angles, drawing

methodologically and theoretically from the disciplines of history, anthropology, sociology,

literary studies, and linguistics, as well as the interdisciplinary fields of globalization studies,

translation studies, and queer studies. My choice of approaches is based in part on the nature of

my resources, which vary in kind and in availability from sphere to sphere. For all three spheres,

my analysis is based on both archival resources and interviews with women and, in a few cases,

with men linked thereto.

My primary resources are archival, and involve a wide array of commercial and

non-commercial texts. In all three spheres, non-commercial publications, including mini-komi

and pamphlets, were a central site of the exchange of ideas. Of the three, the women of the ribu

community have done the most to save such materials, maintaining archives—sometimes at

personal residences—of collections once amassed at ribu spaces. Since the 1990s they have

begun reprinting many of these texts in whole or in part in order to preserve them for subsequent

generations.48 Members of this sphere have also done the most to reflect in print on their

experiences, taking part in numerous roundtable discussions and writing essays that have

appeared in special issues of commercial journals and magazines, and in some cases writing

memoirs that address or primarily focus on their time in the ribu movement. The relatively

limited availability of mini-komi from the rezubian community as well as d!jinshi [coterie

48
The most notable collections of reprinted materials are Mizoguchi, Saeki, and Miki, Shiry! Nihon "man
ribu shi; and Ribu Shinjuku Sentaa Shiry! Hozon Kai—hereafter RSSSHK—ed. Ribu Shinjuku Sentaa shiry! sh"sei,
3 vols. (Tokyo: Inpakuto Shuppan Kai, 2008). Individual pamphlets are also including in volumes such as Inoue
Teruko et al., eds., Ribu to feminizumu (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1994).

22
magazines] from the queer sh!jo manga sphere in the 1970s and 1980s has led to an

unintentional balance toward the ribu movement in terms of the depth of my analysis of such

community-produced texts. This imbalance is mitigated, however, through my use of a plethora

of commercial texts, including popular magazines and newspapers; manga and anime; translated

literature, essays, and tracts; and popular criticism and history. These texts also help me position

these three spheres in popular discourse. In many cases they also provide access to the voices of

community members themselves, who sometimes shared their thoughts and experiences in the

form of articles or letters, or via interviews appearing in the commercial press.

My study is heavily informed by open-ended interviews involving almost seventy

individuals, conducted between 2004 and 2009, primarily with women directly affiliated with

one or more of my three focal communities.49 Participants in my interviews were roughly

balanced among those whom I interviewed in regard to their ties to the ribu, rezubian, or queer

sh!jo manga sphere. And majority were primarily aligned with just one community, but a

number of women were connected to two of these spheres, most commonly a rezubian who had

also been involved in ribu or had been an avid reader of sh!nen ai manga.

I met these individuals in a variety of ways, including through personal introductions

from friends, acquaintances, and former interviewees, all primarily based in one of the

metropolitan areas surrounding Tokyo, Nagoya, or Osaka. I also contacted some individuals

directly and posted self-introductions and requests for participants on several feminist and

lesbian email lists as well “communities” related to all three spheres on the popular networking

website Mixi (http://mixi.jp). The diverse ways in which I was able to find participants has

allowed for great variety of perspectives and experiences and yet has its own limitations. The

49
Most interviews were conducted one-on-one with individuals, but in a few cases I conducted interviews
in pairs, and twice in lieu of interviews I had discussions with groups of four individuals. Finally, six interviews
were conducted via email.

23
participants were ultimately all self-selected and include only those who continue to feel enough

of a sense of connection to these communities to volunteer. I was unable to hear from women

who had joined the ribu movement briefly and dropped out of feminist activism completely, or

women who had gone to a few rezubian community related activities but who have since

suppressed any desire they feel for women, or from women who completely lost interest in queer

sh!jo manga and related cultural forms. And I had the opportunity to interview only two

individuals who moved and have remained abroad permanently, though I did speak with and

access interviews with several others who lived abroad for a decade or more.

Moreover, some of those who I would have liked to interview, particularly in the ribu and

rezubian spheres, declined my request, generally for unstated reasons. One woman who had been

involved in the ribu movement told me she did not wish to relive her experience, and suggested

that her departure from the movement was emotionally difficult, and another woman who was

prominent in one of the communities explained that she was simply tired of being interviewed.

Still a third woman expressed concern over how I was going to use the information, which may

have been related to my request coming in the wake of a controversy over a book written about

the rezubian feminisuto community. One former ribu activist who did participate told me she

would never have allowed a man to interview her except that she had heard from the person who

introduced us that I am gay. Several women in the rezubian community and several queer sh!jo

manga fans also expressed feeling comforted (anshin) that I identify myself as gay. This is, in

fact, not something I deliberately shared in advance in most cases, but I am a member of several

gay groups on Mixi and it sometimes came up in the course of interviews, so those I met through

Mixi (who presumably looked at my profile before contacting me) or through introductions may

have known prior to consenting to be interviewed. Finally, while I can in no way claim to look

24
anything like the beautiful boys of the most popular queer sh!jo manga, my being a slender

white male with blondish hair and blue eyes appears to have helped me recruit volunteers as well,

and not just fans of sh!nen ai manga.50 Moreover, given that many of those in my target

population were interested in foreign cultures, they may have also been seeking the chance to

interact with a foreigner, thought I do not recall more than two or three women attempting to

speak to me in English.

Most of those I interviewed were in their forties to mid-sixties, though a few were

slightly younger or older. Five participants were men, all but one of whom were involved in

publishing or journalism. I was able to interview a number of women who were prominent in the

ribu or rezubian sphere who have allowed me to refer to them by their actual name or their

public penname. To protect the anonymity of others, in a some cases I have assigned

pseudonyms, and omitted or altered identifiable personal details. Although I have not been able

to give a majority of individuals I interviewed a direct voice in my writing, the experiences and

feelings these individuals shared with have played a large role in shaping my understanding of

the ribu, rezubian, and queer sh!jo manga spheres.

Coming to Terms

Before outlining the remainder of this dissertation, I would like to take a step back and

clarify the reasoning behind my choice of terminology with regard to these three spheres. As will

have become obvious by now, I refer to the ribu and rezubian spheres with the Japanese

50
For whatever reason, my appearance seems to appeal to middle-aged women in Japan, and I got the
impression that it helped me get more volunteers. I posted my picture on both my Mixi profile and on a website I
created to explain my research project to potential interviewees to reassure them that I was a real person and not
menacing. I was, however, repeatedly praised about my appearance by my informants from all three communities,
who sometimes told me that they had also heard this from the acquaintance who introduced us or had thought so
based on my posted picture. One rezubian I interviewed who blogged about the experience on her popular blog
commented on my appearance and suggested other women should volunteer to be interviewed so they could meet
me in person. Several women did in fact end up participating in my research after having read that.

25
transliterations used, in one form or another, in Japanese discourse rather than the terms’ English

“originals.” In public discourse, as well as for most of the women with whom I have spoken,

“ribu” and “lib” as well as “rezubian” and “lesbian” are generally understood as synonymous. I

use the Japanese terms, however, in recognition that neither “!man ribu” nor “rezubian” has the

same history or valence in Japanese as their ostensible English language equivalents, as I spell

out in chapter three.51 This does run the risk of exoticizing the terms and the spheres they name.

It is my hope, however, that given their near equivalence to English words, my choice to

transcribe rather than translate will be just unsettling enough to remind readers that the spheres to

which I point with these terms are not completely equivalent to counterparts elsewhere without

positioning them as exotic Others. The line between second-wave feminism in Japan—of which

ribu was the most visible manifestation in the 1970s—and the radical second-wave feminism

springing up elsewhere from the late 1960s onward is murky, however.52 The same can be said

about the rezubian community in Japan and lesbian communities abroad. Accordingly, I make

use of the English terms when I wish to indicate second-wave feminist and lesbian spheres both

outside of and in excess of these spheres in Japan and utilize other transliterated terms in use

within these spheres, particularly “feminisuto” and “rezubian feminisuto,” to emphasize their

specificities as the need arises. And I do the same with other transliterated terms on occasion for

similar reasons.

I use “sh"jo manga” in reference to comic art aimed at young female readers, using the

51
While “ribu” did not come into common use until the end of 1970, I use it anachronistically at times in
regard to the movement earlier in 1970 for the sake of simplicity. Similarly, although “rezubian” was competing
with the pronunciation “resubian” from 1967 through the mid- to late 1970s, I use the latter pronunciation only in
quotations and when I discuss this shift and its significance, as I do in chapter three.
52
I use “radical second-wave feminism” with regard to the US to point specifically to the feminism that
emerged out of the Civil Rights movement and the student movement in the late 1960s to distinguish it from earlier
liberal feminist movements, such as lead by Betty Friedan. Tong distinguishes between “liberal feminism,” seeking
rights, and “radical feminism,” seeking “women’s liberation,” though she concedes that the distinction is not always
clear. See Tong, Feminist Thought, 23.

26
Japanese term rather than its most common English translation, “girls’ comics,” in recognition of

the specificity of the Japanese art form as well as what has become increasingly standard practice

in the broader field of comics and animation criticism.53 Sh!jo manga encompasses genres and

subgenres of comics aimed at elementary school girls and high school students alike. Its

readership, particularly since its renaissance in the 1970s, has included boys as well as adult

women and men. By “queer sh!jo manga,” I am referring to genres and narratives that break

with the standard heteronormative script, not to any specific generic classification. I use “queer”

here in its English academic sense of non-normative in terms of gender or sexuality rather to

make any claims about the identities or desires of artists or readers.54 In the 1970s and 1980s,

the most common queer sh!jo manga were the sh!nen ai and, later, yaoi narratives mentioned

above. Queer sh!jo manga of these decades also include tales of cross-dressing girls, which in

fact date at least to the 1950s, but which, like sh!nen ai, reached their apex in the 1970s.55

Finally, I am additionally referencing tales of girl-girl romance that, unlike the most popular

sh!nen ai and cross-dressing girl narratives, failed to attract the same attention—though they

developed at the same time and were drawn by many of the same artists.56

My application above of the word “community” to the rezubian sphere and to Wakakusa

no Kai specifically comes, foremost, from a special feature on “community history” (komyuniti

no rekishi) in a 2001 issue of the commercial rezubian magazine Anise, which positions the

group—“Japan’s first rezubian circle”—at the head of a timeline on the history of Japan’s

53
I do not italicize “manga” or its animated equivalent, “anime,” in recognition of their establishment as
English words, as evidenced by their presence in dictionaries.
54
This sense of “queer” in English is largely a product of the 1990s, and the emergence of the field of
queer studies. While its Japanese transliteration, “kuia,” now has limited currency in Japan, it was not in use in the
1970s and 1980s and has not been established as a generic classification of manga or anime.
55
Tezuka Osamu, Ribon no kishi, 2 vols. (1953–1956; Tokyo: K!dansha Manga Bunko, 1999).
56
The earliest girl-girl romance narrative in sh!jo manga is said to be Yamagishi Ry!ko’s “The Two in the
White Room,” which appeared in Ribon Comics (Ribon komikku) in February 1971, just two months after the first
sh!nen ai narrative saw print. See Yamagishi Ry!ko, “Shiroi heya no futari,” in her Refuto ando raito: Yamagishi
Ry!ko zensh" 28 (Tokyo: Kadokawa Shoten, 1988).

27
rezubian community.57 The feature’s use of the Japanese transliteration of “community” about

Wakakusa no Kai is, in fact, anachronistic: the group predates by nearly two decades the use of

this term about rezubian circles and spaces. And while direct definitions of “komyuniti”

appearing in community publications since the 1990s foreground tangible manifestations of

community like the bars in Tokyo’s Ni-ch!me district, rezubian circles, and publications, the

word “community” as well as the newer word “komyuniti” also point to an intangible, affective

sense of connection to others, what the definition in Anise seem to be pointing to when it says the

“komyuniti” includes “all of rezubian society.”58

It is this sense of connectedness that I wish to emphasize by observing that the ribu,

rezubian, and queer sh!jo manga spheres functioned to varying degrees as “communities.” While,

to my knowledge, the term was not widely applied to or used within any of these spheres in the

1970s and 1980s, it is arguably applicable.59 Certainly the commonality of purpose, shared

emotions, and collective activities—including, in some cases, communal living—contributed to a

palpable sense of community among ribu activists.60 Ribu activists indeed sometimes referred to

themselves and their communal activities in terms of “ky!d!tai,” which can be translated as

“community,” as well as “korekutibu” [collective], this term stemming from the language of the

57
Aniisu, “Komyuniti no rekishi,” 29. See also Doi Yuki, “Joseikan paatonaashippu no yukue: josei no
jiyu o motomete, seikatsu o mamoru tame ni,” in D!sei paatonaa: d!seikon, DP h! o shiru tame ni, ed. Akasugi
Yasunobu, Doi Yuki, and Tsutsui Makiko (Tokyo: Potto Shuppan, 2004), 181–82.
58
The earliest of these definitions I have found is in the first commercial rezubian magazine, Phryné:
Hagiwara Mami, “Furiine Key Words,” Furiine no. 1 (June 1995): 172. The same or similar definitions would
appear in word lists in all subsequent issues of Phryné and Anise. A similar definition for “gei komyuniti,” one that
includes “rezubian” and “gei” [gay(s)], can be found in the back of a book commemorating the 2000 Tokyo Lesbian
and Gay Parade: Sunagawa Hideki, ed., T!ky! rezubian ando gei pareedo 2000 no kiroku (Tokyo: Potto Shuppan,
2001), 212.
59
A short piece in the September 1987 issue of Regumi ts"shin, a mini-komi [newsletter/zine] produced by
the produced by the rezubian-feminisuto group Regumi (short for rezubian gumi [group]), suggests the need to
establish a “komyuniti”—a word the author feels the need to define with a footnote—making it clear that this was
not a word the author felt applied yet to what they had established to date, including Regumi Studio, the group’s
headquarters and meeting place. See Yanagihara Rin, “‘Regumi Sutajio T!ky!’ no mirai: dansei shakai ni taik!
dekiru ky!ryoku na komyuniti zukuri o!” Regumi ts"shin no. 7 (September 1987): 1.
60
See James Goodwin, James M. Jasper, and Francesca Polletta, “Introduction: Why Emotions Matter,” in
their Passionate Politics: Emotions and Social Movements (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001), 21–22.

28
New Left. Similarly, readers of what I am calling queer sh!jo manga communicated regularly

with artists and with each other, thinking about and discussing these texts, and forming what are

often called “interpretive communities.”61 The idea of an interpretive community does not,

however, adequately encompass the types of collective creative production occurring within this

sphere that extended far beyond simply reacting to the work of certain artists.62 Acknowledging

both these varying senses of connectedness among these women and girls as well as the

ambiguous boundaries of these collectivities, I choose simply to vacillate between referring to

them as the ribu, rezubian, and queer sh!jo manga communities and referring to them more

nebulously as spheres. And I also refer to ribu using a term the ribu women themselves used, as

a “movement” (und!).

Finally, with the exception of quotations, including direct translations, I deliberately use

the expression “women in Japan” rather than Japanese women. I do so in recognition that not all

women involved in these spheres are of Japanese nationality or ethnicity, even if this was seldom

recognized in the discourse I examine.63

61
See, for instance, Janice Radway’s germinal examination of the interpretive communities sharing
heterosexual romance narratives in her Reading the Romance: Women, Patriarchy, and Popular Literature (Chapel
Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1984).
62
In its focus on textual consumption—or “poaching”—even Henry Jenkins’s expansive notion of “media
fandom,” which incorporates the idea of interpretive communities, does not include the non-parodic, non-imitative
texts also created collectively and individually among the girls and young women in the queer sh!jo manga
community. See Henry Jenkins, Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture (New York:
Routledge, 1992), 1–2.
63
In particular, members of Japan’s population of ethnic Koreans, many of whom have taken Japanese
nationality, many of whom have not, have had mixed experiences in these spheres. At “Kogoroshi to kosodate no
aida de: 70-nendai ribu, Y!sei hogo h", soshite ima,” a symposium, sponsored by Soshiren, held at Bunky" Kumin
Sentaa on September 21, 2008, in conjunction with the publication of reprints of many materials from the archive of
Ribu Shinjuku Center (RSSSHK, Ribu Shinjuku Sentaa shiry! sh"sei), an ethnic Korean woman with whom I spoke,
who was perhaps in her 50s or early 60s, expressed lingering resentment to me over the treatment she experienced in
the ribu movement in the 1970s. As late as 1992, there was a serious controversy when someone at the Asian
Lesbian Network meeting in Tokyo introducing the rezubian from Japan as “[ethnic] Japanese lesbians in Japan”
(Nihon ni iru Nihonjin no rezubian) rather than simply “lesbians in Japan,” coupled with one or more organizers not
respecting the Korean pronunciation of ethnic Korean rezubian’s names. See Izumo Marou et al., “Nihon no
rezubian m!vumento,” Gendai shis! 25, no. 6 (May 1997): 67.

29
Dissertation Overview

The remainder of this dissertation examines the ribu, rezubian, and queer sh!jo manga

spheres via the lens of transfiguration. First, chapter two, “Trajectories,” sketches historical

overviews of the three communities that are the heart of this project, tracing their roots and their

emergence around 1970 and following their development over the course of the next two decades.

They are necessarily partial rather than comprehensive histories—which would be three very

different projects.64 The chapters that follow themselves do, however, contribute to the telling of

these histories from different vantage points and elucidating different aspects.

Chapter three, “Terminology,” reaches back to the early twentieth century to offer

etymologies qua genealogies of key terms used within and beyond these spheres to name the

women and girls’ communities, their activities, and the objects of their desire—“"man ribu,”

“rezubian,” and “sh!nen ai.” In so doing, I show how the labels used by and about these spheres

emerged from layered transnational processes, extensive in both time and scope, that call into

question what it means for a word to be Japanese. The genealogies of these terms shed new light

on the histories of the spheres themselves.

64
And, indeed, a great deal of this history has already been written in one form or another. Of the three
spheres, the most by far has been written about the ribu movement. The historiography in Japanese is far too
extensive to begin to enumerate. Notable histories in English include Sandra Buckley, “A Short History of the
Feminist Movement in Japan,” in Women in Japan and Korea: Continuity and Change, ed. Joyce Gelb and Marian
Lief Palley (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1994), which discusses both ribu and the subsequent emergence
of an explicitly feminisuto movement; chapters seven and eight in Vera Mackie, Feminism in Modern Japan.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003); and Shigematsu, The Women’s Liberation Movement in Japan.
While there are numerous analyses of the sh!nen ai genre and other queer sh!jo manga, there are few
academic histories in Japanese. One recent exception is Ishida, Hisoyaka na ky!iku. There are, however, numerous
histories in the popular press, including Nishimura Mari, Aniparo to yaoi (Tokyo: !ta Shuppan, 2002). A useful
English-language history of male-male romance genres is Mizoguchi, “Male-Male Romance by and for Women in
Japan.” For the development of female-female romance over the 1970s and 1980s, see James Welker, “Drawing Out
Lesbians: Blurred Representations of Lesbian Desire in Sh!jo Manga,” in Lesbian Voices: Canada and the World:
Theory, Literature, Cinema, ed. Subhash Chandra (New Delhi: Allied Publishers, 2006).
Recent histories of rezubian feminisuto in particular can be found in Sugiura, Nihon no rezubian komyuniti;
Iino, Rezubian de aru “watashitachi” no sut!rii; and Aniisu, “Komyuniti no rekishi.” English-language histories can
be found in Sawabe Hitomi, “The Symbolic Tree of Lesbianism in Japan: An Overview of Lesbian Activist History
and Literary Works,” trans. Kimberly Hughes, in Sparking Rain and Other Fiction from Japan of Women Who Love
Women, ed. Barbara Summerhawk and Kimberly Hughes (Chicago: New Victoria Publishers, 2008); and James
Welker, “Telling Her Story: Narrating a Japanese Lesbian Community,” Japanstudien 16 (2004).

30
 Chapter four, “Translation,” considers acts and impacts of translation in these

communities, including both direct translations and more radically transfigured texts, including

early radical second-wave feminist writing from the US, as well as the pioneering feminist texts

Our Bodies, Ourselves (1973) and The Hite Report (1976). Multiple editions of these books were

directly translated in the 1970s and 1980s, inspiring local projects and activities, some bearing

little resemblance to the “originals.” This chapter also looks at the sometimes oblique

transfiguration of literary texts, such as works by Herman Hesse into sh!nen ai narratives, as

well as the use of more direct intertextual references in queer sh!jo manga.

Chapter five, “Travel,” explores the role of real and vicarious voyages abroad in the

construction of the project’s three focal communities, as well as individuals’ self-understanding.

In contrast with other chapters, which are primarily based on textual analysis, this chapter

focuses on personal narratives from interviews and published in biographies and travel narratives.

It points out, among other things, the contradiction between the local focus of most community

activism and the relatively high number of prominent figures in these communities who had

formative experiences abroad.

Finally, the conclusion, reflects on the role transfiguration has played in the ribu,

rezubian and queer sh!jo manga spheres. Anyone looking for borrowing of the “foreign” within

Japan is sure to find it nearly anywhere, and in abundance. But, as is often said, looks can be

deceiving. By viewing the ostensibly “borrowed” through the lens of transfiguration I show that,

ultimately, the Western turn among these women and girls was not a turn away from Japan.

Rather, it was a fundamental part of being a modern woman within Japan. While some did

indeed look to what they perceived to be an “advanced” West for solutions to or an escape from

local problems they faced on account of their status as women, most women in Japan were

31
decidedly focused on the local, even as they selectively transfigured Western practices and ideas.

As I show in the remainder of this dissertation, these processes of transfiguration and the results

thereof led to fundamental changes in the meaning of the category women both within the ribu,

rezubian, and queer sh!jo manga spheres and in society at large.

32
 CHAPTER TWO: TRAJECTORIES1

We can, we can, we can, we can stage a revolution

If women change, men will change
If women change, the world will change
If women change, the world will change

Let’s, let’s, let’s, let’s stage a revolution

You can, you can, you can
Revolutionize yourself
Revolutionize yourself
—Dotekabo Ichiza2

Young women coming of age in Japan from the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s were the

first generation to grow up under de jure equality with men as a result of the 1947 Constitution.

Whether considered to have been bearing gifts or punishment, the postwar Constitution was

essentially imposed by the United States during the Occupation period (1945–1952). Still, while

the articles guaranteeing equality of the sexes in public and private life were resisted as culturally

“inappropriate” by the Japanese officials negotiating the draft with GHQ representatives,3 the

ideas of sexual equality and women’s rights can hardly be considered an exotic American

imposition. Suffrage for women, for instance, had been on the table at various times since early

in the Meiji era (1868–1912). To be sure, the Meiji government’s changing policies regarding

women, including the rights they would or would not be granted, initially involved debate over

the applicability of foreign customs to Japanese society as part of Japan’s broader modernization

project. And the seeking of explicit rights or de facto independence by women themselves from

1
Brief sections of this chapter were previously included in “Telling Her Story: Narrating a Japanese
Lesbian Community,” Japanstudien 16 (2004), and are reproduced with permission.
2
From the lyrics to “Finaare” [Finale], in My!zukaru “Onna no kaih"” (1975; Tokyo: Dotekabo Ichiza no
Bideo Mitai Kai, 2005), by the ribu theater group Dotekabo Ichiza, reproduced in Dotekabo Ichiza no Bideo Mitai
Kai, Dotekabo Ichiza “My!zukaru ‘Onna no kaih"’ 1975” bideo/DVD kaisetsusho (Tokyo: Dotekabo Ichiza no
Bideo Mitai Kai, 2005), 16.
3
See Beate Sirota Gordon, The Only Woman in the Room: A Memoir (Tokyo: Kodansha International,
1997), 123; and Kyoko Inoue, MacArthur’s Japanese Constitution: A Linguistic and Cultural Study of Its Making
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), 221–22, 238–65.

33
the Meiji era through the war years was often explicitly linked to transnational feminist discourse

on the women question.4 In the immediate aftermath of the Pacific War, prior to the

promulgation of the new Constitution, women’s rights were part of a larger human rights

package proposed by the Socialist party—itself a local manifestation of a global discourse, one

that was at last again able to take part in public debate after years of government suppression.5

Thus, by the time the Constitution was ratified, varied threads positioning women’s rights as a

question to be addressed had been thoroughly woven into Japanese public discourse.

Beate Sirota, the Austrian-born young woman, fluent in Japanese, who drafted the

clauses guaranteeing equality of the sexes, among other civil rights, was hardly a foreigner in

Japan. Indeed, Sirota was very much at “home” in the country, where she had spent most of her

childhood.6 Although it was a decision from far higher in the chain of GHQ command that led to

the existence of sections addressing women’s rights—with which Sirota had been charged on the

basis of her sex—the specificity of the rights she inscribed into the articles she wrote, as well as

the passion with which she fought to have all details she drafted included in the final version,

were a response to her experience of having grown up in Japan, constantly aware of the

4
The two early twentieth century transnational categories most associated with feminism and women’s
independence are the “new woman” (atarashii onna) and the “modern girl” (modan gaaru, or moga). While “the
Modern Girl was not on a Western trajectory,” as Miriam Silverberg points out in “The Modern Girl as Militant,” in
Recreating Japanese Women, 1600–1945, ed. Gail Lee Bernstein (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991),
239, she was clearly part of a transnational phenomenon. See, e.g., Modern Girl Around the World Research Group,
ed., The Modern Girl Around the World: Consumption, Modernity, and Globalization (Durham, N.C.: Duke
University Press, 2008). The women of Seit!sha [the Bluestocking Society] were more explicit in linking their
understanding of being a new women with discourse in Europe in particular, though they too were very much
focused on conditions for women living in Japan. See, e.g., Jan Bardsley, The Bluestockings of Japan: New Woman
Essays and Fiction from Seit!, 1911–16 (Ann Arbor: Center for Japanese Studies, The University of Michigan,
2007). On the question of women’s rights from the Meiji era through the war, much has been written. Notable
studies include Sharon L. Sievers, Flowers in Salt: The Beginnings of Feminist Consciousness in Japan (Stanford,
Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1983); Vera Mackie, Feminism in Modern Japan (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge
University Press, 2003); Barbara Molony, “The Quest for Women’s Rights in Turn-of-the-Century Japan,” in
Gendering Modern Japanese History, ed. Barbara Molony and Kathleen Uno (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
University Press, 2005).
5
John W. Dower, Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II (New York: Norton, 1999), 357.
6
Gordon, The Only Woman, 10. My thanks to Rio Otomo, who drew Sirota’s experience to my attention.

34
injustices meted out to girls and women based on both law and social custom.7 And while the

ultimate version agreed upon by GHQ and Japanese authorities did stipulate legal equality of

women and men, this new Constitution—including the provisions regarding equality of the sexes,

the definition of the family, and the status of the individual—was transfigured away from the

intent of its drafters via translation and negotiations across “the ambiguities of cross-cultural and

cross-linguistic communication” and, subsequently, via the interpretation and implementation of

the ratified Japanese language text.8 As a result, while women in the postwar years could vote

upon reaching the age of majority, women’s life course options remained severely limited.

Like the postwar Constitution, other customs, practices, and forms that entered Japan in

the postwar years—whether as objects of curiosity, models to emulate, or something in

between—were only novel and only foreign to a degree. They were always directly or indirectly

building on decades of exchange, transfiguration, and local developments. This point is so

obvious as to be trite and yet it is so easily forgotten in discussions of cultural borrowing and

translation, both within the Japanese popular media, inclined toward hyperbolic treatment of

“foreign” novelties as well as threats, and within academic discourse seeking difference. But the

fact is that by the time of the emergence of the women’s spheres I discuss in this dissertation,

there was a kind of cultural proximity between Japan and a loosely defined West such that, no

matter how exotic or alien an “import” from the West was discursively framed, the ostensibly

foreign was also often very familiar.

A case in point, Japan’s postwar democratic system itself, portrayed by some as a gift via

this Constitution, “derives,” as Carol Gluck remarks, “from the past thrice over”—rooted in

Japan’s modern traditions of political party politics and social protest, bitter memories of the

7
Ibid., 106–18 passim.
8
Inoue, MacArthur’s Japanese Constitution, 266.

35
suppression of political debate in conjunction with the intensification of the war in the 1930s,

and, decades of postwar practice.9 The majority of women who in the 1970s were involved in

the early stages of the ribu movement and the rezubian community, as well as those who

revolutionized sh!jo manga, were born between the mid-1940s and early 1950s—though some

more prominent ribu leaders were born in the early 1940s. As girls, they may have

witnessed—possibly on a new black and white television bought to view the imperial wedding

the year before—what was perhaps “Japan’s most important postwar confrontation between

democratic forces and traditional paternalism.”10 In 1959 and 1960, with war memories still

weighing heavily on a majority of the population, millions of citizens—at some estimates

upwards of sixteen million—participated in some way in protests against the 1960 renewal of the

US-Japan Security Treaty, often referred to locally as “Anpo.” The treaty renewal and its

eventual strong-armed passage were widely seen as symbolizing a fascist reversal of the

democratic reforms of the Occupation, as well as increasing the potential for the remilitarization

of Japan.11 Tens of thousands surrounded the Diet building at one point, photographs and video

footage of which have become iconic symbols of this era. As dramatic as that moment was, its

failure to stop the treaty’s renewal has been associated with the weakening of the Communist

and Socialist parties, concomitant with the fragmentation of political opposition into narrower

interest-based groups, including Japan’s so-called New Left.12

At the end of the 1960s—near the culmination of over a decade of unprecedented

economic growth and increasing prosperity supported by a new generation of stay-at-home wives

9
Carol Gluck, “Introduction,” in Showa: The Japan of Hirohito, ed. Carol Gluck and Stephen R. Graubard
(New York: Norton, 1992), xliv. Gluck notes that “democracy in its postwar constitutional form had indeed come
from on high” (ibid., xliii). John Dower describes some early postwar discourse depicting Japan’s postwar
democracy as a gift from the heavens, a “revolution from above.” See chapter two in Dower, Embracing Defeat.
10
Wesley Makoto Sasaki-Uemura, Organizing the Spontaneous: Citizen Protest in Postwar Japan
(Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2001), 17.
11
Ibid., 16, 23–26.
12
Ibid., 17–18.

36
and mothers13—another round of protests came to a head. This time, in addition to the latest

renewal of the US-Japan Security Treaty, protesters targeted the Vietnam War and the continued

US military presence in Japan, which served as a staging ground for the war. These new protests

are most strongly associated with Zenky!t!, the All-Campus Joint Struggle Committee. The

most tangible manifestation of the New Left, Zenky!t! was formed in the late 1960s primarily

from undergraduate and graduate students, including individuals who had participated in the

earlier Anpo protests.14 And this round of protests involved many of those girls who once

watched from their living rooms—now young women in their late teens and early twenties.

It is this involvement that is generally considered to have provided the impetus for the

emergence of the !man ribu movement in 1970.15 A few of the women who would adopt the

ribu moniker were, several years later, to begin what they eventually called a “rezubian-feminist”

movement. It was also in this context that Japan’s first rezubian organization, Wakakusa no Kai

[Young Grass Club], was formed based on shared desires and experiences rather than an

explicitly feminist agenda. Finally, this was the moment in which a small group of young women

artists began to reinvent sh"jo manga, in part through novel experimentation with gender and

sexuality that called into question the heteronormative romance script—a development

particularly striking due to the young age of the graphic narratives’ intended readers. In addition

to this common background and the related goals of unsettling gender and sexual norms for

women outlined in chapter one, the ribu, rezubian, and queer sh"jo spheres had other sometimes

13
See Mary C. Brinton, Women and the Economic Miracle: Gender and Work in Postwar Japan
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993).
14
Sasaki-Uemura, Organizing the Spontaneous, 198–202. Sasaki-Uemura notes that the generation that
came of age during the protests in 1959 and 1960 had a powerful influence on Zenky!t! (ibid.).
15
See, for instance, the framing of the collection From Zenky"t" to ribu, in which many key ribu leaders
from the 1970s reflect back on the movement: Onnatachi no Ima o Tou Kai, ed., Zenky"t" kara ribu e (Tokyo:
Inpakuto Shuppankai, 1996). An English-language discussion of this connection can be found in Muto Ichiyo, “The
Birth of the Women’s Liberation Movement in the 1970s,” in The Other Japan: Conflict, Compromise, and
Resistance Since 1945, ed. Joe Moore (Armonk, N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe, 1997), 148–49.

37
obvious, sometimes subtle points of overlap that will become more apparent as I trace their

histories.

The Liberation of Eros and the Birth of !man Ribu

When I first met ribu activist Tanaka Mitsu (1943–) in September 2008 at a party

celebrating the publication of a three-volume collection of reproduced fliers, pamphlets and

mini-komi from Ribu Shinjuku Center (1972–1977), she told me that if I wanted to understand

ribu I should watch the video taken of a performance of Women’s Liberation: The Musical

(My!zukaru “onna no kaih"”).16 This production created by a group calling itself Dotekabo

Ichiza, with input from prominent avant-garde poet, playwright, and critic, Terayama Sh!ji

(1935–1983), was first staged in January 1974 at Terayama’s theater.17 The video of the March

1, 1975 performance, clips of which were shown that September evening, encapsulates the social

critiques waged by ribu as well as the spirit of the movement, in a combination of earnestness,

determination, and mirth that is often lost in basic histories of the ribu movement. The name of

the group—which for that performance included Tanaka, as well as Asakawa Mari, Doi Yumi,

Sawabe Hitomi, Wakabayashi Naeko, and Yonezu Tomoko (all discussed below or in

subsequent chapters)—involves a humorous play on words that roughly translates to “the

good-for-nothing theater troupe.” Staged at a time when the movement was arguably reaching its

peak, Women’s Liberation: The Musical, used humor to communicate the troupe’s messages

about abortion, infanticide, Japan’s economic exploitation of Asia, prostitution tours to Asian

16
My!zukaru “Onna no kaih"” 1975, DVD (Tokyo: Dotekabo Ichiza no Bideo Mitai Kai, 2005). While
the members changed, Dotekabo Ichiza continued to stage performances at universities and other locations through
1980. See Ribu Shinjuku Sentaa Shiry" Hozon Kai, ed. Ribu Shinjuku Sentaa shiry" sh!sei: Kono michi hitosuji
(hereafter, RSSSHK, Kono michi hitosuji) (Tokyo: Inpakuto, 2008), iv. The publication being celebrated was Ribu
Shinjuku Sentaa Shiry" Hozon Kai, ed. Ribu Shinjuku Sentaa shiry" sh!sei, 3 vols. (Tokyo: Inpakuto, 2008).
17
Dotekabo Ichiza no Bideo Mitai Kai, Dotekabo Ichiza “My!zukaru ‘Onna no kaih"’ 1975”, 1.

38
countries, and expectations about femininity.18 In a skit about flatulence, “No Holding Farts”

(Onara gaman hantai), the narrator tells the audience that not only is restraining the release of

gas unhealthy, it can kill: “Last year, as many as 13,787.3 women died…from holding their

farts.”19 The use of toilet humor itself constitutes the occupation a discursive position women

were expected not to assume, making it a particularly apt tool for the critique of social

expectations of femininity (onnarashisa). Asakawa Mari (1950–) found both performing in these

productions as well as watching them empowering because it helped her “laugh off” these

serious issues.20 The audience captured in the grainy black and white video of the 1975

performance was as boisterous about and supportive of the silly fart jokes as they were the

revolutionary spirit of the concluding number, part of which appears as the epigraph to this

chapter.

The early stages of ribu were not always as lighthearted, however. The innumerable

personal histories that led women to the movement are filled with resentment, frustration, and

anger related to contradictions that women and girls frequently confronted, and which for many

came to a head in the increasingly prosperous Japan of the late 1960s. From a young age,

Yonezu Tomoko (1948–) questioned the social norms that dictated both that women needed to

marry in order to find happiness and that she herself would not “be chosen” by a man because

she was partially handicapped in one leg. Her handicap placed her outside the bounds of

normative femininity, which pushed her to question it. Deciding that she needed to support

herself in an occupation open to women, she began to study design at Tama Art University at the

end of the 1960s. And, like many other young students at the time, she got swept up in the

18
Ibid., 1.
19
Ibid., 15.
20
30-nen no shisutaafuddo: 70-nendai no !man ribu no onnatachi (documentary), DVD, directed by
Yamagami Chieko and Seyama Noriko (Japan: Herstory Project, 2004).

39
excitement of the student movement. Within the movement she was struck by the discrepancy

between the rhetoric calling students to arms and the rhetoric positioning female students not on

the barricades but behind the scenes doing things like making rice balls and watching men’s

possessions so they could go demonstrate. This was an experience common to many other

women who would become ribu activists, and one that resonates as well with issues faced by

women activists in the US and France in the same period.21 In response to this issue specifically

and the more general lack of concordance between “woman” (onna), “student,” and “designer,”

she and three other students at the school formed the group Thought Collective S.E.X. (Shis!

Sh"dan Esu Ii Ekkusu) in April 1970 to problematize being a “woman.”22

Tanaka, one of the most prominent ribu leaders in the first half of the 1970s, came to the

ribu movement through questioning the meaning of “woman” in Japanese society. Tanaka got

her start in activism more generally in the late 1960s via aid activities for the children of

Vietnam, in part out of sympathy for their plight and in part as a catharsis for the things in her

past that she felt had sullied her as a woman, including being the victim of sexual abuse as a

young child, and contracting a sexually transmitted disease in her early 20s.23 Realizing how

21
Mackie, Feminism in Modern Japan, 147. Akiyama Y!ko opens her own autobiography by positioning
ribu within the revolutions of the moment: Prague Spring, the May 1968 riots in Paris, China’s Cultural Revolution,
the US Civil Rights movement, and anti-Vietnam War demonstrations around the world. Conversely, some former
ribu activists have drawn parallels with the grassroots struggles of women in Japan and the struggles of women
elsewhere in Asia or the Third World. See Kitazawa Y!ko, Matsui Yayori, and Yunomae Tomoko, “The Women’s
Movement: Progress and Obstacles,” in Voices from the Japanese Women’s Movement, ed. AMPO: The Japan Asia
Quarterly Review (Armonk, N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe, 1996), 27. While I do not disagree that these parallels are there to
be seen, I would argue the more salient struggles are those outlined by Akiyama, particularly those in the US, which
was using Japan as a staging ground for its war in Vietnam and which had occupied the country less than two
decades before.
22
Yonezu’s personal history and the history of Thought Group S.E.X. are summarized from Yonezu
Tomoko, interview with author, June 2009, “10/21 o keiki toshite Shis! Sh"dan Esu Ii Ekkusu s!katsu” (1970), in
Shiry! Nihon "man ribu shi, ed. Mizoguchi Akiyo, Saeki Y!ko, and Miki S!ko (Kyoto: Sh!kad! Shoten, 1992), vol.
1, 175, and “Mizukara no SEX o mokuteki ishikiteki ni hikiukeru naka kara 70-nendai o bokki saseyo!!” (1970), in
Ribu Shinjuku Sentaa Shiry! Hozon Kai, Ribu Shinjuku Sentaa shiry! sh"sei: bira hen (hereafter RSSSHK, Bira
hen) (Tokyo: Inpakuto, 2008), 2.
23
See section three in Tanaka Mitsu, Inochi no onnatachi e: torimidashi "man ribu ron (Tokyo: Tabata
Shoten, 1972), and “Mirai o tsukanda onnatachi,” interview by Kitahara Minori and Ueno Chizuko, in Sengo Nihon
sutadiizu 2: 60, 70-nendai, ed. Komori Y!ichi et al. (Tokyo: Kinokuniya Shoten, 2009) 279–83.

40
Japan’s economic growth—supported by US military demand for weapons and trucks—was

being “paid for with the blood of Vietnamese children,” she quickly became involved in the

anti-war movement and, though she had never gone to university, found herself in the middle of

the student protests.24 Through an encounter with a newly released translation of Wilhelm

Reich’s Sexual Revolution, she came to believe that “at the core of human consciousness is sex

(sei),” a point which helped her understand why she had long been cutting herself down and

which was to become the crux of her own theorizing about the marriage system, the family, and

the meaning of “woman.”25 By the middle of 1970, Tanaka was distributing fliers among

demonstrators that called for women to join with her in her new struggle—for the liberation of

eros. Contrary to media reports that would conflate the goals of ribu with sexual liberation or

“free sex” (furii sekkusu), for Tanaka liberation of eros entailed undoing norms that positioned

women as either mothers or receptacles for men’s sexual desire. Free of such oppression women

and men would be able to engage in truly open erotic communication with each other. The group

Tanaka formed would by the fall of 1970 call themselves Group Fighting Women (Gur!pu

Tatakau Onna). The early fliers, titled “Eros Liberation Manifesto” (Erosu kaih! sengen),

specifically draw on Reich in linking the Vietnam War and the Anpo struggle as well as personal

problems to the “oppression of sex” (sei no yokuatsu).26 Tanaka expanded and refined her

argument into an increasingly long declaration that would by August become her famous

“Liberation from the Toilet” (Benjo kara kaih!), which at times bore the Group Fighting Woman

name.27 And it was under this name that they would organize a demonstration involving some

24
Tanaka, Inochi no onnatachi e, 125–26.
25
Tanaka, Inochi no onnatachi e, 141; Wilhelm Reich, Sei to bunka no kakumei, trans. Nakao Hajime
(Tokyo Keis" Shob", 1969).
26
Two nearly identical versions of the single-page flier, one hand-written, one typed, are available as
Tanaka Mitsu, “Erosu kaih" sengen,” 1970, reproduced in RSSSHK, Bira hen.
27
Multiple versions are reproduced in RSSSHK, Bira hen, e.g., Tanaka Mitsu, “Benjo kara no kaih"”
(1970), reproduced in ibid., 20–26.

41
50 women in Tokyo’s Ginza district on October 21, then marked in Japan as International

Anti-War Day.28 Through media coverage of this protest—the first public women’s liberation

protest in Japan—women like Yonezu learned about Tanaka’s group and were able to contact

it.29

Akiyama Y!ko (1942–) did not attend the first ribu rally in 1970 but she had already

been interviewed about the nascent women’s liberation movement in Japan for an article in the

daily Asahi shinbun earlier that month, an article that would introduce the word “!man ribu” and

link the Japanese movement to its American counterpart.30 A year earlier, Akiyama was a

newlywed with a master’s degree in Chinese literature and a new baby. Having found a part-time

job teaching at a high school, she had no choice but to put her baby in an unlicensed daycare

center because public facilities did not admit children that young. She had also become

acquainted with Jan and Annie, a young American couple who had recently graduated from

Berkeley and had come to Japan to protest the war, as well as, in the case of Jan, to evade the

draft. Through English conversation classes given by the couple, she learned details about the

new women’s liberation movement in the US around the time it was first being ridiculed in the

Japanese press. When the couple left to take haven in Sweden, which was providing visas to

American draft dodgers, they left behind several pamphlets from the US movement, including a

pamphlet version of an article by Marge Piercy critiquing sexism within the student movement in

28
An article in the English-language Japanese New Left journal AMPO describes notes that on October 21,
1969, there were 832 rallies held around the country, including all of Japan’s prefectures. The article boasts that
1,505 arrests were made that day throughout the country, most in Tokyo. Of the total, just 100 were women,
indicating a clearly marginal position in the movement. See AMPO, “October 21, Japan’s Mightiest Anti-War Day,”
No. 1 (November 1969): 4.
29
The biggest media coverage of the event may have been an article in the Asahi shinbun: “Yarimasu wa
yo, ‘onna kaih!’: "man ribu Ginza ni ‘otoko wa toridase’ kid!tai mo tajitaji,” October 22, 1970, morning ed., 3. For
an overview of Group Fighting Women, see Saeki Y!ko, “Gur"pu Tatakau Onna (T!ky!),” in Mizoguchi, Saeki,
and Miki, Shiry" Nihon !man ribu shi, vol. 1; Yonezu, interview.
30
Asahi shinbun, “#man ribu, ‘dansei tengoku’ ni j!riku,” October 4, 1970, morning ed., 24.

42
the US.31 Akiyama’s Japanese rendering of this pamphlet was among the earliest translations of

US radical second-wave feminist writing in circulation in Japan, and Akiyama would continue to

play a key role in the translation of US feminist writing for the next several years.32

Another of the earliest ribu translators was Ikegami Chizuko (1946–).33 A voracious

reader as a child, Ikegami was in the fourth grade when a boy in her class told her that she had no

need to study hard since to get married—her presumed destiny and dream—she only had to be

able to clean and to look cute. As Ikegami recalls it, the shock she received at hearing those

words was the start of her feminist career, a course which would lead to her participation in the

ribu movement in the early 1970s. Through the media, including American television shows like

Father Knows Best in which women laughed boisterously and revealed how clever they were,

she had gotten the impression that American women were really fortunate compared with

women around her.34 She decided to study American women’s history at university, thinking

there might be something useful to be learned that would help women in Japan. Upon beginning

her studies at Tokyo University in 1965, she quickly discovered, however, that women in the US

and those in Japan were confronting basically the same issues. She did find new feminist

activism in the US, including the writing of Betty Friedan and the recent creation of the National

Organization for Women, and she began translating short items for herself and to share with

friends.35 She was also among hundreds of women to take part in a seven-hour women-only

31
Akiyama Y!ko, Ribu shishi n!to: onnatachi no jidai kara (T!ky!: Inpakuto Shuppankai, 1993), 8,
16–18, 23.
32
Marge Piercy, “Idai na k"r#: josei,” trans. Akiyama Y!ko, in Josei kaih! und! shiry! 1: Amerika hen, ed.
Josei Kaih! Und! Junbi Kai (Tokyo: Josei Kaih! Und! Junbi Kai, 1970), 24–43.
33
The following description is primarily based on an interview with Ikegami by the author, July 2009.
34
See Ikegami Chizuko, Amerika josei kaih! shi (Tokyo: Aki Shob!, 1972), iv.
35
Friedan’s famous The Feminine Mystique (1963) was translated into Japanese the year Ikegami entered
university: Betty Friedan, Atarashii josei no s!z!, trans. Miura Fumiko (Tokyo: Daiwa Shoten, 1965). Ikegami
recalls getting information on American feminism at the “American Culture Center” (Amerika no Bunka Sentaa),
which has either changed its name or ceased to exist, and at Agora, a women’s resource center started in the
mid-1960s. On Agora, see Mackie, Feminism in Japan 150–51.

43
debate titled “An Accusation of Sex Discrimination” (Sei sabetsu e no kokuhatsu) held on

November 14. This debate was transcribed and released in a volume by the same name in 1971.36

Ikegami would contribute several translations to the volume, and a year later was to publish a

full-length book on American women’s history for the same publisher.37

One day in mid-1971, Miki S!ko (1943–), living in the Kansai region (surrounding

Osaka and Kyoto), found herself in tears on the train reading An Accusation of Sex

Discrimination: finally she found other women who felt like her.38 Miki had been struggling to

reconcile her beliefs about equality in marriage with her own experiences and this book struck a

nerve. Not long after that, Miki saw a tiny notice in the old-school feminist publication Women’s

Democratic Newspaper (Fujin minshu shinbun, 1946–) about the first ribu retreat (ribu

gasshuku) to be held that August in Nagano, and she thought, “This is it!”39 Her first encounter

with !man ribu in the flesh was taking part in that gathering, which saw the participation of

around 300 women ranging from their teens to their forties and a number of groups, including its

organizers, Group Fighting Women and Thought Collective S.E.X. from the Tokyo area, as well

as groups from more distant parts of the country, such as Ribu FUKUOKA, from southwest

Japan.40 The retreat’s plans called for a discussion questioning a shopping list of things often

taken for granted: “the class struggle, sex (sei), family relationships, Marx, Freud, beauty,

common sense, education, employment……and being a woman (onna de aru koto).”41 More

36
Aki Shob! Hensh"bu, ed., Sei sabetsu e no kokuhatsu: !manribu wa shuch" suru (Tokyo: Aki Shob!,
1971).
37
Ikegami, Amerika josei kaih" shi. This book was a revised version of Ikegami’s senior thesis, completed
at Tokyo University. A discussion of Ikegami’s translations can be found in chapter four.
38
Miki describes her initial encounter with ribu in 30-nen no shisutaafuddo.
39
Women’s Democratic Newspaper was begun by Women’s Democratic Club (Fujin Minshu Kurabu) in
1946, the year of the organization’s founding. The publication was renamed Femin in 1991.
40
Miki S!ko, “Ribu gasshuku,” in Mizoguchi, Saeki, and Miki, Shiry" Nihon !man ribu shi, vol. 1. Ribu
FUKUOKA, which writes “ribu” in the phonetic katakana script and “Fukuoka,” its city of origin, in capital Roman
letters, is discussed in chapter three.
41
This quote comes from a message from the retreat’s steering committee, cited in Miki, “Ribu gasshuku.”

44
importantly perhaps, the gathering gave women the chance to talk about their feelings and

experiences—making food for others, abortion, discrimination, wounds—functioning as the kind

of conscious raising necessary for personal liberation.42 Miki writes that this retreat also helped

establish a “ribu network” and led to the birth of a mini-komi called From Woman to Women

(Onna kara onnatachi e [Osaka], 1972–1988) and the first commercially published ribu

magazine, Woman Eros (Onna erosu, 1973–1982), for both of which Miki would be a founding

member.43

Just over a year after the first ribu retreat, several ribu groups established Ribu Shinjuku

Center, nicknamed Ribusen, in a small Tokyo apartment. Tanaka explains that the name of the

center was chosen to emphasize that it was “just one of many ribu groups” that happened to be

located near Shinjuku rather than it being “the” ribu center.44 Given the centrality of Ribu

Shinjuku Center and the prominence of Tanaka in the movement, however, the center did in fact

function as a key node for ribu groups around Japan for the five years of its existence, and was

often on the itinerary of foreign feminists passing through or living in the country. It was out of

Ribu Shinjuku Center that Ribu News: This Straight Path (Ribu ny!su: kono michi hitosuji,

1972–1976), a key mini-komi, was published and distributed nationwide.45 In addition to

providing living quarters for members of Group Fighting Women and Thought Collective

S.E.X.—one of a number of experiments in collective living among ribu groups around

The ellipses are original.

42
30-nen no shisutaafuddo.
43
Miki, “Ribu gasshuku.” Other retreats would later be held in Hokkaid! to the north and Ky"sh" to the
southwest, as well as Kansai and Shikinejima, an island off Shizuoka Prefecture, in central Japan. As many as 5000
copies of each of the first three issues of Woman Eros were in print by the end of 1974, and, as the copies I have
examined demonstrate, at least some of them were reprinted through the late 1970s. Amano Michimi discusses the
publication of Women Eros in “Women in Japan: Lucy Leu Interviews Michimi,” The Second Wave 3, no. 4 (Winter
1974): 41.
44
Tanaka, “Mirai o tsukanda onnatachi,” 312.
45
All sixteen issues are reproduced in their entirety, with minor edits to protect individuals’ privacy, in
RSSSHK, Kono michi hitosuji.

45
Japan—the center was the meeting place or founding location of over a dozen ribu groups

working on a range of issues.46 Among the groups founded here was a translation group that

began in 1974 as a circle to read materials sent from feminist groups abroad, which would in

1975 make English-language materials for women to take with them to Mexico City to introduce

the ribu movement at the first United Nations World Conference on Women in June 1975. A

recent history of the center by women who once took part in activities at the center describes

groups using the space as working on “prevention of the worsening of the Eugenics Protection

Law, abolition of the anti-abortion law, rethinking infanticide, [fighting] the exclusion of baby

strollers from public spaces and the economic invasion of Asia, protesting prostitution tours [by

men], [addressing] the harmful effects of pollution and medicines, denouncing sex

discrimination in the media, [attacking] violence by husbands, [and] abolition of the death

penalty.”47

Opposition to proposed revisions of the Eugenics Protection Law (Y!sei hogo h") would

be one of the most prominent of these issues, one which formed the topic of countless meetings

as well as articles in Ribu News and many other mini-komi. Building on the voices of right-wing

activists who had long favored prohibition of abortion on moral grounds, some members of the

Diet began to make moves toward dramatically increasing restrictions on abortion, in part a

reaction to an increasing demand for labor due to Japan’s rapid economic growth.48 Ribu groups

had begun to address this problem in the latter half of 1970, becoming some of the earliest civil

opposition.49 In May 1972 a bill was proposed that would remove the “economic reasons”

46
A history of Ribu Shinjuku Center can be found in RSSSHK, Kono michi hitosuji, ii–iv, and a listing of
the groups that used the space in ibid., iv–v.
47
Ibid., ii.
48
Tiana Norgren, Abortion Before Birth Control: The Politics of Reproduction in Postwar Japan
(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2001), 59–62.
49
Fliers addressing this issue include Josei Kaih" Und" Junbi Kai, “Y!sei hogo h" kaiaku soshi e mukete
no apiiru,” reproduced in Aki Shob" Hensh!bu, Sei sabetsu e no kokuhatsu; Gur!pu Tatakau Onna, “Ch!kin taisei

46
clause, which effectively allows any woman access to abortion. Equally or more troubling for

many women was its replacement by a clause permitting selective abortion for fetuses with

anomalies to allow, if not encourage, the prevention of handicapped babies from being born.

Finally, the bill included a provision that would establish a system to counsel women on the best

age for marriage and childbirth, this in response to an increase in the number of women seeking

careers.50 Writing at the time in the English-language New Left journal, AMPO, Nagano

Yoshiko explains that, “Taken as a whole…the reform bill is aimed at prohibiting abortions ‘for

economic reasons,’ encouraging abortions in cases of ‘handicapped’ embryoes [sic], and finally,

lowering the age at which women start childbearing, thus effectively controlling their entire life

cycle.”51 Formal discussion of the bill was delayed several times due to other more pressing bills

and opposition within the Diet, and it failed to come to a vote in 1972 or 1973.52 Many of those

fighting the bill, including New Left groups, women’s groups, labor organizations, and groups

for the physically and mentally handicapped, united in March 1973 to form the Committee to

Prevent the Worsening of the Eugenics Protection Law (Y!sei Hogo H" Kaiaku Soshi Jikk"

Iinkai), based at Ribu Shinjuku Center.53 Ultimately, the bill met strong opposition from a

number of fronts, including from the medical establishment, and failed when it finally came to a

vote in May 1974.54

Another group focused on the abortion issue was Ch!piren, which vigorously protested

attempts to criminalize abortion and fought equally hard for legalization of the birth control pill,

the latter a cause other ribu groups were generally reluctant to get behind out of health and other

to wa nani ka,” reproduced in ibid. See also Norgren, Abortion Before Birth Control, 65.
50
Nagano Yoshiko, “Women Fight for Control: Abortion Struggle in Japan,” AMPO no. 17 (Summer
1973): 15–16.
51
Ibid., 17.
52
Norgren, Abortion Before Birth Control, 63.
53
RSSSHK, Kono michi hitosuji, v.
54
Norgren, Abortion Before Birth Control, 63.

47
concerns.55 The group was established in 1972 by Enoki Misako (1945–), whose involvement in

ribu activism appears to have begun in Woolf Society, co-founded by Akiyama as a translation

group.56 While the Japanese medical establishment had criticized the pill as being unsafe, Enoki

had managed to obtain the pill somewhere and members of Woolf Society experimented taking

them. Ultimately the group’s members remained unconvinced that the pill was safe and were

unwilling to advocate for it.57 Enoki split from Woolf Society—and the mainstream of the ribu

movement—after she was criticized for using Woolf’s name on pamphlets about the pill she was

selling at a big ribu meeting in 1972.58 Ch!piren’s colorful public antics, such as boisterous

demonstrations in pink helmets, garnered a great deal of media attention, which in the mid-1970s

tended to conflate Enoki and her group with the entire ribu movement. While writing by ribu

activists looking back on the movement often mentions Ch!piren, the group has received little

extended attention and has instead been positioned outside of the mainstream of the movement,

likely a function of both the lack of strong ties between Enoki’s group and more central ribu

groups, as well as the negative attention her group brought ribu.59

For ribu activists, as for many women around the world, the 1975 United Nations First

World Conference on Women was a pivotal moment, one that would see the participation of

several prominent ribu activists alongside Japan’s official delegation. Among its impacts on

55
Ch!piren stands for Ch!zetsu Kinshi H" ni Hantai shi Piru Kaikin o Y"ky! Suru Josei Kaih" Reng"
[Women’s liberation collective opposing the prohibition of abortion and demanding the elimination of the
prohibition on the (birth control) pill], with the “ch!” standing for “abortion” (ch!zetsu), the “pi” for the “pill” (piru)
and “ren” for “collective” (reng"). See Norgren, Abortion Before Birth Control, 66; Akiyama, Ribu shishi n"to,
121–38.
56
Woolf Society’s translation and other publication activities are discussed in chapter four.
57
30-nen no shisutaafuddo; Akiyama Y"ko, “Piru wa hont" ni yoi mono na no ka?,” Onna kara onnatachi
e [Urufu no kai, Tokyo], no. 2 (Fall 1972).
58
30-nen no shisutaafuddo.
59
Akiyama, Ribu shishi n"to, 137–38. A roundtable discussion published in Woman Eros was held on the
theme “Was Ch!piren [Part of] Ribu?: #tani Junko et al., “Zadankai: Ch!piren wa ribu datta no ka,” Onna erosu no.
10 (March 1978).
Enoki, like many women in ribu, seems to have run out of steam in the mid-1970s and the group
disappeared around 1977. See Atsumi Ikuko, “Goals of Feminism in Modern Japan,” Feminist International [Japan],
no. 2 (June 1980).

48
women in Japan, this conference, along with the subsequent Decade for Women (1976–1985)

and related UN conventions, would drive the creation the Equal Employment Opportunity Law

((Danjo Koy! Kikai Kint! H!) of 1985, a new, if ineffective, law for the protection of women’s

equality in the labor force in Japan. For the ribu women, however, the 1975 meeting drew away

key members and the movement’s already waning energy. In the end, the intensity of their

involvement was too draining for many ribu activists and the conference provided a segue for

them to withdraw. Several prominent activists who went to Mexico City to attend the conference

stayed on in North America for an extended period, using it either as an opportunity to network

and to learn firsthand about feminist movements in the US or to simply drop out. Those who

stayed behind in Tokyo changed the organization of Ribu Shinjuku Center and stepped down

their activism for various, sometimes personal reasons. After moving out of the center, Yonezu,

for instance, got involved in a women-only printing collective with several other former center

residents. When tensions within the group grew too much, she pulled out of feminist activities

altogether until a new government move to revise the Eugenics Protection Law drew her back

around 1982. Since then Yonezu has remained heavily involved in Soshiren, a group initially

focused on again preventing the worsening of the law but which has moved onto focus on

broader themes.60 Around the same time Yonezu withdrew from the collective, one of her

colleagues, Yumi Doi, left Japan altogether.

As the ribu movement was waning, a more intellectual form of feminism began to come

to the fore, spearheaded by women of the same generation as ribu activists and some ribu

60
Yonezu, interview. Soshiren, the name the group eventually adopted as its official name, is an
abbreviation of “82 Y"sei Hogo H! Kaiaku Soshi Renraku Kai” [Network to Prevent the Worsening of the Eugenics
Protection Law (in) 1982]. While the group continues to advocate legal access to abortion as well as laws that do not
encourage the use of abortion for eugenic purposes, it also focuses on other issues such as women’s health, and
periodically organizes a retreat called “Because It’s Woman’s=My Body” (Onna=watashi no karada kara). See
Soshiren’s website: http://www.soshiren.org/.

49
activists themselves. While these newly prominent feminists would focus on many of the same

issues as ribu activists had been doing, the new feminists would, for the most part, not stage the

same kinds of public protests or demonstrations or engage so vigorously in grass-roots activism.

This new wave was represented most tangibly in books and magazines, sometimes devoted

exclusively to feminist topics. One such magazine is the journal Feminist (Feminisuto,

1977–1980), founded by Atsumi Ikuko (1940–) and a small group of other women—and which

made no attempts to conceal an internationalist vision of feminism. In its first year, the magazine

prominently ran interviews with American feminists like Kate Millet and Erica Jong and Japan’s

own international feminist par excellence, Yoko Ono. It also produced and distributed

internationally several issues in English, the first in 1978, published “in the hope of bringing to

readers of English accurate information about the situation of women in Asia.”61

The subsequent issue contains a special feature on the “dawn” of “women’s studies”

(joseigaku), with articles introducing courses on women available at universities in Japan as well

as women’s studies courses abroad.62 While the study of women in Japan itself is nothing new,

as the editors of Feminist spell out in their introduction to the issue, with the advent of this new

field, “women have begun to rewrite scholarship and history.”63 Like the new wave of academic

feminism, those involved in establishing women’s studies as a field in Japan make no qualms

about pointing to learning about women’s studies courses in the US as a major impetus for

moving to establish similar ones in Japan. Inoue Teruko (1942–) writes that she first heard about

“women’s studies” from (female) Asahi shinbun journalist Matsui Yayori (1934–2002) at the

61
Feminist International [Japan], “A Brief History of ‘Feminist,” no. 2. (June 1980): 104.
62
Feminisuto, “Joseigaku no akebono,” special feature, no. 5 (April 1978).
63
Feminisuto Hensh!bu, “Onna ga, gakumon ya rekishi o, kakikae hajimeta: joseigaku no akebono,”
Feminisuto no. 5 (April 1978): 3.

50
ribu retreat in August 1971 and decided she wanted to see it for herself.64 Nevertheless, writing

about the field almost a decade later, she insists that, “It is important to build a [field of]

women’s studies rooted in the history of women (onna) in Japan and that is not a mere import

from America.”65 When she and Kaya Emiko (1943–), who accompanied her on a 1973 tour to

several US universities with women’s studies courses, later wrote about those courses, they

coined the word “joseigaku” to name the field. Like the choice within the ribu movement of

“josei” and, especially, “onna” over “fujin” to name women and the women’s movement

(discussed in chapter one), this naming was not without significance to Inoue. Inoue and Kaya

ultimately chose a term that would suggest a field in which “women (josei) research women

(josei).”66 Though not spelled out in Inoue’s history of the field, the use of “josei” rather than

“onna” does suggest a certain distance from the unrefined woman who was the focus of the ribu

movement. Adopting this new term, the Women’s Studies Association of Japan (Nihon

Joseigaku Kenky!kai) was founded in Kyoto in the fall of 1977 and published its first Annual

Report of Women’s Studies (Joseigaku nenp!, 1980–) three years later.67

While Inoue had high hopes for the new field from the outset, some women within the

ribu movement saw women’s studies, as well as the academic feminism with which it was

associated, as draining the energy from ribu activism.68 It is beyond the scope of my discussion

here to evaluate this claim, but given the timing of ribu’s dissipation and the rise of women’s

studies and this new feminist thinking, it is not a surprising correlation to see. Still, there is no

definitive end point for the ribu movement and no one event or new movement (or field) dealt it

64
Inoue Teruko, Joseigaku to sono sh"hen (Tokyo: Keis" Shob", 1980), 230.
65
Ibid., 231.
66
Ibid., 230–31.
67
Nihon Joseigaku Kenky!kai “Purojekuto 20,” and “Anata e,” in their Watashi kara feminizumu: Nihon
Joseigaku Kenky"kai 20-sh"nen kinenshi (Osaka: Nihon Joseigaku Kenky!kai, 1998).
68
See, for instance Miki S"ko’s critique of the then emerging field of women’s studies, which lacks the
“ribu spirit” in Miki S"ko, “Ribu tamashii no nai joseigaku nante,” Onna erosu no. 11 (October 1978). Miki has
been a very outspoken critic of mainstream feminizumu in Japan.

51
a fatal blow. Many of the women involved in the ribu movement continue to take part in

activism, often related to women’s issues, sometimes explicitly framed as “feminisuto” causes.

When Yonezu began again to take part in activism with the members of Soshiren, which does

not define itself as a “ribu” group, she was rejoining some women she knew from her ribu

days.69 The group of women in Nagoya who began publishing the mini-komi Women’s Revolt

(Onna no hangyaku, 1971–) at the opening of the decade are still going at it in 2010. While

women like Miki still proudly fly the ribu banner, most do not. Yet, even if they no longer apply

the term to their current identity, some women with whom I have spoken maintain a clear

attachment to the term. That the !man ribu movement lives on at least in spirit for many former

activists, however, is quite evident in a 2004 documentary in which ribu women from Tokyo,

Osaka, Nagoya, and elsewhere come together to remember and to celebrate “30 years of

sisterhood.”70 The fact that a version of this video was released with English subtitles and a

2006 film tour of US universities was arranged—with Miki and Doi as well as the filmmakers

participating—makes it clear that, no matter how local in origin their movement, theirs is an

experience that at least some former ribu activists and feminists from Japan continue to believe

has more global importance.

Stringing Together a Rezubian Community

Lying in a corner of an adult bookstore near the south exit of Tokyo’s Shinjuku Station

was a notebook in which those into “homo, rezu, swapping (suwappingu), or SM” could leave

messages for each other. It was December 1971 and a 21-year-old office worker who would later

69
Yonezu, interview. Soshiren’s history certainly places it in a trajectory coming in no small part from
ribu but the group does not prominently use the term “ribu” about its activities. The demise of the terms “ribu” and
“!man ribu” are discussed in chapter three.
70
30-nen no shisutaafuddo.

52
adopt the pseudonym Suzuki Michiko left a note containing the address of her newly created

post office box, the telephone number of the boarding house where she was staying, and a

message stating that she was making a group for those who “want to live as rezu.” As a

consequence, the phone at her boarding house rang non-stop. But, to her great disappointment

and frustration, the calls were all from curious men. After hanging up on one man after another,

she talked to the husband of a woman who, he said, was “like that.” He asked Suzuki to meet his

wife. Soon thereafter, Suzuki tracked down another woman who had left contact information in

that notebook, and the three of them, with Suzuki as leader, became Wakakusa no Kai,

considered to be Japan’s first rezubian organization.71

To reach out and provide support to women attracted to other women, Suzuki did what

she could to promote the group. She was interviewed for magazines and on television, a

particularly brave act for a young rezubian in the 1970s.72 She also put ads in adult manga

magazines, the only magazines with rates she could afford that would allow her to advertise a

“rezubian” group.73 Many women evidently went to Wakakusa no Kai’s gatherings looking for

partners rather than a community, and indeed, a defining feature of the group was the

match-making registry maintained by Suzuki and in the personal ads in Wakakusa [Young grass]

the group’s mini-komi. Yet, as Suzuki has described the group, a majority of participants at its

meetings just wanted to engage in “completely ordinary” chat in a space where it was acceptable

to be a rezubian, a space where a woman could withdraw, however briefly, from the heterosexual

71
Hirosawa Yumi [Sawabe Hitomi], “Nihon hatsu no rezubian saakuru: ‘Wakakusa no Kai’ sono j!gonen
no rekishi to genzai,” in Bessatsu Takarajima, no. 64, Onna o ai suru onnatachi no monogatari (Tokyo: JICC
Shuppankyoku, 1987), 111–12; Sh!kan bunshun, “J!sh!nen o mukaeta rezu gur!pu hyakunin: sono na mo
‘Wakakusa no Kai,’” June 25, 1981, 41–42. Where there are discrepancies in the origin story between the narratives
told by Hirosawa and that told by Sh!kan bunshun, I have generally chosen to rely on Sawabe (Hirosawa) because
of the evident amount of personal investment Sawabe had in telling the story with care rather than for the sake of
titillating readers.
72
E.g., Sh!kan josei, “Watashi wa ‘rezubian no kai’ (kaiin 80-nin) no kaich"-san,” November 24, 1973.
73
Ibid.; Hirosawa, “Nihon hatsu no rezubian saakuru,” 112.

53
world and feel at ease.74

By the mid-1970s, Wakakusa no Kai had over 80 members and was holding monthly

social gatherings in Tokyo and bimonthly gatherings in Osaka, and it would eventually organize

parties and trips.75 In the mid-1980s, Suzuki estimated that the group had at least 500 members

over the course of its existence.76 In a 1983 article she wrote for Fujin k!ron, Suzuki describes

the group’s membership as including “single people, people living with their girlfriends, married

people (those accepted by their husbands; those keeping it secret)…ranging in age from high

school students in their teens to married women in their 50s.”77 While the group was harshly

criticized in the mid-1970s by ribu-oriented rezubian for being non-political, as early as 1975, in

a note opening the spring issue of Wakakusa, Suzuki expresses a desire to “eliminate the

deep-rooted prejudice” in Japanese society “against people attracted to the same sex,” so any

woman can lead a bright, carefree life with the woman she loves.78 In response to

rezubian-feminisuto critiques of the group, I would argue that, while not explicitly feminist or

otherwise political, the mere existence of spaces like Wakakusa no Kai where women can find a

respite from social expectations work to gradually unravel patriarchal norms by making

individuals aware of alternatives. And, as is clear here, Suzuki’s ultimate goal was to rent a hole

in the normative fabric of Japanese society.

The experiences of rezubian within the ribu movement itself varied. Among open

rezubian participating in ribu activities were women who felt attracted to females prior to joining

74
Suzuki Michiko, “Rezubian no kai o shusai shite j!nen,” Fujin k!ron 68, no. 1 (January 1983): 340.
75
Suzuki Michiko, “Go-aisatsu,” Wakakusa (Spring 1975), and “Rezubian no Kai,” 340.
76
Hirosawa, “Nihon hatsu no rezubian saakuru,” 113.
77
Suzuki, “Rezubian no Kai,” 340.
78
Suzuki, “Go-aisatsu.” Suzuki’s statement complicates sharp distinctions drawn between Wakakusa no
Kai and rezubian feminizumu. Sugiura Ikuko, for instance, writes that rezubian feminisuto differed from Wakakusa
no Kai in the intention on the part of the former to “eliminate rezubian’s ‘internalized homophobia,” but, whether or
not it is stated directly, the idea of creating social acceptance is premised on the idea of being worthy thereof. See
Sugiura Ikuko, “Nihon ni okeru rezubian feminizumu no katsud": 1970-nendai k"han no reimeiki ni okeru,” Jendaa
kenky" [T"kai Jendaa Kenky!sho] no. 11 (December 2008): 144.

54
the ribu movement, sometimes from a young age. Amano Michimi (1945–), who got involved in

the ribu movement and Tanaka’s Group Fighting Women around 1972, was quite open about her

sexuality, although she left the group in less than a year because she and Tanaka did not get

along.79 While Amano did not feel that she was treated poorly for being a rezubian, other

women like Asakawa, also in Group Fighting Women, were made to feel unwelcome in the

communal living environment of the organization. In addition, Asakawa, like a number of others,

also had problems with Tanaka’s leadership style.80

Between 1975 and 1976 four rezubian involved in ribu, including several with ties to

Wakakusa no Kai, created several surveys to find out more about the rezubian they were certain

were among them in the ribu movement. They circulated the surveys among ribu women at

meetings and via ribu group membership lists and other channels. The first survey asked “female

homosexuals” (josei d!seiaisha) about issues such as when they became aware of their desire for

women; the other was a survey of those in the ribu movement in general as well as other

interested women and men. The 57 responses they received to the rezubian survey led to the

holding of three roundtable discussions between March and May 1976 and then the creation of

the first—and ultimately only—issue of a mini-komi, called Wonderful Women (Subarashii

onnatachi), published in November of that year.81

It was at one of these roundtables that Izumo Marou (1951–), who was first attracted to
79
Amano’s relationship with Tanaka is discussed further in chapter five.
80
Asakawa Mari, “Ribusen de deatta ‘subarashii onnatachi’,” oral history taken by Sugiura Ikuko, in
Nihon no rezubian komyuniti: k!jutsu no und! shi (Tokyo: privately printed, 2009), 5–6. Izumo Marou also recalls
rezubian within ribu taking issue with Tanaka. See also Izumo Marou et al., “Nihon no rezubian m!vumento,”
Gendai shis! 25, no. 6 (May 1997): 59–60
81
Subarashii onnatachi, “Zasshi no hakkan ni attate,” no. 1 (November 1976), and “Zadankai ‘rezubian "i
ni kataru,” no. 1 (November 1976): 6. A transcript of the second roundtable, held with 17 participants in April 1976,
can be found in Subarashii onnatachi, “Zadankai ‘rezubian "i ni kataru.” While Asakawa participated in the making
of the surveys, due to her strong objections, the survey results were not included in the main magazine but printed
separately as a supplement, prefaced with Asakawa’s objections to the survey and Kawahara Karido’s response and
defense. See “‘Resubian ni kan suru ankeeto’ sh!kei rep"to,” Subarashii onnatachi no. 1. (November 1976),
supplement, and Asakawa 6–8. See also Izumo et al., “Nihon no rezubian m!vumento,” 59–60; The mini-komi may
have sold as many as 1,000 copies. See Anne Blasing, “The Lavender Kimono,” Connexions no. 3 (Winter 1982).

55
other girls as a middle school student, initially learned about the existence of Wakakusa no Kai,

as well as about the criticism of the group by ribu-oriented rezubian.82 In addition to attacking

the organization for not actively working to improve the rights of rezubian, noted above,

ribu-oriented rezubian took issue with the group’s perpetuation of the patriarchal paradigm

through the expectation that, both in couples and within the group in general, rezubian take on

either a female role (onnayaku) or male role (otokoyaku). This was codified on the

match-making cards kept by Suzuki as well as within the discourse of the group’s members.83 In

spite of this criticism and lack of support from ribu activists, Wakakusa no Kai provided an

important space for many women for almost a decade and a half in total. The group continued to

hold meetings through around 1985, before running out of steam—and out of money. Suzuki had

taken out an enormous loan to privately publish “Japan’s first rezubian magazine,” Eve and Eve

(Ibu ando ibu) in 1982, and in spite of poor sales due to distribution issues, quickly produced

another issue. She was ultimately forced to devote her time to working in order to pay off the

loan rather than running the group itself. Suzuki eventually withdrew completely, and the group

dissolved not long after.84

Just as the Wonderful Women project was underway, Wakabayashi Naeko (1947–),

arrived back in Japan after a year spent in Mexico and the US. Wakabayashi, who had joined

Group Fighting Women after she saw an article in the Asahi shinbun following the first ribu

protest on October 21, 1970, brought back with her a lesbian-feminist identity, the mere

82
Izumo et al., “Nihon no rezubian m!vumento,” 60; Aniisu, “Komyuniti no rekishi,” 55. This criticism is
discussed in the roundtable itself: Subarashii onnatachi, “Zadankai ‘Rezubian "i ni kataru’,” 15–16.
83
The group was also criticized for a lack of openness about bookkeeping. See Subarashii onnatachi,
“Zadankai ‘Rezubian "i ni kataru’,” 15–16; Izumo et al. “Nihon no rezubian m!vumento,” 59; Hirosawa, “Nihon
hatsu no rezubian saakuru,” 115-16.
84
Suzuki Michiko, “S"kan no kotoba,” Ibu ando ibu no. 1 (August 1982): 2. The publication date is not
indicated in the magazine itself; it comes from Suzuki, “Rezubian no kai,” 344. On the financial difficulty leading to
the group’s demise, see Hirosawa, “Nihon hatsu no rezubian saakuru,” 117; note that Hirosawa erroneously lists the
year of publication of the original issue as 1984.

56
possibility of which she was unaware of before her trip.85 Her contribution to Wonderful Women

was the translation of an article into Japanese by a foreign woman living in Japan.86 In an oral

history taken in 2007, she acknowledges that she is considered an “ideological lesbian” (shis!-ha

rezubian), that is, someone who is a rezubian for “ideological” reasons. This, she knows,

positions her differently from someone who grew up attracted to other women.87

As Izumo recalls, those who were rezubian as a “political choice” (seijiteki

sentaku)—which she links to the influence of US feminism—had not experienced the same kind

of anxiety about or rejection for being rezubian and, consequently, were not adequately

sympathetic toward the needs of those for whom being a rezubian was not experienced as a

choice. These needs included speaking and writing about negative issues in order to address the

wounds they had incurred from going against or feeling forced to comply with social norms. In a

recent study of this period, Sugiura Ikuko draws a line between the women involved in

Wonderful Women and those who made the political choice to be a rezubian.88 Yet, in Izumo’s

personal experience, those who chose a rezubian identity under the influence of US lesbian

feminism—whether or not first translated and transfigured by other Japanese women—blurred

with those ribu-oriented rezubian involved in the Wonderful Women project. Some women in

this project harshly rejected ideas and experiences that contradicted the notion that lesbians are

“wonderful women,” and Izumo was ridiculed and criticized for talking about her own struggles,

leading to her withdrawal from the group.89

In 1977 Sawabe Hitomi (1952–) and several women who had come to Wonderful Women

85
Wakabayashi Naeko, “Onna no nettowaaku no naka de ikiru,” oral history taken by Sugiura Ikuko, in
Sugiura, Nihon no rezubian komyuniti, 17, 21–25.
86
Wakabayashi, “Onna no nettowaaku no naka de ikiru,” 25. The article she translated is probably Barbara
Lee Barbara, “Rezubian, kono onnatachi wa nani mono da?” trans. Hazama Natsu [?Wakabayashi Naeko],
Subarashii onnatachi no. 1 (November 1976).
87
Wakabayashi, “Onna no nettowaaku no naka de ikiru,” 31.
88
Sugiura, “Nihon ni okeru rezubian feminizumu no katsud!,” 162–63.
89
Izumo Marou, personal communication with author, July 2009.

57
from Wakakusa no Kai formed the group Everyday Dyke (Mainichi Daiku), which produced two

issues of its own mini-komi, The Dyke (Za daiku, 1978).90 Differences of opinion led Sawabe to

form another group, Shining Wheel (Hikari Guruma), which produced an eponymous

mini-komi.91 In spite of their differences the groups continued to cooperate, however. Everyday

Dyke, for instance, promoted the premier issue of Shining Wheel its own publication.92 While

both groups positioned themselves as rezubian feminisuto, Sugiura points out that lesbianism as

an explicitly political choice was central to neither.93

In 1981, members from each group joined together to start Lesbian Feminist Center,

which was, however, guided in part by the belief that lesbianism is a rational political choice for

feminists.94 Activities organized by the groups using the center included holding

consciousness-raising workshops, throwing dance parties with an attendance of between 50 and

60 women, and providing support to rezubian from around the country who sent letters to its post

office box. While the facility was repurposed into a Rape Crisis Center in 1983,95 around the

same time, several women organized Sisterhood Club (Shisutaafuddo no Kai) and began

producing a mini-komi called Lesbian Communication (Rezubian ts!shin). At a rented space near

Waseda in Tokyo, the group presented a slideshow put together by lesbians in the US called

“Women Loving Women.” Afterward, five of them, including Wakabayashi, Kagura Jamu

90
The group’s Japanese name involves a play on words based on the fact that “dyke” rendered into
Japanese is homophonous with the word for carpenter (daiku).
91
Sugiura, “Nihon ni okeru rezubian feminizumu no katsud!,” 162–63; Izumo et al, “Nihon no rezubian
m"vumento,” 58–62; Sawabe Hitomi, “The Symbolic Tree of Lesbianism in Japan: An Overview of Lesbian
Activist History and Literary Works,” trans. Kimberly Hughes, in Sparking Rain and Other Fiction from Japan of
Women Who Love Women, ed. Barbara Summerhawk and Kimberly Hughes (Chicago: New Victoria Publishers,
2008), 8–9.
92
The promotion can be found in Za daiku, “Hikari guruma s!kan-g!,” no. 2 (June 1978). A lengthier
history of 1970s rezubian feminizumu, including an analysis of The Dyke and Shining Wheel, can be found in
Sugiura, “Nihon ni okeru rezubian feminizumu no katsud!.”
93
Sugiura, “Nihon ni okeru rezubian feminizumu no katsud!,” 163.
94
Vera Mackie, “Kant! Women’s Groups,” Feminist International [Japan] no. 2 (June 1980): 108.
95
Blasing, “The Lavender Kimono”; Sawabe, “The Symbolic Tree of Lesbianism,” 9; Mackie, “Kant!
Women’s Groups,” 107–8.

58
(1952–), and Sawabe, the latter of whom had first learned about American lesbian feminists

through participation in Ribu Shinjuku Center translation activities in the 1970s, set to work to

produce a Japanese version of the slide show.96 While they were unsuccessful in creating the

show due to privacy concerns, these women did found a new mini-komi, Regumi

Communications (Regumi ts!shin, 1985–); a new group, Regumi no Gomame; and, in 1987, a

new rezubian space, Regumi Studio Tokyo.97 The group’s original name combines an

abbreviation for “rezubian group” (rezubian + gumi [group]) with an oblique reference to the

idea that working together is powerful.98 Today, however, this group continues on, with

Wakabayashi still taking a prominent role, and is known simply as Regumi.99

Inspired by a combination of American lesbian-feminist writing, attending an

international lesbian conference in Switzerland in 1986, and the responses that came in from

around the country to an article she wrote about the conference for Fujin k"ron, Sawabe would

go on to spearhead a new pair of surveys of rezubian in 1986.100 The results formed half of

Stories of Women Who Love Women (Onna o ai suru onnatachi no monogatari), a book she put

together and for which she wrote the bulk of the chapters.101 Published in May 1987 as part of

96
Sawabe Hitomi, “Onna o ai suru onnatachi o meguru hy!gen katsud!,” oral history taken by Sugiura
Ikuko, in Sugiura, Nihon no rezubian komyuniti, 39–40; Hisada Megumi, “Genki jirushi no rezubian: ‘Regumi no
Gomame’ t!j!!” in Bessatsu Takarajima, no. 64, Onna o ai suru onnatachi no monogatari, 122–23; Wakabayashi,
“Onna no nettowaaku,” 27–28. A transcript of the slideshow narration is reproduced in Sugiura, Nihon no rezubian
komyuniti, 85–97.
97
Hisada, “Genki jirushi no rezubian.”
98
See ibid., 122.
99
A history of Regumi drawing heavily on Regumi Communications can be found in Iino Yuriko,
Rezubian de aru “watashitachi” no sut"rii (Tokyo: Seikatsu Shoin, 2008). This history has, however, been severely
condemned by the group for its extensive use of their newsletter and reproduction of cover art without permission,
and violation of the privacy of contributors. See the group’s open letter to Iino in Regumi Sutajio Tokyo, “Iino
Yuriko-san chosho Rezubian de aru ‘watashitachi’ no sut"rii ni tsuite,” Regumi ts!shin no. 250 (September 2008).
100
Hirosawa Yumi [Sawabe Hitomi], “Sekai rezubian kaigi ni sanka shite,” Fujin k"ron 71, no. 7 (June
1986). The conference was the eighth International Lesbian Information Service Conference, held in March 1986.
See Sawabe, “Onna o ai suru onnatachi no monogatari,” 52–54.
101
Bessatsu Takarajima, no. 64, Onna o ai suru onnatachi no monogatari. Sawabe was using the
pseudonym Hirosawa Yumi at the time (personal communication, 2006). A majority of the articles appearing under
other names in this volume were also penned by Sawabe, who was encouraged by the publisher to make the volume
appear to be more of a collective project. Four chapters from this volume are available in English translation in

59
the popular Bessatsu Takarajima series, Stories was the first commercially produced book

by—and, more or less, for—rezubian. This volume, available at bookstores around the country,

has been described as a “bible” for a generation of rezubian and baisekushuaru [bisexual]

women, for whom it was often the first, if not only, positive representation they saw of rezubian

life.102 Many women say that reading this book was the first time they were aware of the extent

of the rezubian community—and for some, its very existence.103

Also in the 1980s, an “English-speaking lesbian community” came together, centered

around Tokyo.104 This was initially facilitated by International Feminists of Japan (IFJ), founded

in 1979 by Anne Blasing, “to provide a support network among feminists in Japan’s international

community and to provide a bridge between this feminist community and the many Japanese

feminist organizations.”105 In 1985, a lesbian session was included in the program of an

international feminist conference jointly hosted by IFJ and a Japanese feminist group. The

enthusiasm at that session led those in attendance to plan an overnight gathering in November,

which was the first of what would often be called simply “Weekends” (uiikuendo). Around 50

women attended the initial retreat, but for a while over 100 women were regularly coming to the

Mark McLelland, Katsuhiko Suganuma, and James Welker, eds., Queer Voices from Japan: First-Person Narratives
from Japan’s Sexual Minorities (Lanham, Md.: Lexington, 2007).
102
Tenshin Ranran, “Media ga nakatta koro no baiburu,” in Kuia sutadiizu ’96, ed. Kuia Sutadiizu Hensh!
Iinkai (Tokyo: Nanatsumori Shokan, 1996).
103
One woman recollects that, after moving from Okinawa to Tokyo she happened to find Stories, through
which she contacted Regumi Studio; her subsequent social involvement helped her accept herself as a rezubian. See
Wim Lunsing, Beyond Common Sense: Sexuality and Gender in Contemporary Japan (London: Kegan Paul, 2001),
232–33. I heard similar experiences from several of the women I interviewed.
104
I borrow the expression “English-speaking lesbian community” from Linda Peterson, “English
Language Journal in Japan,” Lesbian News and Views [Japan; also called The DD] no. 1 (May 1986): 1. Peterson’s
label is more accurate than two other terms sometimes used: “foreign lesbian community,” which fails to incorporate
the women from Japan who played (and play) a vital role, and “international lesbian community,” which fails to
suggest that it does not include those women from abroad who do not speak English, including those who also do
not speak Japanese and who are accordingly excluded from both the Japanese- and English-speaking communities.
105
Anne Blasing, “International Feminists of Japan,” Feminist International [Japan] no. 2 (June 1980):
109; Audrey Lockwood, personal correspondence, April 2009; Linda M. Peterson, “Rezubian in Tokyo,” in Finding
the Lesbians: Personal Accounts from Around the World, ed. Julia Penelope and Sarah Valentine (Freedom, Calif.:
Crossing Press, 1990), 129–30; Anne Blasing, “The Lavender Kimono,” Connexions no. 3 (Winter 1982).

60
Weekends, which are still being held several times a year in various parts of the country.106

While the early workshops at the Weekends were mostly in English, the events were in

principle bilingual. Nevertheless, communication across language barriers was always an

issue.107 A woman using the name Joni van Dyke complied a Japanese-English “dyketionary” in

the mid-1980s to foster cross-cultural lesbian communication.108 She sold this at the Weekends

and by mail. When asked about the links between the English- and Japanese-speaking lesbian

communities in general, Linda Peterson (1951–), an American lesbian living in Japan since 1979,

recalls that they were bridged by binational couples in which one partner was Japanese, by

enthusiastic learners of Japanese, and by Japanese women who had lived abroad at some point.

She adds, however, that because of differences of language and interests, “It’s impossible to say

that there was ever one community of any kind.”109 Hara “Minata” Minako (1956–), who had

spent significant time abroad before participating in some Weekends, adds that the relative

economic advantages of foreigners teaching English in Japan as well as their short-term

outlook—a majority planned to stay in Japan only a few years at most—contributed to the gap

between the international and domestic lesbian communities.110

About the rezubian involved in the English-speaking community, Peterson recalls, “All

the Japanese dykes who showed up were definitely political. Either lesbian political or feminist

106
Aniisu, “Komyuniti no rekishi, 1971-2001: nenpy! to intaby" de furikaeru,” (Summer 2001): 40; Linda
M. Peterson, interview with author, April 2009; Izumo et al., “Nihon no rezubian m"vumento,” 63.
107
Peterson, interview; Izumo et al., “Nihon no rezubian m"vumento,” 62.
108
Joni van Dyke, Dyketionary, 2nd ed. (Tokyo: privately printed, ca. 1985).
109
Peterson, interview. Peterson and her partner, Amanda Hayman, from the UK, founded an
English-language newsletter called The DD in 1986, which members of the foreign lesbian community continued to
produce usually three or four times per year and sometimes in abbreviated form during Weekends from 1986
through the early 1990s. Its production continued sporadically after that through 1996. It contained a mix of
Japan-related information of interest to the international lesbian community and more global issues of interest to the
newsletters’ producers and readers.
110
Hara Minako, interview with author, July 2009.

61
political…or groovy green political….”111 Hara remembers that their politicization put undue

pressure on some women to declare their sexuality, noting that in the beginning some women

who called for information about the Weekends were asked outright, “Are you a lesbian?”112

Such a direct question was doubtless jarring at best for women unsure of their sexuality or

uncomfortable with the word “rezubian” and, at times, made the term a shibboleth for entrance

into the retreats.

In addition to Weekends, the mid-1980s also saw the emergence of bars aimed

specifically at rezubian, and in some cases, run by them. The first regular bar events aimed at

rezubian were the women-only nights on Mondays beginning in 1982 at the gei bar, Matsuri

[Festival]. Matsuri was run by It! Bungaku (1932–), the (publicly heterosexual) editor of Japan’s

first commercial homo magazine, Barazoku [Rose tribe] (1971-2008).113 It! had long been

supportive of rezubian, who, in the absence of a commercial rezubian publication, sometimes

called him or sent letters to Barazoku. Against the objections of his editorial staff, who wanted to

keep the focus on men, It! occasionally included these letters and wrote about the phone calls in

the magazine; he also repeatedly shared information about Wakakusa no Kai.114 For a while in

the 1970s and 1980s, It! attempted, sometimes in cooperation with Wakakusa no Kai, to arrange

marriages between homo and rezubian who needed to make a show of heterosexuality to deal

with familial and social pressure.115 His publishing company, Dai Ni Shob!, was also slated to

publish Wakakusa no Kai’s Eve & Eve, but pulled out in the end, indirectly leading to the

111
Peterson, interview.
112
Izumo et al. “Nihon no rezubian m"vumento,” 63.
113
Barazoku was published bimonthly then monthly from 1971 to 2004, intermittently after that until
2008.
114
See James Welker, “Flower Tribes and Female Desire: Complicating Early Female Consumption of
Male Homosexuality in Sh!jo Manga,” Mechademia 6 (forthcoming).
115
See ibid., and Wim Lunsing, “Japanese Gay Magazines and Marriage Advertisements,” in Gays and
Lesbians in the Pacific: Social and Human Services, ed. Gerard Sullivan and Laurence Wai-Teng Long (New York
and London: Harrington Park Press, 1995). I have found no indication that any arranged pairings were ultimately
successful.

62
financial collapse of the group.116 Nonetheless, he promoted Eve & Eve in several of his

columns.117

The women-only nights at Matsuri were run by a woman called Tomita Chinatsu. Three

years after she began hosting those nights, Tomita started up Ribonne (Ribonnu), Japan’s first

women-only bar, located adjacent to the well-known neighborhood of gei bars in Tokyo’s

Ni-ch!me district. Ribonne, named after a book illustrated by male artist Kaneko Kuniyoshi and

whose painting of a girl adorned the bar’s sign, was established with It!’s financial backing.118

Unlike existing bars with a significant rezubian clientele, drinks at Ribonne were reasonably

priced and there was no service charge. Sunny (1948–), a rezubian who was running an ordinary,

and thus expensive, snack bar called Sunny Ni-ch!me, was a frequent customer of Ribonne.

Seeing a viable model for a bar, Sunny copied Ribonne’s approach when she opened Mar’s Bar

in Ni-ch!me’s gei bar district six months later. Mar’s Bar lives on today as Japan’s longest-lived

rezubian bar.119 After Mar’s Bar, similar bars began to open in Tokyo and other large cities

around the country. Some of those early bars remain open, while many others have opened and

closed over the years. Surveys of the community from over the past ten to fifteen years suggest

that bars have continued to serve an important function for many in the community.120

116
Hirosawa, “Nihon hatsu no rezubian saakuru,” 117.
117
E.g., It! Bungaku, “Ibu & Ibu banzai!” Barazoku no. 113 (June 1982). Several other homo magazines
attempted to reach out to the rezubian community, including The Gay (Za gei, 1981–?2005), published by early gay
rights advocate T!g! Ken (1932–), and which for several years in the early 1980s included a “Lesbian Square”
(Rezubian sukuea) section in the back of the magazine.
118
Nawa Kaori, “Rezubian baa no yoru to yoru,” in Bessatsu Takarajima, no. 64, Onna o ai suru onnatachi
no monogatari, 102–3; Sawabe, “The Symbolic Tree of Lesbianism,” 11–12. The book the bar was named after is
Funazaki Yoshihiko, Ribonnu, with illustrations by Kaneko Kuniyoshi (Tokyo: Chikuma Shob!, 1979).
119
Aniisu, “Rezubian no rekishi,” 44–45.
120
One quarter of respondents in Sei Ishiki Ch!sa Gur"pu, ed., Sanbyakuj! nin no sei ishiki: iseiaisha
dewa nai onnatachi no ankeeto ch"sa (Tokyo, Nanatsumori Shokan, 1998), said they do or would look for a
romantic partner at a lesbian bar, though only 8.5 percent reported bars as having been where they met their current
partner, five percent their first female sexual partner, or 0.3 percent their first female love interest. See ibid., 52–53,
57–58. However, over 23 percent of respondents in a survey included in a special feature on Japan’s rezubian
community in a 2001 issue of Anise reported lesbian bars being the first rezubian space they went to. See Aniisu,
“Komyuniti no rekishi,” 75.

63
 In a recent history of the rezubian community, Sawabe describes the years from 1971 to

1980 as “the seeds,” from 1981 to 1990 as “the sprouts,” from 1991 to 2000 as “the flowering,”

and from 2001 onward as “the fruit.”121 Reflecting back in the mid-1990s on the progress of the

community, Hara wrote, “It has become easier for women to love women” in Japan “because

self-identified lesbians and bisexual women have emerged to work on lesbian issues.”122 Groups

like Regumi, in which Hara was involved at one time, continue on, and other rezubian groups

and spaces, some short-lived, others more enduring, have been established in large metropolitan

areas, producing any number of non-commercial publications. The 1986 meeting in Switzerland

attended by Sawabe and Wakabayashi led to the creation of an Asian Lesbian Network, which

held several gatherings, including one in Bangkok in 1990, and another in Tokyo in 1992. The

continuing existence and success of these activities and activism from the 1990s onward accord

with the narratives of Sawabe and Hara, who suggest their seeds were planted and tended by

rezubian in the two decades prior.

The 1990s also saw commercial and popular successes in the rezubian as well as the gei

and rezubian communities that owe some debt to 1990s “gay boom” (gei b!mu) in the popular

media, mentioned in the previous chapter, which, while focused on men, helped provide popular

forums for rezubian discourse as well, no doubt attracting women who might otherwise been

unaware of the community. New interest sparked by the boom also made some community

productions at least appear commercially feasible. Commercial magazines aimed at rezubian

readers have come and gone—Phryné (Furiine, 1995), Anise (Aniisu, 1996–1997, 2001–2003),

Carmilla (Kaamira, 2002–2005)—now supplanted by the internet. Translation of lesbian-related

essays, fiction, and academic writing has continued, often published by commercial presses, but

121
Sawabe, “The Symbolic Tree,” 6, 10, 17, 25.
122
Hara Minako, “Lesbians and Sexual Self-Determination,” in AMPO, Voices from the Japanese
Women’s Movement, 129.

64
so has the local production of an ever-increasing number of books on being a rezubian in Japan,

beginning, most famously with Kakefuda Hiroko’s On Being “Lesbian” in 1992.123

Collaboration with the gei community in Japan has become more common, and jointly sponsored

events such as parades and film festivals have been held regularly in Tokyo, Osaka, Sapporo,

Fukuoka, and elsewhere since the early 1990s, which in the case of the film festivals, has

attracted large audiences of ostensibly heterosexual women. In addition to the bars, there have

also been a series of women-only rezubian-run discos, often drawing large rezubian crowds. In

2005, after being elected to the Osaka Prefectural Assembly, Otsuji Kanako came out publicly as

a rezubian, in part via an autobiography.124 While she was unsuccessful in her 2007 bid as the

first openly rezubian candidate for a national office when she vied for a seat in Japan’s Upper

House on the Democratic Party ticket, she has continued to play a visible role in the in the

struggle for public acceptance and rights for LGBT people. She is among a number of activists

advocating recognition of same-sex partnerships or marriage, having publicly held a marriage

ceremony with her partner at the Nagoya Lesbian and Gay Revolution “pride event” (puraido

ibento) in June 2007.

By the end of the twentieth century, the rezubian community had come to resemble

lesbian counterparts in other industrialized countries. And, indeed, the histories of events since

the 1990s like the lesbian and gay film festivals and parades and large-scale lesbian discos show

that they were begun by individuals who had experienced something similar and wanted to do

the same in Japan.125 In 2001, Izumo reflected on the significance of the Tokyo Lesbian and Gay

Parade, staged sporadically since 1994:

I’ve been doing the rezubian thing in Japan since the 1960s and I am enormously happy

123
Kakefuda Hiroko, “Rezubian” de aru to iu koto (Tokyo: Kawade Shob! Shinsha, 1992).
124
Otsuji Kanako, Kamingu auto: jibunrashisa o mitsukeru tabi (Tokyo: K!dansha, 2005).
125
See the histories of the events in Aniisu, “Komyuniti no rekishi.”

65
 that the parade has become a reality in my lifetime. No matter how wonderful the parades
are in other countries, if I can’t participate in them in the place I’m living, it’s
meaningless. … If you look at this [parade] historically, it’s amazing….126

From the 1990s, the community has indeed developed in many directions. And, while the

immediate inspirations for some of the developments of the past two decades have come rather

obviously from abroad, the foundation for these events were laid in the Japan of the 1970s and

1980s. And like other seemingly imported aspects of Japanese culture, they have been

transfigured to meet local needs and desires.

Queering Sh!jo Manga

The generation of young women who revolutionized sh!jo manga came to be called the

“Fabulous Forty-Niners” on account of most of them having been born in or around 1949.127

When these women were growing up, the sh!jo manga they were reading were predominantly

drawn by male artists, themselves heirs to an art form developed by men that can be traced most

closely to the influence of European and American comic arts in the Meiji and Taish! eras, but

which has been linked to centuries of humorous art in Japan.128 While manga were included in

magazines aimed at girl readers prior to the Pacific War, sh!jo manga’s emergence as a genre

has been widely linked to “god of manga” Tezuka Osamu’s (1928–1989) popular postwar story

of the adventures of cross-dressing heroine Sapphire in Princess Knight (Ribon no kishi,

126
Ibid., 57.
127
In Japanese they are called “hana no nij"yonen gumi,” or the “fabulous 24 group,” reflecting their
having been born in or around year 24 of the Sh!wa era (1926–1989).
128
Manga has been positioned by some scholars and critics as belonging to a 1,000-year-old tradition, but
even they concede that the influence of Europeans and Americans in Japan was the impetus for the development of
modern manga. See, e.g., Kinko Ito, “Manga in Japanese History,” in Japanese Visual Culture: Explorations in the
World of Manga and Anime, ed. Mark Wheeler MacWilliams (Armonk, N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe, 2008), 26–32; Brigitte
Koyama-Richard, One Thousand Years of Manga (Paris: Flammarion, 2007), 99–138; and Frederik L. Schodt,
Manga! Manga! The World of Japanese Comics, rev. ed. (1983; Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1986), 28–67.

66
1953–1955) as well as to the emergence of sh!jo manga magazines in the 1960s.129

Art scholar and curator Mizuki Takahashi, however, challenges this narrative, arguing

that Tezuka’s influence of the development of sh!jo manga was “secondary” to that of the

joj!-ga [lyrical illustration] of the 1920s and 1930s, drawn by male artists such as Yumeji

Takehisa (1884–1934) and Takabatake Kash! (1888–1966), and revived after the war by

Nakahara Jun’ichi (1913–1983).130 The girls depicted in this mid-century art style were lithe and

delicate in form, with large sparkling eyes and an “empty, wandering gaze,” similar to their

appearance in postwar sh!jo manga. After the war these girls were set against flowery

backgrounds, which “reflect[ed] their inner personality” and drew on images of the girl in prewar

sh!jo literature, which this style was used to illustrate earlier in the twentieth century.131 Such

seemingly random cascades of flowers and eyes a-twinkle were standard fare in the sh!jo manga

of the 1970s. While, Mizuki concedes, Tezuka played a significant role in the development of

complex plots, other artists building on the joj!-ga style, such as Takahashi Makoto (1934–), had

already been creating manga that revealed the “inner psychology of the characters,” which was

of little interest to Tezuka but a central element in the sh!jo manga of the 1970s and beyond.132

Nevertheless, Tezuka’s astoundingly prolific and varied manga and anime works, sh!jo or

otherwise, had a profound impact on many, if not most, postwar manga artists, including star

sh!jo manga artists such as Hagio Moto (1949–) and Ikeda Riyoko (1947–).133

129
Tezuka Osamu, Ribon no kishi (1953–1955; Tokyo: K!dansha Manga Bunko, 1999). For a typical
history of the sh!jo manga genre, see Schodt, Manga! Manga!, 95–97.
130
Mizuki Takahashi, “Opening the Closed World of Sh!jo Manga,” in MacWilliams, Japanese Visual
Culture, 127.
131
Ibid., 117, 118, 122.
132
Ibid., 122, 128.
133
See, for instance, Hagio Moto, interview with Fujimoto Yukari, in Fujimoto Yukari, Sh!jo manga
damashii: ima o utsusu sh!jo manga kanzen gaido & intaby" sh" (Tokyo: Hakusensha, 2000), 188–89; Hagio Moto,
“The Moto Hagio Interview,” by Matt Thorn, The Comics Journal no. 269 (June/July 2005); Matsutani Takayuki et
al., “Tezuka Osamu to Takarazuka Kageki: My"jikaru f!ramu,” in Tezuka Osamu no furusato, ed. Kawauchi Atsur!
(Kobe: Kobe Shinbun S!g! Shuppan Sentaa, 1996), 18–19.

67
 While Tezuka, under the sway of the all-female Takarazuka Revue and its cross-dressing

performers, may have first popularized the gender-bending dandy beauties (dans! no reijin) in

sh!jo manga, it was the innovations of the Fabulous Forty-Niners that truly revolutionized the

genre from the 1970s, turning it into a liminal space in which readers—and artists—could

experiment with both gender and sexuality in ways theretofore unheard of.134 One of the most

salient innovations made by this new generation of artists was the introduction of male

protagonists and same-sex romance and sexual relationships contained in narratives set in

Western countries and aimed at readers barely in their teens.135 Anything but marginal, the

so-called sh!nen ai [boys love] manga that followed were penned by a large number of

professional female artists during this period and were, visual studies scholar Ishida Minori

asserts, central to the radical transformation of sh!jo manga in the 1970s.136 Critics and scholars

have long argued that the beautiful boy serves as a locus of identification for adolescent girl

readers and that the use of male (rather than female) characters, as well as homo- (rather than

hetero-) sexual relationships, placed in a foreign setting, provides female readers the means for

vicarious circumvention of gender and sexual norms.137 While many of the same artists who

134
On the influence of the Takarazuka Revue on Tezuka, see Matsutani et al., “Tezuka Osamu to
Takarazuka Kageki.” On Tezuka’s Princess Knight as originator of cross-dressing characters, see Fujimoto Yukari,
Watashi no ibasho wa doko ni aru no? Sh!jo manga ga utsusu kokoro no katachi (Tokyo: Gakuy! Shob!, 1998),
130.
135
Narratively, however, male homoeroticism in fiction by women and the use of male protagonists in
sh!jo manga was not unprecedented. Novelist Mori Mari (1903–1987) had already penned several male homoerotic
novellas almost a decade prior to this, beginning with Koibitotachi no mori (Tokyo: Shinch!sha, 1961). And in the
January 1969 issue of Seventeen (Sebuntiin, 1968–), pioneering woman sh!jo manga artist Mizuno Hideko (1939–)
first began to serialize the manga Fire!, a sh!jo manga narrative that replaced female with male protagonists. See
Mizuno Hideko, Faiyaa! 4 vols. (Tokyo: Asahi Panorama, 1973). An article in Takarajima suggests it was the first
step in linking rock music and “homo.” See Bish!nen-dan, “Ima, kiken na ai ni mezameru toki……ka na?”
Takarajima, December 1979, 67. The work does not figure in the histories the Fabulous Forty-Niners tell of the
creation of sh!nen ai manga, but it was pioneering in its depiction of male and female nudity and heterosexual sex
for a teenage female audience.
136
Ishida Minori, Hisoyaka na ky!iku: “yaoi/b!izu rabu” zenshi (Tokyo: Rakuhoku Shuppan, 2008),
142–43.
137
The scholarship and criticism making this case, supported by the words of the artists themselves, is
extensive. Representative criticism in Japanese can be found in Fujimoto, Watashi no ibasho wa doko ni aru no?,
particularly in the section, “Onna no ry!seiguy", otoko no han’iny!,” 130–76. A general discussion of this genre in

68
drew sh!nen ai texts also experimented with female-female romance, unlike sh!nen ai, those

often dark early works were not popular enough to inspire a boom.138

The creation of the new sh!nen ai genre is most closely associated with Hagio and

Takemiya Keiko (1950–). In the December 1970 issue of Bessatsu sh!jo komikku [Girls’ comic

extra], Takemiya published the short narrative “Snow and Stars and Angels…” (Yuki to hoshi to

tenshi to), later reissued as “In the Sunroom” (Sanr"mu nite), a narrative generally considered to

be the very first example of the new manga genre.139 Hagio followed eleven months later in the

same magazine with “November Gymnasium” (J"ichigatsu no gimunajiumu).140 Both works

feature schoolboys in romantic relationships with other schoolboys in historical European

settings. Takemiya had published her first work while still a high school student in 1967 and

Hagio in 1969. Their early manga were good enough to earn them the attention of editors and

additional assignments, but the works themselves were not particular memorable, nor were they

groundbreaking. Neither set out to write about homosexuality and both would go on to draw

many other kinds of narratives, including science fiction, mysteries, and romance narratives—a

diversity of genres typical of the artists of their generation. But those first two sh!nen ai

narratives, as well as the pair’s wildly popular later sh!nen ai works, Hagio’s The Heart of

Thomas (T!ma no shinz!, 1974) and Takemiya’s The Song of the Wind and the Trees (Kaze to ki

no uta, 1976–1984), would help pave the way for a sh!nen ai manga boom in the 1970s and

English can be found in Midori Matsui, “Little Girls Were Little Boys: Displaced Femininity in the Representation
of Homosexuality in Japanese Girls’ Comics,” in Feminism and the Politics of Difference, ed. Sneja Gunew and
Anna Yeatman (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1993); and Tomoko Aoyama, “Male Homosexuality as Treated by
Japanese Women Writers,” in The Japanese Trajectory: Modernization and Beyond, ed. Gavin McCormack and
Yoshio Sugimoto (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988).
138
For a history and analysis of these female-female romance narratives, see James Welker, “Drawing Out
Lesbians: Blurred Representations of Lesbian Desire in Sh!jo Manga,” in Lesbian Voices: Canada and the World:
Theory, Literature, Cinema, ed. Subhash Chandra (New Delhi: Allied Publishers, 2006).
139
Takemiya Keiko, “Sanr!mu nite,” in her Sanr"mu nite (1970; Tokyo: San Komikkusu, 1976).
140
Hagio Moto, “J!ichigatsu no gimunajiumu,” in her J"ichigatsu no gimunajiumu (1971; Tokyo:
Sh"gakukan Bunko, 1995).

69
beyond, as well as the emergence of other related genres.141

Hagio and Takemiya were roommates for several years, having moved in together right

around the time Takemiya published “Snow and Stars and Angels…,” when Hagio came to help

Takemiya meet a deadline on another project. They lived in a small apartment “surrounded by a

cabbage patch” in !izumi, in Tokyo’s Nerima Ward. Their neighbor was Masuyama Norie

(1950–), who was soon thereafter to become Takemiya’s producer, roommate, and muse—or, in

Takemiya’s words, her “brain” (bureen).142 Masuyama introduced the pair to some of her

favorite books and played a pivotal, though underappreciated role in the development of the

sh!nen ai genre, discussed in subsequent chapters. Under the supervision of Masuyama,

Takemiya and Hagio’s apartment became the “!izumi Salon,” where up-and-coming sh!jo

manga artists, assistants (often aspiring artists themselves), and others would gather and work,

eat, or chat—sometimes staying over for extended periods.143

In December 1975, a year after Hagio’s The Heart of Thomas was published and while

her popular The Poe Clan (P! no ichizoku, 1972–1976)—featuring beautiful boy vampires

named Edgar and Allan—was still being serialized, the first “Comic Market” was held at a

public hall in Tora-no-mon in Tokyo’s Minato Ward.144 In spite of a rather modest

turnout—there were just some 30 circles and around 700 attendees in total—Comic Market grew

rapidly and today is held over three days in both August and December, attracting tens of

141
Hagio Moto, T!ma no shinz! (1974; Tokyo: Sh"gakukan Bunko, 1995); Takemiya Keiko, Kaze to ki no
uta, 10 vols., (1976–1984; Tokyo: Hakusensha Bunko, 1995). The histories of the terms “BL”/“b!izu rabu” and
“yaoi,” as well as the distinctions between these genres, are discussed in chapter three.
142
Takemiya Keiko, Takemiya Keiko no manga ky!shitsu (Tokyo: Chikuma Shob", 2001), 244; Josei
sebun, “Ima sugoi ninki no sh"jo komikku sakka no karei-naru shi seikatsu,” December 3, 1975, 199; Masuyama
Norie and Sano Megumi, “Kyabetsu batake no kakumeiteki sh"jo mangakatachi,” in Bessatsu Takarajima, no. 288,
70-nendai manga daihyakka (Tokyo: Takarajimasha, 1996).
143
Masuyama and Sano, “Kyabetsu batake no kakumeiteki sh"jo mangakatachi,” 169. Among those taking
part were Sasaya Nanae (1950–),Yamada Mineko (1949–), and Yamagishi Ry"ko (1948–), the latter of whom
produced a number of male-male romances, albeit her protagonists were often older than in typical sh!nen ai
narratives. See ibid., 166; Hagio, “The Moto Hagio Interview.”
144
In Japanese, the event is referred to as “Komikku Maaketto,” “Komiketto,” and “Komike.”

70
thousands of registered circles (who must win a lottery to formally participate) and hundreds of

thousands of regular attendees.145 It was begun by male manga critic Yonezawa Yoshihiro and a

handful of others to provide an inexpensive means of distribution and exchange of diverse,

self-produced manga. Comic Market provided artists a space for creative expression outside the

restrictions of the commercial publishing world—although the event was also used by

commercial publishers to recruit new talent.146 The Comic Market quickly became synonymous

with the buying and selling of d!jinshi [coterie magazines] of wildly varying quality and content,

generally including manga, fiction, and/or criticism. Demonstrating the enthusiasm of fans of the

newest generation of sh!jo manga, in the beginning, these adolescent girls accounted for the vast

majority of attendees. Around 90 percent of the approximately 700 who attended the very first

event were devotees of the genre, predominantly middle and high school students, enamored

with Hagio’s Thomas and Poe and works by Takemiya and !shima Yumiko (1947–) and

others.147 It also was around this time that a number of manga circles began to spring up on

university campuses and began producing their own manga, which many would sell at Comic

Market. Among these artists were those attracted to British glam rock, and who drew manga

featuring beautiful rock stars and homosexuality, the beginning of a new style of homoerotic

145
The catalog for Comic Market 76, held August 14–16, 2009 is nearly 1,400 pages long. According to
the report it provides on the Comic Market held December 28–30, 2008, that event had 35,000 registered
circles—who were among 49,000 who applied—and around 510,000 attendees. See Komikku Maaketto 76 katarogu
(2009), 1192–93.
146
Yonezawa Yoshihiro, “Manga/anime no kaih"ku, komike tte nani?,” interview, in Bessatsu Takarajima,
no. 358, Watashi o komike ni tsuretette!: ky!dai komikku d!jinshi maaketto no subete (Tokyo: Takarajimasha, 1998),
15–16; Ichikawa K"ichi. “Comiket,” interview with Patrick Galbraith, in Patrick Galbraith, The Otaku
Encyclopedia: An Insider’s Guide to the Subculture of Cool Japan (Tokyo: Kodansha International, 2009), 46;
Yonezawa Yoshihiro, “Manga to d"jinshi no sasayaka no ky"en: komiketto no ataeta eiky",” in Bessatsu
Takarajima, no. 358, Watashi o komike ni tsuretette!, 42.
147
Hagio Moto, P! no ichizoku, 3 vols. (1972–1976; Tokyo: Sh"gakukan Bunko, 1998). For early
attendance figures, see Hattori Shin’ichir", “Komikku maaketto katarogu de wakaru saakuru, janru no hensen,” in
Bessatsu Takarajima, no. 358, Watashi o komike ni tsuretette!, 30; and Nishimura Mari, Aniparo to yaoi (Tokyo:
!ta Shuppan, 2002), 18. Today over half of attendees are female and around 70 percent of registered circles are
comprised of women. See Galbraith, The Otaku Encyclopedia, 45.

71
sh!jo manga with older characters in more contemporary settings.148

Riding on this wave of enthusiasm, in 1978 Sagawa Toshihiko (1954–), then working

part time at San Shuppan, a publisher of magazines with erotic themes aimed at adults, including

the homo magazine Sabu (1974–2002), convinced the company to produce a “mildly

pornographic magazine aimed at females.”149 At least at the time this is how he framed the

project that became the first commercial sh!nen ai-themed magazine, June (1978–1979,

1981–).150 Reflecting on the magazine’s content three decades later, he explains, somewhat

more equivocally, that what the Fabulous Forty-Niners produced was not “porno” but rather

something in between literature and porno, with both being important aspects of the genre’s

appeal.151 Sagawa was a young man who like many other men at the time was taken in by works

by the Fabulous Forty-Niners, the artists he hoped would contribute to this new magazine. He

was, however, certain that even if he was unable to get Takemiya and her cohort to draw for the

magazine, he could get d!jinshi artists from the Comic Market to do so.152 June, called Comic

Jun for the first two issues, became a mix of both.153 Takemiya contributed immeasurably to

both the content and the tone of the magazine in its early years. Another prolific contributor was

Kurimoto Kaoru (1953–2009), a writer who contributed fiction under her own name and essays

148
Yonezawa Yoshihiro, “Manga to d!jinshi no sasayaka no ky!en: komiketto no ataeta eiky!,” in
Bessatsu Takarajima, no. 358, Watashi o komike ni tsuretette!, 41–42. Mizuno’s Fire! had, however, by 1969
already featured male rock star protagonists.
149
The name “Sabu” is an abbreviation of “Sabur!,” a masculine-sounding male name.
150
Sagawa Toshihiko, “Bungaku to goraku no aida o ittari, kitari,” interview with Ishida Minori, in Ishida,
Hisoyaka na ky!iku, 327. The name June is homophonous, and spelled the same in katakana script, as the Japanese
pronunciation of the surname of infamously homosexual French author Jean Genet. While links between the writer’s
name and the magazine name have been made frequently enough to establish an association, the magazine’s history
(discussed below) shows it was not the original idea of the title.
151
Ibid.
152
Ibid. 328.
153
June was called Comic Jun for the first two issues, with both new and old versions spelled out in
English/Roman letters on the cover. It was renamed to settle a copyright issue over the name “Jun,” which was the
name of a clothing company. As the cover for the third issue was already laid out, the producers decided it was
simplest just to add an “e” to the name See June, “Editors’ Rest Room,” no. 4 (April 1979). A brief
English-language history of the magazine can be found in Frederik L. Schodt, Dreamland Japan: Writings on
Modern Manga (Berkeley, Calif.: Stonebridge Press), 120–23.

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under the name Nakajima Azusa.154 The combined presence of Kurimoto/Nakajima and

Takemiya shaped the soul of the June, which Ishida describes as a “site of collaboration”

between the two. Readers, largely ranging from adolescent girls in their late teens to young

women in their early 20s, contributed a significant portion of the content in the form of letters

and drawings as well as manga narratives and short stories, the latter of which could respectively

be submitted to Takemiya and Kurimoto (as Nakajima) for critique.155

When disappointing sales figures forced June to suspend publishing in 1979, the gap was

quickly filled by Nanbara Shir!, working at Minori Shob!, publisher of Out (1977–1995), a

magazine associated with anime and anime parody.156 Nanbara founded Allan (Aran,

1980–1984), which was named after popular—and handsome—French actor Alain Delon, but

for reasons of design, spelled on the cover in Roman letters like the middle name of American

author Edgar Allan Poe and one of the beautiful boy protagonists in Hagio’s The Poe Clan.157

While at first attempting to tap into the same interests as June, Allan was more textual and less

graphically oriented than its predecessor and devoted far more page space to reader-contributed

content. From its third year, Allan also ran a personal ad column “Lily Communications” (Yuri

ts!shin) first “for lesbiens only [sic],” although the number of rezubian-identified advertisers is

questionable.158 Differences of opinion between Nanbara and his superiors at Minori Shob! led

Nanbara to leave the company in 1984, taking with him the magazine, which he renamed Gekk"

[Moonlight] (1984–2006), but nicknamed “Luna” (Runa). While Gekk" was similar in content

and tone to Allan for the first year or so, it eventually became far more focused on the bizarre

154
Ishida, Hisoyaka na ky"iku, 204.
155
The information on the magazine’s readership comes from ibid., 222.
156
On Out, see Nishimura, Aniparo to yaoi, 20.
157
See James Welker, “Lilies of the Margin: Beautiful Boys and Queer Female Identities in Japan,” in
AsiaPacifiQueer: Rethinking Gender and Sexuality, ed. Fran Martin et al. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press,
2008) 50, 61 n25.
158
For details on Allan’s content and an analysis of the personal ads in “Lily Communications,” see ibid.

73
and dark themes, in keeping with Nanbara’s own taste.159

Both Allan and June, which was revived in 1981, functioned as a bridge in the 1980s

between commercial and non-commercial worlds of sh!nen ai manga, and between artists and

fans. While focused on beautiful males, both magazines reflected a broad range of tastes from

the beautiful early teen boys in the works of Takemiya and Hagio and the innocent-looking

members of the Vienna Boys Choir to glam and heavy metal rockers like David Bowie and

Queen. The availability of magazines like this, sold in bookstores around the country, gave

readers not just access to homoerotic narratives by professional manga artists, but also the

opportunity to participate in the amateur production and consumption of such narratives—which

would have otherwise been impossible outside of venues like Comic Market. Both ran ads from

readers seeking others to join in their manga circles and help produce d!jinshi as well as

promotions for the d!jinshi themselves, either as announcements or as advertisements, and Allan

was even giving away selected issues of popular d!jinshi via a promotion in its premier issue.160

Editorial content as well as contributions from readers also introduced and discussed foreign and

domestic literature and films depicting (male) “homos” or gays and, particularly in Allan,

lesbians. Linking fantasy to reality, the lives of actual gays and lesbians abroad, as well as homo

and rezubian in Japan were also represented in letters and articles. The rezubian organization

Wakakusa no Kai even placed several advertisements in Allan and Gekk! recruiting new

members and promoting its own publications.161 Returning the favor, in 1987 Gekk! placed an

ad in Stories of Women Who Love Women.162 In the mid-1980s, June created Sh!setsu June

159
Nanbara Shir!, interview with author, June 2005.
160
See the comment in the margin of Aran, “Ninki d!jinshi purezento,” October 1980, 139.
161
See, e.g., Aran, June 1983, 179.
162
See Bessatsu Takarajima, no. 64, Onna o ai suru onnatachi no monogatari, 109. As a “m"ku”—a
magazine/book—the volumes in the Bessatsu Takarajima series, like other m"ku series, contained a limited number
of ads.

74
[June fiction] (1983–2004), devoted to prose rather than graphic stories, and while the style and

content have changed drastically, and in spite of publishing difficulties in the mid-1990s, June

remains in print. Gekk! largely lost relevance to this readership by the late 1980s, though it

lingered on under different titles until 2006.163

Near the end of the 1970s, some circles at Comic Market comprised of females in their

late teens and early twenties were selling manga parodying—and soon homoeroticizing—foreign

glam and hard rock and other musicians, while others were creating and selling their own

variations of manga by Takemiya and other sh!jo manga artists, as well as the male homoerotic

fiction of Mori Mari (1903–1987) dating to the early 1960s.164 One woman who created d!jinshi

centered around foreign hard rock musicians in the mid-1970s recalls that, at the time, she used

Western rock stars in the manga she drew because Japanese musicians were just not cool to

her.165 Perhaps due to a realization that rock musicians are too old to be “sh!nen” (boys), or

perhaps just a reflection of the popularity and central role of June, but male homoerotic works

quickly came to be called “June-mono,” or June things. And, as will be detailed in chapter three,

the word “yaoi,” coined to teasingly criticize manga lacking a plot, point, or meaning, became

linked with these works in 1979, and soon caught on.

Parodying existing manga and anime also began in the 1970s and took off in the 1980s,

forming a broad generic category often called “aniparo,” short for “anime parody.”166 While in

theory anything could be parodied, among female artists buying and selling d!jinshi at Comic

Market, sh!nen manga [boys’ comics] were a major source of material.167 Manga and other

163
These names include Bokka meron [Pastoral melon] and Lucky Horror Show (in English). Several
issues of a fiction version of the magazine were also published in the mid-1980s.
164
It! G!, Manga wa kawaru: “manga gatari” kara “manga ron” e (Tokyo: Seid!sha, 2007), 215.
165
Quoted in It!, Manga wa kawaru, 216.
166
It!, Manga wa kawaru, 222–23; Nishimura, Aniparo to yaoi, 18ff.
167
A parallel commonly drawn to this kind of homoerotic parody is with “slash fiction” in the US and the
UK, created by homoerotically pairing characters like Captain Kirk and Spock. See Henry Jenkins, Textual

75
topics that were popular fuel for parodies became subgenres in their own right, around which

various manga circles often created d!jinshi, with each volume sometimes containing multiple

narratives on the same manga or anime. The mid-1980 saw an explosion of homoerotic parodies

of Takahashi Y!ichi’s extremely popular sh!nen manga and anime series Captain Tsubasa

(Kyaputen Tsubasa, 1981–1988), depicting a Japanese boys school soccer team. The

relationships between the boys on the team, captained by "zora Tsubasa, provided ample

material for the parodists to work with, and this subgenre dominated the Comic Market for

several years.168 And the “Tsubasa” boom marked the beginning of what turned out to be the

heyday of aniparo in general.169

While the Tsubasa subgenre was not the first time for sh!nen ai or male homoerotic

d!jinshi to be set in Japan and feature Japanese characters, its incredible popularity as an object

of homoerotic parody represents a noteworthy shift away from the dominance of foreign settings

and characters in sh!jo manga depicting male homoeroticism. In the d!jinshi world, these

depictions included both parodies, such as of “Tsubasa,” as well as original texts. Over the 1980s

such male homoerotic d!jinshi were increasingly referred to simply as yaoi, and from the 1990s

onward “b!izu rabu” [boys love].170 It is from the late 1980s and early 1990s as well that saw an

increase in commercial magazines aimed at fans of the genre.171 For some, the sh!nen ai created

Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture (New York: Routledge, 1992).
168
Nishimura writes that in summer 1986, parodies of the Captain Tsubasa series constituted half of total
sales at the event. See Nishimura, Aniparo to yaoi, 33.
169
It!, Manga wa kawaru, 227.
170
For an ethnographic study of female circles and attendees at Comic Market in the 1990s, see Matthew
Thorn, “Girls and Women Getting Out of Hand: The Pleasure and Politics of Japan’s Amateur Comics Community,”
in Fanning the Flames: Fans and Consumer Culture in Contemporary Japan, ed. William W. Kelly (Albany: State
University of New York Press); and for a discussion in English of recent parodies of J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter
series, see Sharalyn Orbaugh, “Girls Reading Harry Potter, Girls Writing Desire: Amateur Manga and Sh!jo
Reading Practices,” in Girl Reading Girl in Japan, ed. Tomoko Aoyama and Barbara Hartley (London: Routledge,
2010).
171
A list of over two dozen new commercial magazines dedicated to yaoi/b!izu rabu founded between
1990 and 1995 can be found in Yamamoto Fumiko and BL Sap!taazu, Yappari, b!izu rabu ga suki: kanzen BL
komikku gaido (Tokyo: "ta Shuppan, 2005), 16–17.

76
by the Fabulous Forty-Niners remains a distinct genre in its own right—and the fact that many

classic sh!nen ai texts are still in print testifies to their lasting popularity. But, unsurprisingly

given the mix of Takemiya-style manga and d!jinshi artists in venues like June and at Comic

Market, for most people—including June’s own editor—sh!nen ai has blurred with yaoi/b!izu

rabu.172

Conclusion

In the brief histories sketched out above, it is clear that the primary attention of most

women and girls in the ribu, rezubian, and queer sh!jo manga spheres was on what was

happening in their own lives in Japan, or on activities that would change or distract them from

those lives. In addition to their various efforts to redefine the possibilities of and for “women,”

points of overlap between these spheres are suggested in their histories. Some of these obvious,

such as the linking of the ribu and rezubian communities by early rezubian feminisuto activism,

while others are more subtle, such as the multiple ways men in the homo, later gei, communities

were useful to women in both the rezubian community and the queer sh!jo manga sphere even

though both were by and large situated at a remove from the queer male community.

Another significant point of overlap is how acts of transfiguration of appropriated cultural

elements have shaped all three of these women and girls’ communities and helped to reshape

understandings of “women,” a point which I will draw out through the foci to which I turn next.

As I laid out in the introduction, and as the histories of these spheres show, translation as well as

travel, real or vicarious, played key roles in all three of these female spheres in the 1970s and

1980s. Chapters four and five will take up these threads and examine the ways both translating

and traveling shaped these communities and the lives of individuals within them. Another point
172
See Sagawa, “Bungaku to goraku no aida.”

77
that the histories of these communities suggest is the significance of words and of choosing

names. It is that topic, to which I turn next.

78
 CHAPTER THREE: TERMINOLOGY

[T]he world of speech and desires has known invasions, struggles, plundering, disguises, ploys.
1
—Michel Foucault

What’s in a name? Names—along the processes whereby they are chosen or

coined—matter. This is certainly the case in the ways groups or communities choose names for

themselves or are named—and, as I will show, this naming is not necessarily an either-or affair.

As David Valentine observes, the ways “[p]eople…categorize themselves and others…is one of

the most fundamental aspects of human language and meaningmaking.”2 In this chapter, I slip,

however, beyond categorization of just self and other in my examination of the etymologies,

permutations, and offshoots of three key terms around which certain communities of women in

Japan unified in the 1970s and with which they expressed identification: “!man ribu,”

“rezubian,” and “sh"nen ai.” While the former two are ostensibly Japanese transliterations of

“women’s lib” and “lesbian,” respectively, the history of these terms shows that their

“borrowing” was no straightforward process.3 To dismiss these as mere loan words and, thus,

imports tout court is to overlook the significant and extensive local histories that undergird and

have shaped them. The third of these, “sh"nen ai”—a Sino-Japanese term literally meaning “boy

love,” with semantic roots that extend back many centuries into Japan’s past—did not directly

function as a community or identity marker but rather as an early label certain artists and readers

1
Michel Foucault, “Nietzsche, Genealogy, History,” trans. Donald F. Bouchard and Sherry Simon, in
Michel Foucault, Language, Counter-Memory, and Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews, ed. Donald F.
Bouchard (1971; Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1977), 139.
2
David Valentine, Imagining Transgender: An Ethnography of a Category (Durham, N.C.: Duke
University Press, 2007), 5.
3
Lydia Liu, for instance, argues that translation is the site of political and ideological struggles through
which words and their meanings “are not so much ‘transformed’ when concepts pass from the guest language to the
host language as invented within the local environment of the latter.” See Lydia H. Liu, Translingual Practice:
Literature, National Culture, and Translated Modernity—China, 1900–1937 (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University
Press, 1995), 26.

79
applied to a genre of manga [comics] first inked around 1970.4 The history of the encounter of

this pair of words—which, unlike “d!seiai” and other variant translations of “homosexuality,” is

not a calque—with modern understandings of sex, gender, and sexuality further calls into

question what it means for a word to be “Japanese.”5

As my discussion of these various terms chronicles, the meaning of (seemingly) local

coinages and loan words alike can, with the passage of time, easily become overdetermined.

Rather than erase the imprint of historic usages (whether actual or anachronistically inferred), a

term’s reinscription by layers of transnational intellectual and cultural flows may continue to

invoke echoes of past meanings even as it transforms them. It is these layers that I set out in this

chapter to peel apart. My task is, however, one of more than merely unearthing forgotten

histories of words that were central to the women and adolescent girls who are the focus of my

larger project. In a critique of the (largely American) lesbian and gay studies of the 1980s, Joan

Scott cautions against the historical “project of making experience visible”—then typical of the

field—as it “precludes critical examination of the workings of the ideological system itself”; it

“exposes the existence of repressive mechanisms, but not their inner workings or logics.”6 Scott

suggests that,

It ought to be possible for historians … to ‘make visible the assignment of subject-positions,’ not in the
sense of capturing the reality of the objects seen, but of trying to understand the operations of the

4
Asserting the presence of an identity category, sh!nen ai manga fan and critic Mizuma Midory, however,
has declared that some women in fact have a “preference for sh!nen ai” (sh!nen ai shik!). In her use of “shik!”
[literally, taste], the same word often used to indicate “sexual preference” (seiteki shik!), Mizuma attempts to
position this taste as in some ways equivalent to “homosexuality,” “heterosexuality,” and “bisexuality.” See Mizuma
Midory, In’yu toshite no sh!nen ai: josei no sh!nen ai shik! to iu gensh! (Tokyo: S!gensha, 2005). I am unaware of
others—fans, critics, or scholars—who use this term.
5
While I write “d!seiai,” literally same-sex (d!sei) love (ai) as a single word, I have chosen to write
“sh!nen ai” as two words to reflect the latter term’s relative lack of conceptual coherence. “Sh!nen ai” has been
used to refer to either pederastic or pedophiliac desire of adult men for youths, in which case transcribing this erotic
orientation as a single word (i.e., “sh!nen’ai”) seems reasonable. It could, however, also refer to love or erotic desire
among youths, as it does in the sh!nen ai manga genre, where it stands in for “boys’ love (for one another),” in
which it refers less to an orientation than to the feelings of boys in an (ostensible) subject position for their
schoolmates.
6
Joan W. Scott, “The Evidence of Experience,” Critical Inquiry 17, no. 4 (1991): 778, 779.

80
 complex and changing discursive processes by which identities are ascribed, resisted, or embraced, and
which processes themselves are unremarked and indeed achieve their effect because they are not noticed.
To do this a change of object seems to be required, one that takes the emergence of concepts and
identities as historical events in need of explanation.7

This is precisely what I aim to do in this chapter. As I suggest below, however, the “emergence”

of even a single term might be not so much an “event…in need of explanation” as it is a

congeries of histories which warrant mapping.

In his essay “Nietzsche, Genealogy, History,” Foucault declares that genealogy “opposes

itself to the search for ‘origins’” and “rejects the metahistorical deployment of ideal

significations and indefinite teleologies.”8 His rejection of origins, or, rather, Nietzsche’s, is a

rejection of the “assum[ption of] the existence of immobile forms that precede the external world

of accident and succession,” of the idea that there is some pure truth to be found at the moment

of conception.9 While I concur that the social truth of a thing is not necessarily to be found in its

origins and that meaning is unstable, I wager in this chapter, that on a small scale the tracing of

the origins and evolution of words—even when not completely successful—can begin to get at

the continuities and disjunctures that prefigure and refigure words, as well as the concepts they

attempt to signify. I propose that in following the histories of words we can better understand

how these particular words and not others came to be used within and about these communities,

and, perhaps more importantly, we can get a better sense, at various moments, of the individuals

and communities who used these words and about whom they were used.

Part and parcel of this project is an examination of the workings of power that have

shaped these histories. While the dominant role of men in shaping discourse and the words with

7
Ibid., 792.
8
Foucault, “Nietzsche, Genealogy, History,” 140. The grand genealogy of which Foucault writes here, it
should be noted, is not one of words or even identity positions but of “morals, ideals, and metaphysical concepts”
(ibid., 152) within an “endlessly repeated play of dominations” (ibid., 150), a system of rules violently installed
(ibid., 151).
9
Ibid., 142.

81
which it is constructed means that men occupy a relatively large proportion of the histories told

in this chapter, these histories also show how some women and girls have at times successfully

hijacked both words and whole fields of discourse for their own purposes. One of the more

fascinating, if unsurprising, points that the etymologies of these words casts in particular relief is

the extent to which discourse is presumed to be male domain and, more remarkably, the almost

ingenious way some men have managed to reframe even words whose meaning seems predicated

on the centrality of women so that men themselves remain central, whether as subject or

objectifier. The primacy of the male in erotic discourse is evident, for example, in two terms

borrowed from Chinese and in common use in the Edo era and before: nanshoku (also

pronounced danshoku)—male eros—which names the broad tradition and practice of male

same-sex erotic relations, and nyoshoku (also pronounced joshoku)—female eros—which names

not erotic interaction between two females but between a male and a female.10 Although this

pair was evidently coined with the assumption of a male subject position, examples I share below

from the modern and contemporary eras clearly demonstrate masculine semantic reinscription.

Yet, the terminological histories below also illustrate that men’s roles in the (re)shaping of these

key terms was sometimes positive in intent if not in effect. More importantly for my purposes

here, they show that women have at times successfully reclaimed and redefined words, and, in

the case of “sh!nen ai,” recast females in the subject position of an ostensibly all-male sphere.

As I will demonstrate in the remainder of this chapter, it is productive to consider the

coinage and adoption as well as denotative and connotative redefinition of these words in the

"man ribu, rezubian and sh!jo manga [girls’ comics] spheres in terms of the concept of

10
While female-female erotic practices in early modern Japan have been documented, they were not
codified on a par with nanshoku. See Gary P. Leupp, “‘The Floating World is Wide…’: Some Suggested
Approaches to Researching Female Homosexuality in Tokugawa Japan (1603–1868),” Thamyris 5, no. 1 (1998);
and Morishita Misako, “S izen no koto,” Imago 2, no. 2 (August 1991).

82
“transfiguration,” introduced in chapter one. To examine key words with an eye toward ways

they have been transfigured invites us to look not just for a moment of coinage, import, or

redefinition, or for the person(s) responsible, but for the multiplex processes over time factoring

into what and how words come to mean in inherently and indelibly transnational contexts. It also

draws our attention to the words’ reverberations in the lives of individuals and in communities,

as well as in and beyond the culture at large.

Framed in this manner, it should be evident that the life of a word is often a complex one.

In a project such as this, moreover, we must remain always cognizant that each person has her or

his own idiolectic sense of a word and that words carry different valences in different social

spheres, as well as that shifts in the meaning and usage of a word in one sphere do not

necessarily have a significant effect on others. To begin to get at this complexity, this chapter is

much broader in scope and draws upon an archive chronologically and materially more

far-ranging than subsequent chapters on translation and travel. Specifically, I examine the usage

reflected in dictionaries of new words; literature; sexological texts and sexological discourse of a

somewhat less scientific bent; pornography; newspapers; popular magazines aimed at various

populations; sh!jo manga and related magazines; and non-commercial magazines, newsletters,

and other ephemera from the ribu, rezubian, and gender-bending sh!jo manga spheres. I also

draw from interviews with individuals, female and male, in these spheres to clarify empirical

details as well as to incorporate reflections on the personal significance of these words.

83
The “Arrival” of “!man ribu”

The moniker “!man ribu” is a Japanese transliteration of the “not quite”11 English phrase

“woman lib” and was coined not by women in the movement but by a male journalist writing for

a mainstream broadsheet. He used this new term to indicate the “women’s lib(eration)”

movement, upon what he understood as its “arrival” in Japan from the United States in 1970. The

term’s invention and quick diffusion throughout popular discourse as well as its adoption by

nascent groups of women formed to advance women’s social and sexual freedom in Japan

appears relatively straightforward. Unraveling why and how this particular expression came to

be used both as a term of derision within the popular press and in public discourse, as well as a

mark of pride within the movement itself, however, begins to reveal some of the complexity of

the processes and effects of cultural appropriation in the Japanese context, even for something as

simple as an (ostensible) loan word. Moreover, the evolution and use of “!man ribu,” like

“rezubian” and “sh"nen ai,” exemplifies the profoundly transnational nature of what it means to

be a woman in Japan.

***

By all accounts, the first instance of “!man ribu” in print was its use in the headline of an

October 4, 1970, article in the Tokyo edition of a major national newspaper, the Asahi shinbun,

written by male journalist Ninagawa Masao (1938–).12 This was the initial article in a series

introducing the movement which, Ninagawa tells readers in the headline, had “at last arrived” in

the “male paradise” that was Japan and was already spreading around the country. Early ribu

activist and translator Akiyama Y!ko, who was herself interviewed for that article, concurs that

Ninagawa most likely coined the term, and, regardless, it is clear that the article and those that

11
I borrow this term from Homi K. Bhabha, The Location of Culture (London: Routledge, 1994), 122.
12
Asahi shinbun, “"man ribu, ‘dansei tengoku’ ni j!riku,” October 4, 1970, morning ed., 24.

84
followed were pivotal in its popularization—a function, no doubt, of their prominent appearance

in the Tokyo daily.13

The word “!man” itself has long been a part of modern Japanese vernacular. Kadokawa

Shoten’s Dictionary of Loan Words cites, for instance, the use of “!man” as early as 1885, by

male writer, translator, educator, and public intellectual, Tsubouchi Sh!y!.14 Its currency a

quarter of a century later is evidenced, for example, by its use in the title of the magazine "man

karento [Women’s trends], founded in 1923. This particular usage of “!man,” it might be noted,

demonstrates the same disregard for the “need” for English grammatical inflections as is found in

“!man ribu”—that is, both the magazine title and the feminist movement moniker use not

“women’s”/“uimenzu” but “woman”/“!man.” While the latter was ultimately adopted, some ribu

and, later, feminist writers did use the former locution, including prior to Ninagawa’s fateful

series of articles.15 As these usages of “!man” exemplify, the absence of a plural form in the

Japanese language has meant that, like other grammatical inflections, the plural form of words

from other languages is often altered or eliminated when words are adopted into Japanese. In the

13
My discussion here is based on an interview I conducted with Akiyama (March 2009), her own writing
on this series of articles, and Sait! Masami’s analysis of these articles. See Akiyama Y!ko, Ribu shishi n#to:
onnatachi no jidai kara (T!ky!: Inpakuto Shuppan Kai, 1993), 35–50; Sait! Masami, “‘"man ribu to media’ ‘ribu
to joseigaku’ no dansetsu o saik! suru: 1970-nen aki Asahi shinbun tonai-ban no ribu h!d! o kiten toshite,”
Joseigaku nenp# 24 (2003). While Akiyama relies on her memory to name Ninagawa as the likely coiner of the term,
Sait!’s research, like mine, turns up no evidence of the use of “!man ribu” prior to Ninagawa’s. See ibid., 5.
While the series was printed in the Tokyo edition and not distributed nationwide, Tokyo is in many respects
arguably the cultural, intellectual, and information capital of modern and contemporary Japan. Moreover, the Asahi
was (and is) widely read by people with significant cultural influence, including journalists who would write about
the movement as well as ribu activists in the Tokyo region.
14
Gairaigo jiten (ed., Arakawa Soobei), 1979, Kadokawa Shoten, s.v., “!man.” We must, of course,
remain aware that the Gairaigo jiten, like other dictionaries which offer word origins, cannot be regarded as
indexing the definitive moment when a word entered the language or even the first time it was found in print. In the
case of “!man” as well as “feminizumu” and “feminisuto” it provides a close enough approximation of when the
words entered Japanese and their meanings for my purposes. In the case of “resubian,” one of the two terms upon
which I focus, its information is not precise enough. Specifically, it is off by nearly forty years in its suggestion that
the first usage was in Morris Leopold Ernst and David Goldsmith Loth, Amerika jin no sei seikatsu, trans. Nakaoka
Hir! (Akatsuki Shoten, 1949).
15
See, e.g., Charlotte Bunch-Weeks, interview with Kurita Reiko, in Josei kaih# und# shiry# 1: Amerika
hen, ed. Josei Kaih! Und! Junbi Kai (hereafter JKUJK) (Tokyo: Josei Kaih! Und! Junbi Kai, 1970), 42; and
Feminisuto no. 2, “Josei bunka no fukurami o!” (October 1977).

85
postwar decades leading up to 1970, “!man” remained current enough to appear with some

frequency in the media as a stand-alone word and in Japanized English phrases. Moreover, of

course, anyone young enough to have received at least some English language instruction in

school, thus a majority of the population, would have by 1970 no doubt been familiar with a

word as basic as “woman”/“!man.”16

The term “ribu,” however, indeed seems to have “arrived” in 1970, initially finding its

way into print around six months prior to “!man ribu.” Its first use in the Asahi shinbun, for

example, may have been in a March 28 article, not two months, incidentally, after the phrase

“women’s lib” first appeared in the pages of the New York Times.17 The Asahi article explains

that “ribu”—which it first writes in capital Roman letters, i.e., “LIB”—is short for

“LIBERATION” and has been making daily appearances in the mass media in the United States.

The American liberation movement, it tells readers, splintered off from the student civil rights

group Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and, based in part on an anti-capitalist

philosophy, the “braless” “redstockings” in the US “lib movement” intend to “crush ‘male

society.”18 A month later, under the heading “Lib, not love!” in its “New words ’70” column,

the daily Yomiuri shinbun regales its readers with details about the US women’s liberation

movement, recounting how “braless” lib activists have been protesting at beauty pageants and

16
English was compulsory at middle schools by the early decades of the twentieth century for both boys
and—with the exception of 1941–1945—girls; and made compulsory at the high school and university levels in
1947. See Robert M. McKenzie, “The Complex and Rapidly Changing Sociolinguistic Position of the English
Language in Japan: A Summary of English Language Contact and Use,” Japan Forum 20, no. 2 (2008): 271.
17
Asahi shinbun, “Bu’tsubuse ‘dansei shakai’: bei de LIB und!,” March 28, 1970, evening ed., 10.
Marylin Bender, “The Women Who’d Trade in Their Pedestal for Total Equality,” New York Times February 4,
1970, Family Style: 30. I found no earlier examples of “ribu” and “women’s lib,” respectively, in a search of the
full-text electronic archives of the Asahi shinbun, the Yomiuri shinbun or the New York Times.
18
Founded in 1969 by Shulamith Firestone, among others, the Redstockings were a radical feminist
organization, whose name represents a reclaiming of “bluestocking,” a term sometimes disparagingly applied to
feminist intellectuals many decades earlier and which was transfigured into the name of an early twentieth century
Japanese feminist group Seit!sha [the Bluestocking society] and their journal, Seit" [Bluestocking] (1911–1916).
The American group lives on to the present and maintains a website, Redstockings (http://www.redstockings.org/),
which archives their writings and documents past and recent activism.

86
the offices of Playboy and Ladies’ Home Journal.19 While the former article makes a legitimate

attempt to explain the rationale behind “lib” philosophy, each draws attention both to the

women’s libbers’ choice to go braless, thus painting them as crude or hysterical, and to the

apparent threat these women represent to men. Noting that lib is spreading in Europe, the author

of the latter article wonders when a spark from the lib flame will reach Japan’s shores.

In the pages of the July issue of the venerable women’s monthly Fujin k!ron [Women’s

debate] (1916–), a venue more sympathetic toward the idea of raising women’s social status, yet

another male writer uses “ribu,” this time in an article in which he describes the US women’s

liberation movement as potentially edifying for Zenky!t!, which had coordinated the student

uprisings that began on university campuses around Japan in the late 1960s.20 This article also

links the initial use of the word “lib”—presumably, but not explained as, “liberation”—to SDS.21

The writer of this article, Suzuki Tadashi, a student at the prestigious Kyoto University and

involved in the Japanese student movement, had established direct ties to SDS. Suzuki reports

that SDS members in San Francisco bombarded him with questions about what he called in his

article “Nihon no ribu” [Japanese lib]—perhaps the first time the Japanese movement was

labeled as such in the commercial press. While Suzuki was unable to adequately answer the

questions posed to him by SDS members, he was himself interested in increasing the number of

women in the Japanese student movement. This curiosity about the “secret” of women’s

liberation—and perhaps a lack of awareness that many women were leaving SDS because of its

institutionalized sexism—moved him to ask “Mary,” a lib activist.22 She explained that it was

not just about middleclass women liberated by free sex and reproductive planning, perhaps all

19
Akazuka Yukio, “Shin go ’70: rabu yori ribu o!” Yomiuri shinbun April 19, 1970, morning ed., 23.
20
Suzuki Tadashi, “Zenky!t! wa ‘ribu’ ni manabu,” Fujin k!ron 55, no. 7 (July 1970).
21
Ibid. 184.
22
On institutionalized sexism within SDS, see Kathy McAfee and Myrna Wood, “Bread and Roses,”
Leviathan 1, no. 3 (1969).

87
Suzuki learned from this encounter.23 Regardless of what Suzuki was able to take away,

however, it was certainly too late, if not too little, as, by the time the article hit the newsstands,

women were already beginning to break away from the Zenky!t!-led student movement and the

student movement itself was beginning to collapse.

Outside of the commercial press, “ribu” was also in use at least by mid-1970 within the

movement that would by year’s end be widely referred to by that term. Its early use, however,

seems to derive from (male-authored) Japanese media accounts, such as those just noted, rather

than direct contact.24 In May of 1970, a handful of women in Fukuoka city formed a group they

called “Ribu FUKUOKA” (writing “ribu” in the katakana script and their location in capital

Roman letters); this was probably the first group to use “ribu” in its name.25 Group member

“S.F.” later wrote that they chose the name “ribu” based on the fragmented and sensational bits

of information they got from the media about the American women’s liberation movement, and

while the use of “ribu” in their name “gave the impression that we were directly influenced by

[that] lib movement, we hardly knew anything about the actual lib movement. It was just that,

now, this new women’s movement was springing up globally and we drew strength from a sense

of connection to it.”26 By August prominent activist Tanaka Mitsu was using “ribu und!” [lib

movement] in early versions of her influential “Liberation from the Toilet” (Benjo kara kaih!)

pamphlet to refer specifically to the American movement—about which, she too makes clear,
23
Suzuki, “Zenky!t! wa ribu ni manabu,” 185.
24
Some feminist-minded American anti-war protestors had entered Japan by 1969 and were quickly
sharing information about the nascent American women’s liberation movement and, while it seems quite plausible
that the word “ribu” may have entered Japanese through them, I have yet found no evidence thereof. Akiyama,
interview; Larry Taub, interview with author, April 2009; Akiyama, Ribu shishi n!to, 15–24, 139–53 passim; see
also Asahi shinbun, “"man ribu, ‘dansei tengoku’ ni j!riku.”
25
See “Memo,” in Shiry! Nihon "man ribu shi, 3 vols., ed. Mizoguchi Akiyo, Saeki Junko, and Miki S!ko
(Kyoto: Shokad! Shoten, 1992–1994), vol. 1, 272. On the masthead of its mini-komi (newsletter/zine), the group
wrote “ribu” in the katakana script (used to indicate loan words) and the place name “Fukuoka” in all capital Roman
letters. See the illustration of the mini-komi in ibid., vol. 1, 273. See also Onna kara onnatachi e [Osaka], “Gur#pu
dayori,” no. 1 (March 1972): 5.
26
S.F., “Ribu FUKUOKA no koto” (1985), in Mizoguchi, Saeki, and Miki, Shiry! Nihon "man ribu shi,
vol. 1, 290.

88
she has learned what little she knows from the Japanese press.27 In the distinction she

deliberately draws in these early writings between the Japanese “onna kaih! und!” or “josei

kaih! und!” [both, women’s liberation movement] and the American “ribu und!,” we can see a

point that she and other prominent ribu leaders were quite vocal about: that, in spite of the

media’s insinuation or insistence to the contrary, the Japanese women’s liberation movement that

emerged in 1970 was local women’s organic response to conditions for women in Japan.28 An

additional instance of “ribu” in the non-commercial media prior to Ninagawa’s article can be

found in a Japanese-language pamphlet on the US women’s liberation movement that served as a

reference to Ninagawa.29 As we shall see, this particular instance may have played a significant

role in the coinage of “"man ribu.”

So now we have established the presence of both “"man” and “ribu” and the emergence

of a new movement of women activists. Remaining to sort out is how these came together—and,

later, apart.

***

27
Tanaka Mitsu, interview with author, July 2009. Multiple versions of this pamphlet were published:
Tanaka Mitsu, “Josei kaih! e no kojinteki shiten” (August 1970), reproduced in Ribu Shinjuku Sentaa Shiry! Hozon
Kai (hereafter, RSSSHK), Ribu Shinjuku Sentaa shiry! sh"sei: bira hen, 5; Tanaka Mitsu, “Benjo kara no kaih!”
(August 1970), reproduced in ibid., 4.
While the pamphlet “Josei kaih! e no kojinteki shiten” [A personal perspective on women’s liberation],
published before “Benjo kara no kaih!,” has a different title and differs somewhat in content, Tanaka already begins
to use the concept of women as benjo [toilets] and the section on the American lib movement is substantially
unchanged (see ibid., 14), and thus I consider it an early draft of the Benjo pamphlet.
28
See., e.g., Inoue et al., “Hensh" ni attate,” in their Nihon no femimizumu 1: Ribu to feminizumu (Tokyo:
Iwanami Shoten, 1994).
Within the ribu movement, both “josei kaih! und!” and “onna kaih! und!” were used relatively
interchangeably. While both mean “women’s liberation movement” “josei” is more neutral than “onna,” which has a
more direct and, particularly at the time, a more vulgar nuance to it. As noted in chapter one, it is the power of the
latter term that many members of the ribu movement hoped to harness in their adoption there of. In an interview
with me, however, Tanaka Mitsu corrected my use of “josei kaih! und!,” explaining that to her it was always “onna
kaih! und!.” Her own handwritten words in pamphlets she created in 1970 to recruit women to join her in the fight
for women’s liberation demonstrate the unreliability of memory when it comes to subtle shifts in word choice,
however. See, e.g., Tanaka, “Josei kaih! e”.
29
JKUJK, Josei kaih! und! shiry! 1.

89
 Since, as is clear in his initial article, on October 4, Ninagawa saw Japan’s new women’s

movement as emanating from the US, his application of “ribu” is a logical extension of the new

word, which was until that point tied strongly to the American movement. His—or his

editors’—decision to conspicuously write out “women’s liberation” in English as a caption—or a

decorative heading—for no fewer than five of the dozen or so articles that appeared in the Asahi

between 4 October and 4 November reinforced the casting of this movement in a foreign light.30

Ninagawa’s own understanding of the connection was no doubt reinforced for him by the fact

that he interviewed not Tanaka, whose knowledge of the US women’s liberation movement was

very limited, but Akiyama, who was herself interested in the US movement and who, with a

small group of others, had already informally released a pamphlet on the US women’s liberation

movement in order to provide accurate information about the American movement and counter

the ridicule it was receiving in the Japanese media.31 The pamphlet contain two articles

translated from English and an interview with American activist Charlotte Bunch (1944–).32

Ninagawa, in fact, mentions in the first article that this pamphlet served as a reference to him.33

In both translated articles in the fifty-page pamphlet the original English “women’s

liberation”—rather than “women’s lib”—is rendered “josei kaih!” [women’s liberation]. In

Kurita Reiko’s interview with Bunch, conducted during a visit by Bunch to Japan, Kurita uses

“ribu” throughout. While we can speculate that Ninagawa’s interest in the topic if not his work

as a journalist would have brought him into contact with at least one of the few earlier articles in

30
Even in advertisements, English words were seldom used in the newspapers of the early 1970s I
examined, and I never encountered other examples of English words serving as a caption for a newspaper article.
31
JKUJK, Josei kaih! und! shiry!, 48.
32
These articles are Kathy McAfee and Myrna Wood, “Bread and Roses,” Leviathan 1, no. 3 (1969),
published in Japanese as “Pan to bara,” in JKUJK, Josei kaih! und! shiry! 1; Marge Piercy, “The Grand Coolie
Dam,” Leviathan 1, no. 6 (1969), published in Japanese as “Idai na k!r": josei,” trans. Akiyama Y#ko, in ibid.; and
Charlotte Bunch-Weeks, interview with Kurita Reiko, in ibid. Bunch was using the surname Bunch-Weeks at the
time.
33
Asahi shinbun, “$man ribu, ‘dansei tengoku’ ni j#riku.”

90
the popular press which “ribu” is used, it seems likely that the word’s use in this pamphlet as

well as, perhaps, by Akiyama, either led him to use the term when writing about this new

Japanese movement, or at least supported his choice to do so. Most curious, however, is that in

the opening of the Bunch interview, handwritten, as is the whole pamphlet, Kurita writes out

“josei kaih!,” providing it a full superscript gloss of “uimenzuribu [sic]” [women’s lib], after

which she abbreviated it to “ribu.”34 Whether Ninagawa did not notice this transliterated gloss

or did not find it striking enough for his purposes, the fact is that before Ninagawa coined “"man

ribu” a more accurate transliteration was in circulation within the nascent ribu community—of

which Ninagawa may have been aware. And yet, it was a term coined by this male journalist

rather than the transliteration drafted by a ribu activist-cum-translator which became the name

for the new movement.

Regardless of the choice, oversight, or indifference leading Ninagawa to use “"man” over

“uimenzu” to introduce this new movement, it is clear that he needed a term that would sound

novel to the mass reading public or at least distinguish these activists from their foresisters.

Drawing from an interview she conducted with Ninagawa, sociolinguist Sait! Masami suggests

that it would have been difficult for Ninagawa to be allowed to run articles about the movement

under the banner of “josei kaih! und!” or “onna kaih! und!” [both, women’s liberation

movement], the two terms most widely used in early movement writings, or fujin kaih! und!

[women’s, or ladies’, liberation movement], a more old-fashion sounding term, as none of these

34
Bunch-Weeks, interview, 42. Notes from the Second Year, it merits observing, favored “women’s
liberation” and “feminism”/“feminist.” Whether uimenzuribu/women’s lib came from the interview itself or it was
added by Kurita is unclear.

91
existing terms would convey a sense of something new or newsworthy.35 Moreover, in headlines

certainly “!man ribu” in bold katakana script was bound to attract more attention.

Rather than coining this new term, however, there are several transliterated loan word

alternatives Ninagawa might have chosen that would have reflected his understanding of the

movement as having come from abroad, words that were also used within and about the new

American women’s movement: “feminizumu” [feminism] and “feminisuto” [feminist]. Both

words were introduced into Japanese by at least the Taish! era (1912–1926). Kadokawa’s

Dictionary of Loan Words offers writer Nagai Kaf"’s novel Sh"taku [The mistress’s home]

(1912) as an early use of “feminizumu” with the meaning, belief in women’s rights (joken

shugi).36 It also provides Kikuchi Kan’s Tomo to tomo no aida [Between friends] (1922) as an

early use of “feminisuto” with the meaning, a believer in the praising of women (josei sanbi

shugi). While the second usage the dictionary lists for “feminisuto,” with the meaning, a believer

in women’s rights (joken shugi sha), also comes from Kikuchi (Teis" mond" [Dialogue on

virtue], 1935), it was something closer to the earlier meaning that was to quickly crystallize and

would predominate through at least the 1970s. A perusal of dozens of dictionaries of new words

and jargon from the 1920s and 1930s, finds some ten volumes which have an entry for

“feminizumu,” all of which indicate it means advocating women’s rights.37 “Feminisuto” only

appears in two of those same volumes. In both cases, while the entries make links to feminizumu,

35
Sait! Masami, “#man ribu to media,” 7. Widely used throughout much of the modern era to indicate an
adult, presumably married female, “fujin” was by the 1970s showing signs of age, and had a rather old-fashioned
ring to it, much like the English word “lady.” While through the 1960s and even beyond, there are many instances in
which “woman” would be a more appropriate translation, I use “lady” here to draw attention to the word’s
antiquated tone.
36
Gairaigo jiten (ed., Arakawa Soobei), 1979, Kadokawa Shoten, s.v., “feminizumu,” “feminisuto.”
This story can be found in his collection Shinbashi yawa [Evening tales of Shinbashi] (1912), which was
published in November, several months into the Taisho era (1912-1926). While I have not yet been able to locate the
original, the story is likely to have first appeared serialized in a periodical prior to this. The dictionary offers no
initial publication date.
37
Matsui Shigekazu, Sone Hiroyoshi, and $ya Yukiyo, eds., Kindai y"go no jiten sh!sei, 42 vols. (Tokyo:
$zora Sha, 1994–1996), vols. 10, 12, 23, 28, 29, 30, 32, 34, 35, s.v., “feminizumu.”

92
they also make it clear that—in a stark deviation from English—the primary meaning associated

with “feminisuto” is that of a man who praises and or treats women well, suggesting that this

latter meaning was already firmly established by the 1930s.38 Although I was able to find

occasional instances in the popular press of feminisuto used to indicate a person or people who

believe in feminism/feminizumu, these cases were either translations from another language or

referring to feminisuto in another country, occasionally glossed to explain the intended

meaning.39 Ultimately, while neither of these words was widely used in the middle of the

twentieth century, based on their occasional use in print media, we can surmise that

“feminizumu” would have been somewhat familiar at least to educated readers and consequently

might have lacked the immediacy that Ninagawa wanted to convey. Moreover, if “feminisuto”

would have given most readers entirely the wrong impression, the similarity of “feminizumu” to

“feminisuto” might also have been cause for confusion.40

There was one other ostensible loan word new to Japanese that Ninagawa might have

considered, and which might have influenced his coinage of “!man ribu”—namely, “!man

pawaa,” a transliteration of the “English” expression “woman power.” This term was introduced

to readers of the Asahi in October 1968 in an article on women in the work force by female

38
Of the two volumes with entries for “feminisuto,” one, the Modan jiten [Modern dictionary], published
in 1930, gives “josei raisan sha” [a praiser of women] as the primary definition and “joken shugi sha” [a believer in
women’s rights] as the secondary. See Matsui, Sone, and !ya, Kindai y"go no jiten sh!sei, vol. 12, s.v.
“feminisuto.” The 1933 Shinbun shingo jiten [Dictionary of new newspaper vocabulary] explains that a “feminisuto”
may be an advocate of women’s rights or an adherent of feminizumu; to this it adds, however, that, “in general, a
person who respects women and treats them kindly is called a feminisuto.” See Matsui, Sone, and !ya, Kindai y"go
no jiten sh!sei, vol. 36, s.v. “feminisuto.”
39
Akiyama notes that “feminizumu” was “not generally used” in 1970. See Akiyama, Ribu shishi n"to, 58.
Most of the several dozen instances I was able to find of “feminisuto” in the Asahi and the Yomiuri prior to the late
1970s use the Japan-specific meaning, with the exception of translated articles and articles specifically about
women’s activism abroad. One article in the Yomiuri in late 1977 spells out that the understanding of a feminist as
an adherent of the principle of “ladies first” is a Japanese invention. See Yomiuri shinbun, “Mi no mawari katakana
no kotoba: feminisuto,” August 31, morning ed. 1977: 12.
40
The lack of currency of “feminizumu” and the lack of correspondence of “feminisuto” to “feminist”
made translating these terms a challenge for the translators of Shulamith Firestone and Anne Koedt, ed., Notes from
the Second Year (New York: Radical Feminists, 1970), a collection of radical second-wave feminist writing from
the US. See Akiyama, Ribu shishi n"to, 58–59.

93
social critic Kageyama Y!ko (1932–2005) and then garnered additional attention in both the

Asahi and the Yomiuri surrounding the “National meeting on the development and utilization of

woman power” held in Tokyo in June 1969, for which Kageyama was acting as a spokesperson

and, again, which focused on women’s labor issues.41 An article in the Yomiuri makes a link

between !man pawaa and black power (buraku pawaa) and student power (such!dento pawaa)

yet defines the term as “fujin r"d"ryoku” [women’s/ladies’ labor power] rather than something

related to activist claims for broad civil and social rights.42 The meaning of !man pawaa would

very quickly blur in newspaper articles with !man ribu, and examples can be found of its use in

reference to the US with a meaning akin to “women’s liberation” even before Ninagawa coined

“!man ribu.” Yet, perhaps the expression’s association in the Asahi specifically with women in

the work force—an association which is decidedly more old-school liberal feminist than the

issues of immediate concern to this new movement—rendered “!man pawaa” inappropriate for

his introduction of this new wave of women’s activism.43 Given Ninagawa’s interest in and

awareness of women’s issues, however, it is easy to see how, whether consciously or not, he

might have been mimicking the grammar of this expression when he coined “!man ribu.”

***

41
Kageyama Y!ko, “"man pawaa: ry# kara shitsu e no tankan, hogo kitei mo o-nimotsu ni,” Asahi
shinbun October 31, 1968, evening ed., 7. In Japanese the meeting was called “"man pawaa no kaihatsu to katsuy#
zenkoku taikai.”
42
Yomiuri shinbun, “Saidoraito: !man pawaa,” June 17, 1969, evening ed., 1.
43
Already on October 22, “!man pawaa” was used in the caption of a photograph in the Asahi of ribu
activists struggling with security forces in Ginza, Tokyo. See Asahi shinbun, “Yarimasu wa yo, ‘onna kaih#’: !man
ribu Ginza ni ‘otoko wa toridase’ kid#tai mo tajitaji,” October 22, 1970, morning ed., 3. And as early as November
15, 1970, an article in the Yomiuri used “!man power” to describe a meeting organized by several ribu groups,
including Tanaka’s Group Fighting Women: Yomiuri shinbun, “Kobushi, ky#sei roku jikan, !man pawaa s#kessh!,”
November 15, 1970, morning ed., 13. Tanaka herself uses it in reference to the American lib movement in a 1970
pamphlet: Tanaka, “Josei kaih# e no kojinteki shiten,” 5. An example from the popular press of its usage in
association with women’s liberation in the US prior to the use of “!man ribu” can be found in the September 14
issue of Sh!kan bunshun, “Zenbei !man pawaa no shid#sha wa Nihonjin no tsuma: josei kaih# no “M# goroku” o
kaita Keeto Yoshimura,” September 14, 1970. Almost twenty years later, journalist and activist Matsui Yayori was
using the term to describe the Philippines’ Corazon Aquino. See Matsui Yayori, Onna-tachi no Ajia (Tokyo:
Iwanami Shoten, 1987), 11–38.

94
 Like the emergence of the movement itself, the adoption of the terms “!man ribu” and

“ribu” by the women in the movement seems organic rather than planned and occurred in the

face of several factors that might have forestalled it. The simplest of these factors to explain is

the question of why the words were used in spite of their negative association in the media. In

popular and academic writing on the treatment of the ribu movement in the media, as well as the

words of several dozen women in and outside the movement I have interviewed since 2006, the

standard narrative is that male-run mass media establishment ridiculed !man ribu, accusing its

adherents of being hysterical women engaged in irrational antics, and at times, of being

unattractive and unable to get a man, or, alternatively, of being obsessed with sex. The image of

the “!man ribu” activists as objects of (and, to some, worthy of) widespread mocking and scorn

lingers to this day. Yet, as Sait! reminds us, some of the initial treatment of the !man ribu

movement, particularly Ninagawa’s series in the Asahi, was largely positive and sympathetic and

attempted to give ribu activists a voice in the media.44 While not exactly denying this point, in a

recent interview with me Tanaka disagreed. She explained that regardless of Ninagawa’s

sympathy, the way the women were portrayed even in those early articles left them open to

ridicule in public discourse.45 Yet, even if we allow that the word was first used ambivalently at

best, rather than simply as a mark of derision, “!man ribu” could at the very least be seen to

symbolize establishment acknowledgement of the cause of these activists, despite the positive

and the negative accounts and consistent misrepresentation of ribu as an import from the US.

This mistaken association with the US movement is the other major issue that might have

forestalled the adoption of “ribu” and “!man ribu” in the community: namely, that to choose

44
While seems is fair to say that when lib activists and scholars look back on media coverage, they tend
concentrate on the ridicule !man ribu was subjected to, Sait! overgeneralizes academic writing on the subject. Inoue
Teruko, for instance, is far more nuanced in her assessment of media coverage in her Joseigaku to sono sh!hen
(Tokyo: Keis! Shob!, 1980) than Sait! gives her credit for. See Sait!, “"man ribu to media,” 1.
45
Tanaka, interview.

95
these terms supported the idea that the movement was imported even as many of the women

directly involved understood it as local in origin. As noted above, the members of Ribu

FUKUOKA appropriated the word “ribu” out of a sense of connection with their US

counterparts, but with little knowledge of what was actually going on in the US. The members of

Radical Ribu Group (Radikaru Ribu Gur!pu), which formed in November 1970, a month or so

after the word “!man ribu” hit the newsstands—espoused the new term as it symbolized

something completely different from the old-fashioned image of the fujin und" [“ladies’ ”

movement] and acknowledged that “ribu” was “born in America and … is spreading globally.”

Yet, at the same time, they argue that the idea promulgated in the mass media that Japan’s “ribu

und"” was simply imported from the US—and, by implication, out of place in Japan—is

“meaningless criticism.” This criticism, they suggest, likely stems from the fact that the same

issues the American lib activists are criticizing resonate in Japan. And, they speculate, perhaps

the men who criticize them are afraid of the fact that the grudges women bear in Japan are even

stronger than those among women in the US.46 Also by November, “!man ribu” was appearing

in materials put out by Tanaka’s Group Fighting Women (Gur!pu Tatakau Onna), and, in spite

of her misgivings both about its use in the media and the sense of importedness it carried, she

herself ultimately adopted it to name her own theory of women’s liberation, articulated in her

influential book, To Women with Spirit: A Disorderly Theory of #man Ribu.47

Miki S"ko, prominent in the Kansai ribu movement, explains that, to her, “!man ribu”

didn’t have the baggage of existing Japanese words and thus appealed to activists in the new

46
Radikaru Ribu Gur!pu ts!shin, “Dai-san no sei” (November 29, 1970), in Mizoguchi, Saeki, and Miki,
Shiry" Nihon !man ribu shi, vol. 1, 111.
47
Tanaka, interview; Tanaka Mitsu, Inochi no onnatachi e: torimidashi !man ribu ron (Tokyo: Tabata
Shoten, 1972). I borrow the term “disorderly” in my translation of this title from Setsu Shigematsu (personal
correspondence). “#man ribu” appears glossed as “onna kaih"” [women’s liberation], for instance, in a pamphlet
dated November 3, 1970, and produced by Tanaka’s Gur!pu Tatakau Onna (reproduced in Tanaka, Inochi no
onnatachi e, 310–13).

96
movement.48 The fact is, however, that “!man ribu” functioned merely as the most

attention-grabbing name (and, for some, epithet) for a movement of loosely knit groups around

the country which continued to describe themselves as working toward onna kaih" or josei kaih"

[both, women’s liberation]. Miki, wont to claim “ribu” as specifically and uniquely Japanese,

forgets or overlooks the fact that from the term’s coinage it was often used as a universal label

for the second wave of activist feminism both within and outside of Japan and in some cases

applied anachronistically, such as in the title of an Asahi article about Ichikawa Fusae, a prewar

women’s suffrage activist and postwar outspoken feminist politician, and in the translation of the

title of Trevor Lloyd’s Suffragettes International as “One hundred years of !man ribu.”49

Miki’s suggestion that the term was relatively neutral when introduced to Japanese helps

to emphasize a critical point I have already touched on, however. When this new expression was

adopted as the de facto moniker of the movement, most activists knew very little about

“women’s lib” in the United States. As discussed in chapter four, Akiyama and the others

engaged in translating early radical feminist writing from the US began to do so precisely

because there was virtually no information about the American liberation movement available in

Japanese. To be sure, to Ninagawa and much of the mass media establishment, his term “!man

ribu” pointed specifically to an imported women’s movement. Yet, to a majority of women

engaged in this new activist movement in Japan, it represented, at most, a sense of solidarity with

an American or more global women’s liberation movement. Thus, to these activist women, it

was able to function in effect as a not quite empty signifier, open to inscription with their own

meanings which to them bore little evidence of being imported or derived from abroad. The

result was a transfigured notion of onna kaih" or josei kaih" and a transfigured term, “!man

48
Miki S!ko, interview with author, July 2006.
49
Asahi shinbun, “"man ribu,” November 5, 1970, morning ed., 23; Trevor Owen Lloyd, #man ribu no
hyaku nen: “j!jun na” josei kara “tatakau josei” e, trans. Tashiro Yasuko (1970; Tokyo: Tsuru Shoten, 1972).

97
ribu” that, while bearing denotative and connotative similarities to “women’s lib,” was clearly

not the same, particularly to members of the ribu community.

***

Ultimately, however, in the sphere of public discourse, the ribu women were unable to

control the meaning or image of “!man ribu.” Among the public at large today, “ribu” is now

more closely associated with the flamboyant protests ridiculed on the evening news and talk

shows, and in the press, such as the antics of the pink-helmeted pro-birth control pill,

pro-abortion rights group Ch!piren group led by Enoki Misako than the radical philosophy

behind Tanaka’s activism.50 Nakanishi Toyoko, founder of Japan’s first women’s bookstore,

Sh"kad", in Kyoto, recalls that the negative valence and images associated with the term made it

impossible at the beginning of the 1990s to find an existing commercial publisher to put out a

compendium of ribu mini-komi, pamphlets, and other ephemera from the movement.51

The fossilization of the term’s meaning can also be attributed to the weakening of the

ribu movement itself and the emergence of new visible manifestations of feminist activism and

scholarship. As noted in chapter two, the ribu movement began to lose steam when, among other

things, Tanaka, decided not to return from Mexico City, where she had gone, in part, to attend

the first United Nations World Conference on Women in 1975. Soon thereafter, inspired in part

by the ribu women as well as by American feminist activism and scholarship, the field of

women’s studies (joseigaku) began to emerge at Japanese universities and a new more

intellectual and less activist Japanese feminism began to develop, reviving the word

50
Ch!piren is discussed in chapter two. On Tanaka’s theory of !man ribu, see Setsu Shigematsu, “Tanaka
Mitsu and the Women’s Liberation Movement in Japan: Towards a Radical Feminist Ontology” (PhD diss. Cornell
University, 2003), and The Women’s Liberation Movement in Japan (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press,
forthcoming); and Tanaka Mitsu, Inochi no onnatachi e.
51
Nakanishi Toyoko, Onna no hon’ya (uimenzu bukkusutoa) no monogatari (Tokyo: Domesu Shuppan,
2006), 161. This was resolved by Nakanishi’s bookstore publishing it: Mizoguchi, Saeki, and Miki, Shiry" Nihon
!man ribu shi.

98
“feminizumu” and reclaiming the word “feminisuto.”52 Thinking back, writer and actress

Nakayama Chinatsu (1948–), who was involved in ribu in the 1970s, believes that the word

“died” around 1975, but as of the late 1980s, she “was still calling [herself] ribu in her heart.”53

The editors of the new journal Feminisuto [Feminist]—so titled as part of an effort to

redefine and, thus, reclaim the term—saw “feminizumu” as more cultural than “uimenzu

ribareeshon” [women’s liberation]—probably pointing here to the movement in the US as well

as in Japan.54 Whether the editors would themselves frame it as such, based on the contents and

tone of the magazine, it seems clear that “cultural” implied a certain cosmopolitan elitism these

women did not see in the US women’s liberation movement or in ribu.55 When Feminisuto was

first published, the association with the traditional meaning of a “feminisuto”—a man who

sweet-talks women—remained strong enough that apparently at some bookstores the magazine

was at first mistakenly shelved with the men’s magazines.56 Evidence of feminists’ ultimate

success in redefining the term can be found with younger people inside and outside my larger

project’s three focal communities with whom I have spoken, who are, for the most part, unaware

of the earlier meaning of the word.57 This does not, however, mean that women whose ideas and

52
Atsumi et al., “Hachi nin no feminisuto ni yoru ny! feminisuto sengen: josei no gawa kara ningen kaih"
shugi (feminizumu) o teigen,” Feminisuto no. 8 (November 1978). On the emergence of women’s studies in Japan,
see Inoue Teruko, Joseigaku to sono sh!hen (Tokyo: Keis" Shob", 1980).
53
Nakayama Chinatsu, Gendai Nihon josei no kibun (Tokyo: Mainichi Shinbun Sha, 1987), 15.
54
Feminisuto, “Josei bunka no fukurami o!”; see also Vera Mackie, Feminism in Modern Japan
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 161.
55
Early issues included interviews with figures such as Erica Jong and Yoko Ono and articles about
women’s studies at US universities, e.g., Atsumi Ikuko, “Erika Jongu no tetsugaku: y!morasu na shiky!teki
uch!kan,” Feminisuto no. 2 (October 1977); Matsumoto Michiko, “Ono Y"ko no tetsugaku” Feminisuto no. 1
(August 1977); and Mizuta Noriko, “Joseigaku k"za (uimenzu sutadiizu) wa gendai no gakumon taikei no kakumei
de aru: ‘joseigaku’ no taishitsu to Minami Kariforunia Daigaku no rei,” Feminisuto no. 1 (August 1977). The
magazine also attempted to produce semi-regular English editions, both to share information about Japanese
feminism with the rest of the world and, as indicated by Japanese abstracts accompanying the articles, to serve as at
the very least English reading practice for women in Japan, e.g., Feminisuto Japan, special issue of Feminisuto no. 4.
(April 1978).
56
Feminisuto no. 7, “Josei no s"z" to feminizumu” (September 1978).
57
There are, of course, exceptions. One friend of mine of around 30 years in age who is extremely fluent in
English recently (2009) told me she was not aware until I told her that there was the newer meaning and that this
meaning had supplanted the older meaning.

99
activism resonate with a broadly defined notion of feminism consider themselves to be

feminisuto, however. As Laura Dales shows, in the first decade of the twenty-first century, some

such women feel that “a feminist is one who is aware of inequality or of the difficulty of being a

woman, and this awareness has grown from a tangible, personal experience of hardship.” Thus,

the term could not possibly apply, for instance, to housewives.58 In a conversation over dinner

with four women in their forties to sixties who regularly meet to discuss English-language texts

(often on feminist themes), my own querying as to whether these women identify as “feminists”

led to an unresolved definitional discussion in which one of the four rejected the label even as

she espoused views that clearly fell under the definition she herself agreed to, namely being an

advocate of equality of social opportunity for women and men.59

While women such as Miki continue to publicly identify themselves as ribu rather than

feminisuto—except in English, in which she calls herself a “feminist”—by and large the term

remains only to name a specific sphere of 1970s feminist activism in Japan (and abroad)—that

the general public believes to have faded away long ago.60 This is likely a function of a handful

of factors, not the least of these being the media’s use of the term as a mark of derision. The shift

in the locus of the discourse on women’s social status from activists engaged on the ground, to

academics more heavily invested in intellectual dialogue with American and other feminists,

certainly contributed. If “women’s lib” had remained a popular term in the US, transnationally

engaged Japanese feminists may well have worked to hold on to rather than replace it—their

58
Laura Dales, Feminist Movements in Contemporary Japan (London: Routledge, 2009) 59, 60.
59
Dales proposes that in Japan, “feminist identification is discouraged by the cultural and linguistic
interpretations of the word. … [And] that there are many women who do not identify as feminist yet whose activities
can be seen as feminist under a certain definition.” See Dales, Feminist Movements, 62.
60
Miki’s identification as a “feminist” in English but as “ribu” in Japanese bears an uncanny resemblance
to the many individuals like Indonesian “gay” activist Dédé Oetomo, who explains that he is “gay when
speaking…English,” demonstrating a certain linguistic specificity to identity labels. See Dédé Oetomo, “‘I'm Gay
When I'm Speaking English’: Sexuality and Sexual Identity in Indonesia: An Interview with Dédé Oetomo,” by
Adam Carr, in the conference newspaper for the 6th International Congress on AIDS in Asia and the Pacific,
Melbourne, Australia, 5–10 October 2001 (October 8, 2001).

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relative success at redefining “feminisuto” suggests this might have been possible. Nevertheless,

even if the increasing predominance of the term “feminism” over “women’s lib” in the American

public was the final nail in the coffin for “!man ribu,” the roots of the term’s demise lay in shifts

in local discourse and practice.

On the Possibility of a “rezubian” Continuum

A decade into the American women’s liberation movement, lesbian-feminist Adrienne

Rich provocatively declared the presence of a “lesbian continuum,” by which she meant “a

range—through each woman's life and throughout history—of woman-identified experience,”

somewhere along which any woman might be located regardless of whether she consciously

desires a sexual relationship with another woman.61 While her claim may be bolder than most,

Rich is but one of many self-identified lesbian-feminists around the world who have attempted to

reclaim and redefine the term “lesbian.” Observing the very personal process of identification

with the term, lesbian-feminist writer Nicole Brossard has declared that “A lesbian who does not

reinvent the word is a lesbian in the process of disappearing.”62 For their part, rezubian

feminisuto in Japan have themselves repeatedly responded to their own perceived need to cast

“rezubian” in and on their own terms.63

One possible approach to the history of female gender and sexual practices in postwar

Japan would be to attempt the delineation of a different kind of continuum from that of Rich, one

that seeks not to redefine the term but that traces its history and offers at least a humble

61
Adrienne Rich, “Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence,” in her Blood, Bread, and Poetry
(New York, Norton: 1986), 51.
62
Nicole Brossard, The Arial Letter, trans. Marlene Wildeman (Toronto: Women’s Press, 1988), 122.
63
See the discussions of what it means to be a “rezu” or a “rezubian” in, e.g., Ribu n"usu: kono michi
hitosuji no. 14, “Resubian” (1974), reprinted in RSSSHK, Kono michi hitosuji: Ribu Shinjuku Sentaa shiry# sh!sei
(Tokyo: Inpakuto Shuppan Kai, 2008); Subarashii onnatachi no. 1 (1976); and Kakefuda Hiroko, “Rezubian” de
aru to iu koto (Tokyo: Kawade Shob! Shinsha, 1992).

101
genealogy not necessarily of even something as complex as what it means to identify as a

“lesbian”—or in the case of contemporary Japan, a “rezubian”—but to even begin “to identify

the accidents, the minute deviations—or conversely, the complete reversals—the errors, the false

appraisals, and the faulty calculations”64 whereby the word has come to take its current form and

meaning, and how some women have come to claim it as their own. Even a brief history of

“rezubian” makes clear that there is, in fact, no clear continuum, no figurative baton toss

stretching from the introduction of variant formulations of the word “lesbian” from Latin,

German, English, and French, and, more than half a century later, extending to the popularization

of the word “rezubian” from the 1970s onward as, for some women, a locus of identification and

a banner of pride in and celebration of their love and sexual desire for other women.

***

“Homosexuality”—hereafter in this section I use the English term in “scare quotes” to

emphasize both its fluidity and the multiple calques and transliterations used to represent it

through much of modern Japanese history—is a modern concept, one whose introduction in

Japan as early as an 1894 translation of early sexologist Richard von Krafft-Ebing’s

Psychopathia Sexualis (1886) ultimately led to a revolution in the conceptualization of and a

pathologization of same-sex sexual behavior as well as non-normative gender practices.65

Among the more dramatic changes it brought about, this novel approach to same-sex eroticism

drew new attention to same-sex affection and sexual activities between females, which were for

the first time placed conceptually on a par with those among males, even if widely considered

64
Foucault, “Nietzsche, Genealogy, History,” 146.
65
As Jim Reichert illustrates in his examination of Meiji era literature, In the Company of Men:
Representations of Male-Male Sexuality in Meiji Literature (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2006), this
transition was by no means smooth. The use of traditional terms such as nanshoku, also pronounced danshoku
[male-male eroticism], and chigo [the youthful male object of an older male’s attention] were used to connote more
modern, if historically tinged, understandings of “homosexuality” as late as the 1950s. See, e.g., Kond! Takashi,
“Danshoku henreki: aru sodomia no shuki,” F!zoku kurabu, May 1954.

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qualitatively distinct.66 While it took several decades to settle on “d!seiai” [literally, “same-sex

love”] as the translation of “homosexuality” among the half dozen or so calques in circulation,

the current form of “rezubian” was not settled upon until the mid-1970s.67 Its ultimate form and

meaning reflect the efforts of some women to take control of the discourse on female same-sex

desire as well as men’s continued dominance of that discourse in mainstream culture. As I will

show, the presence of the word “rezubian”—in its multiple contemporary permutations and

meanings—in Japanese is not the result of a simple one-time import, but rather dozens of

transnational exchanges, as well as domestic discussion and debate over much of the twentieth

century—a stretch of time when the meaning of “lesbian” was similarly unstable in the West.68

In Japan, it should be noted, until as late as the 1960s, this discourse rarely included the women

whose affectional and sexual practices the word now purports to name.69

In her groundbreaking article on same-sex love and suicide among women in modern

Japan, Jennifer Robertson describes “lesbian (rezubian)” as already a “household word” in early

1900s Japan.70 The truth of the matter, however, is complex and depends on what is implied by

both “household word” and “lesbian (rezubian).” To be sure, in the early 1910s the “female

66
See Hiruma Yukiko, “Kindai Nihon ni okeru josei d!seiai no ‘hakken,’” Kaih! shakaigaku kenky" 17
(2003); and Gregory M. Pflugfelder, Cartographies of Desire: Male-Male Sexuality in Japanese Discourse,
1600–1950 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), and “‘S’ Is for Sister: Schoolgirl Intimacy and
‘Same-Sex Love’ in Early Twentieth-Century Japan,” in Gendering Modern Japanese History, ed. Barbara Molony
and Kathleen Uno (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Asia Center, 2005).
67
On the history of translations of “homosexuality,” see Pflugfelder Cartographies of Desire, 175, 248;
Furukawa Makoto, “D!sei ‘ai’ no k!,” Imago 6, no. 12 (November 1995), and “Sekushuariti no kindai no hen’y!:
kindai Nihon no d!seiai o meguru mitsu no k!do,” Nichibei josei jaanaru 17 (1994).
68
See David M. Halperin, How to Do the History of Homosexuality (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
2002), 48–53.
69
To be sure, women were involved early on in the discourse on “homosexuality,” but with rare exception,
women were not a part of discourse in which the word “lesbian” was used. Such exceptions include Havelock Ellis,
“Joseikan no d!sei ren’ai,” trans. Yabo, Seit! 4, no. 4 (February 1914), reprint (Tokyo: Ry"kei Shosha, 1980);
Kamichika Ichiko, “Aishiau koto domo,” Shin sh!setsu, October 1921; and Yoshiya Nobuko, “D!sei ren’ai no
tokushitsu,” Shin sh!setsu, October 1921.
70
Jennifer Robertson, “Dying to Tell: Sexuality and Suicide in Imperial Japan,” Signs 25, no. 1 (1999): 9.

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homosexual” was “discovered and quickly problematized” in the media.71 Press accounts of

double-suicides of school girls, actresses, and female factory workers repeatedly drew the

public’s attention and caused anxiety about “homosexuality” among females. Yet, prior to the

war, transliterations of the word “lesbian” from any language were rare in popular magazines

and newspapers, virtually nonexistent in reference to women in Japan, about whom variant

calques of “homosexual” were applied.72 Transliterated forms of “lesbian,” as well as the related

terms “Lesbos,” “Sappho,” and “tribade,” were in use, but were largely limited to a few

specialized discourse spheres dominated by men—sexology and translated literature depicting

Sappho and the isle of Lesbos, as well as specialized dictionaries of new words referencing

usages from both genres of writing. The extent to which the public at large was familiar with and

used these terms is questionable. As in European languages, while these various related terms

would continue to have limited currency for much of the twentieth century, “lesbian” would

ultimately prevail in Japan, almost certainly a function of on-going exchange and the strongly

citational nature of pre- and postwar discourse on female “homosexuality” in Japan—including

discourse that was literary, sexological, and, eventually, activist.

From its introduction into Japanese, “lesbian” has always been a thoroughly transnational

term. Among the earliest transliterations of “lesbian” upon the initial boom in discourse on

female “homosexuality” beginning around 1911 can be found in the 1913 translation of

Krafft-Ebing’s Psychopathia Sexualis, in which the term “am!ru resubikusu,” a transliteration of

71
Hiruma, “Kindai Nihon ni okeru josei d!seiai no ‘hakken,’” 9–10.
72
Robertson’s own use of “lesbian” encompasses various Japanese expressions for female
“homosexuality” rather than the use of any variant of the word (or concept) “lesbian.” For instance, when she
translates direct quotes about the Saij!-Masuda double suicide attempt, she renders “onna d!shi no d!seiai”
[homosexuality between women] as “lesbian” and even just “d!seiai” [homosexuality] as “lesbian love.” Compare
Robertson, “Dying to Tell,” 13, 16, with Yasuda Tokutar!, “D!seiai no rekishikan,” Ch"! k!ron March 1935, 150,
and Saij! Eriko, “Dans! no reijin, Masuda Fumiko no shioerabu made,” Fujin k!ron 20, no. 3 (March 1935): 170.
The translations of article titles Robertson provides in her bibliography further illustrates her tendency to read
“d!seiai” as “lesbian” whenever it clearly indicates females.

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the Latin “amor lesbicus” and glossed as “fujin kan no ren’ai” [love between women], appears a

handful of times, along with the German-based “resubisshu” [lesbisch].73 While am!ru

resubikusu would ultimately not have much staying power, variations on the phrase “lesbian

love” would remain the primary usage of “lesbian” through the 1960s.74 In this early text

“am!ru resubikusu” is used not as a universal term for female “homosexuality” but rather refers

to non-congenital “homosexuality” among adult females. The specificity of this usage, however,

like its Latin name, would ultimately not endure.75 Although references to Sappho did not make

their way into this particular translated text,76 “Sappho” and “Lesbos” make frequent

appearances in pre- (and post-) war texts by Japanese scholars, often in the context of offering a

global, primarily Western, history of female “homosexuality”77 and occasionally explained with

the mistaken assertion that “homosexuality” among women in Japan—in contrast with men—is

simply absent from the historical record.78 In its section on Sappho, a 1928 translation of

73
Richard von Krafft-Ebing, Hentai seiyoku shinri, trans. Kurosawa Yoshitami (Tokyo: Dai Nihon
Bunmei Ky!kai, 1913), 462–64, 469, reprinted in Senzen d!seiai kanren bunken sh"sei, 3 vols., ed. Furukawa
Makoto and Akaeda Kanako (Tokyo: Fuji Shuppan, 2006).
The observation that the discourse on “homosexuality” among females saw something of a boom in 1911
comes from Hiruma, “Kindai Nihon ni okeru josei d!seiai no ‘hakken.’”
By way of contrast to Kurosawa’s choice to transliterate and provide a Japanese gloss for “amor lesbicus,”
translator of the 12th edition into English, F.J. Rebman maintains Krafft-Ebing’s original term only in several
instances and in Krafft-Ebing’s section on “amor lesbicus,” he translates it into the English “lesbian love” in spite of
the fact that medically trained readers at whom the text was ostensibly aimed would presumably be able to read the
Latin terms. See Richard von Krafft-Ebing, Psychopathia Sexualis: With Especial Reference to the Antipathic
Sexual Instinct: A Medico-Forensic Study, trans. F.J. Rebman (New York: Rebman, 1906), 321, 396, 607–11.
A year after this translation of Krafft-Ebing, a translation of Havelock Ellis’s writing on female
“homosexuality” from his Studies in the Psychology of Sex (1897-1928) was published in the feminist journal Seit!
[Bluestocking] (1911-1916), the word “Lesbianism”—unlike all other loan words in the text—appears but it is left
in English rather than being translated or transliterated. See Ellis, “Joseikan no d!sei ren’ai,” 4, 10; see also
Pflugfelder, “‘S’ Is for Sister,” 167–68.
74
It can also be found lingering in other languages. There is, for instance, an entry for “lesbian love” in
Stedman’s Medical Dictionary in the volumes I examined from the 1910s through the 1940s.
75
While, for instance, Sat! maintained the use of “am!ru resubikusu” alongside its German counterpart, in
its application he made no distinction between congenital and non-congenital female “homosexuality.” See Sat!
K!ka, Sekai seiyokugaku jiten (Tokyo: K!bunsha, 1929), 45, 194–95.
76
Cf. Krafft-Ebing, Psychopathia Sexualis, 396, 607n.
77
Sawada Junjir!, Shinpi-naru d!seiai, 2 vols. (Tokyo: Ky!ekisha Shuppanbu, 1923), vol. 1, 58–59,
reprinted in Furukawa and Akaeda, Senzen d!seiai kanren bunken sh"sei, vol. 1.
78
For instance, Yasuda makes this claim in his “D!seiai no rekishikan,”147; Leupp, “‘The Floating World
is Wide…’,” and Morishita, “S izen no koto.”

105
Havelock Ellis’s Studies in the Psychology of Sex (1897–1928) contains an early stand-alone use

of “resubian”—without “ravu”—to describe the poet from Lesbos, but this form would not

become popularized until the 1960s.79

Of the several dozen dictionaries of new words and slang published between the 1910s

and 1930s I examined, almost a third had references to female “homosexuality” (d!seiai) and/or

schoolgirl romance.80 Most commonly included were modern native terms to describe

passionate friendships between schoolgirls, such as “ome(-san),” “(o-)netsu,” and “S” or “esu”

—with the former two composed of Japanese roots and the latter a modern Japanese
81
transfiguration of the notion of a “sister.” While only “esu” draws directly on a “foreign”

word, it must be remember that the girlhood that rendered such passionate schoolgirl friendships

possible was itself a product of Japan’s transfigured modernity. Also sometimes noted in these

dictionaries was “to ichi ha ichi” [tribadism], a term which dates at least back to the Edo era

(1603–1868).82 Eight of these dictionaries contained the words “resubiyan ravu,” “resubian

79
This early use of resubian can be found in Havelock Ellis, Sei no shinri, trans. Masuda Ichir!, 20 vols.
(Tokyo: Nichigetsusha, 1927–1929), vol. 6, 8.
80
Specifically, for the prewar era, I examined dictionaries reprinted in Matsui Shigekazu, Sone Hiroyoshi,
and "ya Yukiyo, eds., Kindai y!go no jiten sh"sei, 42 vols. (Tokyo: "zora Sha, 1994–1996); Matsui Shigekazu, and
Watanabe Tomosuke, Ingo jiten sh"sei, 23 vols. (Tokyo: "zora Sha, 1996–1997); as well as the dictionaries
serialized in the journal Hentai shinri (1926–1928) and Sat!, Sekai seiyokugaku jiten.
On schoolgirl romance see Pflugfelder 2005, “‘S’ Is for Sister”; Honda Masuko, “‘S’: Ta ai naku, shikamo
kongenteki na ai no katachi.” Imago 2, no. 8 (August 1991).
81
While, as Pflugfelder observes, “o-netsu” and “go-shin’y"” are roughly equivalent to now out of fashion
English terms such as “smash” and “pash,” “S” (pronounced “esu”), uses the first letter of “sister” or possibly “sex”
to indicate the closeness of female-female relationships. Such relationships were considered to be largely platonic.
“Omesan” might derive from a combination of “osu” [male] and “mesu” [female], which would suggest the kinds of
masculine-feminine pairings that were pathologized in pre-war discourse on female “homosexuality.” Pflugfelder,
who offers an extensive discussion of these terms did not find such pathologization among the women with whom
he spoke who went to a school at which it was popular. Pflugfelder notes that different modern terms appeared to
have emerged or at least become popular in different schools by the close of the Meiji era. See Pflugfelder, “‘S’ Is
for Sister,” 134–40. On the etymology of “omesan,” see Matsui, Sone, and "ya, Kindai y!go no jiten sh"sei, vol. 39
(1922), 111.
82
Referring to the appearance of the phonetic katakana letters “to” (ト) and “ha” (ハ), the term “to ichi ha
ichi” is a graphic indication that female-female sex there is one (ichi) inserter (to) and one insertee (ha).

106
ravu,” “am!ru resubikusu,” and/or, from German, “resubisshu riibe” [lesbische Liebe].83 Earlier

dictionaries tended toward transliterations from German and later ones from English, indicating a

gradual shift in the locus of sexological discourse. The heavily German inflected dictionaries of

Sat! K!ka (pseud. Tamio Satow; 1891–?)—a collaborator of Slavonian-Austrian folklorist

Friedrich S. Krauss—were first serialized in Hentai shiry! [Perverse materials] (1926–1928) and

then in his Global Sexuality Dictionary, given a German title on the cover: Universell Sexual

Lexikon.84 These texts contain entries for both the German and Latin terms, along with

“saffisumusu” [Sapphismus] and “toribaade” [Tribade], with a comment under “resubisshu

riibe” in both dictionaries that female “homosexuality” (josei d!seiai) is also colloquially called

“Resubosu no ai” (Lesbos love), a novel term combining Lesbos with the “lesbian love” pattern,

and which would have much currency in the “perverse press” in the 1950s and 1960s.85 While

none of these dictionaries explained these terms as unrelated to women in Japan, neither did they

support drawing such a connection. The illustration of two young women gazing into each

other’s eyes that accompanies the definition of “d!seiai” in a 1931 “illustrated dictionary of

modern words” is ambiguous but may represent Japanese schoolgirls in sailor suits, the modern

and then still novel school uniform.86 “Resubian ravu,” on the other hand, is represented by two

women in evening gowns running off together, hands interlocked, which, when juxtaposed with

83
For various examples, see the dictionaries reprinted in Matsui, Sone, and "ya, Kindai y!go no jiten
sh"sei, vols. 19(1931), 653; 23(1933):1171; 34(1932), 340; 36(1933): 376; and 37(1933): 358. See also Kat!
Koyume, “Sekaiteki hentai seiyoku gafu (3),” Hentai shiry! 3, no. 2 (1928): 73, reprint (Tokyo: Yumani Shob!,
2006); Sat! K!ka, “Seiyokugaku goi,” part 1, Hentai shiry! 1 no. 3 (1926): 19, 95–96, reprint (Tokyo: Yumani
Shob!, 2006); Sat!, Sekai seiyokugaku jiten, 45, 194–95.
84
Sat!, Sekai seiyokugaku jiten.
85
For a discussion of this discourse within the “perverse press,” see Mark McLelland, “From Sailor Suits
to Sadists: ‘Lesbos Love’ as Reflected in Japan’s Postwar ‘Perverse Press,’” U.S.-Japan Women’s Journal 27 (2004),
and chapter two in Queer Japan from the Pacific War to the Internet Age (Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield,
2005). Examples in contemporary dictionaries can be found in Sat!, “Seiyokugaku goi,” part 1, 19, 95–96; and Sat!,
Sekai seiyokugaku jiten, 45, 194–95, 261, 290.
86
Sailor suits replaced the traditional hakama as uniforms for schoolgirls during the Taish! era
(1912–1926). See "tsuka Eiji, Sh!jo minzokugaku: sekimatsu no shinwa o tsumugu “miko no matsuei” (Tokyo:
K!bunsha, 1989), 45.

107
the kimono-clad women in the illustrations on the opposite page, makes them appear particularly

Western—or at least Westernized.87

A male-dominated literary discourse on “lesbians” ran alongside this scientific writing on

female “homosexuality,” albeit scientific discourse too drew from literary texts, including mythic

accounts of the life of Sappho, as noted above. Unsurprisingly, Sappho and the isle of Lesbos

were at the center of “lesbian” literary representation in Japan for most of the first half of the

twentieth century, often but not always via translations of texts by European writers such as

Franz Grillparzer, Charles Baudelaire, Alphonse Daudet, and Pierre Louÿs, as well as poems by

or reputed to be by Sappho herself and those of or about other women of Lesbos.88 The

European writings were translated and retranslated—in some cases, such as Daudet’s Sapho

(1884), dozens of times—and regularly serialized in magazines and published as independent

volumes from the early twentieth century onward—with some works repeatedly retranslated and

republished decades into in the postwar era as well.89

It must be noted, however, that “lesbianism” in much of nineteenth century European

writing “served to represent heightened sensuality in woman” in general and was—as in what we

know of the actual life of Sappho as well as the fictional lives represented in Louÿs’s Les

chansons de Bilitis (The Songs of Bilitis) (1894)—neither considered to be engaged in to the

exclusion of relationships with men, nor was it pathologized in those texts in the way emblematic

87
Matsui, Sone, and !ya, Kindai y!go no jiten sh"sei, vol. 19(1931), 361, 653.
88
E.g., Sakai Kiyoshi, “Resubiennu,” Gurotesuku 1, no. 2 (December 1928).
89
Grillparzer’s Sappho: Trauerspiel in fünf Aufzüge (Sappho: A Tragedy in Five Acts, 1818) was a topic of
discussion in the press even before the close of the Meiji era. See Kawashima F"kotsu, “Guriruparutsueru no
hen’ei,” Yomiuri shinbun May 9, 1909, supplement: 2. Two separate translations of the work were published in 1922
alone. Other early translations include Daudet’s Sapho (1884), translations of which were published as early as 1913
and 1914; Baudelaire’s Les fleurs du mal (The Flowers of Evil, 1857), published in translation by 1919; and Louÿs’s
Les chansons de Bilitis (The Songs of Bilitis, 1894), published in Japanese in 1924 and 1926. Continuing interest in
these literary representations are evidenced by translations of Baudelaire’s banned poems from Les fleurs du mal,
“Lesbos” and “Les femmes damnées” [Damned women] being published in the literary journal Mita bungaku [Mita
literature] (1910–1925, 1926–1976, 1985–) just over a year after the end of the war. See Alphonse Baudelaire,
“Resubosu,” trans. Sat# Saku, Mita bungaku 20, no. 7 (September 1946).

108
of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century scientific understandings of “inversion.”90 David

Halperin observes that as late as the 1920s “a cultivated social observer,” such as Aldous Huxley,

“could portray a party at which the term ‘Lesbian’ gets thrown about in civilized banter and

applied” as a geographic reference “not only to heterosexual”—rather than homosexual—“love

affairs but to the male participant in them without causing the slightest puzzlement or

consternation.”91 Similarly, the two female and two male members of singing group in the late

1920s, the Resubian B!karu F!a [Lesbian vocal four], were likely unaware of or at least

indifferent to any “homosexual” implication of the term—perhaps using the name simply to

reference to the lyrical nature of the island’s most famous resident.92 Moreover, focused as they

were on European or “Oriental,” i.e., Greek, women, within Japan early translated and

transfigured “lesbian texts,” whatever their implications, were a world apart from the discourse

on “homosexuality” among Japanese women.

This is not to discount the possible influence of these texts on Japanese writers, such as

influential and very cosmopolitan novelist Tanizaki Jun’ichir!, who depicts in a Japanese setting

a male-female-female love triangle ending in suicide in his novel Manji (1959, first serialized

1928–1930).93 Such a relationship might suggest at least a tangential link between European

literary “lesbians” and Japanese women. To be sure, the well-read author would certainly have

been familiar with a least some of the literary depictions of female-female erotic relationships

noted above and aware of the existence of Sappho and current variants on the word “lesbian”

90
Anna Balakian, “Those Stigmatized Poems of Baudelaire,” The French Review 31, no. 4 (1958): 276. I
thank Mark McLelland for introducing this article to me.
91
Halperin, How to Do the History of Homosexuality, 49.
92
The Asahi shinbun article that describes the group is focused on the difficulties of one member, who had
left his ill mother behind for the sake of the group and gives no suggestion that the name or nature of the band was
in any way scandalous. See Asahi shinbun, “By!bo o ato ni gakudan e: Uchida-san no seibetsu aiwa,” May 7, 1928,
morning ed., 4.
93
Tanizaki Jun’ichir!, “Manji,” 1928–1930, in his Tanizaki Jun’ichir! zensh", vol. 17 (Tokyo: Ch"!
K!ronsha, 1959).

109
from reading of literature if not from sexology texts. Yet, when Tanizaki makes direct reference

to female-female relationships in the novel, while “d!seiai” [homosexuality] appears at least

once, the author primarily describes the relationship between the two women merely as being

between persons of the “same sex” (d!sei) as opposed to between members of the “opposite sex”

(isei).94 And, in contrast post-war discussions of the text, including those in which he was

involved, Tanizaki did not use the word “lesbian” in the original text.95 To date, in my surveys

of prewar writing, I have not encountered in any context, presented as fact or fiction, connections

being made between real women in Japan and literary representations of “lesbians.”

***

In the immediate postwar era, in addition to the on-going literary depiction of “lesbians,”

sexological texts continued to be produced locally as well as translated into Japanese. In the

earliest works that discussed “homosexuality” among females, references to Sappho and Lesbos

were frequent as were references to “lesbian love,” yet their use was by no means universal, nor

was their form consistent. Among the first of the new translations was of Morris Ernst and David

Loth’s American Sexual Behavior and the Kinsey Report published in English in 1948 and in

Japanese translation in 1949, demonstrating the rise in global prominence of American sexology

94
“D!seiai” appears at least once (ibid., 108), the author primarily describes the relationship between the
two women merely as being between persons of the “same sex” (d!sei) (ibid., 37, 83, 91, 94) as opposed to between
members of the “opposite sex” (isei) (ibid., 91, 94, 106).
95
Examples of “resubian” used in reference to the text can be found in, e.g., Kabiya Kazuhiko, “Homo no
hondana: Tanizaki Jun’ichir! cho Manji,” F"zoku kitan, October 1964; and Tanizaki Jun’ichir!, Wakao Ayako, and
Kishida Ky!ko, “Zadankai: Manji no konbi no onna no himitsu o kataru,” Fujin k!ron 49, no. 9 (September 1964).
Demonstrating the fluidity of both language and ascribed identity in the context of linguistic, cultural, and
temporal translation, his English translator inscribed “lesbians” in Tanizaki’s writing where they did not exist,
describing the women’s relationship and female-female relationships in general as “lesbian,” and the character
Mitsuko as preferring to be thought of “as a lesbian.” For the former compare the English translation, Tanizaki
Jun’ichir!, Quicksand, trans. Howard Hibbett (New York: Knopf, 1993), 116, 121, with Tanizaki’s “Manji,” 91, 94;
and for the latter compare Quicksand, 147 and “Manji,” 147.

110
as well as, perhaps, a prurient interest in Japan’s occupiers.96 Suggesting that the prewar form

“lesbian love” was lingering in Japanese sexological discourse, however, where Ernst and Loth

make a passing reference to the historical association of the Greek isle of Lesbos with female

homosexuality, their translator notes parenthetically that Lesbos is in the Aegean Sea and the

birthplace of Sappho, so “Lesbos love means female homosexuality.”97 However, with the

exception of introducing this alternative way to indicate “josei no d!seiai” [female

homosexuality], the term is not used elsewhere in this volume.

Interest in the work of groundbreaking American sexologist Alfred Kinsey was strong

enough that his pioneering studies on the sexual behavior of men and of women were published

in Japanese translation within a year or two of their publication in English.98 For Kinsey, who

saw “homosexual” as a description of behavior rather than as a name for a kind of person,99 it is

unsurprising that again, Sappho-related terms for homosexuality are mentioned only in passing

as terms Kinsey recommends avoiding in scientific discourse. In the translation of this fleeting

reference, however, rather than render “lesbian” into the existing Japanese “resubian ravu,” as

had the translator of the Ernst and Loth volume, the translator of Sexual Behavior in the Human

Female simply transliterates it as “resubian,” providing an early postwar example of a

stand-alone use of the term, a usage which may have made its way into the “perverse press”

(discussed below).100 It is also worth noting that the translation of Kinsey’s discussion of his

96
Ernst, Morris Leopold, and David Goldsmith Loth, American Sexual Behavior and the Kinsey Report
(New York: Greystone Press, 1948), translated into Japanese as Amerika jin no sei seikatsu, trans. Nakaoka Hir!
(Akatsuki Shoten, 1949).
97
Ernst and Loth, Amerika jin no sei seikatsu, 19; cf. Ernst and Loth, American Sexual Behavior, 13.
98
Alfred C. Kinsey and the Institute for Sex Research, Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (Philadelphia:
W.B. Saunders, 1948), translated into Japanese as Ningen ni okeru dansei no sei k!i, 2 vols., translated by Nagai
Hisomu and And! Kakuichi (Tokyo: Kosumoporitan Sha, 1950); and Sexual Behavior in the Human Female
(Philadelphia: W.B. Saunders, 1953), translated into Japanese as Ningen josei ni okeru sei k!d!, 2 vols., trans.
Asayama Shin’ichi, Ishida Sh"z!, Tsuge Hideomi, and Minami Hiroshi (Tokyo: Kosumoporitan Sha, 1954).
99
Alfred C. Kinsey, Ningen josei ni okeru sei k!d!, 15.
100
Ibid., 13.

111
discomfort with the term “homosexual” is the only time that the word is transliterated

(“homosekushuaru”) rather than translated (“d!seiai”).101 This suggests that at the time

“d!seiai” sounded more scientific or legitimate—or perhaps more neutral—to the translator than

loan transliterations of “homosexuality” in general, a sense reflected in popular press accounts of

“homosexuality” (in terms of “d!seiai”) in most of the twentieth century.

Outside the scientific and literary discussion and representation of female

“homosexuality,” an increasingly graphic discourse on female-female sexual practices within

Japan’s semi-underground postwar “perverse press” ran alongside similar discussion of

male-male sexual practices and any number of sexual behaviors between opposite-sex partners.

While clearly designed to titillate an ostensibly male readership and largely written by men, as

Mark McLelland shows, there were also voices that can with some certainty be considered from

same-sex desiring females.102 In 1954, the year the Japanese translation of Kinsey’s Sexual

Behavior in the Human Female saw print, an article titled “Chitchat on lesbianism” appeared in

F"zoku kagaku [Sexual customs science] (1953–1955), one of the earliest of the postwar

perverse magazines.103 Penned by an individual using the female name Miyagawa Yoshiko, this

article links Japanese female homoerotic experiences to the terms “resubianizumu,” “resubian

rabu,” “safizumu” [Sapphism], and “toraibaado” [tribade], terms she explains via a lengthy

discussion of Sappho and Lesbos, as well as, in the case of tribadism, “to ichi ha ichi,” a

Japanese synonym. Miyagawa also makes extensive reference to Krafft-Ebing, the most likely

source of the introduction of “lesbian” into Japanese decades earlier. This usage of

“resubianizumu” apparently did not take hold even within that magazine. Occasionally, such as

in a 1955 roundtable discussion including both Japanese women and male “experts” in F"zoku

101
Ibid., 15.
102
See McLelland, “From Sailor Suits to Sadists”; McLelland Queer Japan.
103
Miyagawa Yoshiko, “Resubianizumu zatsuwa,” F"zoku kagaku, February 1954.

112
kagaku, for instance, women-loving women were referred to and referred to themselves as “josei

no homo” [female homos], positioning them as the female counterpart to the (male) homo, who

were discussed in this sphere with greater frequency during this period and who were and

continue to be the primary referent of “homo.”104 With the exception of “d!seiai,” perhaps the

most frequently used term during this same period, was “Resubosu ai” [Lesbos love] or simply

“Resubosu” [here, lesbian(ism)], the former of which resembles the “am!ru resubikusu” pattern

dating back to translations of Krafft-Ebing. While noted, for example, in dictionaries by Sat!

K!ka several decades prior, the terms had not taken root in the discourse until this point.105

A significant number of writers in the 1950s perverse press might better be described as

scholars of literature than of science, yet they derived a certain scientific authority from

“extensive reading about Japanese and foreign … ‘sexual customs’” including “psychoanalytic

and sexological works such as [by] Kinsey…as well as anthropological, historical and literary

treatises,”106 and their writing echoes the blurring between scientific and literary discourse in the

prewar era. Whether or not the use of “Resubosu ai” in this sphere originated with these more

literary-minded contributors to the magazines, in retaining the name of Sappho’s mythic Aegean

home, “Resubosu ai” points toward the literary roots of the term and of that particular strand of

interest in female “homosexuality.”

By the late 1950s, “resubian” began occasionally to stand on its own in the perverse press,

used both as an adjective and as a noun, indicating a female subject, increasingly a Japanese

woman, whose primary affectional and sexual desire was directed at other women. Perhaps this

104
Saij! Michio et al., “Zadankai: josei no homo makari t!ru,” F"zoku kagaku, March 1955. Other
examples of the usage of “josei no homo” include Narabayashi Yasushi, Rezubian rabu (Tokyo: Kodama Puresu,
1967), 9; Takahashi Tetsu, Abu rabu: ij! ai rip!to (Tokyo: Sey"sha, 1966), 61; Ura mado, “Resubosu no aru rajio
dorama,” May 1963, 141; and Nishina Junz!, “Sei kunren ni miru josei no homo,” F"zoku kagaku, January 1954, 72.
On the use of “homo” in this period see McLelland, Queer Japan.
105
Sat!, “Seiyokugaku goi,” and Sekai seiyokugaku jiten.
106
McLelland, Queer Japan, 69.

113
terminological transition reflects the influence of postwar sexological texts, which, as noted

above, had already begun to shift toward this “English” form. One early article to use this form

discusses “resubian kurabu” [lesbian clubs] that existed in the late nineteenth century in the

“lesbian paradise” (resubosu no tengoku) of France. While the article positions the existence of

these clubs as a product of a specific time and place akin to the gei b!i [gay boy] culture that

emerged in the context postwar Japan, it makes no reference to “lesbian” culture in Japan.107

The earliest instance in this sphere I have encountered in which “resubian” is used

specifically in reference to women in Japan was an August 1960 feature in F"zoku kitan [Strange

talk about (sexual) customs] (1960–1974) on “resubian no seitai,” which might be translated as

“the life (or ecology) of lesbians” or “lesbian life (ecology).” While “resubian” is prominently

used in the title, the term by no means supplants alternative words in the remainder of

feature—nor would it for several years in the discourse at large. In fact, only two of the four

articles contained therein frame their discussion as being about “resubian.” The most substantial

of these is an article on “love techniques of resubian east and west” by Kabiya Kazuhiko, a

prolific writer on “homosexuality” and frequent contributor to perverse magazines beginning in

the 1950s. In this piece, using a mix of terms and combining discourse on relationships between

women in Japan and elsewhere, Kabiya describes relatively “puratonikku” [platonic]

relationships among high school girls alongside titillating details about female-female sex

practices, perhaps between women who go to “otokogata [sic]” [male role player] bars.108 While

107
Higuchi Itsuma, “Pari no resubiantachi: resubian kurabu,” Ura mado, February 1959. On gei b!i culture,
see chapter three in McLelland, Queer Japan; and Ishida Hitoshi, “Dansei d!seiai to joseisei: gee b!i b"mu in mire
sai/j!h!/shintai,” in Shintai to aidentiti toraburu: jendaa/sekkusu no nigenron o koete, ed. Kanai Yoshiko (Tokyo:
Akeshi Shoten, 2008).
108
Kabiya Kazuhiko, “T!zai resubian no ai no gih!: joshi d!seiaisha wa donna f" ni ai shiau ka,” F"zoku
kagaku, August 1960, 45. “Otokogata,” perhaps an invention by Kabiya, is an interesting term—it is a logical
counterpart of “onnagata” [female form], the term used to describe males who play female roles in the kabuki
theater. The choice of “otokogata” is intriguing because the term “otokoyaku” [male role] was well established to
refer to females playing male roles in the all-female Takarazuka and Sh!chiku musical revues and appears to have

114
primarily relying on the calque “d!seiai” and the transliteration “resubian,” Kabiya also makes

reference to the “local” constructs, noted above, such as “S”/“esu,” “o-netsu,” “ome-san,” and

“toichi haichi.”109 Kabiya indicates the equivalence of “resubian” and “josei d!seiaisha”

[female homosexual] by using the former as a superscript over the latter.110 Later in the article,

by way of an explanation of why “josei no d!seiai” [female homosexuality] is referred to as

“resubian rabu” [lesbian love] or “Resubosu” [Lesbos], he offers the familiar story of Sappho.111

Both of the articles that did not use “resubian” go further into that same mythic history. One

offers a “invitation to Resubosu” via French literature.112 The other, entitled simply

“Resubiennu”—a transliteration from French—is ostensibly a Japanese translation from French

of a dialogue between two women, the original translation of which, from ancient Greek, is

attributed to a “Pieru Robizu” (?Pierre Robise)—a doubly misspelled/mispronounced attempt to

(perhaps falsely) credit Pierre Louÿs.113 The article is plagiarized, no less, from a magazine

dating to Japan’s interwar “erotic grotesque nonsense” boom.114 Even decades later “Resubosu”

been used in regard to the dans! no reijin [dandy beauty] bartenders at such bars, often called dans! no reijin bars,
which emerged in the early 1960s. On the history of this bar scene, see Toyama Hitomi, “Dans! no reijin no jidai,”
in her Miss dandi: otoko toshite ikiru joseitachi (Tokyo: Shinch!sha, 1999), and Shiba Fumiko, “Sh!wa rokuj" [sic]
nendai rezubian b"mu,” in Tanbi sh!setsu, gei bungaku bukkugaido, ed. Kakinuma Eiko and Kurihara Chiyo
(Tokyo: Byakuya Shob!, 1993). A roundtable in F"zoku kagaku offers evidence that the beginnings of this sphere
may date back to the 1950s. See Saij! et al., “Zadankai.”
109
Kabiya, “T!zai resubian no ai no gih!,” 44, 49–50
110
Ibid., 44. In Japanese, superscript is commonly used to indicate the pronunciation of a word in Chinese
characters. It has been used as well to assign a specific meaning to a term or to introduce a new word by pairing a
known and novel word, the latter of which was particularly common in the Meiji era, which saw a massive influx of
new words and concepts. See Douglas R. Howland, Translating the West: Language and Political Reason in
Nineteenth-Century Japan (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2002).
111
Kabiya, “T!zai resubian no ai no gih!,” 49.
112
Kawashima Hayato, “Resubosu no sasoi,” F"zoku kitan, August 1960.
113
Pieru Robizu [sic, Pierre Louÿs], “Resubiennu,” F"zoku kitan, August 1960. In the Japanese katakana
script, spelling and pronunciation are in effect identical.
114
A comparison shows that the latter of the two is reprinted without attribution from a 1928 issue of
Grotesque (Gurotesuku): Sakai Kiyoshi, “Resubiennu,” Gurotesuku 1, no. 2 (December 1928). The “original” is
presented as a translation by Sakai Kiyoshi of a French translation purportedly by a man whose name, spelled in
Roman letters rather than katakana, is “Pierre Lovijs [sic].” In addition to transliterating the misspelling of the
author’s name (as “Robizu”), F"zoku kitan’s editors reinserted or invented parts of the dialogue that were censored
with X’s—perhaps both as a response to then stricter media censorship codes and to tease the reader (and censors)
with an overt declaration of the wish to flout the restrictions. While both attempt to credit Louÿs, the dialogue being

115
had not completely disappeared: as late as the mid-1990s there was a “magazine/book” (m!ku)

under the name Resubosu kurabu [Lesbos club]. While the 1997 issue I examined—lent to me by

a rezubian-identified woman I interviewed—had articles that appeared to be about actual

rezubian-identified women, the overall salacious tone of the editorial content makes the text

appear to be aimed primarily at male readers, making it clear that the androcentricity of

“Resubosu” lingers as well.115

Discussion of “homosexuality”—among females or males—during this period and

through much of the 1960s was far less complicated in the mainstream press, which in general

continued to refer to it simply as “d"seiai.”116 Exceptions included weeklies catering primarily

to male readers—such as Heibon panchi [Ordinary punch] (1964–1988), Sh!kan taish! [Weekly

masses] (1958–) and Weekly pureib"i [Weekly playboy] (1966–)—as well as in a few of the

baser magazines aimed at women—such as Josei jishin [Woman herself] (1958–). In these

magazines interest in “resubian” was primarily prurient, echoing interest expressed in this sphere

reproduced does not appear in Louÿs’s Les chansons de Bilitis, which had by then been translated into Japanese
several times, nor, in fact does Sakai actually claim that text as its origin. Although a limited number of dialogues
appear in the original Bilitis, none are as long, nor do the names of the interlocutors appear prior to each statement in
a style akin to a play script, as they do in Sakai’s text (cf. Pierre Louÿs, Les Chansons de Bilitis: Traduites du Grec,
Paris, 1894). As noted above, several translations of Les chansons de Bilitis were published in the 1920s and might
have simply inspired Sakai to generate his own “translation” from the ancient Greek, via French, relying on Louÿs’s
name to lend an air of legitimacy to his text, or to suggest to readers in the know that this text too was simply a
literary invention.
On the erotic grotesque—or ero guro—phenomenon, see Miriam Rom Silverberg, Erotic Grotesque
Nonsense: The Mass Culture of Japanese Modern Times (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006). On media
censorship and the use of X’s, see Gregory J. Kasza, The State and the Mass Media in Japan, 1918–1945 (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1988), 38.
115
Resubosu kurabu, no. 6 (Tokyo: Sanwa Shuppan, 1997).
116
E.g., Yomiuri shinbun, “D!seiai kara shinj",” January 6, 1948, morning ed., 2; Mochizuki Mamoru,
“D!seiai: shakai gensh! toshite,” Fujin k"ron 35, no. 3 (March 1950); “Futari tomo muki, d!seiai satsujin kettei,”
March 18, 1955, evening ed., 3. In an article in the staid women’s magazine Fujin k"ron, to give an example from
the mid-1960s, Setouchi Harumi discusses “d"seiai no onna” [homosexual women], using the modern “native” term,
yet contrasts them with “gei b"i” [literally, “gay boys”], effeminate men associated with bar tending and
entertainment, rather than “d"seiai no otoko” [homosexual men]. See Setouchi Harumi, “D!seiai no onna,” Fujin
k"ron 49, no. 11 (November 1964).
The word “resubian” is not entirely absent from this discourse, however. Also in Fujin k"ron, just two
issues after Setouchi’s article, while “d"seiai” is the primary term used to discuss the female protagonists’
relationship and female “homosexuality” in general in a roundtable discussion on the 1964 film version of
Tanizaki’s novel Manji (1928-1930), actress Wakao Ayako mentions that in the case of women, they are called
“resubian.” See Tanizaki, Wakao, and Kishida, “Zadankai,” 200).

116
in gender ambiguous gei b!i and, perhaps, evidencing the influence of the “perverse press,” a

possible, if not likely, source of information for reporters charged with writing articles on the

topic.117 In newspapers and more conservative magazines in general, however, “d!seiai”

maintained its dominance throughout the 1970s and into the 1980s.

The final transition in the term, that from “resubian” to “rezubian,” is marked by several

clear and significant signposts and, in part, evidences women’s effort to take control of the

discourse at a moment when more women were claiming the right to their own sexuality—at the

same time that it indexes several new points of transnational exchange.118 In January 1967,

Narabayashi Yasushi (1919–2002), a man trained in obstetrics and gynecology who later became

a marriage counselor, published a book called Rezubian rabu [Lesbian love].119 This title echoes

the prewar expressions “resubiyan ravu” and “resubian ravu”—carried on into the postwar era,

as noted above, in sexological writing and the perverse press—as well as the postwar “Resubosu

ai,” yet differs in his deliberate switch from “su” to “zu.” In spite of “resubian” being the

generally used pronunciation, Narabayashi explains on the opening page of his book, “rezubian”

117
E.g., Akazuka Yukio, “Oshaberi jiten,” Yomiuri shinbun January 21, 1968, morning ed., 23; Sh"kan
taish", “Otoko no tame no resubian-gaku ny!mon,” June 20, 1968; Sh"kan manga sandee, “Fukaku shizuka ni
ry!k" suru ‘resubian’: onna ga onna o ai suru gendai no ij" na sei f!zoku,” November 23, 1966.
118
A search of the online database for the F!zoku Shiry" Kan [Sexual customs materials archive]
(http://pl-fs.kir.jp/pc/) turns up several instances of “rezubian” and “rezubianizumu” prior to the 1967 date I discuss
below. McLelland also reports an instance of “rezubian” as early as 1960. See “From Sailor Suits to Sadists,” 23
n70. In cases where I have been able to examine the original, the actual spelling has always been with “su” rather
than “zu,” with the latter apparently an error of transcription. Regardless of whether there are instances of the “zu”
spelling prior to Narabayashi’s book, the vast majority of pre-1967 references to “lesbians” use the form “resubian”
or the earlier “Resubosu (no) ai” rather than “rezubian,” and as suggested by Narabayashi, “resubian” was the
standard pronunciation into the late 1960s. See Narabayashi, Rezubian rabu, 1967, 3. Moreover, earlier instances of
“rezubian” may indicate other points of the kind of direct contact I discuss below.
For reasons I have yet to determine, even before “rezubian” came to predominate (discussed below), “rezu”
was used as the shortened form of “resubian” with rare exception, e.g., Kar"seru Maki, “Homo to resu ni kawari
tsutsu aru watashi,” Sh!ri, November 1968. While this may be related to the influence of imported materials, a
definitive explanation remains unclear to me.
119
Narabayashi, Rezubian rabu.

117
is “correct” (tadashii).120 Ironically perhaps, even in insisting that his readers switch to this and

English-based—and thus, to Narabayashi, correct—pronunciation of “lesbian,” he has himself

“incorrectly” transcribed “love” not as “ravu” but as “rabu.” Like “resubian,” “rabu” was the

established Japanese pronunciation for a word whose English “original” could, if a speaker

desired, be more closely approximated in Japanese.121 Narabayashi had previously spent a year

(1964–1965) in New York City, working as a marriage counselor and while there became

acquainted with a “collective” of male and female homosexuals, the latter of whom provided the

material for part of the book. Although he does not state this directly, he presumably adopted the

English pronunciation of “lesbian” while in the US.

One month after the publication of this volume, an interview with Narabayashi

introducing his book and his research appeared in the men’s magazine Heibon panchi, and an

editorial comment in the opening paragraphs informs readers that “rezubian” is the “correct”

pronunciation.122 This is to become the pronunciation used in all subsequent articles on

“lesbians” in the magazine. In late February an article in the women’s magazine Josei jishin also

discusses “rezubian rabu” in great detail, giving a number of examples from the book.123

Another article on “rezubian” office workers appears in Sh!kan gendai that same week, also

referencing Narabayashi’s text.124 In other magazines, however, “resubian” would persist as a

pronunciation through the end of the decade, and in some cases far into the 1970s—with some

120
Ibid., 3. While Narabayashi does not cite his sources, it seems likely that as a scholar he would have
been familiar with both the prewar “resubiyan ravu” and the postwar “Resubosu (no) ai,” making it difficult to
determine which, if any, he was drawing from in the title of his book.
121
Japanese has no native sound approximating the English “v” sound, but it is possible to indicate it
graphically with a diacritic mark on the “u” sound, creating a spelling that is pronounced like a “b” sound followed
immediately by a “w” sound.
122
Heibon panchi, “Kindan no ai o motomeru rezubian no jittai,” February 6, 1967, 36.
123
Josei jishin, “Yuganda sei no jidai o ikiru joseitachi: d!seiai, jink! jusei, rank! o jissen suru joseitachi
wa ‘ai’ o d! kangaeteiru ka?” February 27, 1967.
124
Sh!kan gendai, “BG no aida ni d!seiai ga ky"z! shiteiru!” February 23, 1967.

118
magazines switching back and forth between pronunciations from issue to issue.125 Around the

same time as Narabayashi’s introduction of the apparently novel pronunciation, the abbreviations

“resu” and “rezu” began to gain currency in the press. The latter of these remains in use to the

present primarily as a slur or a sexually objectifying term outside the “lesbian” community, and

also, if not without irony, as an identity marker within it. Given the tendency in Japanese to

abbreviate words, without evidence—which I have not encountered—there is no reason to

believe that this necessarily reflects a separate introduction of the English form “lez,” which at

least in American English had less currency at the time than terms such as “lezzie” and “lesbo.”

As for Narabayashi, whatever his motivations, in addition to furthering interest in “lesbians” in

the popular press, his book, perhaps drawing on his authority as a doctor, was at least part of the

impetus behind this seemingly insignificant yet revealing change in how “lesbians” are referred

to and how they refer to themselves.

When “lesbians” were discussed at all within the ribu community, as in popular discourse

at large, the spelling was inconsistent through the first half of the 1970s. The newer

pronunciation was common in translated works and writing about the US but not universal.126

Akiyama Y!ko, discussed above, who participated in the translation of both Our Bodies

125
An article in a June issue of Sh!kan taish!, for instance refers to a newly released book which itself
uses the older pronunciation, Akiyama Masami, Resubian tekunikku: onna to onna no sei seikatsu (Tokyo: Daini
Shob!, 1968), rather than Narabayashi, and unsurprisingly sticks with the “resubian” pronunciation. See Sh!kan
taish!, “Otoko no tame no resubian-gaku ny"mon,” June 20, 1968.
Other examples of the “resubian” pronunciation relatively soon after the introduction of the new
pronunciation in 1967 include Got! Ben, “Joshi k!k!sei no seijutsu shita sei chishiki to taiken: furii sekkusu jidai no
Nihon josei,” Sh!kan taish!, August 17, 1967; Ishii Mimi, “J"-dai no onna no ko ni ‘Saffo-zoku’ ga ky"z!!: Blue
Sex to iu saike na ai no k!i,” Weekly pureib"i, March 5, 1968; and Aien, “Taiy! no shita no resubian,” October 1969.
Examples from the late 1970s include Fujin k"ron, “Kaigai josei jaanaru,” Fujin k"ron 63, no. 4 (April 1978);
Feminisuto, “Nihon no josei no media: onna no mini-media kara onnatachi e no messeeji,” no. 7 (September 1978).
126
The new pronunciation can be found in Shulamith Firestone and Anne Koedt, eds., Onna kara
onnatachi e: Amerika josei kaih" und" rep"to, trans. and commentary by Urufu no Kai (Tokyo: G!d! Shuppan,
1971), passim; Boston Women’s Health Book Collective (hereafter BWHBC), Onna no karada: sei to ai no
shinjitsu, trans. Akiyama Y!ko, Kuwahara Kazuyo, and Yamada Mitsuko (Tokyo: G!d! Shuppan, 1974), 345. And
the old pronunciation is used in Aki Shob! Hensh"bu, ed., Sei sabetsu e no kokuhatsu; !manribu wa shuch" suru
(Tokyo: Aki Shob!, 1971), 207.

119
Ourselves and Notes from the Second Year (discussed in chapter four) herself had a handful of

American friends who both introduced American lib materials to her and assisted her and her

fellow translators in their translation, and she does not recall when she picked up the newer

pronunciation.127 By contrast, rare passing references to “lesbians” in books focused on Japan

were more likely to use the old pronunciation.128 Articles in the commercially published ribu

journal Woman Eros (Onna erosu), during the first several years generally used the older

pronunciation in reference to Japan and the new one in reference to the US.129 A note at the end

of an article in the first issue on the American lib movement explains that the newer

pronunciation is English and the older French.130 Amano Michimi, who spent half a year living

in New York and who translated the chapter “In Amerika They Call Us Dykes” from Our Bodies

Ourselves for the journal recounts that she vacillated over how to translate “lesbian” and

“dyke.”131 Her understanding of the latter term as a pejorative, gained while in the US, accorded

with the existing nuance of “rezu,” which she used in the title of the article. For the translation of

“lesbian,” she rejected “(onna no) d!seiaisha” [(woman) homosexual] as too serious or stiff

(katai). And, while she associated “resubian” with French culture when she first heard it, the

word was too strongly linked in her mind with the image of “resubian baa” [lesbian bars] and

sex in general for it to be appropriate in an affirmative article on “lesbian” life in the US. The

word “rezubian,” which she does not recall as being in wide use at the time, seemed in her mind

to indicate women who “try to live lives in which they take their homosexuality earnestly,”

127
Akiyama, interview, and Ribu shishi n!to; and Taub, interview.
128
E.g., Tanaka, Inochi no onnatachi e, 311.
129
E.g., Funamoto Emi, “Shikij!teki ni, geijutsuteki ni: han-kekkon no erosu,” Onna erosu no. 1
(November 1973); Yoshihiro Kiyoko, “Amerika no ribu no atarashii nami,” Onna erosu no. 1 (November 1973);
BWHBC, “Rezu to yobarete,” pts. 1 and 2, trans. Amano Michimi, Onna erosu no. 2 (April 1974), no. 3 (September
1974).
130
Yoshihiro Kiyoko, “Amerika no ribu,” 111.
131
BWHBC, “Rezu to yobarete.” This translation is discussed in chapter four.

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hence her choice to use the term.132 While the switch from “su” to “zu” indexes a new awareness

of the (American) English pronunciation, contrary to the earlier comment in Woman Eros, as we

have seen, the original “su” of lesbian can be traced back not to French influence, but the initial

transliteration from Latin near the beginning of the century. Within the “lesbian” community, a

1975 issue of the mini-komi (zine) Wakakusa [Young grass], produced by Wakakusa no Kai,

favors the earlier pronunciation. By contrast, in the sole issue of the non-commercial magazine

Wonderful Women (Subarashii onnatachi, 1976), the first overtly rezubian feminisuto

publication in Japan, “resubian” is used in the table of contents while “rezubian” is used in most

of the articles, albeit inconsistently even within individual pieces.

On the one hand, as the ease with which the producers of Wonderful Women seem to

have switched between pronunciations demonstrates, such a minor change as this was, to many,

insignificant. Indeed, most of the dozens of women and men in and outside the rezubian

community I have spoken with about this over the past several years did not even recall until

pressed that there had been another pronunciation. A few these women who identify as rezubian

now, including some who were attracted to other women in the late 1960s and early 1970s, do

recall the two pronunciations, but most do not recall it as being significant. “Fujisaki Rie,”

however, remembers that when she was struggling with understanding her own attraction to

women at the end of the 1960s, she wondered which word—that is, which of the two

pronunciations—applied to her.133

As late as the 1990s, the older pronunciation lingered in community discourse.

Vocabulary lists in the first commercial rezubian magazine Phryné, for example, offer

132
Amano Michimi, interview with author, March 2009.
133
“Fujisaki Rie,” interview with author, September 2008.

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“resubian” as an alternative pronunciation.134 Further, Hara “Minata” Minako chose “resubian”

over “rezubian” in translations of works by activist Pat Califia and, with fellow translator

Tomioka Akemi (1951–), by scholar Lillian Faderman to honor the term’s Sapphic roots—even

though both books were written by Americans about women in US.135 In her daily life, however,

Hara uses “rezubian.” Reflecting on the distinction, Hara explains that to her—like “S”/“esu,”

which, as she points out, resonates with the “su” of the older pronunciation—“resubian” seems

too strongly associated with “two women together” (onna d!shi) and doesn’t contain the

sexuality or gender difference between partners that is part of her own “rezubian” experience.

This desire to point to a difference of gender—as opposed to biological sex—between partners

makes Hara also unable to identify with the term “d!seiai,” which literally means “same-sei

love,” with the word “sei” generally translated into English as sex but which could also be

translated as “gender.”136

While in the intervening years since the 1990s, when Hara penned her translations, and

since the 1970s, when Amano penned hers, there is of course a chance that the passage of time

may have distorted each of these women’s recollections of their motivations to choose

“rezubian” over “resubian” and vice versa. Two points stand out, however. One is that the

association with the then currently favored pronunciation in (male-dominated) public

discourse—“resubian” for Amano, “rezubian” for Hara—foregrounded the sexual aspect of

134
Hagiwara Mami, “Furiine Key Words,” Furiine no. 1 (June 1995): 174; Furiine, “Phryné Key Words,”
no. 2 (November 1995): 83.
135
Hara Minako, “Yakusha atogaki,” in Pat Califia, Safisutorii: resubian sekushariti no tebiki, trans. by
Hara Minako (Tokyo: Taiy!sha, 1993), 226; Tomioka Akemi and Hara Minako, “Yakusha kaisetsu,” in Lillian
Faderman, Resubian no rekishi, trans. Tomioka Akemi and Hara Minako (1991; Tokyo: Chikuma Shob!, 1996),
392.
136
Hara Minako, interview with author, July 2009.
“Sei” can index biological sex, gender, or merely the characteristics of something. The lack of word that
corresponds clearly to the word “gender” has led to the introduction of the transliteration “jendaa.” (The
transliteration “sekkusu” predominantly refers to sexual acts.) When “sei” is juxtaposed with “jendaa” it is best
translated as “sex,” but otherwise could reference either or both, depending on the context.

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“lesbian” experience. The other is that, for both of these women, the choice to use one or the

other in reference to their own lives as well as the lives of other women in Japan and abroad was

and is clearly related to the politics of being a “lesbian.”

This association with sex over all other aspects of “lesbian” experience is arguably a

function of men’s desire to objectify women’s sexuality and the androcentricity of public

discourse in Japan. That is, discourse assumes the centrality of men to the extent that, as noted

above, even “feminisuto” was quickly transfigured in Japanese into a referent for a man who was

kind to women in order that he might more easily entreat her to meet his wishes. With this in

mind, it might be somewhat less surprising that even “lesbian” was reconfigured in some spheres

to include (biologically) male subjects. Arguably, the subject of the term “lesbian” in much of

twentieth century Japan was not women but the men who were gazing upon these real and fictive

women, whether in scientific, literary, or pornographic contexts. But men were not simply

voyeuristic subjects of “lesbian.” In the 1960s, in a column in F!zoku kitan dedicated to

male-to-female crossdressers “Resubosu no purei” [Lesbos play] was used suggest relations

between two crossdressers.137 Two decades later, while “rezu purei” [lez play] and variant terms

(e.g., “rezubian no purei” and “rezubian gokko”) were used in personal ads in the crossdresser

magazine Queen (Kuiin, 1980–?), starting with the first ad in the first issue.138 Given the sexual

implications of “lesbian” in Japanese discourse, it can be safely assumed that this “play” was

itself at least in part erotic. Reintroducing women into the equation, if, again, primarily as objects,

a 1992 article in the men’s weekly Sh!kan taish! titillates (male) readers with the “rezu purei”

offered at certain SM (sadomasochist) clubs, where women might, for a price, experiment

137
E.g. F!zoku kitan, “Jos! aik! heya,” May 1961, 152.
138
Kuiin, “Jos!sha ky"y" messeeji,” no. 1 (1980): 71.

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sexually with female staff, sometimes with the women’s husbands watching.139 And at least one

club described in the article, the “rezu purei” entailed men donning women’s clothes and

make-up and having sex with “other” women. This androcentric gender-bending notion of

“Resubosu” seems to have real holding power in at least limited circles. For instance, the 1997

issue of Resubosu kurabu, noted above, which describes itself on its cover in both Japanese and

English as “rezubian purei senmonshi” [lesbian play specialist magazine] and “The Lesbian Play

Magazine,” features a pornographic pictorial of a biological woman and a “ny! haafu” [literally,

new half], a male-to-female transsexual. While, to be sure, the earliest of these uses of

“Resubosu no purei” and “rezu purei” could arguably be interpreted as members of a

marginalized group repurposing language to reflect their own desires and experiences, they are

nonetheless biological males whose privileged status, even in this marginal discourse was

manifest in the regular column in F!zoku kitan in the 1960s and a bi-monthly glossy magazine in

the 1980s, neither of which was available to “lesbians” at the time.140

Kakefuda Hiroko, a rezubian activist prominent in the early to mid-1990s and best known

for writing the first rezubian “coming out” book in Japanese, On Being a “Lesbian” (1992), has

expressed ambivalent, sometimes conflicting, opinions about the use of Western concepts and

terms such as “lesbian.”141 In her book she describes her unease and eventual embracing of the

term.142 Part of this discomfort stemmed from the long association between “rezubian” and

“rezu” and pornography aimed at men. While two years after she put out her book, though not

139
Sh!kan taish!, “Onna ga onna o kau: otokotachi wa jos"-rezu ga dai k"ry!!!” February 10, 1992.
140
As noted in chapter two, while there were rezubian newsletters in very limited circulation from the
mid-1970s onward, they would not have been readily accessible to most women, who would likely have been
unaware of their existence. Indeed, while there was a discourse on “lesbians” within the perverse press from the
early postwar years, in addition to questions about the extent to which this discourse was written by, much less for,
actual same-sex desiring women, these were not magazines which most women would likely have been comfortable
perusing in bookstore or purchasing. In any case, it did not offer the same sort of dialogue available to “homo” and
crossdressers in this sphere.
141
Kakefuda, “Rezubian” de aru to iu koto.
142
Ibid., 214–38.

124
denying the “rezubian” identities of herself or other Japanese lesbians, she comes to question the

applicability of imported concepts such as “lesbian” and “heterosexual,” given that they come

from the West, which is “completely different” from Japan.143 Other women working with

Kakefuda made their own efforts to reclaim the word “rezubian,” not simply by using it

affirmatively, but by changing the abbreviation from “rezu” to “bian,” which is homophonous

with the Japanese transliteration of the French “bien” [good] and which allowed them to “put the

bian back into lezu [sic] !”144

Today “rezubian” is the primary term used in the public sphere, including the mass media,

to refer to female “homosexuals.” The sense of connection felt by women in Japan with women

abroad from the earliest days of the ribu movement has meant that, while the history of “lesbian”

in English in other languages and “rezubian” are not the same, the general sense in the

community today is that, even if there are cultural differences, “rezubian” and “lesbian”—as

well as “Lesben,” “lesbienne,” and other linguistic variants—are effectively the same word. That

said, while “lesbian” in the US, for instance, has its own complex history in which men have

often been the subjects—not infrequently of a pornographic gaze—it is not the same history.

Thus, the discomfort that some women in Japan have continued to feel with “rezubian,” as well

as the sense of solidarity and pride stemming from participation in the rezubian community,

come from women’s relationships with Japanese cultural representations of female desire and

with other women in Japan, as well as women’s own (in)ability to, as Brossard remarks,

“reinvent the word” in their own context.145 Ultimately, then, in spite of a sense of equivalence

between the foreign and transfigured terms, while “radio” and “rajio” can be said to point to the

143
Kakefuda Hiroko, “Rezubian wa mainoriti ka?” Joseigaku nenp! 15 (1994): 32.
144
Izumo Marou and Claire Maree, Love Upon the Chopping Board (North Melbourne, Australia: Spinifex,
2000), 108.
145
Brossard, The Arial Letter, 122. On the discomfort that some women in Japan have continued to feel
with “rezubian,” see Sharon Chalmers, Emerging Lesbian Voices from Japan (Richmond, U.K.: Curzon, 2002), 39.

125
same object, “lesbian” and “rezubian” do not necessarily point to the same subject.

Sh!nen ai: Love of Boys from Pederasty to Pedophilia and Beyond

One of the difficulties of writing about sh!jo manga in English is mapping the multiple

and significantly distinct types of comic narratives created by and for women and adolescent

girls depicting male-male romance and, at times, graphic sex. The long existence of prose,

animated, and, more recently, game and related merchandise manifestations of this

cultural-textual phenomenon further complicates matters. While these various texts have

attracted enough academic and popular attention in recent years that their very existence is not

necessarily surprising to those familiar with Japanese popular culture or its increasingly global

presence, the business of actually naming the genre(s), in English or in Japanese, is a tricky one.

And as we shall see, the actual business of publishing has played a significant role in the naming

and renaming of this genre, broadly defined. In their own choice to create, consume, and discuss

these various texts, however, artists and readers/consumers, have the ultimate say in a sphere of

textual and image consumption that has for decades straddled commercial and non-commercial

domains.

The earliest generic name with substantial holding power was “sh!nen ai,” [boys

love]—a term which represents a significant claim by women of discursive and erotic

subjecthood and a dramatic transfiguration of the very idea of the (homo)eroticized youth,

theretofore almost exclusively the domain of adult male subjects. These works have had a

number of other names by which these works have been classified, most recently “b!izu rabu”

[boys love] or “BL” (pronounced bii eru), and “yaoi,” to which I will return later in this section.

As some fans and artists use these various terms to delineate specific subgenres with different

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origins and intended audiences, which I will also discuss at greater length below, translating

“sh!nen ai” as “boys love” runs the risk of conflating genres (or subgenres, depending on how

one chooses to categorize them) that are historically and narratively different. Moreover, while

there is a clear link between the histories of these terms, it is one which might seem

counterintuitive for a number of reasons. First, the “transliterated” term “b!izu rabu” preceded

its English “original”—although the words “BOY’S LOVE [sic]” may have appeared in print

prior to their transliteration into the katakana script. Further, while discourse flows on sex and

sexuality between Japan and the West have resulted in a number of calques and transliterated

terms in Japanese stemming from European languages, such as “d!seiai” [homosexuality] and

“rezubian,” the generic label “boys love” in English is, in effect, a calque of “sh!nen ai.” Clearly,

it is not only electronics and pop culture that are flowing out of Japan but novel ways of

envisioning and naming eros. Finally, a historically sensitive discussion will use “sh!nen ai” to

designate the earliest commercially published texts which generally depicted adolescent

European boys, and the not quite loan word “b!izu rabu” to name their post-1990 counterparts,

though these texts quite frequently feature Japanese settings. As the etymology of these terms

demonstrates, however, even the early sh!nen ai manga narratives set in France, Germany, the

United States, and other Western locales remained discursively tinged with the echoes of historic

Japanese erotic customs—albeit, like “lesbian,” heavily mediated by European and American

sexological and literary discourse.

***

The practice of adult males erotically objectifying and having sexual relations with male

youths in pre- and early modern Japan was institutionalized on a par with the Greek tradition of

pederasty—a point long noted or implied in numerous modern historiographical and sexological

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writing on Edo era sexual customs.146 The terms wakashud! and, more frequently, its shortened

form, shud! [way of the (male) youth] have carried on into the contemporary era as the most

common referents, after nanshoku [male eros], for male homoerotic practices in Japan occurring

prior to the modern era. While in the title of his explication of pre- and early modern poetry, Kita

Tadashi ascribes the words “sh!nen ai” to ninth to seventeenth century verse written by adult

men about beautiful “sh!nen” [youths] or “chigo” [young male temple acolytes], he seems to be

using a modern understanding of this term.147 To be sure, as explained in the comprehensive

dictionary Nihon kokugo dai jiten, during the Edo era (and likely before this) “sh!nen”

sometimes indicated the younger, passive partner in male-male erotic relations.148 While this has

never been the primary meaning of “sh!nen,” the form “bish!nen” [beautiful youth], prefixed

with the character “bi” [beautiful], renders all the more salient the youth’s positioning as the

potential object of aesthetic admiration or erotic desire.149 Given that well into the modern era

public discourse on the erotic has been almost exclusively male domain, until even recent

decades this desire for beautiful boys has presumed an adult male subject.

A notable example of how the polyvalence of “sh!nen” has carried on into the modern

era can be found in Vita Sexualis (Wita sekushuarisu), a somewhat scandalous 1909 novel about

a youth’s sexual awakening—or, more accurately, relative lack thereof—by writer, translator,

146
E.g., Kita Tadashi, Sh!nen ai no renga haikai shi: Sugawara Michizane kara Matsuo Bash! made
(Tokyo: Ch!sekisha, 1997), 55–56; Sei f"zoku, 3 vols. (Tokyo: Y!zankaku, 1959), vol. 3, 318–20; Sat", Sekai
seiyokugaku jiten, 235–37. Ancient Greek pederasty is by no means the only example with which Japanese shud!
and nanshoku have been compared in such writing, but it is the most common. Given the prevalence of references to
ancient Greece for antecedent examples of male-male and female-female eroticism in European sexological texts, it
is unsurprising that this correlation would be noted by Japanese scholars and cultural critics.
147
Kita Tadashi, Sh!nen ai no renga haikai shi. Matsuda Osamu (1988) goes a step further, placing this
same pre- and early modern history as well as the writing of Mishima Yukio and Shibusawa Tatsuhiko under the
rubric of sh!nen ai. See Matsuda Osamu, Hana moji no shis!: Nihon ni okeru sh!nen ai no seishinshi (Tokyo:
Peyotoru K"b", 1988).
148
See Nihon kokugo dai jiten, 2nd ed., s.v., “sh!nen.”
149
Pflugfelder describes this beautiful boy as assuming the position of object of the erotic (male) gaze
occupied in the Edo era by the wakashu, or the youth who was the passive partner in a nanshoku relationship. See
Pflugfelder, Cartographies of Desire, 225.

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and physician Mori !gai.150 !gai uses “sh!nen” dozens of times, and occasionally “bish!nen,”

but only in limited instances is male homoeroticism being directly referred to or implied. While,

from his introduction to the concept at age eleven, the narrator makes occasional reference to

male-male sexual relations among “k!ha” [roughnecks], and their attempts to seduce, if not rape,

bish!nen, he describes these practices as “nanshoku” or “Urning” (in German, untranscribed into

Japanese), not “sh!nen ai.”151

While I can offer no evidence that the expression “sh!nen ai” was never used prior to the

modern era, the “ai” [love] part of the equation has shifted enough in meaning during Japan’s

early and rapid modernization in the Meiji era (1868–1912) that—even as “sh!nen ai” draws on

this Edo history for some of its historico-erotic cachet—such a term would not have had the

same valence to !gai and his readers as it might have had a century prior.152 As Takayuki

Yokota-Murakami observes, the contemporary meaning of “ai” came to approximate the English

word “love” in Meiji Japan through a problem of translation: namely, the lack in Japanese of a

referent for a relationship of friendship and mutual respect between opposite-sex partners found

150
Mori !gai, “Wita sekushuarisu,” in Mori "gai zensh# vol. 1 (1909; Tokyo: Chikuma Shob", 1995).
151
!gai, “Wita sekushuarisu,” 240. “Urning” is a term coined by early campaigner for the rights of those
attracted to members of the same sex, Karl Heinrich Ulrichs. It can be found with relative frequency in Japanese
language sexological discourse from early in the twentieth century through the 1950s.
See chapter seven in Reichert, In the Company of Men, for an in-depth discussion of this work in the
context of changing valences in the Meiji era (1868–1912) of the “historical trope of nanshoku” (ibid., 2). I would
note that one disappointment I have with Reichert’s impressive mapping of the shifting valence of nanshoku
throughout this period is his lack of attention to a perhaps seemingly insignificant shift in pronunciation from
“nanshoku” to “danshoku,” which, as my discussion of the shift from “resubian” to “rezubian” attests, can index
significant shifts in cultural understandings of a topic. See my discussion of this text in James Welker, review of Jim
Reichert, In the Company of Men: Representations of Male-Male Sexuality in Meiji Literature, Rons! kuia 1 (2008):
241. Pflugfelder proposes that this shift is “a reflection not only of broader phonetic and orthographic changes but
also of the growing obsolescence of Edo-period erotic culture,” a suggestion which in and of itself is quite relevant
to Reichert’s thesis. See Pflugfelder, Cartographies of Desire, 184 n114. The version of Wita sekushuarisu I
consulted does not indicate (via superscript) the pronunciation of the characters for nanshoku/danshoku (Mori,
“Wita sekushuarisu” 240), making it difficult to ascertain which pronunciation the author had in mind as he wrote.
152
An absence is, of course, more difficult to prove than a presence. Nonetheless, if we rely on the
admirably rich and extensive study of the discourse on male-male eroticism from 1600–1950, in Pflugfelder,
Cartographies of Desire, it should be safe to assume that prior to the 1920s, “sh!nen ai” had little to no currency.
Note also the term’s absence from the list of nanshoku-related slang covering the Edo through Taisho eras in
Hiratsuka Ry"sen, Nihon ni okeru nanshoku no kenky# (Tokyo: Ningen no Kagaku Sha, 1983), 32–35.

129
in the Western literatures with which Japanese intellectuals were coming into contact and

attempting to render in Japanese. The transfiguration of “love” into modernizing Japanese gave

rise to a reconceptualized “ai” though which “[a] friend and a (heterosexual) lover came to stand

in a paradigmatic relationship with each other in the Japanese language system for the first time

in history.”153 “Dismantling… contempt for women,” Saeki Junko remarks, “was a primary goal

of those who propounded ai” to name this new sense of “love.”154 Beginning in the late

nineteenth century, the lack of a corresponding term led some translators and writers to use

transliterations of the English word. Yet—echoing ribu activist Miki’s explanation, above, of the

appeal to her of “!man ribu” over existing native terms—the meaning, like the spelling, of this

new signifier was unclear and unstable, if not empty, “denot[ing] hardly anything, having,

instead, a good deal of connotations.”155 I should point out here that while both

Yokota-Murakami and Saeki make note of multiple transliterations of “love”—e.g., “rabu,”

“raabu,” and “rabbu”—neither mentions the use of “ravu,” which also had a degree of currency

by the early decades of the twentieth century, finding its way, for instance, into the term

“resubian ravu,” discussed above, by the 1920s.156 Whether the shifting between “rabu” and

“ravu” was simply orthographic experimentation or indexes a more significant discursive

shift—as does the shift from “resubian” to “rezubian”—remains to be investigated. Nonetheless,

what both scholars make clear is that the result is a modern understanding of “ai” premised in

153
Takayuki Yokota-Murakami, Don Juan East/West: On the Problematics of Comparative Literature
(Albany: State University of New York Press, 1998, 37.
154
Saeki Junko, “From Iro (Eros) to Ai=Love: The Case of Tsubouchi Sh!y!,” trans. Indra Levy, Review
of Japanese Culture and Society 20 (2008): 79.
155
Yokota-Murakami, Don Juan East/West, 42–43.
156
In the original Japanese, Saeki does indicate in a footnote that Sh!y! used “rabu” rather than “ravu,”
which, she erroneously states, is used today. See Saeki Junko, “Iro” to “ai” no hikaku bunka shi (Tokyo: Iwanami
Shoten, 1998), 352 n2. The footnote, which was eliminated in Indra Levy’s translation (Saeki, Saeki Junko, “From
Iro (Eros) to Ai=Love), is problematic for several reasons. Not the least of these is that, while both
pronunciations/spellings are possible today, it is “rabu” which is prevalent, found, for instance, in the term “b"izu
rabu” discussed below. Moreover, the predominance of “ravu” in dictionaries of the 1920s and 1930s suggests that
early on this was the pronunciation preferred by intellectuals.

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principle on an affective equality of the sexes. The question that remains, however, is the extent

to which it is this “ai” which finds its way into the term “sh!nen ai” as used in the twentieth

century. When paired with “sh!nen,” “ai” clearly remains tinged with the asymmetrical Edo era

eroticism that modern intellectuals sought to attenuate. Yet it simultaneously seems to connote a

certain avuncular affection and a sense of responsibility on the part of the man for the youth. And

while it is composed of Sino-Japanese roots, “sh!nen ai”—the various modern understandings of

which date back to the early decades of the twentieth century—is a transnational term.

Unlike “lesbian,” which first entered Japanese at a specific moment in time, almost

certainly as a transliterated term within a translation, and unlike “"man ribu,” whose coinage can

with some certainty be linked to a specific journalist and a specific newspaper article, the

“original” usage of “sh!nen ai” seems impossible to pinpoint definitively, but its initial modern

use may date to as late as the 1920s. During this period multiple combinations of “sh!nen” and

“ai” were used to name adult male desire and affection for adolescent males, but there is no

evidence suggesting that “sh!nen ai” was ever the primary term during the prewar and wartime

eras. At the beginning of the 1920s, Sawada Junjir! offers a book-length explication of

Mysterious Homosexuality, one which draws heavily on Western sexology and history.157 In a

section that sets out to define the terms “sodomii” (Sodomy), which he ascribes as religious, and

“pederasuchii (Pederasty),” which he ascribes as literary, Sawada explains that “pederasuchii”

comes from the Greek, and means “sh!nen no ai” [love of/for youths], using the genitive particle

“no” to link “boy” and “love.”158 In a chapter on the meaning of “homosexuality” (d!seiai) in a

1931 book on the topic, Morita Y"sh" combines “sh!nen” and “ai” with the object marker “o”

and the auxiliary verb suru [do]: “sh!nen o ai suru,” a phrasing which literally means “to love a

157
Sawada Junjir!, Shinpi naru d!seiai.
158
Ibid., vol. 2, 119–20.

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boy.”159

Several years prior, however, in a heavily German-influenced article on ancient Greek

practices in the journal Hentai shinri [Perverse psychology] (1917–1926) Tanaka K!gai (pseud.

Tanaka Y"kichi) offers a typology of “homosexualities” which pairs “onowarabe ai” [lit., male

child love] with “Knabenliebe” [boy love] and “sh!nen ai” with “Funglingsliebe [sic]”

(Jünglingsliebe [lit., adolescent love]).160 While “onowarabe ai” does not appear in other pre-

(or post-) war texts that I have consulted and may be Tanaka’s own coinage, “sh!nen ai” is a

reasonable collocation which nominalizes other phrasal combinations of “sh!nen” and “ai” into a

concept. Just a few years after Tanaka’s article, however, the entries in Sat! K!ka’s polyglottal

sexual lexicons for “Päderastie” (earlier transliterated as pederasuchii, later pederasuti) define it

as “keikan” [anal intercourse]—a Sino-Japanese term associated with its brief prohibition in the

1870s and 1880s—and as nanshoku.161 Sat! indicates that “pederasty” derives from Greek roots

meaning “jid!” [juvenile] and “ren’ai” [love], but that it has come to mean “sodomii (Sodomie),”

the Biblical origin and sinfulness of which he does not fail to note.162 His 1929 encyclopedic

lexicon has a separate entry for “pedofiria erotika (Paedophilia erotica),” but this is defined as

“shikij!sei sh!ni shik!” [erotic taste for small children], rather than Tanaka’s “onowarabe ai”163;

and in neither of these dictionaries does he use “sh!nen ai” in his discussion of ancient Greek

159
Morita Y"sh", D!seiai no kenky" (Chiba: Jinsei S!z! Sha, 1931), 8, reprinted in Furukawa and Akaeda,
vol. 2.
160
Tanaka K!gai, “D!seiai no bunrui to kasei iseiai,” Hentai shinri 16, no. 5 (November 1925): 98.
161
Sat!, “Seiyokugaku goi,” pt. 2, 30, and Sekai seiyokugaku jiten, 235. In the earlier entry,
“pederasuchii” is defined as “keikan,” in turn explained as “nanshoku (Urning),” or the use of a male’s (danshi)
anus as a substitute for a female’s (joshi) vagina (Sat! “Seiyokugaku goi,” pt. 2, 30). Keikan was prohibited for
nearly beginning in 1873. For a discussion of this legal change, see Pflugfelder, Cartographies of Desire, 158–68,
and for a history of “keikan” placing its origins within this Meiji-era Japan discourse of prohibition, see Inoue
Sh!ichi and Kansai Seiyoku Kenky"kai, Sei y!gosh" (Tokyo: Kodansha Gendai Shinsho, 2004), 344–49.
162
See Sat!, “Seiyokugaku goi,” pt. 2, 30, and Sekai seiyokugaku jiten, 235.
163
Sat!, Sekai seiyokugaku jiten, 237.

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pederasty or Japanese nanshoku customs.164 A few years later, “sh!nen ai” is used in a book

offering A History of Human Sex Lives in a section of the chapter on “homosexuality” (d!seiai)

discussing same-sex relations between teacher and pupil in ancient Greece and Iberia.165 This

time the word stands alone. It is not glossed with or used as a gloss for any loan word, with its

meaning either assumed known by readers or easy enough to surmise from both the characters

and context in which it was written.

Prolific writer Inagaki Taruho, whose own use of “sh!nen ai” would lead to its

reinvention as a label for the genre of male homoerotic manga narratives first penned by and for

women in the 1970s, employed the term as early as 1930, in an essay originally published in

Grotesque (Gurotesuku, 1928–1930), the namesake journal of the interwar erotic grotesque

nonsense boom, mentioned above.166 In this article, as in many of his later musings that sought

to develop a modern homoerotic aesthetics of beautiful boys, Taruho draws extensively on

Japanese and European history and literature as well as philosophical and sexological texts,

including the writing of Krafft-Ebing and early “homosexual” rights advocate Edward Carpenter,

with the result being a hybrid aesthetics of boy loving that is heavily intertextual, transhistorical,

and transnational, like the sh!nen ai manga created by female artists forty years later.167 If

Taruho’s attempt to develop a modern aesthetics of the adolescent male was unique and

164
While the 1927 entry is largely focused on Japanese nanshoku customs, it is followed for some reason
by a list of terms used in “English erotic books,” such as “Sodomies [sic]… Catamites… Bum-Fuckers…
Pederasts… [and] Sod [sic],” all transliterated into the katakana script with the original English provided
parenthetically. See Sat!, “Seiyokugaku goi,” pt. 2, 34. Conversely, at the end of his entry for “"runingu (Urning),”
which he explains in largely in non-culture specific terms as “danshi d!sei shikij!” [male same-sex sexual desire]
(ibid., 91), he provides a list of terms used to name “"runingu” in China, Japan, and Korea, yet here the list names
not male same-sex desire but the objects thereof. While he does include “mei shao nian” [bish!nen, beautiful youth]
in the Chinese list of "runingu (ibid., 92), nowhere in either definition does he use “sh!nen ai.”
165
Tomooka Nobusuke, Jinrui sei seikatsu shi (Kyoto: Jinbun Shoin, 1932), 160
166
Inagaki Taruho, “Sh!nen tokuhon,” Gurotesuku 3, no. 1 (January 1930): 248. I thank Jeffrey Angles for
obtaining a copy of this article for me.
167
For a lengthier discussion of Taruho’s aesthetics in his early fiction, see Jeffrey Angles, Writing the
Love of Boys: Desire between Men in Early Twentieth-Century Japanese Literature (Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, forthcoming); see also Pflugfelder, Cartographies of Desire, 305–7.

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impressively erudite, it must be noted that the intertextual nature of his approach was not

significantly distinct from contemporary sexological writing on “homosexuality.” And while he

neither coined the term “sh!nen ai” nor is he responsible for its association with the tradition of

nanshoku, it is Taruho’s writing, more than anything else, that imbued its eroticized object with

the characteristics of, at once, a prewar European schoolboy in uniform and of a beautiful Edo

era wakashu [youth] with unshaven forelocks—thus folding Knabenliebe and shud! [the way of

the youth] into one another. The apex of this imagery is inscribed in his Aesthetics of Boy Loving

(Sh!nen ai no bigaku, 1968), which included revised versions of his earlier writing, including

that 1930 article. Evidencing the lack of a serious taboo about the topic, the volume was awarded

the prestigious Grand Prize for Japanese Literature (Nihon Bungaku Taish!).168 That the title on

the cover box and cover of the original work was written in German “Ästhetik der Knabenliebe”

rather than Japanese, which was used just on the “obi”—the promotional sash—only reinforces

the transnational nature of Taruho’s sh!nen ai aesthetic and the rough semantic equivalence

between sh!nen ai and Knabenliebe.

While it would take until well into the postwar era before this term approached anything

close to household word status, Taruho’s “sh!nen ai” was occasionally used in popular, if not

mainstream, discourse. For instance, in a 1954 article on five types of “sodomii,” prolific

perverse press writer on “homosexuality,” Kabiya Kazuhiko, glosses “seiteki sh!ni aik!ky!” [lit.,

sexual infant/child love mania] in English as “erotic pedophilia,” but, when discussing literary

representation thereof, brings up the “sh!nen ai” in Taruho’s works.169 While the word is then

absent from Kabiya’s discussion of Taruho in the “homo sekushuaru” literature chapter of his

168
Inagaki Taruho, Sh!nen ai no bigaku (Tokyo: Tokuma Shoten, 1968). On the use of the title of
Taruho’s book in the naming of the sh!jo manga genre of sh!nen ai, see Ishida Minori, Hisoyaka na ky!iku:
“yaoi/b!izu rabu” zenshi (Tokyo: Rakuhoku Shuppan, 2008), 88, 89 n65. This connection is discussed in greater
detail in chapter four.
169
Kabiya Kazuhiko, “Sodomii itsutsu no koikei,” F"zoku kagaku, January 1954, 43.

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Heretics of the Night (1958), Kabiya uses it again in the title of a 1960 article on “pederasts”:

“People who are sh!nen ai,” in which he writes “kunaaben riibe” [Knabenliebe] in superscript

over “sh!nen ai.”170 These two terms are again linked in a 1962 section of the regular “Homo

window” column in F"zoku kitan.171 While “sh!nen ai” is absent from the “homo” vocabulary

list in the 1968 book The World of Homosexuality, which uses “kunaaben riibe” as the definition

for the slang term “sh!nika” [pediatrician], it can be found in another book published that same

year on the Homo Techniques, in a chapter on “ancient Greek ideals of beauty and sh!nen ai.”172

But it is not to be found in a discussion of how to seduce adolescents in An Introduction to

Homology, a 1972 book by homo/gei rights activist Minami Teishir! (1931–).173 Clearly, while

it was soon to become an established term within several limited discourse spheres, “sh!nen ai”

had not even by the early 1970s become the standard term to name either pederasty or

pedophilia.

Over the course of the 1970s, however, “sh!nen ai” would gain currency as a label for

adult male desire for adolescents in this rapidly expanding commercial homo publication sphere,

which in 1971 saw its first commercial magazine Barazoku [Rose tribe], put out by Dai Ni

Shob!, the publisher of Homo Techniques and An Introduction to Homology. Barazoku made no

effort in the early years to restrict expression of “sh!nen ai” desire for even prepubescent boys.

Perhaps this was a function of the lingering memory of the nanshoku tradition modernized in the

writing of Taruho among others—who were discussed on occasion in both reader-contributed

and editorial content174—as well as a relative lack of legal prohibition at the time. While It!

170
Kabiya Kazuhiko, Yoru no itansha (Tokyo: Nan!sha, 1958), and “Sh!nen ai (kunaaben riibe) no
hitobito,” F"zoku kitan (November 1960).
171
F"zoku kitan, “Homo no mado,” October 1962, 100.
172
Hirano Toshiz!, D!seiai no sekai (Tokyo: Shinp" Shuppansha, 1968), 252; Akiyama Masami, Homo
tekunikku: otoko to otoko no sei seikatsu (Tokyo: Daini Shob!, 1968), 24–26.
173
Minami Teishir!, Homorojii ny"mon (Tokyo: Dai Ni Shob!, 1972) 72–78.
174
E.g., Takeda Hajime, “Taruho no sh!metsu no hi ni,” Barazoku no. 60 (January 1978).

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Bungaku, the magazine’s chief editor, would not directly facilitate through the magazine’s

personal ad section and, later, the “Sh!nen no heya” [Boys’ room] column correspondence

between those over and under 18 years of age, he has repeatedly expressed support for adult men

who are sexually attracted to youths, seeing it as just another kind of desire.175 In the personal

ads in Barazoku as well as Sabu (1974–2002), while “sh!nen ai” was used by adult males to

indicate their desire for—and to appeal to—adolescents, this was alternated with other terms in

popular use, “yangu” [young] and “hai tiin” [high teen], used to name the advertiser or the object

of his interest. Terms marking age-based hierarchical roles, including onii-san and aniki [both,

older brother] and ot!to [younger brother] could also, in effect, be used to name this desire,

depending on the age of the “younger brother.”

***

Men, however, were not the only ones homoerotically objectifying bish!nen [beautiful

boys] in the 1970s. As noted in chapter two, female artists who were taking over the production

of sh!jo manga began to incorporate homoerotic romances between beautiful boys into their

works beginning in late 1970. The new genre of which Takemiya’s In the Sunroom represented

the initial salvo was to be called “sh!nen ai manga.”176 This appellation would predominate for

most of the 1970s, competing with the term “bish!nen manga” until the 1978 debut of the

magazine June, the title of which would itself be used as a label for the genre in the form “June

mono,” that is, “June things.” While “bish!nen” merely denotes a beautiful youth, as observed

above, it is a term linked closely to sh!nen ai manga imagery and drawing on the same history of

the homoerotic objectification of male youths. What makes this usage of both terms quite

remarkable is that women are the subjects of the repurposing of male terms and that males

175
It! Bungaku, interview with author, June 2005.
176
Takemiya Keiko, “Sanr"mu nite,” in her Sanr"mu nite (1970; Tokyo: San Komikkusu, 1976).

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remained the objects.

Inspired by the relationships among schoolboys depicted in some of Herman Hesse’s

novels and the writing of Taruho, Masuyama Norie took upon herself the role of muse and

encouraged Takemiya and Hagio Moto to give life to her ideas.177 Taruho’s concept of sh!nen

ai, elaborated in his Aesthetics of Boy Loving, which Takemiya had just read when she conceived

of The Song of the Wind and the Trees, was almost certainly borrowed directly as the name of

the new genre.178 The ambiguity of the term sh!nen ai served the new genre well, as it can

simultaneously indicate the boys as the subject (sh!nen ga ai suru) or object (sh!nen o ai suru)

of affection.179 Masuyama recalls that, in fact, they first used the term “kunaaben riibe,”

suggesting a degree of carryover of the literary-sexological discourse of the perverse press, one

that perhaps comes—like the label for, as well as some of the aesthetic sense evident in the new

genre—via Taruho.180

While Masuyama and sh!nen ai artists claim to have conceived of sh!nen ai in sh!jo

manga as well as Taruho’s writing as quite distinct from the “homosexuality” depicted in the

works of authors such as Mishima Yukio (1925–1970) and Shibusawa Tatsuhiko

(1928–1987),181 these intentions on the part of the new genre’s progenitors did not forestall

interest among some sh!jo manga readers in the homo sphere, nor the conflation of the fictive

sh!nen ai of sh!jo manga and of Taruho with both the “homosexuality” and sh!nen ai (qua

pederasty/pedophilia) in magazines like Barazoku. Letters from adolescent female readers

printed in the pages of Barazoku and other homo magazines in the 1970s and 1980s make that

177
This is discussed in greater depth in chapter four.
178
Ishida, Hisoyaka na ky!iku, 88. Takemiya Keiko, Kaze to ki no uta, 10 vols. (1976–1984; Tokyo:
Hakusensha Bunko, 1995).
179
Ibid., 85.
180
Ibid., 85–92, 296. As the primary term used within Taruho’s Sh!nen ai no bigaku was “sh!nen ai” itself,
perhaps “kunaaben riibe” was borrowed from the cover.
181
Masuyama Norie, quoted in Ishida, Hisoyaka na ky!iku, 99–100; cf. Matsuda, Hana moji no shis!.

137
quite clear. The large number of letters from female readers of Barazoku, in fact, led to the

creation of column for them in November 1976.182 While some of these letter writers suggest

they were devoted readers of the magazine, I have personally encountered only one woman who

described herself as a regular reader of Barazoku—a then university student-aged rezubian who

bought the magazine frequently in the mid-1980s for the handful of personal ads from other

rezubian.183 Many of the several dozen women I interviewed who were avid readers of sh!nen

ai manga during this period, however, did tell me that they had perused at least a copy or two,

sometimes as it was passed around at middle or high school. However limited in number these

female Barazoku readers were, they shared their opinions not only in the pages of homo

magazines but also in June and two other magazines connected with sh!nen ai manga and

female erotic consumption of beautiful boys, Allan (Aran), and Gekk! [Moonlight/Luna].

Editorial content in these magazines also sometimes explicitly made such linkages and drew

readers’ attention to “gay” cultures in Japan and abroad.184 Moreover, artists such as Kimura

Ben (1947–2003) and Naito Rune (1932–2007) drew illustrations of beautiful youths for both

magazine genres, and June itself was published by San Shuppan, the same publisher that

produced Sabu. Both this kind of editorial content and reader submissions helped spread the

vocabulary and symbolism as well as cultural information from the homo sphere among the

broader sh!nen ai manga fandom, perhaps helping them decode or re-encode the symbolism

found in sh!nen ai manga texts.185

Some female readers of Barazoku indicated in letters published in the magazine that they

182
James Welker, “Flower Tribes and Female Desire: Complicating Early Female Consumption of Male
Homosexuality in Sh!jo Manga,” Mechademia 6 (forthcoming).
183
“Sano Rie,” interview with author, March 2009.
184
See, e.g., Kitazumi Izumi, “Homo-shi ‘go-sanke’ o kanzen dokuha,” Aran, February 1983; “Shinjuku
ni-ch!me,” August 1983; Kakinuma Eiko, “Senmonshi de shiru igai na chomeijin, jinsei s!dan, kojin k!koku,
gei-do chekku,” June no. 39 (March 1988).
185
See James Welker, “Beautiful, Borrowed, and Bent: Boys’ Love as Girls’ Love in Sh!jo Manga,” Signs
31, no. 3 (2006).

138
started reading it after first becoming fans of sh!nen ai manga. Such readers occasionally

explained that they learned about “homo” from this manga, often noting directly or by

implication that reading these works gave them a special sympathy for and/or interest in homo

men. “Sylvie,” for instance, who incidentally “want[ed] to marry a homo,” wrote manga and

“homosexual novels” about boys which she hoped to publish in Barazoku.186 She also

recommended to male readers a handful of sh!nen ai manga titles, including Takemiya’s The

Song of the Wind and the Trees (1976–1984) and Hagio Moto’s The Heart of Thomas (1974), as

well as films such as Death in Venice (1971).187 In addressing the magazine’s readers with

“sh!nen ai no mina-san” [dear boy lovers] but clearly indicating homo men, Sylvie conflates the

homo of Barazoku and the beautiful boys of sh!nen ai manga, as well as pedophiles, for whom

the term sh!nen ai had (and has) a different meaning.188

The “sh!nen ai” label as used in the sh!jo manga sphere was to eventually find its way

into the popular press, both in the pages of magazines partially or entirely devoted to the

representation of sh!nen ai for female consumption such as those noted above and in occasional

articles about the genre in high- and lowbrow periodicals, sometimes compiled into books.189

Based on my perusal of hundreds of magazines from the 1950s to the 1990s aimed a wide variety

of readerships on women’s issues and on “homosexuality” as well as database searches of major

186
Barazoku, “Homo no hito to kekkon shitai,” No. 46 (November 1976).
187
Hagio Moto, T!ma no shinz! (1974; Tokyo: Sh!gakukan Bunko, 1995); Takemiya, Kaze to ki no uta;
Death in Venice, directed by Luchino Visconti (Italy: Alfa Cinematografica, 1971).
188
Barazoku, “Homo no hito to kekkon shitai.” A more extensive discussion of the female readership of
Barazoku can be found in Welker, “Flower Tribes.”
189
For a discussion in English of magazines aimed at female fans of sh!nen ai manga, see James Welker,
“Lilies of the Margin: Beautiful Boys and Queer Female Identities in Japan,” in AsiaPacifiQueer, ed. Fran Martin, et
al. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2008). Examples from low- and highbrow publications include Weekly
pureib!i, “Sh!jo manga dai kenky" de jit!tto ‘nurie-chikku’ k!saih!’ oseemasu,” September 9, 1986; Nakano
Osamu, “Sh!jo manga no k!z! bunseki,” Yuriika 13, no. 9 (July 1981); and Nakajima Azusa [Kurimoto Kaoru],
“Onna no ko o miry! suru sh!nen d!shi no ai,” Fujin k!ron 63, no. 7 (July 1978). Compilations of such essays can
be found in, e.g., Fujimoto Yukari, Watashi no ibasho wa doko ni aru no? Sh!jo manga ga utsusu kokoro no katachi
(Tokyo: Gakuy! Shob!, 1998); and Nakajima Azusa [Kurimoto Kaoru], Bish!nengaku ny"mon, rev. ed. (1984;
Tokyo: Chikuma Bunko, 1998).

139
newspapers, however, I do not believe the term “sh!nen ai” was in wide use in print as a label

either for gender-bending manga or for male-male pederastic (or pedophiliac) desire outside

these specific discourse spheres. When used in the context of a discussion of either these sh!jo

manga or adult male erotic appreciation of beautiful youth, I would suggest that even for those

not familiar with the manga genre or Taruho’s writing, the historic association of sh!nen,

particularly bish!nen, with male homoeroticism would render the term’s meaning easy to infer.

The term’s sole appearance in the 1960s and 1970s newspaper articles that I was able to find was,

in fact, in reference to Taruho’s book. While some fans of the sh!nen ai genre in the 1970s and

1980s with whom I have spoken still use the term, either of their own volition or at my

prompting, it is the pederastic meaning that has lingered in the present day, evident, for instance,

in its use to name the subject of a book on contemporary pederasty and pedophilia, Boy Lovers:

Searching for Their Reality, Concealed by Myth and Taboo, and, more prominently, in a lengthy

Japanese Wikipedia entry, only a small section of which describes sh!nen ai in the context of

sh!jo manga.190

Similar to “"man ribu,” while the term’s users ultimately lost control of the specific word,

women and girls did not lose control of the broader liberatory discourse. As laid out in chapter

two, while the comic depiction of male homoeroticism by and for a female audience first

emerged in the commercial publishing sphere, by the latter half of the 1970s, female

fans-cum-artists were parodying sh!nen manga [boys’ comics], homoeroticizing the male-male

relationships therein, compiling these narratives into d!jinshi [self-published magazines], and the

selling them at the then annual Comic Market and through magazines like Allan. It is in this

sphere that “yaoi,” one of the two current terms to label this broad generic sphere emerged.

190
Taniguchi Rei, Sh!nen ai sha: shinwa to tab" ni tsutsumareta karera no hont! no suguta o saguru
(Tokyo: Tsuge Shob! Shinsha, 2003). The Japanese Wikipedia entry is available at http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/少年
愛, last accessed 6 October 2009.

140
 By the early 1980s, “yaoi”—in recent years a truly global label for male homoerotic

manga and anime—was widely used in this amateur comics sphere to name these amateur

homoerotic parodies. The word is an acronym for “yama nashi, ochi nashi, imi nashi,” or “no

climax, no conclusion, no meaning,” which was readily applicable to the relatively plotless

parodies replete with male-on-male sex. Its coinage had little specifically to do with the genre,

however. As explained much later in the pages of June by manga artist Hatsu Akiko (1959–),

once a frequent guest at Takemiya and Hagio’s “!izumi Salon,” the term emerged organically at

the end of the 1970s among the members of the popular Ravuri [?Lovely] manga circle as a

general, often self-ridiculing assessment of all types of d!jinshi.191 Playing on the new term,

Ravuri member Maru Mikiko created a male homoerotic manga which she titled “Yaoi,” writing

the term in kanji characters meaning “chasing the night.” Hatsu explains, at the time she felt that,

“It’s true that this manga has no climax, no conclusion, and no meaning. But there’s

something—what’s going on between these guys?” So, in December 1979, she, Maru and a

small group of others collectively compiled a d!jinshi full of male homoerotic narratives based

on the concept that, “Even if there’s no climax, no conclusion, and no meaning, there’s eros.”

This d!jinshi, titled Rappori: Special Yaoi Issue (Rappori: yaoi tokush" g!), in effect narrowed

the definition of the term, which has subsequently been given alternative readings within the

community including “yamete, oshiri ga itai,” that is, “stop, my ass hurts,” and “yaru, okasu,

ikaseru,” or “fuck [him], rape [him], make [him] cum.”192 A number of other terms were in use

in the 1980s, some emerging at first to name parodies of a specific text, the most prominent of

191
A description of Ravuri’s d!jinshi in the premier issue of Allan describes the publication as “semi-pro.”
As of Allan’s publication, they had already produced 10 issues. See Aran, “Ninki d"jinshi purezento,” October 1980,
138. On Hatsu’s participation in the !izumi Salon (discussed in chapter two), see Hagio Moto, “The Moto Hagio
Interview,” by Matt Thorn, The Comics Journal no. 269 (June/July 2005).
192
Rappori is discussed in Hatsu Akiko, “Yaoi no moto wa ‘share’ deshita: hatsu k"kai: yaoi no tanj",”
June no. 73 (November 1993). On the various interpretations of the acronym, see Nishimura Mari, Aniparo to yaoi
(Tokyo: !ta Shuppan, 2002), 12 n3).

141
which was “Tsubasa” (a male given name), first used to name parodies of the soccer-themed

sh!nen manga Captain Tsubasa (Kyaputen Tsubasa). “June-mono,” mentioned above, and

“tanbi” [aesthete], associated both with June and with male homoerotic literature were also in

frequent use.193

“Sh!nen ai” as a genre marker has, however, had a perhaps surprising afterlife

stemming from the vagaries of the publishing world and Japanese and global fandoms. For those

sensitive to chronologic and generic distinctions, “sh!nen ai” continues to be used to name the

early works, particularly the popular commercially produced texts by the Fabulous Forty-Niners,

including artists such as Takemiya and Hagio. In the early 1990s, a number of new commercial

magazines began to be published to take advantage of the ever increasing desire to consume

male homoerotic manga evidenced at the Comic Market and beyond. Such magazines often

printed a catch phrase on the cover, generally in Japanese. In the 1970s, June’s was “now,

opening our eyes to dangerous love,” while by the 1990s, this was altered to “now, transcending

dangerous love.” Allan labeled itself “an aesthete magazine for girls.” Among the slogans

appearing on magazines first published at the opening of the 1990s were “YAOI!COMIC” (in

capital Roman letters) and “a comic for bad girls.” And on the cover of the 1991 debut of Image

(Imaaju, 1991-?) was “BOY’S LOVE! COMIC [sic],” a title I read as a transfiguration of

“sh!nen ai manga.”194 While “English” is often used for little more than ornamentation on the

covers of magazines, in advertising, and on consumer goods, this particular decorative turn of

phrase caught on: Soon after Image’s debut, Manga j!h!shi pafu [Manga information magazine

193
Within the pages of June, the term “tanbi” [aesthete] was applied both to this genre and to literature by
authors as diverse as André Gide, Oscar Wilde, Taruho, and Mishima Yukio, known both for their own
“homosexuality” and for works that depicted it. “Tanbi” has appeared most often in the phrases “tanbi bungaku”
[aesthetic literature], “tanbi sh!setsu” [aesthetic fiction], and “tanbi zasshi” [aesthetic magazines], the latter of
which was applied to June, Aran, and Gekk!. The term can also occasionally be found in andro-centric pornography,
used to indicate eroticism even as it tries to paint the material as refined.
194
Yamamoto Fumiko and BL Sap"taazu, Yappari, b!izu rabu ga suki: kanzen BL komikku gaido (Tokyo:
#ta Shuppan, 2005), 14.

142
puff] used “BOY’S LOVE [sic]” as the title of a special feature on “June-type” works and artists,

and the term gained currency as a generic marker, often abbreviated as BL or spelled out

phonetically as “b!izu rabu.” The “English” form of the term—not quite a calque—caught on

and is used globally alongside yaoi and local transliterations and translations to name male

homoerotic manga, anime, and novels, as well as related video games. While the presence of an

English translation of “sh!nen ai” is not itself remarkable, the fact that “boys love”—also written

“boys’ love” and “boy’s love” on fan and commercial websites—was first coined in Japan as a

“Japanese” translation renders the already unclear current of cultural and linguistic flows still

murkier.

Today, in both English and Japanese, many people use “yaoi” and “boys love”/“BL” as

relatively interchangeable, but for some “yaoi” marks amateur and “BL” commercial works.195

The fact that amateur works are often more sexual and less plot-driven than commercially

published texts has meant that some in this sphere classify them in roughly the same way but

based on content rather than form. Critic and fan of the genre, Mizoguchi Akiko (1962–), writes

that “yaoi” makes a fitting overarching label for these texts dating back to the male homoerotic

fiction penned by the woman novelist Mori Mari, but I believe that this obfuscates important

historic and generic specificity.196 While the distinction made by individuals between terms in

the present day is indeed largely idiosyncratic, the unique and complicated origins of these

overlapping labels reveals differences that made a difference in the history of this sphere.

195
Patrick W. Galbraith, The Otaku Encyclopedia: An Insider’s Guide to the Subculture of Cool Japan
(Tokyo: Kodansha International, 2009), 38, 238–39.
196
Mizoguchi Akiko, “Male-Male Romance by and for Women in Japan: A History and the Subgenres of
Yaoi Fictions,” U.S.-Japan Women’s Journal 25 (2003): 51.

143
Conclusion

To be sure, my treatment of the histories of “!man ribu,” “rezubian,” and “sh"nen ai” has

been by no means comprehensive. While I may have been able to pinpoint within a day, or a

week, or a month, the originary moment of “!man ribu,” as I hope my discussions of the other

two terms has demonstrated, this is less important than the inevitably partial elaboration “of the

myriad events through which—thanks to which, against which—they were formed”197 and have

come, again and again, to mean—events that, from the 1970s onward at least, have reflected the

agency of the women and girls who used them. My aim in this chapter has not been to contribute

to the construction of a misleadingly linear genealogy of “!man ribu,” “rezubian,” and “sh"nen

ai,” but to begin to unravel and complicate—rather than merely uncover—individual and

collective struggles over meaning. For women and girls in the ribu, rezubian, and

gender-bending sh"jo manga spheres, this grappling is with the meaning of desire as well as the

meaning of specific terms to name it. And, as Kath Weston reminds us, “no one has a greater

stake in the outcome of conflicts over terminology than the people who constitute themselves

through and counter to available cultural categories.”198

In recent years, in contemporary queer activist communities in Asia, there has been

substantial debate over the applicability of “imported” terms such as “lesbian,” “gay,” and, more

recently, “queer.”199 Some of the debate centers on whether these terms and the meanings with

which they are laden are being imposed from the outside and thus fail to reflect local—and

individual—understandings of self, and of gender and sexuality. As I have shown, in the case of

Japan, the history of the terms “!man ribu” and “rezubian” demonstrate that they were neither

197
Foucault, “Nietzsche, Genealogy, History,” 146.
198
Weston, Kath Weston, “Lesbian/Gay Studies in the House of Anthropology,” Annual Review of
Anthropology 22 (1993): 349–51.
199
James Welker and Lucetta Kam, “Introduction: Of Queer Import(s) in Asia,” Intersections: Gender and
Sexuality in Asia and the Pacific 14 (November 2006).

144
imposed from the outside nor are they the result of a one-time importation. Nor do “native”

terms, such as “sh!nen ai,” remain uninflected by transnational cultural and intellectual flows.

Rather, for these three terms, their transfiguration into and within Japanese is the culmination of

many decades of local discourse on women’s rights and gender and sexual expression, a

discourse repeatedly incorporating transnational exchange of ideas, and, increasingly, the voices

of women and girls.

If the “"man ribu” movement has been misunderstood as a simple import from the US,

this is as much a function of insufficient attention to the sometimes complex way “loan words”

come to be and to mean within a language as it is to the history of the movement itself. And

while “rezubian” has, roughly, come to converge in meaning and in pronunciation with the

English “lesbian,” to assume that “rezubian” was simply imported into Japanese along with the

(unstable) concept of what constitutes a lesbian, belies nearly a century of evolving

understandings of “homosexuality” (in both Japan and elsewhere) along with the transnational

exchange that has gone into it. The history of “sh!nen ai” goes back centuries further, and yet,

much like the meaning and valences of its components “sh!nen” and “ai,” it was transfigured in

modern Japan as notions of boyhood, girlhood, eros, and affection were reconsidered and

reconfigured in no small part in response to the introduction of novel ideas from beyond the

confines of Japan. And like “rezubian,” while residue from past meanings continue to adhere to

it, the term’s meaning has remained unfixed. Its afterlife in the 1990s term “b!izu rabu”

demonstrates both the creative power of Japanese and the nativeness of “foreign” terms within

the language. As I remarked at the opening of this chapter, words do matter. And as I have tried

to show here with my micro-focus on “"man ribu,” “rezubian,” and “sh!nen ai,” so do their

histories.

145
 CHAPTER FOUR: TRANSLATION1

Modern Japan is a culture of translation. … the idea seems so self-evident as to require no further comment,
and yet we have only begun to unravel its manifold implications.
—Indra Levy2

According to literary scholar Mizuta Noriko, the translator assumes her authorial power

“as a transmitter, a transvestite, a trans/gender/lator who blurs the boundaries between self and

other and transgresses into different cultures and across gender distinctions.”3 In the case of

Japan, for more than a century translation has been central to individual and collective efforts by

modern women to explain and, to varying degrees, to liberate female gender and sexuality from

restrictive norms. While the work of some of the earliest women translators such as Senuma

Kay!, Koganei Kimiko, and Wakamatsu Shizuko may not be regarded as overtly feminist, their

introduction of foreign literature did contribute to the broader discourse on what it means to be a

woman in Japan.4 From the early twentieth century other modern women, however, were more

actively and overtly deploying translation and translated texts in order to question, resist, or

subvert attempts to control female sexual and gender expression. Prominent among feminist

translation activities in the 1910s were members of Seit!sha [the Bluestocking Society] and their

journal, Seit! [Bluestocking], founded and bankrolled by well-known feminist Hiratsuka Raich!.

As evidenced by both original translations and critical essays found in the pages of Seit!, these

1
Portions of this chapter previously appeared in James Welker, “From The Cherry Orchard to Sakura no
sono: Translation and the Transfiguration of Gender and Sexuality in Sh!jo Manga,” in Girl Reading Girl in Japan,
ed. Tomoko Aoyama and Barbara Hartley (London: Routledge, 2010), and are reproduced with permission.
2
Indra Levy, “Introduction: Modern Japan and the Trialectics of Translation,” in “The Culture of
Translation in Modern Japan,” ed. Indra Levy, special issue, Review of Japanese Culture and Society 20 (2008):1.
3
Mizuta Noriko, “Translation and Gender: Trans/gender/lation,” trans. Judy Wakabayashi, in Woman
Critiqued: Translated Essays on Japanese Women’s Writing, ed. Rebecca L. Copeland (Honolulu: University of
Hawai‘i Press, 2006), 164.
4
The role of Wakamatsu Shizuko’s translations of children’s literature in rethinking gender in the Meiji
era, for instance, is examined in Melek Ortabasi, “Brave Dogs and Little Lords: Some Thoughts on Translation,
Gender, and the Debate on Childhood in Mid Meiji,” in Levy, “The Culture of Translation.”

146
Japanese bluestockings looked toward the writings of figures such as Swedish feminist Ellen

Key and British sexologist Havelock Ellis to help elucidate certain desires for social and sexual

autonomy—and sometimes for each other. They also turned a critical eye to many of the same

literary texts that drew the attention of the (male) Japanese literati of the time, such as works by

Anton Chekhov, Henrik Ibsen, and Edgar Allan Poe—authors who have continued to resonate

with both women and girl readers and writers many decades later.5 While the specific texts have

naturally varied over the course of the twentieth century, this combination of literature, social

criticism, and empirical studies in translation would remain of great import to women seeking to

rethink the meaning of the category “women” and its implied gender and sexual possibilities.

This chapter specifically takes up such translation practices in the 1970s and 1980s within and

around the !man ribu, rezubian, and queer sh"jo manga spheres.

In her introduction to a recent special issue of Review of Japanese Culture and Society on

“The Culture of Translation in Modern Japan,” Indra Levy writes that a focus on translation in

the Japanese context “mobilizes a set of heuristic tools that take us far beyond the often vague

and slippery trope of ‘influence.’” Levy observes, moreover, that within Japan studies translators

as well as their audiences are beginning to be seen as agents of translation, through which they

contribute to the reshaping of the culture at large,6 a point long taken for granted in the field of

translation studies. In Japan, beginning around 1970 translation became a key tool through which

women in the ribu movement and the rezubian community, as well as artists and readers of queer

sh"jo manga directly and indirectly acted as agents of cultural change. This they accomplished

via their creative use of ideas and imagery from abroad, primarily the United States and Europe.

5
Further discussion on translation among the women of Seit!sha and in Seit" can be found in Jan Bardsley,
“The New Woman of Japan and the Intimate Bonds of Translation,” in Levy, “The Culture of Translation”; and
Mizusaki Noriko, “Gaikoku bungaku no juy! to hy!ka: hon’yaku,” in Seit! o yomu, ed. Shin Feminizumu Hihy! no
Kai (Tokyo: Gakugei Shorin, 1998).
6
Levy, “Introduction,” 4.

147
John Milton and Paul Bandia have recently called for giving more attention to the existence of

other agents of translation: namely, anyone along the route from the selection of a text to

translate to the distribution of the translated text to readers, all of whom play a role in the

sometimes far-reaching changes effected through translation.7 Within informal circles of women

and girls in the purview of this project, reading, writing, and translating by and for themselves,

these agents were predominantly female. In the world of commercial publishing, however, men

too have been agents of translation in the ribu, rezubian, and queer sh!jo manga spheres—acting

most often as editors or publishers, positions which were rarely occupied by women in at

commercial presses at the time.

Unsurprisingly, given their dominance of publishing as well as academia and other areas

of the public sphere, men have also been the translators of feminist texts. Some key second-wave

feminist texts of the 1970s, were—like the 1953 translation of Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second

Sex (1949) two decades earlier—translated by men.8 These men did not necessarily have

expertise or interests related to the topics of these works, which has sometimes resulted in

misunderstandings and omissions.9 As a male who is, in the broadest sense, also acting here as a

translator of women’s words and experience myself, I will not claim that a male translator would

7
John Milton and Paul Bandia, “Introduction: Agents of Translation and Translation Studies,” in their
Agents of Translation (Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2009), 1–2.
8
Simone de Beauvoir, Le deuxième sexe: Les faits et les mythes and Le deuxième sexe: L'expérience vécue
(Paris: Gallimard, 1949), first published in Japanese as Dai ni no sei, 5 vols., trans. Ikushima Ry!ichi (Tokyo:
Shinch!sha, 1953–1955).
9
In 1997, two women, Inoue Takako and Kimura Nobuko, published a new translation, citing a need
arising from a number of significant errors in the translation done by Ikushima Ry!ichi, a scholar and translator of
French literature. Inoue and Kimura suggest the problems with the text were primarily caused by it having been
“translated from the perspective of a man at that point in time.” See Inoue Takako and Kimura Nobuko, “Yakusha
atogaki” [Translators’ afterword], in Simone de Beauvoir, Dai san no sei, definitive edition, 2 vols., trans. Inoue
Takako and Kimura Nobuko (Tokyo: Shinch!sha, 1997), n.p. I thank Julia Bullock for sharing this with me. The
original English translation of Le deuxième sexe has also been roundly criticized, with critics suggesting that much
of the problem lies with the male translator’s lack of understanding of issues of importance to women. See Margaret
Simons, “The Silencing of Simone de Beauvoir: Guess What’s Missing from The Second Sex,” Women’s Studies
International Forum 6, no. 5 (1983); and Toril Moi, “While We Wait: The English Translation of The Second Sex,”
Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 27, no. 4 (2002).

148
be unable to successfully convey the nuances, valences, and affect of feminist texts in Japanese.

Yet we cannot deny that, regardless of her or his skill, a translator’s knowledge and experiences

function as resources upon which she or he draws when translating. Translating feminist texts

into Japanese in the 1970s and 1980s would have demanded a greater degree of awareness of

women’s experiences and openness to women’s concerns than might have been expected of most

male translators at the time—in Japan or elsewhere.10

Nevertheless, even a poor translation can be better than none at all. Indeed, whatever its

shortcomings, the 1953 translation of Beauvoir’s work became a feminist touchstone for many

women in Japan in the latter half of the twentieth century.11 And, as with the coinage of the

terms discussed in chapter three, we should recognize that men at times played a significant role

in the translation of feminist ideas into Japanese. That this role has been almost completely

unacknowledged speaks at least as much to the fact that these men were, by and large, not

otherwise participating in the movement or in the field of women’s studies that was to emerge in

the late 1970s as it does to the general condition of what Lawrence Venuti describes as the

“translator’s invisibility.”12 We should also recognize that, even if this role was not wholly

10
This is, of course, not to say that the mere experience of being a woman is, in and of itself, an essential
qualification that can make up for a lack of aptitude in language and the subject matter at hand—if accuracy,
stylistic consistency, and other common measures of “good translation” are at issue. While many early ribu
translators worked toward accuracy, for instance having the most linguistically talented among them check their
translations, the most important task of these mostly untrained translators was sharing as best they could the ideas
and words that excited and inspired them.
11
See Inoue and Kimura, “Yakusha atogaki.” In the course of my own research, a number of women I
interviewed who were affiliated with ribu in the 1970s mentioned Beauvoir’s text. Julia Bullock notes that, while
many women in 1950s–1960s Japan found inspiration in this work, they were circumspect about its applicability to
their own lives. See Julia C. Bullock, “Fantasy as Methodology: Simone de Beauvoir and Postwar Japanese
Feminism,” U.S.-Japan Women’s Journal 36 (2009).
12
Lawrence Venuti, The Translator’s Invisibility: A History of Translation, 2nd ed. (1995; London:
Routledge, 2008). Venuti explains that a translation is judged to be good if it “reads fluently” and is seen as
essentially unchanged from the original—thus, when the translator’s presence is least visible. While Venuti is
discussing literary translation into English, his thesis largely holds in this context. While the common inclusion in
translated texts of a “translator’s afterword” running from a few paragraphs to a few pages does mitigate the
translator’s invisibility somewhat. As explanatory or interpretive notes (kaisetsu) are also often included in the back
of both literary and critical works, however, the translator’s afterword might be easily overwhelmed by a longer

149
positive—resulting, for instance, in a distorted message—the aggregate effect of their work was

certainly not negative for ribu women and other feminists: however inspired or indifferent to

feminist ideas and ideology they may have been, male translators did help to convey it.

In the case of the literature read and transfigured by artists and readers of queer sh!jo

manga, the sex of the translator appears not to have been as relevant, particularly since the texts

themselves were often initially penned by male authors and depict male experience. I show

below, however, that the sex—and sexuality—of the translator of a text can, if subtly, add

meaning to the text’s transfiguration into sh!jo manga.

***

I now return in this chapter to the notion of transfiguration to help make sense of the

various roles of translators, acts of translation, and translated texts within and surrounding these

three communities. As I note in chapter one, Dilip Gaonkar and Elizabeth Povinelli propose that

focusing on “circulation and transfiguration, rather than meaning and translation,” might be a

more productive way to think about the transformational nature of border crossing.13 They

specifically suggest that the focus on meaning—and its transformation, often via

translation—has run its course.14 While, as they point out, there are indeed “countless socially

informed studies of the conditions of possibility for various forms of translation and countless

critical commentary or be regarded as mere additional commentary without drawing significant attention to the
translator(s).
13
Dilip Parameshwar Gaonkar and Elizabeth A. Povinelli, “Technologies of Public Forms: Circulation,
Transfiguration, Recognition,” Public Culture 15, no. 3 (2003), 387.
14
They never suggest dispensing with translation studies altogether, yet neither do they acknowledge how
a contextualized focus on translation, including but not limited to an examination of meaning, might further their
own larger goal of making sense of transfiguration. The diversity of recent scholarship on translation belies the
narrow focus they ascribe to the field. A useful historical overview of the field can be found in Maria Tymoczko,
Enlarging Translation, Empowering Translators (Manchester, U.K.: St. Jerome Publishing, 2007). For examples of
work in the field, both historical and contemporary, see the collections Lawrence Venuti, The Translation Studies
Reader (London: Routledge, 2000); Sandra Bermann and Michael Wood, Nation, Language, and the Ethics of
Translation (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2005); and Mona Baker, Critical Readings in Translation
Studies (London: Routledge, 2010).

150
studies of the profoundly political nature of translation,”15 I see translation as one of a myriad

modes of transfiguration, and, consequently, one of an array of foci through which to elucidate

transfiguration as processes of change through circulation in a given site or sites. As I explain in

chapter one, my own use of transfiguration does not end there, however, but rather insists that we

look as well at the effects of these processes, be they—in the case of translation—new texts or

new subjectivities. By following the history of translation in situ and tracing it forward and

backward, we can get a better sense of translation as a practice that transfigures not only ideas

and texts but also people and the communities and societies which they inhabit.

Although translation theorists such as Maria Tymoczko make a strong case for an

expansive notion of translation that encompasses diverse processes and products across cultures

and time,16 for the purposes of this chapter I find it productive to delimit translation to its more

common definition of conveying in one language, however successfully, an utterance from

another.17 While all translation is creative—André Lefevere, for instance, describes translation

as “rewriting”—it is important to distinguish attempts to directly transmit textual meaning or

affect from attempts to transform it.18 This distinction speaks to both agency and intention, and

can have profound implications on the resulting texts as well as, consequently, the effects of

those texts. By positioning translation as a mode of transfiguration, we can expand our purview

to include acts and products related to translation without losing this specificity.

I turn now to the translation and more radical transfiguration of texts within the ribu,

rezubian, and queer sh!jo manga spheres. I used the previous chapter’s focus on the etymology

15
Gaonkar and Povinelli, “Technologies of Public Forms,” 393.
16
Tymoczko, Enlarging Translation, 97.
17
I will forego rehearsing here the extensive discourse on the (im)possibility of translation, either in terms
of conveying meaning or artistic effect that has been a central issue of translation studies and can be found in any
number of monographs in the field as well as the collections cited above.
18
André Lefevere, Translation, Rewriting, and the Manipulation of Literary Fame (London: Routledge,
1992). By textual meaning and affect, I am referring to the widespread idea that a translation can either be
literal—conveying meaning—or beautiful—conveying affect—but not both.

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of “!man ribu,” “rezubian,” and “sh"nen ai” [boys love] to begin to get at how these three

pivotal terms, among others, were shaped by manifold acts and flukes at the junctures and

disjunctures of global and local discourse. To incorporate the long histories undergirding these

terms—histories that include many layers of translation—the gaze of that chapter spans from the

beginning of the twentieth century to the 1990s. In this chapter, I narrow my chronological

purview and simultaneously widen my focus beyond individual words. I turn specifically to the

ribu, rezubian, and queer sh"jo manga spheres in the 1970s and 1980s and the overlooked role

that both translated texts and acts of translation played in shaping these spheres and the

individuals who inhabited them.19 The production and reverberations of these numerous and

varied translations and more radical transfigurations exemplify the web of connections and

coincidences that not infrequently accompany translation, as well as the random, spontaneous,

and amorphous nature of these three spheres.

To cover this vast and uneven terrain, I selectively examine diverse translated critical,

empirical, and literary texts that allow me to at once trace the broader history of translation

among these women and girls and to highlight various ways translation functioned as both an act

and a product within these communities, shaping both the communities themselves and

individuals within them. The texts I have chosen to look at here also at times call particular

attention to the intertwined nature of the ribu and rezubian spheres, in spite of the degree to

19
The still nascent state of scholarship on translation within the field of Japan studies notwithstanding, I
suspect that the lack of significant scholarship to date on translation in these communities stems from a combination
of factors. In the case of !man ribu, a rejection of the possibility that the movement might have been somehow
imported makes the exploration of the role of translation potentially unsettling to the dominant narrative of the
movement’s history among ribu women as well as contemporary feminists. Compounding a similar anxiety
surrounding the rezubian community is the dearth of work done on the history of rezubian-identified women in
Japan. Moreover, within both communities, with few exceptions, translators of second-wave and lesbian writing
were not translating qua “translators.” Rather, in many cases, they were merely helping make texts accessible in
Japanese. By contrast, in the queer sh"jo manga sphere, it was not direct translation but rather the further
transfiguration of already translated texts that makes translation significant, but also easily overlooked. The
significance of translated foreign literature among artists and fans of queer sh"jo manga has not been highlighted in
a body of scholarship more concerned with the sociological examination of readers or the explication of texts.

152
which rezubian women felt ignored or ostracized within the ribu community. First, I scrutinize

direct translations within the ribu and rezubian spheres, with an emphasis on the many kinds of

choices made in their translation, from the choice of words to the choice of texts. I then take up

the translations and the multiple transfigurations of Our Bodies, Ourselves, a germinal book on

women’s health intended from its conception to have a global impact, and The Hite Report, a

pioneering study designed to reveal the many realities of women’s sexuality in the US. Both

texts inspired local transfigurations sometimes so dramatically different from the originals as to

be almost unrecognizable. Finally, I look at ways literature in translation has been transfigured as

well as transfiguring in the realm of queer sh!jo manga, engendering the creation of a new genre

of sh!jo manga as well as an awareness in readers of other gendered and sexual possibilities.

Re-Presenting Radical Feminist Writing from the US

Each in its own way, the three key terms discussed in the previous chapter—“"man ribu”,

“rezubian,” and “sh!nen ai”—are products of translation. In the case of “"man ribu,” Ninagawa

Masao, the male journalist who coined the term, came across translations of American

second-wave feminist writing while conducting research that would go into the first of his series

of Asahi newspaper articles that introduced the ribu movement to the Tokyo reading public.

These translations and Ninagawa’s interview with Akiyama Y!ko, a translator of some of that

American feminist writing, perhaps reinforced, perhaps gave rise to Ninagawa’s false impression

that the Japanese movement was, like the translated articles themselves, imported from the US.

While ribu was clearly not an import, an examination of translation within the ribu movement

and the ripples it set in motion demonstrates, however, that “we cannot ignore the influence of

the American women’s liberation movement” on the nascent Japanese movement. As Akiyama

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observes in relation to the translation of materials from the US movement, information and ideas

from the US helped to inform, even ignite “the smoldering resentment among Japanese women

and to put that resentment into words.”20

This influence was, of course, nowhere stronger than among translators, whose work

entailed a relatively high level of interest in and intimacy with their American counterparts, who

were, accordingly, less “foreign” to the translators. The earliest ribu translators were not,

however, typical of ribu activists in the early 1970s. While most ribu activists were of university

age, if not university students, and many of the early activists had first participated in the student

and anti-war movements of the late 1960s, most of the first translators were slightly older and

already in the workforce, as well as somewhat less likely to have devoted much time to the most

recent wave of social protests, which flared back up after they graduated from university. Many

of the translators were in their late 20s or early 30s, some older—and, as evidenced by their

engaging in translation, they were more likely to be both relatively proficient in written, if not

spoken, English and in contact with foreigners able to pass on new feminist writing. As a

consequence of this imbalance of information, while the earliest translation of radical

second-wave feminist materials from English was coincident with the organizing that is widely

seen as the beginning of the movement, the information that most women’s liberation activists in

Japan initially had about their counterparts abroad came from the limited and distorted images

available in the mass media, rather than from personal experience or from translation. Deliberate

distortion, it should be noted, is itself a kind of transfiguration, which, as these mass media

images attest, is not always positive in intent or effect.

It was this combination of slant and silence in the mass media that Akiyama’s own

co-translation project aimed to correct. This is spelled out in the project’s afterword: “Not a word
20
Akiyama Y!ko, Ribu shishi n!to: Onnatachi no jidai kara (T!ky!: Inpakuto shuppan kai, 1993), 52.

154
is written [in male-produced media accounts] about why these American women—who appeared

more liberated than us—have risen up.”21 In response to this situation, in mid-1970, shortly after

the founding of small student feminist groups like Thought Collective S.E.X. (Shis! Dan Esu Ii

Ekkusu) and around the same time activist Tanaka Mitsu was drafting her revolutionary

manifesto, “Liberation from the Toilet” (Benj! kara kaih!), Akiyama and a handful of others

were assembling in a 50-page, handwritten and mimeographed pamphlet what may have been the

first translations of radical second-wave feminist writing.22 The pamphlet, Women’s Liberation

Movement Materials 1: American Edition (Josei kaih! und! shiry! 1: Amerika hen) contained

two translated articles from members of the US liberation movement and an interview with an

American activist.23 This pamphlet represents the ribu movement’s earliest “engaged

translation,” a term Tymoczko uses to describe translations intended to “rouse, inspire, witness,

mobilize, and incite to rebellion,” and which are created by “engaged translators,” who

themselves “have political agendas and use translation as one means to achieve those agendas.”24

And yet, it was made by a group which came together by happenstance, did not set out to be or

identify as “translators,” and was not even entirely comprised of feminist women.

Akiyama recalls that the group, which named itself Women’s Liberation Movement

21
Josei Kaih! Und! Junbi Kai (hereafter JKUJK), “Hitokoto,” in their Josei kaih! und! shiry! 1: Amerika
hen (Tokyo: Josei Kaih! Und! Junbi Kai, 1970).
22
If earlier translations were produced, it seems unlikely that they were widely circulated. I have
encountered no such translations and no references to them either in interviews or in ribu-related publications.
Thought Collective S.E.X. was founded in April 1970, by Yonezu Tomoko and other students at Tama Art
University, near Tokyo. See Yonezu Tomoko, “Mizukara no SEX o mokuteki ishikiteki ni hikiukeru naka kara
70-nendai o bokki saseyo!!” in Ribu Shinjuku Sentaa Shiry! Hozon Kai, Ribu Shinjuku Sentaa shiry! sh"sei: bira
hen (hereafter RSSSHK, Bira hen) (Tokyo: Inpakuto, 2008), 2. See also chapter two.
As noted in chapter two, Tanaka was distributing her “Erotic liberation declaration” and attempting to
recruit other women to her cause by June of 1970. See “Erosu kaih! sengen” (1970) reproduced in RSSSHK, Bira
hen. Tanaka began distributing pamphlets that would be shaped into “Liberation from the Toilet” (1970) by August:
“Josei kaih! e no kojinteki shiten,” 1970, in ibid.; “Benjo kara no kaih!,” 1970, in ibid.
23
JKUJK, Josei kaih! und! shiry!. Two versions of this pamphlet were produced, the original during the
summer of 1970 (Akiyama, Ribu shishi n!to, 25). The latter, which Akiyama believes was released less than a year
later, containing minor corrections and a table of contents—absent in the original version—on its cover (Akiyama
Y!ko, personal correspondence, June 20, 2009).
24
Maria Tymoczko, Enlarging Translation, 213.

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Preparation Group (Josei Kaih! Und! Junbi Kai)—hereafter Preparation Group—was “very

ordinary,” just one among “numerous gatherings of [female] co-workers, fellow students, and

friends who came together to study women’s issues and history” at that time, groups that helped

plant the seeds that grew into the ribu movement. In fact, Preparation Group was formed from

members of two different reading groups in the Tokyo area. One was a group of professional

women working at Nippon Television (NTV) who, groping for a way to understand their own

experiences, were reading classics of women’s history.25 Akiyama was invited to take part in the

group’s discussions through a friend working at the station. The other group was comprised of

women who were former members of the Haiy"za Theatre Company (Gekidan Haiy"za), editors,

teachers, students, and so forth. Several members of the latter group were also working part time

at the TV station, which is how members of the two groups became acquainted with each other.26

The two translated articles in Women’s Liberation Movement Materials, Marge Piercy’s

“The Grand Coolie Dam,” and Kathy McAfee and Myrna Wood’s “Bread and Roses,” were

originally published in 1969 in the American New Left magazine Leviathan (1969–1970) and

were quickly circulated as pamphlets, which is the form in which they reached Japan and their

translators.27 Both articles discuss institutionalized sexism and the exploitation of women within

the American anti-establishment New Left movement, an issue which resonated with the

experiences of women in Japan involved in leftist groups. Akiyama was motivated by her own

interest in the topic to translate Piercy’s article, which for Akiyama really spoke to how the

25
Akiyama, Ribu shishi n!to, 31. Akiyama names Inoue Kiyoshi’s influential Nihon josei shi [Japanese
women’s history] (orig. Tokyo: San’ichi Shob!, 1949), but does not mention whether the other histories were also
about women in Japan.
26
Ibid., 31–32.
27
Ibid., 26. Kathy McAfee and Myrna Wood, “Bread and Roses,” Leviathan 1(3) (1969), and, in Japanese,
“Pan to bara,” in JKUJK, Josei kaih! und! shiry!; Marge Piercy, “The Grand Coolie Dam,” Leviathan 1(6) (1969);
and, in Japanese, “Idai na k"r#: josei,” trans. Akiyama Y!ko, in JKUJK, Josei kaih! und! shiry!. Akiyama indicates
that she received Piercy’s “Grand Coolie Dam” from an American couple who introduced her to the women’s
liberation movement in 1969. See Akiyama, Ribu shishi n!to, 23–24

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personal is political in its narration of the resentment that in the US drove the women to break

from the New Left and begin the women’s movement.28 This lends a certain irony to the fact

that “Bread and Roses” was, in fact, translated by a Japanese man who had come into contact

with the leftist movement while living in Berkeley in the late 1960s. While unsigned, the article

was translated by the then up-and-coming actor Nakamura Tetsuo (1940–). Though never

actually a member of Preparation Group or the two reading groups, Nakamura had become

acquainted with several members of the latter reading group who, like him, belonged to he

Haiy!za Theatre Company. He was asked to translate McAfee and Wood’s text for these women

at around the same time that Akiyama was working on Piercy’s.29

The draft translations were circulated among both reading groups, and some members of

both groups ended up cooperating to put these translations together and more widely distribute

them, forming a third group, Preparation Group, for that purpose.30 In back of these translations,

appears an interview with American feminist activist Charlotte Bunch (1944–) conducted by

Kurita Reiko, a woman unaffiliated with Preparation Group but who was very familiar with the

US and felt a strong sense of connection to the women’s liberation movement.31 One of a

number of American activists who were either transiting through or sojourning in Japan briefly

28
Akiyama, Ribu shishi n!to, 28, 30, 32.
29
Ibid., 28.
30
Ibid., 32–33.
31
Ibid., 30. At the time, Bunch was using the surname Bunch-Weeks. The interview can be found in
JKUJK, Josei kaih! und! shiry!, 42–47. Bunch maintained at least limited ties with feminists in Japan and would
eventually write the foreword for AMPO: The Japan Asia Quarterly Review, ed., Voices from the Japanese
Women’s Movement (Armonk, N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe, 1996). In this she writes of her experience in Japan in 1970 that
she felt a “thrill when I ‘discovered’ a small feminist cell discussing women’s liberation and planning a women’s
collective in Tokyo. For years after that, I received numerous circulars from women’s groups in Japan, and the
English language newsletter Asian Women’s Liberation published there in the late 1970s and early 1980s was my
major source of feminist information on women in the region at the time” (ibid., xiii).
In addition to the articles and interviews, James Oppenheim’s 1911 poem “Bread and Roses,” associated
with a 1912 strike by women textile workers in Lawrence, Massachusetts, which appears at the head of McAfee and
Wood’s original article, is reproduced on the first page of the pamphlet.

157
during this period, Bunch was interviewed while en route back to the US from Hanoi.32 In her

conversation with Kurita, Bunch describes issues similar to those covered in the two translated

articles. While the interview is largely a matter of Bunch sharing information about the

movement and the current situation for women in the US, it ends with a discussion of the merits

and safety of the birth control pill, then unavailable in Japan, and abortion, then largely

unavailable in the US.33 This brief exchange shows that even at the early stages of the

movement in Japan, the ribu women were both learning from and actively engaging with their

American counterparts—surely among the first such exchanges between second wave feminists

in Japan and the US to be recorded.

In 1971, there were more translations of American second-wave writing, some of it

published commercially, alongside ribu writing. Chance helped Preparation Group’s pamphlet

play a role in the introduction of the ribu movement to the nation, and it is safe to assume that

few other ribu pamphlets in limited circulation had such an impact.34 While, to be sure, other

non-commercially produced and distributed translations had the potential to provoke thought and

actions within the ribu movement that would ultimately have wider repercussions, the relative

accessibility of commercial books gave them greater and more immediate reach and make them

of particular interest here.

March of 1971 saw what may be the first commercially published translations of

American second-wave feminist writing, appearing in the back of a book largely focused on

Japanese second-wave feminism. Published by the left-leaning Aki Shob!, this volume, An

Accusation of Sex Discrimination: The Demands of Women’s Lib (Sei sabetsu e no kokuhatsu:

32
Akiyama, Ribu shishi n!to, 28, 30, 32.
33
Charlotte Bunch-Weeks, interview by Kurita Reiko, in JKUJK, Josei kaih! und! shiry!, 46–47. At the
time, access to abortion in Japan was relatively unfettered, but there were concerns among women in Japan that this
open access would not continue. See chapter two.
34
One notable exception is Tanaka Mitsu’s “Benj! kara kaih!.”

158
!manribu wa shuch" suru), was also the first commercially published book on ribu and the first

with “!man ribu” in its title.35 While foregrounding Japanese women and the Japanese

movement, interest in and a sense of connection to women’s activism abroad is evidenced by

both the fact that nearly a third of this volume is devoted to the American movement and the fact

that even the two thirds of the materials in the book focused on Japan directly and indirectly

point to the US movement or is written in generic language universalizing women’s oppression.

The volume is divided into three sections, the first of which, “A Debate for Liberation”

(Kaih" no tame no t"ron), is a transcript of a groundbreaking “teach-in” (tiichi in) held in a large

public facility in Tokyo’s Sendagaya neighborhood on November 14, 1970, and involving

hundreds of women.36 Perhaps half of the participants were in their early twenties, but many

were in their thirties or older, with some women in their sixties.37 Some of these women were or

had been involved in the current or older waves of pre- and postwar women’s activism, and

included members of Preparation Group and Tanaka’s Group Fighting Women (Gur!pu Tatakau

Onna). These women were of diverse backgrounds in terms of career and life course. Most

participants are identified not by name but simply as “activist” (with or without mention of their

affiliation), “consumer activist,” “researcher,” “participant,” “high school student,” “university

instructor,” “student,” “housewife,” “worker,” “older housewife,” or “instructor”; at least one of

the participants was a non-Japanese speaking American activist.38 These women’s discussion

35
Aki Shob" Hensh!bu, ed., Sei sabetsu e no kokuhatsu: !manribu wa shuch" suru (Tokyo: Aki Shob",
1971). N.B.: both the year and month of publication are listed in most books published in Japan. Current
editor-in-chief of Aki Shob", Kimura Takashi characterizes the press, founded in 1968, as originally producing
leftist publications, adding that in recent years it has become merely left-leaning (personal correspondence, March
17, 2010). By 1971, Aki Shob" had already published books on topics including the student movement in Japan and
on a global scale, the peace movement, and Marxism.
36
See Inoue Teruko, Joseigaku to sono sh!hen (Tokyo: Keis" Shob", 1980), 176–78, for a personal
recollection of the event.
37
My description here draws largely on the description of the event as well as the words of the participants
themselves. My estimate of the relative number of women in their early twenties comes from ibid., 176.
38
At one point, a woman identified as “activist (USA)” speaks (Aki Shob" Hensh!bu, Sei sabetsu e no

159
includes differences between the new and previous movements; sex discrimination at the

workplace, home, school, and within social movements; and the historical origins of and what to

do about this discrimination.39

After proclaiming her excitement about being “able to take part in this profoundly

moving meeting,”40 an American participant introduced as Diana Connolly shares information

about the movement in the US. Like Bunch in her interview with Kurita, Connolly observes,

among other things, the importance of the abortion issue in that country.41 She also describes the

movement’s troubled relationship with the mass media, which she felt was using the movement

and providing distorted coverage thereof42—a sentiment very similar to ribu discourse on the

Japanese media’s treatment of ribu, and evincing a resonance that made the American experience

relevant to women in Japan. While she contributes little more than words of support and

information that was already in circulation, Connolly’s participation in the discussion and its

reproduction in the first commercial “!man ribu” publication, like the interview with Bunch,

draws our attention to early personal ties between the ribu movement and foreign activists

(discussed in greater depth in chapter five).

The rendering of her words into Japanese also illustrates the imperfect nature of

communication, specifically to the potential of translation to (mis)shape the message it attempts

to convey, sometimes in subtle ways. While I have no original against which to compare the

Japanese version, translation’s effect on the nuance of Connolly’s words is most evident in her

(translator’s) reference to the new US women’s liberation movement as “fujin kaih" und"”

kokuhatsu, 70–72) and shortly thereafter, a woman specifically introduced as Diana Connolly from America speaks
(ibid., 81, 82ff.). It is unclear if these are the same individual.
39
Aki Shob! Hensh"bu, Sei sabetsu e no kokuhatsu, 4–5.
40
Ibid., 82.
41
Ibid., 85, 87–89.
42
Ibid., 86.

160
[women’s liberation movement], a dated term generally used to refer to earlier generations of

women’s activism in Japan and abroad.43 The labeling of US radical second-wave feminism as a

movement of fujin, an increasingly old-fashioned word meaning “woman”/“women,” rather than

josei or onna, the then preferred terms among ribu women, casts it as more old school than

revolutionary.44 It is likely that Connolly’s words were interpreted during the roundtable by an

older woman more accustomed to the old-fashioned—and more deferential—term and not

consciously distinguishing between fujin on the one hand, and josei and onna on the other. This

awkward anachronism aside, the ultimate impact of this choice of words was probably minimal

in this particular case—the context and content makes it clear that Connolly is speaking of a

radical new movement—but it reminds us we need to pay attention not only to what is being

translated, but how and by whom, and that even female translators were (and are) not always

attuned to linguistic nuances of feminist import.

The second section of this book, “Materials, Japanese Edition” (Shiry! Nihon hen)—a

title which echoes Preparation Group’s “American Edition” pamphlet—attempts to offer a

representative sample of the text of fliers and short pamphlets produced by various ribu groups.45

The very first of these, in fact, is a Preparation Group flier which introduces their pamphlet of

translations. The flier also notes the group’s plan—which was never realized—to release a

“Japanese edition” (Nihon hen) as well. This suggests that the title of this section of the book is

not a coincidence, but rather a choice that cannot be pulled apart from the information flowing in

from the US, however limited in scope.46 A number of fliers released by “Women’s Liberation

43
E.g., ibid., 82.
44
Japanese nouns are generally not inflected to distinguish singular and plural. Thus “fujin,” “josei,” and
“onna” could all mean “woman” or “women.” The distinction between these three terms and their significance for
the ribu movement is discussed in chapter one.
45
Ibid., 127–80.
46
JKUJK, “Josei Kaih! Und! Junbi Kai apiiru!” in Aki Shob! Hensh"bu, Sei sabetsu e no kokuhatsu, 130.
No date is given for the release of the flier, but it introduces the American edition as forthcoming in July (1970), so

161
Network (Preparation Group)” (Josei Kaih! Renraku Kai [Junbi Kai]—unrelated to the original

Preparation Group), Group Fighting Women, and other groups and individuals are also

reproduced in the remainder of this section. While some of them refer to the specifics of the

situation of women in Japan, including announcements for upcoming meetings and events, much

of the content of these pamphlets speaks in very general terms about women’s oppression, and

the complex relationship between women, imperialism and capitalism (sometimes overtly based

on Marxist philosophy), with little direct reference to women in Japan. The discourse on

imperialism and capitalism is, of course, strongly connected to Japan’s student and anti-war

movements, which, in turn, are part of a more global discourse with deep roots in Japan.47 This

reinforces the point that, however rooted in local experience, the discourse on women’s

liberation in Japan was also from the very beginning impossible to pull apart from global

discourses on many topics aside from women, discourses long circulating in Japan.

The final section of the book directly attempts to offer a more global perspective on

women and includes some of the earliest commercially published translations of writing on US

second-wave feminism. This section, “The History and Current State of the American Women’s

Liberation Movement: Materials, American Edition” (Amerika josei kaih! und! no rekishi to

genj!: shiry! Amerika hen), contains a lengthy introduction to the US movement as well as two

articles on the movement from the US left-wing literary and social magazine Ramparts and the

very mainstream magazine Time.48 It also has a three-page appendix with brief lists of local and

national women’s liberation groups in the US and Canada, and of American feminist periodicals.

it presumably was created in or before June of 1970 (ibid.).

47
Muto Ichiyo, “The Birth of the Women’s Liberation Movement in the 1970s,” in The Other Japan:
Conflict, Compromise, and Resistance Since 1945, ed. Joe Moore for the Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars
(Armonk, N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe, 1997), 147–49.
48
Aki Shob! Hensh"bu, Sei sabetsu e no kokuhatsu, 181–263. The translated articles are Marlene Dixon,
“Naze ribu ga okiru no kaa,” in ibid., 226–51 (originally published as “Why Women’s Liberation?” Ramparts
December 1969, 57–63); and Gloria Steinem, “Kanzen by!d! no y"topia: ribu kakumei ga umidasu shakai,” in ibid.,
252–61 (originally published as “What It Would Be Like if Women Win,” Time August 31, 1970, 22, 25).

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This section was written and, in the case of the articles on the US, translated by Ikegami Chizuko.

Reflecting back in an interview with me, Ikegami explained that she translated those articles, as

well as researched and wrote about American feminism, because she wanted to share information

that would help stimulate women in Japan.49 This stands in contrast with the goal of simply

providing information and correcting mass media accounts, given by Akiyama and Preparation

Group as the purpose of their translation project and introduction of American second-wave

ideas to women in Japan.

***

Also in 1971, just three months after An Accusation of Sex Discrimination was released,

Japanese translations of two pioneering collections of American second-wave writing, Women’s

Liberation: Blueprint for the Future and Notes from the Second Year, were published by

commercial presses.50 That both appeared in Japanese the year after their publication in the US

and that the earliest of these was published less than six months after Japan’s ribu movement

began to attract the media’s attention indicates a clear measure of interest in and awareness of the

American movement—and the belief by publishers that such materials would sell.51 While,

similar to Women’s Liberation Movement Materials, both of these collections were translated by

groups of women who were somewhat older than typical ribu activists, the choices made in these

49
Ikegami, interview.
50
Sookie Stambler, comp., Women’s Liberation: Blueprint for the Future (New York: Ace Books, 1970),
translated as Kate Millett et al., !man ribu: josei wa nani o kangae, nani o motomeru ka, trans. Takano Fumi et al.
(Tokyo: Hayakawa Shob!, 1971); and Shulamith Firestone and Anne Koedt, eds., Notes from the Second year:
Women’s Liberation; Major Writings of the Radical Feminists (New York: Radical Feminism, 1970), published in
Japanese as Onna kara onna-tachi e: Amerika josei kaih" und" rep"to, trans. and commentary, Urufu no Kai
(Tokyo: G!d! shuppan, 1971). Bell hooks notes that this Stambler’s Women’s Liberation was one of a handful of
anthologies from the early 1970s containing articles that attempted to reach audiences beyond educated white
middle class women, efforts that were not sustained. See bell hooks, Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center, 2nd
ed. (London: Pluto Books, 2000), 7.
51
The left-leaning social orientation of books coming from G!d! Shuppan, the publisher of the translated
Notes, may explain the motivation for its support for the translation project. On the other hand, Hayakawa Shob!,
the mainstream publisher of the Japanese version of Women’s Liberation, was (and is) better known as a publisher
of translated mysteries and science fiction, suggesting editors thought the volume would turn a profit, or at least not
lose money.

163
two translation projects, including the framing of the finished products and the degree to which

they were transfigured by their translators (and, possibly, editors), represent two different

approaches to translation and two different ideas about the potential uses of information from the

US movement. These differences appear to stem at least in part from the translators’ degree of

connectedness to second-wave feminism in Japan and in the US.

Women’s Liberation was the first collection of American second-wave writing to be

translated into Japanese, yet its translators give little indication in their translation that they felt a

personal connection to the women’s movement in either the US or Japan. Consequently, in spite

of the activist message of the original text, the Japanese version does not appear to be an

“engaged translation.” To be sure, the copy on the outer obi [sash] and the dust jacket, as well as

the commentary in the back of the book—part of what Keith Harvey calls the “bindings,” which

contextualize, contribute to, and construct the discourse—suggest the content of the book has

relevance for women in Japan.52 Yet, it is far from clear whether the translation is intended to

provide a “blueprint for the[ir] future.” In the translated version, this original subtitle, which

presents the text to readers as a plan for action, if not a call to arms, becomes a pair of tepid

questions: “What are women thinking? What are they seeking?” Covering the bottom quarter of

the dust jacket, the obi positions the book as a “groundbreaking anthology” which responds to

the current “darkness” (for women) and as a successor to The Second Sex and Betty Friedan’s

The Feminine Mystique, while the copy inside the dust jacket positions the contents of the book

as part of the discourse of “the storm of women’s lib, which is now blowing in America, Japan,

52
Keith Harvey, Intercultural Movements: American Gay in French Translation (Manchester, U.K.: St.
Jerome Publishing, 2003). Harvey defines bindings as the “paratextual material that ‘surrounds’ the text,” including
what is on the images and copy on front and back covers, as well as reviews and even related criticism. In sum,
“these diverse textual rewritings themselves partake in—and indeed contribute to—the intercultural traffic” of
translated discourse, holding—or “binding”—texts and discourses to one another (ibid., 177).

164
and other countries.”53 Of course, it is unclear to what extent these promotional blurbs are an

editorial intervention and to what extent they are a product of the translators.

The six women who translated Women’s Liberation were established academics in their

late 30s to mid-50s, four of whom were then assistant or full professors at the prestigious and

conservative women’s school, Tsuda College, while the remaining two were assistant professors

elsewhere.54 All did research on English-language literature, English-speaking countries, or the

English language itself, and most had already undertaken or would later undertake translation

projects related to their research, not uncommon in Japanese academia. Although none of these

women were at the time working in the yet to be established field of women’s studies (joseigaku),

their research demonstrates an on-going interest in women’s issues. All but one had previously

or were to publish research on either women’s literature or women’s labor issues in Britain or the

US.55 In 1976, scholar of American literature, Itabashi Yoshie (1931–) would, however, go on to

translate Marabel Morgan’s The Total Woman, a conservative bestseller advocating women’s

subservience to their husbands to create strong marriages. That, in her afterword to the

translation, Itabashi describes Morgan’s method to attain marital bliss as “extremely effective in

Japan as well” demonstrates either a lack of actual commitment to the sexual and social

autonomy of women advocated by second-wave feminists or, possibly, a personal change of

heart.56

The primary translator of Women’s Liberation, Takano Fumi (1914–), a full professor

with an M.A. from Radcliffe College and a former Fulbright scholar, wrote the “commentary”

53
Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique (New York: Norton, 1963), first translated into Japanese as
Atarashii josei no s!z!, trans. Miura Fumiko (Tokyo: Daiwa Shoten, 1965).
54
See the list of translators in Millett et al., "man ribu, 303.
55
The sixth translator was a specialist of English language pedagogy.
56
Itabashi Yoshie, “T!taru #man atogaki,” in Marabel Morgan’s T!taru #man: shiawase na kekkon o
kizuku himitsu, trans. Itabashi Yoshie (Tokyo: K!dansha, 1976), 258.

165
(kaisetsu) at the back of the translation, contextualizing it with a historical overview of the

struggle for women’s rights in the US.57 While Takano makes no attempt to relate the content of

the book to Japan, toward the beginning of her commentary, she does offer a parenthetic aside

implying that “those who insist that Japan’s movement is independent, is not an imitation of

America’s [movement], and has no connection to it” are mistaken.58 However accurate her

assessment, this comment suggests she is not in accord with ribu leaders, who routinely made

(and make) the claims she refutes. Commentaries, which are commonly included in both fiction

and nonfiction texts, are sometimes brief introductory or explanatory comments, while other

times they are quite long and offer a very detailed explication of or response to a text. In

translated works, the translators sometimes include a “translator’s afterword” (yakusha atogaki)

or “translator’s foreword” (yakusha maegaki) that variously offers background information,

interpretation, and/or an explanation of at least some of the choices made in translation.59 This is

sometimes provided in addition to a commentary. That Takano’s comments are included qua

commentary, rather than as a translator’s note, positions her as a scholar-cum-critic, not a

translator. And her offering readers no discussion of the process of translation draws attention

away from the fact that the translation of the text involved a number of significant choices made

by Takano and her fellow translators, and, further, supports the false impression that the

translated text is unchanged from the original.60

In fact, the translators made significant changes in the framing, structure, and content of

the book without giving readers any indication that they had done so, much less an explanation.

57
Takano Fumi, “Kaisetsu,” in Millett et al., !man ribu.
58
Ibid., 299.
59
Examples of such afterwords will be discussed below.
60
Takano’s only comment on language choice is a parenthetic aside in the opening sentence that “"man
ribu” is actually “uimenzu ribu” (ibid., 299), a comment that functions to assert her position as an expert rather than
to draw attention to the significance of language choice.

166
Two of these changes can be found without even opening the cover: first, the choice of a less

activist subtitle, noted above, and, second, the replacement of the name of Sookie Stambler, the

compiler of the original volume, with “Kate Millett et al.” as authors. Millett was, in fact, merely

one of several dozen contributors, albeit of by far the longest chapter. The translators or the

publisher of the Japanese version of Women’s Liberation seem to be banking on the new star

power of this activist, who had already drawn attention in the mainstream Japanese press as the

author of the “Mao’s little red book,” or, alternatively, the bible, of women’s liberation, namely

Millett’s 1970 magnum opus, Sexual Politics.61 Translated excerpts from this work had already

appeared by that same November in the feminist-leaning women’s magazine Fujin k!ron

[Women’s debate] (1916–), and were included in this translation of Women’s Liberation.62

The most substantial change made by the translators was inside the cover: their excision

of approximately a quarter of the book, including seven articles of various lengths, a one-act play,

a short story, and two poems. Given that four of the six translators were scholars of literature, it

is ironic that all four literary pieces were removed. A second irony is the translators’ choice to

reorder the first and second of the seven sections in the original volume so that “Women on

Men” precedes “Women on Women,” reversing the order of the original and—in contrast with

the Japanese stereotype about gender norms in the US—putting men first. Moreover, while there

is no simple direct translation for “on” in these titles, the Japanese section titles—“Dansei tai

61
Kate Millett, Sexual Politics (New York: Ballentine, 1970), later translated into Japanese as Sei no
seijigaku [Sexual politics], trans. Fujieda Mioko (Tokyo: Jiy!sha, 1973). Millett was introduced in September 1970
in mainstream weekly Sh"kan bunshun as a leader of the American “women power” movement and the author of the
“Mao’s little red book” of women’s liberation—an idea probably borrowed from Time magazine, which just two
weeks earlier called her “the Mao Tse-tung of Women’s Liberation.” And in Fujin k!ron, which included a
translated excerpt in their November 1970 issue, she was acknowledged as the author of “the bible of women’s
liberation.” See Sh"kan bunshun, “Zenbei !man pawaa no shid"sha wa Nihonjin no tsuma: josei kaih" no ‘M"
goroku’ o kaita Keeto Yoshimura,” 12, no. 36 (September 14, 1970); “Who’s Come a Long Way, Baby?” Time,
August 31, 1970: 16; Kate Millett, “Josei kaih" no baiburu: sei no seijigaku,” Fujin k!ron 55, no. 11 (November
1970).
62
Millett, “Josei kaih" no baiburu”; Millett, “Sei no seijigaku,” trans., Takano Fumi, in Millett et al.,
#man ribu.

167
josei” [men “tai” women] and “Josei tai josei” [women “tai” women], respectively—replaces

“on” with the oppositional “tai” [against, versus, to] rather than a more neutral alternative. This

allows for a reading of conflict that is not present in the originals and (re)sets the tone for the

translated articles.63 Further, section four, “Women on Sex and Sex Roles,” was cut completely,

eliminating three chapters, one of which was the single chapter in the original text on lesbians.64

(This would not be the last time discourse by and on lesbians was to be omitted or at least

severely truncated in feminist translation projects in the early 1970s.) Finally, in the section,

“Women on Liberation,” a chapter on Black women’s liberation was kept, while a chapter on

consciousness raising groups was eliminated.65 In spite of the latter’s exclusion here, however,

the group discussion practice of “konshasunesu reijingu” was soon to be adopted by some

women within the Japanese movement in order for women to “develop [a]…clear self-identity

[and] to lay bare their own ‘inner feminine-consciousness.’”66 As with Takano’s offhand

comment about the influence of the US lib movement, the translators’ choice to omit this chapter

suggests they were not in touch with issues that were of most immediate concern and relevance

to women in the ribu movement.

63
A possible more neutral translation is “josei ga kataru josei/dansei” [women speaking (about) women].
64
Martha Shelley, “Lesbianism and the Women’s Liberation Movement,” in Stambler, Women’s
Liberation, 123–29.
65
June Arnold, “Consciousness-Raising,” in ibid.; Maryanne Weathers, “An Argument for Black
Women’s Liberation,” in ibid. While Black feminism might seem irrelevant to the women’s movement in an
ostensibly homogeneous Japan, particularly as minority women in Japan had not yet drawn attention in the ribu
movement, the topic it was not infrequently referenced in discussions of feminism in the US. I would argue that in
certain circles in Japan at the time (and now) showing awareness of and the ability to discuss racial and class issues
vis-à-vis US society then was used to indicate a certain cosmopolitan sophistication on the part of a speaker or
writer.
66
Tanaka Kazuko, A Short History of the Women’s Movement in Modern Japan, 3rd ed. (1975; Tokyo:
Femintern Press, 1977), 47. See, also, e.g., Funamoto Emi’s comment in Onna erosu, “Hensh! k"ki,” no. 2 (April
1974): 213. The translation of Notes from the Second Year would, in fact, include Kathie Sarachild’s article
outlining how to run a consciousness-raising group (“A Program for Feminist ‘Consciousness Raising,” in Firestone
and Koedt, Notes from the Second Year, 78–80), although they favored “consciousness revolution” (ishiki no
kakumei) over the direct transliteration, which was to catch on later. See Kathie Sarachild, “Josei kaih" no
puroguramu: ishiki no kakumei,” in Firestone and Koedt, Onna kara onnatachi e, 217–24; and “Kaisetsu to sh"kai,”
in ibid., 150.

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 By contrast, the Japanese version of Notes from the Second Year is clearly the work of

“engaged translators.” These women were both directly involved in the ribu movement and very

forward about the interventions they made in their translation to create a text of direct relevance

to women in Japan, and, ultimately, to help bring about social change. In spite of crediting

Shulamith Firestone and Anne Koedt as the editors of the volume and themselves as merely the

translators, the Wo(o)lf Society (Urufu no Kai) substantially and openly transfigured the text,

translating, in full or in part, just 16 of the original 34 chapters that seemed most meaningful,

then reorganizing them, and inserting their own voices to frame them.67 The cover, an abstract

rendering of badges such as worn by women in the American movement, was designed by

Asakura Setsu (1922–), a woman artist who had just been to the US and had come into contact

with the women’s liberation movement there.68 Woolf Society members give the collection an

entirely new title, From Woman to Women: A Report from the American Women’s Liberation

Movement (Onna kara onnatachi e: Amerika josei kaih! und! rep!to), positioning the text as a

message from American women’s liberation activists to women in Japan.69 And in lieu of

burying their comments on the text in an afterword, as is common in Japan, the translators

include a translators’ foreword at the front of the book and in the back insert an extended

roundtable in which the text and the movement are discussed by the translators, who relate all of

67
The group’s name comes from the impassioned suggestion of one its members, who was a fan of
Virginia Woolf. That “Woolf” and “wolf” are both homophonous and spelled the same when transliterated into
Japanese made this naming all the more “cool” to group members. Afterward, someone decided the name also
worked an acronym for “Women’s Liberation Front,” which is how the name is explained in the translation itself.
See Akiyama, Ribu shishi n!to, 60–61; and Urufu no Kai, “Yakusha maegaki,” in Firestone and Koedt, Onna kara
onnatachi e, 4–5. Hereafter, I will write “Woolf” in reference the initial inspiration that was transfigured into the
group’s name.
68
Akiyama, Ribu shishi n!to, 61.
69
The translation “from woman to women” is my own. Japanese does not normally inflect nouns to
indicate plural, so “onna” can mean either “woman” or “women.” “Onnatachi” is, however, inflected with “tachi”
used to emphasize that there are multiple people. Akiyama says Woolf Society members vacillated between “onna”
and “onnatachi.” They believed their final choice did not translate neatly into English (ibid., 60), though I disagree.

169
this to their own life experiences.70

Akiyama, formerly involved in Preparation Group, which dissolved around the end of

1970, played a key role in the translation activities of the Woolf Society, which itself first came

together as a reading group under circumstances and with a composition of members similar to

that of Preparation Group.71 As before, it was Akiyama who got her hands on a copy of the just

published Notes from the Second Year, which she shared with the reading group. These “brave,

bold” self-proclaimed radical feminists writing about sex, housework, and internal

self-awareness had “put words to [feelings] that had been smoldering in our hearts, that now

finally made sense,” and the nine members of the group set about to translate it “because we

wanted as many women as possible to read it.”72

The chapters they selected to share include Jo Freeman’s well-known “Bitch Manifesto,”

Anne Koedt’s “Myth of the Vaginal Orgasm” (first published in Fujin k!ron), Ti-Grace

Atkinson’s “Institution of Sexual Intercourse,” and the “Redstockings Manifesto,” as well as

writing by Shulamith Firestone and Kate Millett, and on topics including abortion, consciousness

raising, capitalism and the oppression of women, and feminism and social revolution.73 They

divide the essays into three sections: “Women’s Experience,” “Love and Sex,” and “Women’s

Struggle,” and preface each with a brief commentary on the essays contained therein, as well as

information about the authors. Omitted from the translation were chapters that overlap

significantly with the ones that were selected, and chapters on specific organizations, as well as

70
Ibid., and Urufu no Kai, “Onna kara onnatachi e: zadankai: yakusha no atogaki ni kaete,” in Firestone
and Koedt, Onna kara onnatachi e, 225–56.
71
Ibid., 33–34, 56.
72
Ibid., 56–57; Urufu no Kai, “Yakusha maegaki,” 3. Journalist Matsui Yayori, one of Woolf Society’s
founding members, similarly recalls that the group gathered materials about the US movement because they wanted
both an unmediated look at their struggle, and then translated them because they wanted to let women in Japan know
about it too. See Matsui Yayori, Josei kaih! to wa nani ka? Onnatachi no danketsu wa chikarazuyoku, kokky! o
koeru (Tokyo: Miraisha, 1975), 40.
73
Anne Koedt, “Wagina !gazumu kara no kaih!,” trans. Mitsumoto Yasuko, Fujin k!ron 56, no. 5 (May
1971).

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chapters on drug addition, classism within the women’s movement, and feminist theater. In their

foreword, the translators indicate that they cut around one third of the total text, and concentrated

on translating the longer, richer essays.74 While the foreword gives no further indication of why

they chose the articles they did, in the roundtable in the back, the translators discuss their

reaction to various essays and it is clear that they translated those that most closely spoke to and

helped them reevaluate their own experiences with regard to the themes commonly discussed in

feminist writing, including marriage, housework, sex, childbirth and childrearing, and work and

discrimination.

Akiyama later recalled that, “We felt that by talking about how we all came to this book

[in the roundtable], we could play a role in connecting the American writers and Japanese

readers.”75 In the foreword, however, Woolf Society members express a certain ambivalence

about the project as a whole. While they greatly wanted other women to read this text, they had

wondered whether it would be better to spend their time writing something themselves, or

engaging in more direct activism. They realized, however, that they could not leave the job to a

professional male translator: even though he would be able do the job much faster, they doubted

a man—not torn as they were between work and home—would be able to translate it

accurately.76 They were further encouraged in this regard by Anne Koedt’s positive response to

their request for permission to translate the text, telling them that the text was written by women

and should be translated by women.77

The responses the translators received from the translation’s readers were also

74
They do not, however, directly indicate that they abridged articles in the course of translation, such as
Meredith Tax’s “Woman and Her Mind: The Story of Everyday Life,” only a third of which was translated as “Onna
no shinj!.”
75
Akiyama, Ribu shishi n!to, 59.
76
Urufu no Kai, “Yakusha maegaki,” 3.
77
Ibid., 4.

171
overwhelmingly positive and encouraging, reassuring the translators that their choice to translate

the Notes from the Second Year was a good one. The transfigured text was clearly as

inspirational to the readers of the upwards of 5,000 copies sold as the original was to its

translators.78 In spite of an absence of significant advertising or reviews, readers around the

country found copies of the book, and sent Woolf Society dozens of letters full of passion,

desperately seeking information about ribu and solidarity with other women. A third of these

they compiled in a booklet, Letters to From Woman to Women.79 The translators spoke to

readers in many different ways. One female student from Tokyo wrote,

I just finished reading ‘The Bitch Manifesto’ and I’m so excited my hands are still trembling. I feel like
saying ‘The Bitch Manifesto’ is truly ‘My Human Manifesto’ …. [It] made some things very clear for me.
… ‘Activism’ like in “Bitch Manifesto” isn’t possible for me right now but I hope to carry on with an
80
awareness of what’s inside me.

A woman from Kyoto said the volume helped her think deeply about the meaning of “woman”

(onna), as well as the status of minorities in Japan, while another woman from Tokyo read the

roundtable at the back and realized that the “woman problem” is not just an “intellectual woman

problem.”81 And a 32-year-old housewife from Nagoya, in central Japan, was thrilled to find

that what she had always believed about sex was true.82 Women critical of the volume were also

motivated to write the group, including one who was “completely disappointed” that the

members of the roundtable “just expressed admiration and agreement with American lib

activists’ opinions, and not a word of criticism or opposition.”83 They also received a number of

78
Akiyama notes that around 5,000 copies were printed over three print runs and that the book was no
longer available by the 1980s. See her Ribu shishi n!to, 61.
79
See ibid., 74; and Urufu no kai, “Maegaki: 14-nin no onnatachi kara,” Onna kara onnatachi e [Urufu no
kai, Tokyo], no. 1 (1972):1. In September 1971, this translation, along with the translation of Women’s Liberation,
were, however, mentioned in the Asahi shinbun as two of a number of “reports on the American women’s liberation
movement being published one after another” in Japan. See “!man ribu no ichinen: Amerika to Nihon,” Asahi
shinbun September 22, 1971, morning ed., 17.
80
Quoted in Akiyama, Ribu shishi n!to, 70.
81
Cited in ibid., 70–71.
82
Cited in ibid., 73.
83
Cited in ibid., 75.

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letters like one from a university student in Kodaira, near Tokyo, who put together a small group

and had begun to “raise their [as yet] naïve voices.” What they need more than anything, she

writes, is information, and asks Woolf Society to let her know if group puts out their own

publication.84 This, they very quickly decided to do, and in the spring of 1972, they produced

the first of what was to be three issues of From Woman to Women published over the following

two years. This new publication focused some of the same issues as Notes from the Second Year

but was written from the perspective of women in Japan and tailored more specifically to their

concerns.85 With the first issue the Woolf Society included the booklet of letters as a supplement,

creating a sense of dialogue between readers and translators, as well as readers and readers over

the meaning of the text.86 And like this text, other translations of key American second-wave

feminist texts also sparked dialogues on issues such as women’s bodies, sexuality, and

reproductive health.

From Translation to Transfiguration and Back: Our Bodies, Ourselves

Our Bodies, Ourselves was made to be translated. When the small group of Boston

women who put together the open-ended “course” that became Our Bodies, Ourselves were

negotiating with the publishing house Simon and Schuster to produce the first commercial

edition, they fought for and won a contract clause calling for the book to be released

simultaneously in Spanish for US distribution.87 Although the Spanish version was ultimately

84
Cited in ibid., 73–74.
85
Another mini-komi, this one based in Osaka, also adopted the From Woman to Women name.
86
Ibid., 69.
87
The first edition was Boston Women’s Health Collective (later, Boston Women’s Health Book
Collective), Women and their Bodies: A Course (Boston: Boston Women’s Health Collective and New England Free
Press, 1970). The title was changed to Our Bodies, Ourselves with the printing of a new edition by the same press in
1971. Combined, these two editions sold over 250,000 copies. The first commercial edition was Boston Women’s
Health Book Collective—hereafter BWHBC—Our Bodies, Ourselves: A Book By and For Women (New York:
Simon and Schuster, 1973). See Kathy Davis, The Making of Our Bodies, Ourselves: How Feminism Travels Across
Borders (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2007), 22, 24.

173
delayed by several years, as a result of a combination of coincidence and fortuitous personal ties,

both within Japan and transnationally, three Japanese women came to produce one of the first

translations of this landmark in the transnational movement for women to take ownership of their

own bodies and sexuality.88 With its emphasis on female sexuality and reproduction—including

chapters on sexual anatomy, sexuality, rape, venereal disease, birth control, abortion, and

childbirth—the book resonated as well with major issues of concerns of ribu activists. And the

conditions that prompted its compilation by the Boston Women’s Health Book Collective were

equally true for women in Japan: namely, the frustration engendered by the need to entrust

medical issues—particularly those surrounding sexual and reproductive health—to

pre-dominantly male, “paternal, judgmental and non-informative doctors” because of a lack of

knowledge about one’s own body.89 In fact, in the fall of 1972, at the suggestion of a couple of

Americans then in Japan to protest the Vietnam War, the Woolf Society had already published an

issue of From Woman to Women focused on women and sex/sexuality (sei), divided into sections

on abortion and birth control, pregnancy, and infertility, as well as sex/sexuality and the female

body90—many of the issues addressed in more depth by the women in Boston. That these issues

were of interest to a broad spectrum of women in Japan is evidenced by the fact that, in addition

to circulating through informal ribu networks, part of this issue was reprinted in Fujin k!ron in

spring 1973.91

88
The US Spanish-language edition was not actually published until 1977. See Davis, The Making of Our
Bodies, Ourselves, 64–66.
89
BWHBC, Our Bodies, Ourselves (1973), 1.
90
“Hajime ni,” Onna kara onnatachi e [Urufu no kai, Tokyo], no. 2 (Fall 1972), 1.
91
Urufu no Kai, “Taiken kiroku: wa ga sei no jikken: Onna kara onnatachi e no h!koku,” Fujin k!ron 58,
no. 4 (April 1973). The three issues of From Woman to Women are undated; I have confirmed the publication dates
with Akiyama Y!ko (personal communication, June 21, 2009). Copies of mini-komi produced by any given ribu
group were frequently sent to other groups, which sometimes excerpted from them or promoted them in their
mini-komi or otherwise made them available to activists in their region. A synopsis of the content of this issue of
Onna kara onnatachi e appeared, for instance, in a Nagoya-based mini-komi: Onna no hangyaku, “Urufu no kai
‘Onna kara onnatachi e’ dai-ni g!,” no. 6 (December 1972): 53–54; and lists of mini-komi available at Ribu

174
 Yamada Mitsuko (1945–), one of the three translators of the volume into Japanese,

received a copy of an early version of Our Bodies, Ourselves from an American friend around

1972 and found it “just wonderful.” Around the same time, she also got her hands on a copy of

the “sex/sexuality for women” issue of From Woman to Women, which is how she learned about

the Woolf Society and came to send a letter to them, enclosing Our Bodies, Ourselves. Yamada

explained that she had been asked to translate the book by an American woman living in K!chi,

on the rural island of Shikoku, and had been looking for co-translators for a while. When

Akiyama received the letter and the book, which did a much more thorough job than the Woolf

Society had managed thus far, she knew she wanted to help introduce this book to women in

Japan. Yamada had just moved to Matsuyama, also on Shikoku, which is where she met

Kuwahara Kazuyo (1942–), an English teacher previously unconnected to ribu, who became the

third translator.92

Although they wanted to translate the whole book, the three translators realized they

needed to abridge it if it was to be cheap enough for ordinary women to afford. The new Simon

and Schuster version, which had just reached them, was greatly expanded from the version they

first read and it included new chapters on nutrition, exercise, lesbians, aging, and medicine and

society. Using the structure of the older version as a guide, they decided to concentrate on the

“topics of greatest urgency”: the body itself, birth control, pregnancy, and childbirth. In addition,

they were committed to supplementing the information with information specific to Japan.93 Ten

months after an excerpt from Our Bodies, Ourselves on the birth control pill was published in

Fujin k!ron in November 1973, the Japanese translation was released, and sold well enough that

Shinjuku Center were printed in the center’s Ribu News.

92
See Akiyama Y!ko, Kuwahara Kazuyo, and Yamada Mitsuko, “Yakusha atogaki,” in BWHBC, Onna
no karada: sei to ai no shinjitsu, trans. Akiyama Y!ko, Kuwahara Kazuyo, and Yamada Mitsuko (Tokyo: G!d!
Shuppan, 1974), 343–44; Akiyama, Ribu shishi n!to, 154–55, 158.
93
Ibid., 158–59; Akiyama, Kuwahara, and Yamada, “Yakusha atogaki,” 345.

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it was reprinted several times.94 It was one of the first two foreign-language editions to be

published, with the other published in 1974 being in Italian. In the decade after the first Simon

and Schuster edition was published, with Japan among the first of twelve country-specific

versions released in various languages, nine in European countries, it is clear that Japanese ribu

activists were very much in the transnational feminist loop.95

The Japanese version credits both the Boston Women’s Health Book Collective and the

three Japanese translators prominently on the cover of the book, retitled Women’s Bodies: The

Truth about Sex and Love (Onna no karada: sei to ai no shinjitsu)—a title chosen to more

readily convey the contents of the book than would a direct translation of the English original.96

Women’s Bodies opens with a letter from members of the Boston group expressing great pleasure

that the book is being published in Japanese and the hope that it will be useful. They also

emphasize that the book, which they say could only have come to be as the fruit of a collective

project, is just a “beginning” step toward the improvement of women’s understanding of their

own bodies and lives.97 The very engaged translators make their presence visible throughout,

from the “Foreword to the Japanese edition,” which follows the collective’s letter, to the brief

annotations and supplementary information inserted throughout in dark brackets, to the two

distinct afterwords they include at the back.98

94
BWHBC, “Taikenteki piru no subete (jikken h!koku),” Fujin k!ron 58, no. 11 (November 1973).
Akiyama says its sales made it a bestseller among ribu-related books. See Akiyama, Ribu shishi n!to, 164.
95
After Japan and Italy in 1974—and in addition to the 1977 Spanish-language version for the US
market—the other countries were, in chronological order, Denmark (1975), Taiwan (1976, unauthorized), France
(1977), the UK (1978), Germany (1980), Sweden (1980), Greece (1981), the Netherlands (1981), Israel (1982), and
Spain (1982). See Davis, The Making of Our Bodies, Ourselves, 52–53, 64–66. Davis downplays the first Japanese
and Taiwanese versions in her narrative about the global spread of the book, perhaps because it runs against the
standard narrative of second-wave feminist discourse spreading from the US to Europe to the rest of the world. See
ibid., 60–61.
96
Akiyama recalls not being satisfied with this title, but the group decided that for such a pioneering book,
they need a title that was easy to understand, something they did not believe more direct translations of the original
title would have been. See Akiyama, Ribu shishi n!to, 165.
97
BWHBC, “Nihon no mina-san e.”
98
Akiyama Y!ko, Kuwahara Kazuyo, and Yamada Mitsuko, “Nihongo-ban maegaki,” “Iry! to

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 In their foreword, the translators summarize the history of and impetus for the American

original version and, like the letter from the Boston women’s group, situate Women’s Bodies as a

collective project.99 While the translators are clearly reaching out to individual women across

Japan, their emphasis on the collective nature of the book’s production is very much in keeping

with the spirit of ribu; and, to the translators, Women’s Bodies—the product of this collective

effort—“symbolizes” what the women involved on both sides of the Pacific hope is “a new

expansion and intensification of the movement.”100 In the remainder of the foreword, the

translators turn to Japan, which they explain has “completely the same” circumstances that drove

women in the US to develop the book: in Japan, as in the US, the medical system has deprived

women of both their feelings about and accurate information on their own bodies. But, as the

Boston group says, “knowledge is power,” and the translators hope, through this project, to

empower women in Japan. Finally, they provide a nuts-and-bolts explanation of how, among

other things, their own additions of Japan-specific information are indicated in the text.101

Following up on this, the first afterword explains that, while there are many points in common

between the medical systems in Japan and the US, there are also many differences. It exhorts

women to take steps, such as paying attention to their own bodies and asking questions of

doctors, to get the best medical treatment possible.102

In their “Translators’ Afterword,” Akiyama, Kuwahara, and Yamada describe their own

encounter with this book as taking place “in the middle of the expansive flows of the women’s

liberation movement which links the United States and Japan.” This is exemplified by their

watashitachi: yakusha gur!pu,” “Yakusha atogaki”

99
Akiyama, Kuwahara, and Yamada, “Nihongo-ban maegaki”; the history is provided in the English
version: BWHBC, “Preface,” Our Bodies, Ourselves (1973).
100
Akiyama, Kuwahara, and Yamada, “Nihongo-ban maegaki,” 3.
101
Ibid., 3.
102
Akiyama, Kuwahara, and Yamada, “Iry" to watashitachi.”

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narration of the translation’s history, including the circumstances whereby Yamada came to be

asked to translate the earlier version and found the other two translators, as well as the

international group of women and men who assisted with the project.103 The translators then

position the book as a “Japanese language version” (Nihongo ban) rather than a “translation”

(hon’yaku ban).104 This, they explain, is because of the restructuring of the book they carried

out—in consultation with their editor, the American authors, and others—in order, as noted

above, to keep the cost down and make it available to as many women as possible. This, they

believe, is in keeping with the intention of the original authors.105 The final product is divided

into ten chapters, including the preface: “Our Changing Selves,” “Anatomy and Physiology,”

“On Sexuality,” “Birth Control,” “Abortion,” “Pregnancy,” “Childbirth,” “Postpartum,”

“Venereal Disease,” and “Illness and Sanitation,” a breakdown which, as the editors explain,

uses the skeleton of the older version with the meat of the new.106

Although the translators retain a few pages in the sexuality chapter on homosexuality

(d!seiai)—nestled between sections on rape and living alone—they did not include the Simon

and Schuster version’s groundbreaking chapter on lesbians, “In Amerika They Call Us

Dykes.”107 While “unfortunate,” they explain by way of a justification for its omission, this

chapter was written by a lesbian group not otherwise connected to the Boston Women’s Health

Collective. They direct “those who are interested” to the translation already published in the

commercial ribu-run magazine Woman Eros (Onna erosu).108 Although she had no connection

103
Akiyama, Kuwahara, and Yamada, “Yakusha atogaki,” 343.
104
Ibid., 344–45.
105
Ibid., 345.
106
Ibid., 345.
107
See BWHBC, Onna no karada, 101–6. “[F]ar and away the most controversial chapter,” Kathy Davis
writes, the lesbian chapter “became a landmark publication on sexuality and relationships between women,
providing encouragement to countless women to ‘come out’ as women loving women.” It was also eye-opening for
many members of the Boston women’s collective. See Davis, The Making of Our Bodies, Ourselves, 9.
108
Akiyama, Kuwahara, and Yamada, “Yakusha atogaki,” 345. In fact, only the first half had been

178
to any lesbian groups in Japan at the time, Akiyama recalls being concerned about leaving the

chapter out, but satisfied that it was introduced to a lesbian group to translate.109

The “lesbian group” turned out to be the singular Amano Michimi. Amano had become

involved in Tanaka’s Group Fighting Women and the activities of Ribu Shinjuku Center while

acting as a go-between for several individuals who, ironically, wanted to translate Tanaka’s

influential For Women with Spirit into English.110 Though Tanaka had unceremoniously booted

her out six months later, Amano had maintained ties with other ribu activists. Funamoto Emi, a

ribu activist who was one of the founding editors of Woman Eros, invited Amano to help

produce the journal, and specifically asked her to translate the lesbian chapter for the magazine,

which Funamoto thought would be a shame not to put into Japanese. Amano accepted, thinking

that it would be a good chance to work on her English and might lead to something else.111

Amano’s translation, which was to appear over two issues of Woman Eros, in April and

September of 1974, was most likely the first commercially published translation by a

self-identified rezubian of lesbian-authored writing into Japanese.112 Kagura Jamu, who was

strongly attracted to women but had no one with whom she could discuss it, recalled years later

what a shock it was to read that article in a copy of the journal at her neighbor’s: “one look at the

word ‘lesbian’ gave me a start, and I slammed the magazine shut.” Kagura would later become a

founding member of the group Regumi no Gomame.113

published at that point, while the second half was published the same month that the Japanese version of Our Bodies,
Ourselves was published. See BWHBC, “Rezu to yobarete,” pts. 1 and 2, Onna erosu no. 2 (April 1974), no. 3
(September 1974).
109
Akiyama Y!ko, interview with author, March 4, 2009.
110
Tanaka Mitsu, Inochi no onna-tachi e: torimidashi !man ribu ron (Tokyo: Tabata Shoten, 1972).
111
Amano Michimi, interview with author, April 2, 2009.
112
The omission of this chapter from the original translation and its publication in Onna erosu was
significant enough to be remembered twenty years later in a comment on the two volumes in a lesbian book guide
produced by the Osaka-based rezubian group Kansai YLP. See Kansai YLP, Rezubian no tame no dokusho annai
(Osaka: Kansai YLP, 1994), 4.
113
Hisada Megumi, “Genki jirushi no rezubian: ‘Regumi no Gomame’ t!j!!” in Bessatsu Takarajima, no.

179
 While issues of specific concern to women romantically and sexually attracted to other

women were, in the end, very much downplayed in Women’s Bodies, the core of Our Bodies,

Ourselves resonated with many issues of great concern to women in the ribu movement, as noted

above. And, building on this immediate relevance, within the ribu movement the transfigured

text became a springboard for further discussions about women “stealing back their bodies” from

gynecologists and obstetricians.114 In a roundtable discussion printed in Woman Eros in March

1975, co-translator Yamada and three others talk about the lessons the book has for women in

Japan. One of the three, Woman Eros editor Saeki Y!ko (1940–) does, however, open the

roundtable by commenting that, while such a book “will be written by women’s hands for

women in Japan as well,” at the moment, using Women’s Bodies as a starting point, she would

like to discuss the theme of “me and women’s bodies.”115 The discussion took off from there, in

the form of study groups and teach-ins at, for instance, Ribu Shinjuku Center and the women’s

space H!kiboshi.116 At Ribu Shinjuku Center, the first of a series of “women’s bodies” teach-ins

was held in the fall of 1976, which would continue on at other locations from the close of the

center in May 1977 through 1982. Using a slide show produced by one of the Feminist Women’s

Health Centers in the US and methods used in the US to better acquaint women with their own

bodies, participants were encouraged to talk and learn about their own bodies, sexuality, and

reproductive health. For instance, women at the teach-ins were invited to use speculums to view

their cervixes and taught how to do breast self examinations to detect cancer at an early stage.117

64, Onna o ai suru onnatachi no monogatari (Tokyo: JICC Shuppankyoku, 1987), 123.
114
Wakabayashi Naeko, “Onna no karada renzoku tiichi in,” Onna erosu no. 8 (March 1977): 161.
115
Nagai Reiko et al., “Onna no karada,” Onna erosu no. 4 (March 1975): 114. Women’s Bodies also
heads the list of books on learning about the body printed in the subsequent volume. See Onna erosu, “Onnatachi no
hon seizoroi,” no. 5 (September 1975): 166.
116
H!kiboshi [Comet] was a women’s space which was run in Tokyo’s Shinjuku district for about four
years in the late 1970s.
117
See Ribu Shinjuku Sentaa Shiry! Hozon Kai, ed. Kono michi hitosuji: Ribu Shinjuku Sentaa shiry!
sh"sei—hereafter RSSSHK, Kono michi hitosuji—(Tokyo: Inpakuto, 2008), v; Wakabayashi, “Onna no karada

180
 Wakabayashi Naeko, who had worked at the Feminist Women’s Health Center in

Oakland, California, during a year spent in North America, 1975–1976, subtitles her Onna erosu

article on the teach-ins “toward the establishment of a clinic for women,” clearly indicating the

direction at least some of the women involved in the teach-ins were looking.118 When, almost a

decade later, the Woman’s Health Center (!manzu Herusu Sentaa) opened in Osaka, one of its

founders described the need for women to learn more about their own bodies and thereby taking

control of their reproductive health119—the same language used in Women’s Bodies. While it

would be overly simplistic to situate such clinics in a direct line of descent from Our Bodies,

Ourselves or as a simple imitation of the women’s health centers in the US with which women in

Japan such as Wakabayashi had connections, we cannot deny that these ties and these

translations and other transfigurations are a significant part of the context in which they emerged.

Outside the ribu movement, Women’s Bodies quickly reached even more readers in its

further transfiguration in two volumes of the popular Bessatsu Takarajima series (1976–),

Women’s Dictionary (Onna no jiten) and Women’s Bodies (Onna no karada) in 1977 and

1978.120 On the cover of both of these books is the English subtitle, “The New Women’s

Survival Guide Book.” The volumes offer a more expansive lifestyle guide than the Woolf

Society’s translation, but openly draw on Our Bodies, Ourselves/Women’s Bodies. The opening

section of Women’s Dictionary is focused specifically on women’s bodies and is given a title that

is literal translation of “our bodies, ourselves” (watashitachi no karada, watashitachi jishin),

renzoku tiichi in”; Onna hangyaku, “Onna no karada renzoku tiichi in: onna no tame no kurinikku setsuritsu ni
mukete,” 16 (March 1977), 38.
118
On the teach-ins, see Wakabayashi, “Onna no karada renzoku tiichi in”; Wakabayashi Naeko, “Onna
no nettowaaku no naka de ikiru,” oral history taken by Sugiura Ikuko, in Sugiura Ikuko, Nihon no rezubian
komyuniti: k!jutsu no und! shi (Tokyo: privately printed, 2009), 22; “Komyuniti no rekishi: nenpy" to intaby# de
furikaeru,” Aniisu (summer 2001): 40. The study groups at H"kiboshi are mentioned in Nakayama Chinatsu, Gendai
Nihon josei no kibun (Tokyo: Mainichi Shinbun Sha, 1987), 15–16.
119
Shin chihei, “Motto shintai aisou yo: !manzu Herusu Sentaa,” no. 131 (November 1985).
120
Bessatsu Takarajima, no. 4 Onna no jiten (Tokyo: JICC Shuppankyoku, 1977); Bessatsu Takarajima,
no. 9, Onna no karada (Tokyo: JICC Shuppankyoku, 1978).

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words also included in English on the cover, the table of contents, and the first page of the

section. That section also contains illustrations by Nina Reimer found in both the original Our

Bodies, Ourselves and its Japanese translation, as well as a brief section on “homosexuality” (not

lesbians), this time penned, not translated, by Amano.121

While Amano writes somewhat equivocally about this volume in Onna erosu, these new

transfigurations as well as the original translation are recommend in and served as references for

a hand-written, mimeographed guide to birth control methods first produced in 1983 by Students

to Prevent the Worsening of the Eugenics Protection Law (Y!sei Hogo H" Kaiaku o Soshi Suru

Gakusei no Kai), formed as part of a larger response to new proposed revisions to the law.122

The pamphlet, which immediately sold out of its initial print run of 200, was given a title that

could be read as Women’s Bodies or My Body.123 The group writes “I” (watashi) in superscript

over the character for “woman”/“women” (onna) to link the self to women’s bodies, thereby

echoing the titles of both the translated and English versions.

A year later the Boston Women’s Health Collective released The New Our Bodies,

Ourselves, the first major revision of the book in a decade.124 The project to translate this

version into Japanese began with a suggestion by outspoken feminist scholar Ueno Chizuko

(1948–) in 1986, which along with the timing, position it as a post-ribu feminist project.125 And

yet, the project involved women who had been active in the ribu movement and was supervised

by Fujieda Mioko, who had assisted with the 1974 translation of Our Bodies, Ourselves around

121
Amano Michimi, “D"seiai,” in Bessatsu Takarajima, no. 4, Onna no jiten.
122
See Amano’s comment in Onna erosu “Hensh! k"ki,” no. 8 (March 1977): 190. Y!sei Hogo H"
Kaiaku o Soshi Suru Gakusei no Kai, ed., Onna (watashi) no karada: hinin o kangaeru, rev. ed. (Tokyo: Y!sei
Hogo H" Kaiaku o Soshi Suru Gakusei no Kai, ca. 1984), 4, 18, 39. The student group was formed within the group
Soshiren in January 1983. See Masae Kato, Women’s Rights? The Politics of Abortion in Modern Japan
(Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2009), 129.
123
Y!sei Hogo H" Kaiaku o Soshi Suru Gakusei no Kai, ed., Onna (watashi) no karada, 1.
124
BWHBC, The New Our Bodies, Ourselves: A Book By and For Women (New York: Simon and
Schuster, 1984).
125
Nakanishi Toyoko, Onna no hon’ya no monogatari (Tokyo: Domesu Shuppan, 2006), 90–91.

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the same time she was translating Millett’s Sexual Politics.126 This clearly positions the new

translation in the same complex trajectory as earlier ribu discourse on women’s health in which

the original translation played such a key role.

While the translators of the 1974 version made significant abridgements of the American

text to keep the cost affordable, the Boston Women’s Health Book Collective encouraged the

translators of The New Our Bodies, Ourselves to translate the whole volume, and, preferably, to

publish it at the hands of women.127 A decade earlier, finding a woman-run publisher would

have been a tall order—even the Boston Women’s Health Book Collective continues to this day

to publish its books through Simon and Schuster—but for the new Japanese translation this call

was answered by Nakanishi Toyoko (1930–). In 1982, Nakanishi founded the Kyoto-based

Sh!kad!, Japan’s first women’s bookstore, which became the new translation’s publisher. And,

unlike the first translation, which was the work of three women with the assistance of others,

some 50 women are credited as translators or editors of the new volume, making it more

obviously the kind of collective project these women were trying to render into Japanese. And

like the book upon which it was based, the translation included a page full of photos of these

women, personalizing the translators and editors in the same way as the original had done for its

contributors.128

This time, they followed the wishes of the Boston collective and attempted to faithfully

translation nearly the entire volume.129 One unfortunate result of this was the price tag of 5,000

yen (then around US$38), which made the oversized 600-page book less affordable than the

126
See Akiyama, Kuwahara, and Yamada, “Yakusha atogaki,” 344; Millett, Sei no seijigaku.
127
Nakanishi, Onna no hon’ya no monogatari, 90. Davis notes that, over time, the Boston women became
less interventionist about the content of what was translated, and were more concerned that the translation and
localization projects in various countries help bring about collective discussions on women’s bodies, sexuality and
health. See Davis, Translating Our Bodies, Ourselves, 79.
128
See BWHBC, The New Our Bodies, Ourselves, xii; BWHBC, Karada, watashitachi jishin, 6; Nakanishi,
Onna no hon’ya no monogatari, 94.
129
Ogino Miho, “Nihon-ban ni tsuite,” in BWHBC, Karada, watashitachi jishin, 8.

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earlier edition had been. While the translators aimed for a more literal translation of this book, to

which they assigned the more literally translated title Bodies, Ourselves (Karada, watashitachi

jishin), it was nonetheless a very engaged translation. Like its predecessor over a decade earlier,

the translators and editors assert their presence throughout, beginning with a three-part foreword

penned by the three women in charge of translation and editing.130 While they continue to use

physiognomical illustrations from the original, according to the editors, most photographs have

been replaced with photos taken in Japan, to make it easier for readers to relate—although this

might have been a positive spin put on an editorial problem.131 Like the 1974 translation, the

translators and editors insert up-to-date local information in dark brackets throughout. They also

add longer sidebars with local information and, in several cases, lengthier sections, such as the

two-page section on Japanese lesbians added to the end of the lesbian chapter.132 Finally, at the

end they add a 30-page listing of information on available obtaining gynecologic and obstetric

care around the country, including details on fees, services available, and what kind of

information can be provided to whom at various clinics.133 Such a list both provides readers with

invaluable information and suggests to them what is important in making choices about

reproductive and sexual health care.

When the translation of The New Our Bodies, Ourselves was finally published in 1988, as

130
Kawano Miyoko, “Onna kara onna e no messeeji,” in BWHBC, Karada, watashitachi jishin, 7–8,
available in English translation in Sandra Buckley, Broken Silence: Voices of English Translation (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1996), 199–202; Ogino Miho, “Nihon-ban ni tsuite,” available in English translation
in Buckley, Broken Silence, 202–12; Fujieda Mioko, “‘Onna to kenk!’ und! to Karada, watashitachi jishin,” in
BWHBC, Karada, watashitachi jishin. Kawano and Ogino are officially listed as in charge of proofreading (k!etsu),
but as they were supervising the “Japanese editing group” (Nihongo-ban Hensh" Gur"pu), for the sake of simplicity,
I refer to them as editors.
131
Ogino, “Nihon-ban ni tsuite,” 9. Nakanishi complicates Ogino’s claim, however. As she recalls, it
would have been too difficult and expensive to obtain permission to reproduce the photographs from the originals
since there were so many different copyright holders. See Nakanishi, Onna no hon’ya monogatari, 100–101.
132
BWHBC, Karada, watashitachi jishin, 146–48; a partial English translation can be found in Buckley,
Broken Silence, 213–16.
133
BWHBC, Karada, watashitachi jishin, 567–95; a partial English translation can be found in Buckley,
Broken Silence, 204–5.

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major and impressive an undertaking as it was, the oversized and not very portable volume

probably did not have the impact of the less substantial translation published fourteen years

earlier had had on elevating awareness on women’s health issues. To begin with, the earlier

translation played a vital role in the formative years of the women’s health movement in Japan,

while by 1988, even if many doctors remained largely unwilling to cede control of women’s

bodies and health to women themselves, information was by far more readily available in

numerous other books, at women’s centers, and through various women’s organizations around

the country. Moreover, even with inflation, the new translation was an expensive book, priced

out of range of women with a limited budget, whatever their age or stage in life.

There is, however, a very significant intervention this new translation made in public

discourse and that is on the Japanese language itself. The Sino-Japanese compounds long used to

refer to most sexual organs contain the character for shame (chi) or for negative (in), creating a

strong negative or shameful association with the parts of women’s bodies associated with sex

and reproduction. The translators replaced these negative characters with the more neutral

character for sex (sei), generating new words to talk about things like the vulva, the labia, pubic

hair, and so forth. They also replaced the then standard word to describe menstruation (seiri), the

primary meaning of which is “physiological” with a new term meaning “monthly occurrence”

(gekkei). In so doing, the translators hoped to remove both the shame and euphemism that might

prevent women from speaking openly about their bodies. Finally, the translators replaced the

standard term for nurse (kangofu), a term meaning “a woman who takes care of” with a

somewhat more unisex term (kangoshi) for “a person who takes care of.”134 While all of the

older terms remain in use over twenty years later, the terms the translators introduced in this

translation have become increasingly standard in public discourse, as evidenced by their

134
Ogino, “Nihon-ban ni tsuite,” 8.

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presence in dictionaries.135

Giving Voice to rezubian, Transfiguring The Hite Report

Three years after Our Bodies, Ourselves was first published commercially in the US,

extending the women’s health movement to the mainstream, Shere Hite’s trailblazing The Hite

Report (1976) revealed the results of a survey of over three thousand women across the US on

their sexual feelings, experiences, and opinions on to masturbation, intercourse, clitoral

stimulation, lesbianism, women’s subservient role in sex (with a man), the “sexual revolution,”

older women’s sexuality, and the changing nature of sex itself.136 What made this book

meaningful to women in the US was arguably not the statistics Hite tabulated but respondents’

often very intimate, sometime moving responses to Hite’s questions. Ranging from brief

sentences to lengthy paragraphs and collectively occupying the bulk of the book, these real and

diverse women’s voices showed the women reading the book both that they were not alone in

their experiences and that there were other sexual possibilities that might be open to them.

An ostensibly complete Japanese translation was published the following year by

Ishikawa Hiroyoshi (1933–2009), a male sociologist who had already published and translated

prolifically on diverse topics that included sexuality but nothing specifically focused on women

or written from a feminist perspective.137 While analyzing Ishikawa’s ability to translate

intimate details of women’s sexual lives is beyond the scope of my discussion here, I only

encountered one article critiquing having a man translate the text, this in an unsigned article in

135
One exception is the word they use for nurse, which includes the character shi (士) meaning person,
man, or samurai, and which has been used to indicate a specifically male nurse. In contemporary Japanese, the
official term for nurse is now also pronounced kangoshi, but written using a more gender neutral character meaning
teacher (師).
136
Shere Hite, The Hite Report: A Nationwide Study of Female Sexuality (New York: Dell).
137
Shere Hite, Haito rip!to: atarashii josei no ai to sei no sh!gen, 2 vols., trans. Ishikawa Hiroyoshi
(Tokyo: Pashifika, 1977).

186
rezubian-feminist group Shining Wheel’s mini-komi discussing the issue of translations by men

in the other of the ten countries that had, to date, seen translations. The article makes no specific

comments on Ishikawa’s translation.138 Perhaps this general lack of attention to Ishikawa’s role

as a translator simply reflects the translator’s relative invisibility in Japan, or perhaps women

readers’ acceptance of the ubiquity of male translators. It merits noting, however, that at the end

of his translator’s preface in the first volume, Ishikawa thanks three women and one man whose

assistance he solicited “because women’s sexual behavior and sexual sensations (sei kankaku)

are the main theme” of the book, implying not so subtly that, as a man, he could not have as

readily translated this content into Japanese without their input.139 Ishikawa also penned an

article introducing The Hite Report to the readers of the new and trendy women’s magazine

Croissant (Kurowassan, 1977–), timed to appear the same month as the first volume of his

translation came out.140

This translation gave rise to significant public interest and similar local projects. For

instance, The Hite Report was clearly the direct inspiration for More magazine (Moa, 1977–) to

run a survey of its readers on “women’s lives and sex” in 1980, which it released as the More

Report in a thick hardcover volume in 1983 and then an abridged paperback form in 1985.141

138
Hikari guruma, “Sekai kara no kaze, Haito rep!to no hon’yaku o megutte,” no. 1 (April 1978),
reprinted in Mizoguchi Akiyo, Saeki Y!ko, and Miki S!ko, eds. Shiry! Nihon "man ribu shi (Kyoto: Sh!kad!
Shoten, 1995), vol. 3.
139
Ishikawa Hiroyoshi, “Yakusha maegaki,” in Hite, Haito rip!to, 8. While his foreword offers
background and analysis to contextualize the text, Ishikawa also provides a commentary at the end of second
volume, allowing him to assert his scholarly expertise: Ishikawa Hiroyoshi, “Kaisetsu,” in Hite, Haito rip!to.
140
Ishikawa Hiroyoshi, “Haito rip!to o megutte,” Kurowassan, June 1977. Ishikawa ended up writing a
series of articles on female sexuality for the magazine, discussed in Takeuchi Keiko, “The Complexity of Sexuality
and Kurowassan,” in Gender and Modernity: Rereading Japanese Women’s Magazines, ed. Ulrike Wöhr, Barbara
Hamill Sat!, and Suzuki Sadami (Kyoto: International Research Center for Japanese Studies, 2000), 163–64.
141
The initial survey appeared in the July 1980 issue of More, “Ankeeto: The More Report: onna no sei to
sei,” More (July 1980), introduced by an article explaining the purpose of the survey, “The More Report: onna no
sei to sei,” More, July 1980. The report was issued three years later, with “The MORE Report on Female Sexuality,”
in English on the cover: Moa Rip!to-han, Moa rip!to (Tokyo: Sh"eisha, 1983). The abridged version, Moa
Rip!to-han, ed., Moa rip!to: onnatachi no sei to sei (Tokyo: Sh"eisha, 1985), was in its fourth printing by 1987. In
the preface to the initial release of the More Report, the editors note that while there are reports by Kinsey and

187
Also in 1983, Linda Wolfe’s Cosmo Report, itself following in the footsteps of Hite’s work, was

translated into Japanese. This volume was, like Hite’s work, translated by a man.142 Following

Hite’s 1981 report on male sexuality—translated the next year into Japanese, ironically, by a

woman in 1982—More released its own report on male sexuality in 1984.143 And thus, through a

new series of translations and transfigurations of The Hite Report beginning in the late

1970s—and in the context of multiple translations and transfigurations of Our Bodies,

Ourselves—Japan saw a flowering of frank public discussion on female (and male) sexuality,

wherein women were able to share anxieties as well as desires and to find a measure of

affirmation and comfort. This was an exchange of ideas and experiences surrounding sexuality

very much akin to what had been taking place within and advocated by the ribu community since

the early 1970s.

Unsurprisingly then, The Hite Report in translation was also well received in the ribu

community itself. The spring 1978 issue of the Osaka-based mini-komi From Woman to Women,

for example, devoted over three full pages to responses from activists. The first of these, by

Watanabe Emi, begins, “This is an excellent book. In the six months since I first started living

with my new lover (koibito), I’ve been worried and confused about sex, but I feel like at last

[through this book] I’ve encountered opinions that give me strength.”144 Later in her response

Watanabe notes that reading this book was the first time for her to encounter the voices of

lesbians in any detail. Miki S!ko observes that the androcentric equation of sex with

Masters and Johnson, as well as more recently The Hite Reports on female and male sexuality in the US, there is
nothing of the sort for women in contemporary Japan (ibid., 3), obviously positioning this new report as the
Japanese version of The Hite Report.
142
It is worth noting that the subtitle assigned to this translation bears a strong resemblance to the subtitles
given to the translations of the Hite reports on women and men. Linda Wolfe, Kosumo rip!to: 10-man 6-sen nin no
josei ga kattata shinjitsu no ai to sei, trans. Hagitani Ry! (1981; Tokyo: Bunka Shuppankyoku, 1983).
143
Shere Hite, The Hite Report on Male Sexuality (New York: Knopf, 1981), translated into Japanese as
Haito rip!to: dansei ban, trans. Nakao Chizu (Tokyo: Ch"! K!ron Sha, 1982); Moa Rip!to-han, ed., Moa rip!to 2:
kondo wa, dansei no gawa kara hajimete katarareta, sei to sei no shinjitsu (Tokyo: Sh"eisha, 1984).
144
Onna kara onnatachi e [Osaka], “Haito rip!to o yonde,” no. 26 (Spring 1978), 3.

188
(hetero)sexual intercourse for the sake of reproduction and giving men pleasure is called into

question by Hite’s attention to masturbation and lesbianism, to each of which is a full chapter is

devoted.145 The comments in Shining Wheel about the text itself were also positive.146

I believe it is this prominent attention to the voices and experiences of lesbians that gave

this book special meaning to some women in the rezubian community and, ultimately, led to its

transfiguration into a project that would lead to Stories of Women Who Love Women (Onna o ai

suru onnatachi no monogatari), the first commercial publication produced by and for members

of the rezubian community—and whose reach would extend far beyond, with over 30,000 copies

available at bookstores around the country.147 Stories demonstrates how far from the original a

transfiguration might extend in time and form and yet still bear some indication of where its

roots reach. Published in 1987 as part of the Bessatsu Takarajima series, the project that became

Stories began as a pair of surveys conducted in late 1986 that drew in subtle and not-so-subtle

ways on The Hite Report and its transfigurations.148 The More Report surveys also contained

questions about homosexuality (d!seiai), specifically among women in Japan, which suggests it

might have been better suited as a direct model for the Stories surveys.149 However, the length

145
Ibid., 3, 5.
146
Hikari guruma, “Sekai kara no kaze.”
147
Bessatsu Takarajima, no. 64, Onna o ai suru onnatachi no monogatari. The figure for the print run
comes from a note on the bottom of a photocopy of the cover included in an issue of the rezubian mini-komi Regumi
ts"shin no. 2 (April 1987), 8. The book remained in print for several years. I have seen several copies listing reprint
dates from the early 1990s.
148
The surveys were published as Hirosawa Yumi [Sawabe Hitomi] and Rezubian Rip!to-han, “Rezubian
rip!to: Nihon de hajimete! 234-nin no rezubian ni yoru sh!gen,” in Bessatsu Takarajima, no. 64, Onna o ai suru
onnatachi no monogatari. The introduction to this survey indicates that the surveys were conducted in 1981, but this
is an error. See Sawabe Hitomi, “Onna o ai suru onnatachi no monogatari o meguru hy!gen katsud!,” oral history
taken by Sugiura Ikuko, in Sugiura, Nihon no rezubian komyuniti, 53–56. English-language synopses of this report
can be found in Appendix I in Barbara Summerhawk, Cheiron McMahill, and Darren McDonald, eds., Queer Japan:
Personal Stories of Japanese Lesbians, Gays, Bisexuals, and Transsexuals (Norwich, Vt.: New Victoria, 1998),
188–99, and Kittredge Cherry, “Japanese Lesbian Life,” in Oceanic Homosexualities, ed. Stephen O. Murray (New
York: Garland, 1992).
149
Moa Rip!to-han, Moa rip!to, 770–71, 786, 788–9. While Hite’s own first of three questionnaires
assume heterosexual experience—i.e., that the respondent’s sexual partners have been male—the second and third
surveys are phrased to avoid this implication. See Hite, The Hite Report, 573–90.

189
and organization of this book makes it very difficult to find references to homosexual experience

and identity interspersed among the respondents’ answers. The Hite Report’s chapter

“Lesbianism” in translation is titled simply “Rezubian,” a politically infused identity category for

some women in Japan. This chapter ends, moreover, with a section under a heading that declares

“Lesbianism can have political significance,” a sentiment that resonated with the ideology of

rezubian feminisuto, some of whom were to create Stories. Consequently, the translation

elaborating on American women’s lives seems to have been more meaningful than the locally

produced text for women in Japan wishing to read about other women’s experiences in order to

make sense of their own same-sex desire. And thus, while the More Report was a significant part

of the larger mainstream domain of women’s discourse on their own sexuality, The Hite Report

was a more immediate model for the surveys that were to be compiled into a section of stories

called the “Rezubian Report.”

Sawabe Hitomi, a self-identified rezubian feminisuto who was the architect of and

driving force behind Stories, situates its genesis at the nexus of events in her own life, including

reading lesbian feminist Marilyn Frye’s The Politics of Reality with a small group of women

considering translating it into Japanese, attending an international lesbian conference in Geneva,

and receiving around 100 letters in response to an article about the conference that she published

under a pseudonym in Fujin k!ron.150 Her existing wish to become a reportage writer, on top of

the letters in particular—overwhelmingly earnest in their various expression of loneliness and

regret, as well as encouragement and excitement—instilled in Sawabe the desire to produce a

150
Marilyn Frye, The Politics of Reality: Essays in Feminist Theory (Trumansburg, N.Y.: Crossing Press,
1983); Hirosawa Yumi [Sawabe Hitomi], “Sekai rezubian kaigi ni sanka shite,” Fujin k!ron 71, no. 7 (June 1986).
The conference was the eighth International Lesbian Information Service Conference, held in March 1986. See
Sawabe, “Onna o ai suru onnatachi no monogatari,” 52–54.

190
book.151 Thus, while thinking and talking about American lesbian-feminist theory with other

Japanese rezubian feminisuto and her attendance at the Geneva lesbian conference formed a

significant part of the context, the most forceful impetus for Stories was Sawabe’s visceral

reaction to the personal accounts of the experiences of women in Japan.

In a recent oral history of her experiences in the rezubian community since the early

1970s, Sawabe makes no mention of The Hite Report when she narrates the history of Stories.152

There are, however, several reasons I position it in a fuzzy line of descent from Hite’s initial

study and its earlier transfigurations. The most salient of these is in its naming. The title of the

section of the book containing the survey responses, “Rezubian Report: A First for Japan! The

Testimony of 234 Rezubian” (Rezubian rip!to: Nihon de hajimete! 234 nin no rezubian ni yoru

sh!gen), almost certainly draws directly from the titles and subtitles of the volumes by both Hite

and More. In Japanese, The Hite Report is assigned the subtitle “Testimony of new women on

love and sex” (Atarashii josei no ai to sei no sh!gen), while the first More Report is given the

lengthier “For the first time, Japanese women talked about sex in their own words” (Nihon no

joseitachi ga, hajimete jibuntachi no kotoba de sei o katatta). To be sure, this

titling—paraphrased slightly and placed in eye-catching type on the cover of Stories for

promotional purposes—could be an editorial intervention from the publisher. The fact that More

released a new or reformatted report each of the four years leading up to the publication of

Stories certainly indicates an on-going level of public interest in these kinds of reports that

publishers would be keen to tap into.

Yet, it is clear that Sawabe had The Hite Report in mind when working on the survey. To

begin, Shining Wheel, which, as noted above, discussed the appropriateness of assigning a man

151
Ibid., 52, 53.
152
Ibid.

191
to translate the book, was produced by a rezubian feminisuto group Sawabe herself founded, so it

is obvious that Hite’s text had her attention soon after its publication in Japan. More saliently,

when she sent out the questionnaires for the “Rezubian Report,” Sawabe enclosed copies from

The Hite Report for use as a reference, clearly showing potential respondents the kind of

responses she had in mind.153 Finally, while each of the three “reports” frames the responses

differently via categorization into chapters, they all rely on the same kinds of testimony about

personal experiences and feelings. The testimony in “Rezubian Report” of a twenty-five-year-old

office worker specifically links the Hite Report and Stories:

…when I first read The Hite Report I was moved in a way I couldn’t put into words. … If this kind of book
were published in Japan, it would be a big step for Japan’s rezubian. … Until now, the only way to touch
the heart of “lesbianism,” politically, culturally, socially, has been through information from abroad. …
Hearing about [lesbians] abroad was very moving, but to hear directly from Japan’s countless
rezubian—for all women who are like that—it would provide them support.154

That, looking back more than twenty years later, Sawabe did not indicate The Hite Report was

part of the inspiration for Stories tells us that did not read its lesbian chapter and immediately set

to work producing a Japanese version focused on rezubian. Nevertheless, I would argue that the

circumstances surrounding its production, as well as, at least in some cases, its reception,

position Stories as a greatly transfigured version of The Hite Report.

Hite conducted the nationwide survey that became The Hite Report in order to find out

how “[American] women themselves … feel, what they like, and what they think of sex,” so

that—through this sharing—women would be able to “see our personal lives more clearly, thus

redefining our sexuality and strengthening our identities as women.” A secondary goal of the

book was “to stimulate a public discussion and reevaluation of sexuality.”155 As we have just

seen, Hite’s study clearly provided some of the inspiration and the context, as well as a

153
Hirosawa and Rezubian Rip!to-han, “Rezubian rip!to,” 152. While the introduction to the report does
not specify this, presumably the copies were from the chapter on lesbianism.
154
Ibid., 243–44.
155
Hite, The Hite Report, xi.

192
productive model for Sawabe and the women who worked with her, yet they transfigured her

approach—reshaping her model to make it meaningful to the lives of rezubian in Japan.

In her preface to the results of the rezubian survey, Sawabe explains that she created the

survey to, first,

convey, as it is, the existence of rezubian living in Japan … [because] we ourselves need to know the truth
… about our current situation. It’s true that in America and in the countries of Europe, the lesbian feminism
born out of the feminist movement has developed a great deal of power. We have a lot to learn to learn
156
from those lesbians, but I would like to begin with an understanding of our own current situation.

Sawabe’s second goal was to represent rezubian in all their diversity, which bears out in the

great variety of individual and collective experiences represented in the book, both in the

rezubian report itself and in the remainder of the volume. Sawabe carefully explains the

procedures by which the surveys were distributed and tallied, lending an air of scientific validity

to the project akin to Hite’s. Yet, in the preface to the report Sawabe rejects the idea that this was

a formal rezubian study, “academic research,” or any other sort of “objective ‘research’ [or]

‘survey.’” Instead, it was created “in order to shed light our real selves, and to reconsider and

come to a new understanding of the lives of [those of us who] have continued to love women in

the midst of the extreme pressure of [our] heterosexual society, which only permits love between

men and women.”157

Another goal that seems to underlie the project—and which later surveys and personal

narratives would show was successful—was to create a book that affirms the presence of a

community of “rezubian” in Japan, a community with a real history and a bright (akarui) future.

While mini-komi and other community-produced materials arguably had already been serving the

same function since the mid-1970s, they reached an extremely limited number of women. The

156
Hirosawa and Rezubian Rip!to-han, “Rezubian rip!to,” 151–52
157
Ibid., 152.

193
fact that Stories was a widely available commercial publication rendered it a proud public

declaration of its creators’ and the community’s existence, well before the use of the term

“pride” (puraido) in Japanese queer contexts—a declaration capable of reaching out to women

with same-sex desire who may or may not identify as rezubian and who might otherwise be

unaware of the rezubian community.

The results contained in this section come from two surveys distributed in lesbian bars,

groups and magazines in October and December 1981, the former eliciting 202 responses and the

latter 122, of whom 90 had responded to the first survey. Thus the responses represent the

experiences of 234 individuals. The survey asked women about their realization they were

attracted to women and how they first met other rezubian, their marital history, their work and

educational history, their love and sexual experiences, and their experiences within “heterosexual

society” (iseiai shakai) including their own families and friends.158 The second survey was

much shorter and was designed to be more “fun,” asking women questions such as about the sex

appeal of their favorite singer or actress, their opinion about butch (tachi, bucchi)/femme (neko,

femu) role-playing, and whether—since it is said that rezubian are less likely than gei (gays) to

cheat on their partners—if they themselves have ever cheated.159 Similar to the Hite and More

reports, most of the respondents’ statements are given out of context, protecting respondents’

privacy but rendering it impossible get a clear picture of them as individuals. The complete

responses to five consenting individuals are, however, included in the final section of the report,

under the English heading “A Lesbian Was Here.”160

While the surveys that became the “Rezubian Report” marked the beginning of the

Stories project, they comprise only the second half of the book. The first half contains over a

158
Ibid., 284–5.
159
Ibid., 285.
160
Ibid., 246–282.

194
dozen articles about what the editors have described as “living as lesbians” (rezubian o ikiru),

divided into “lesbian lives,” “lesbian experiences,” “lesbian beliefs,” “lesbian sex,” “lesbian

groups and spaces,” and, last, “lesbians abroad.”161 And thus, in spite of having roots in a survey

on the sexuality of women in the US, the content and the order in which it is presented in Stories

positions the lives of local lesbians as being of foremost importance. This is of particular

significance given the fact that, as will be detailed in chapter five, many of the most prominent

lesbian activists have had formative experiences abroad, as well as the fact that in the 1980s most

commercially available publications depicting lesbian lives in anything other than a salacious or

scandalous manner were translations or gave little attention to women in Japan. Even in Stories

itself, only five of the 35 works of fiction and nonfiction on the booklist which, in its title, claims

to be the product of “dowse[ing] for underground lesbians” are not translations from a European

language or primarily focused on a Western culture or cultures.162

Literary Transfiguration as a Liberatory Strategy

As noted in the introduction to this chapter, translated literature has long been a

touchstone for women rethinking what it means to be a woman in Japan. Within the ribu,

rezubian, and queer sh!jo manga communities of the 1970s and 1980s this remained true to

varying degrees. I would like, however, to focus the remainder of this chapter on the
161
I have translated four of these articles into English, which are available in Mark McLelland, Katsuhiko
Suganuma, and James Welker, eds., Queer Voices from Japan: First-Person Narratives of Japan’s Sexual
Minorities (Lanham, Md.: Lexington, 2007).
162
Nishihara and Bukkurisuto-han, “Rezubian no suimyaku o tadoru bukkurisuto 35.” Admittedly this
could be a reflection of the bias of the compiler of the list. The “literature depicting lesbians” (resubian o atsukatta
sakuhin), summaries, excerpts, and discussions of which occupy over a quarter of the spring 1975 issue of
Wakakusa, a mini-komi produced by Wakakusa no Kai, are balanced numerically in favor of fiction from Japan.
Pierre Louÿs’s Les chansons de Bilitis (1894) and Violette Leduc’s La bâtarde (1964), as well as the legend of
female homosexuality on Lesbos, are given far lengthier treatment than individual Japanese works, however. A 1993
“guide to aesthete novels and gay literature” gives more overall space to rezubian in Japan, but a more substantial
discussion to foreign literature, which is placed before literature from Japan. See section three, “Rezubian bungaku,”
in Kakinuma Eiko and Kurihara Chiyo, eds., Tanbi sh!setsu, gei bungaku bukkugaido (Tokyo: Byakuya Shob!,
1993).

195
consumption and transfiguration of translated literature within the queer sh!jo manga sphere,

which, in fact, first emerged as the genre of sh!nen ai through direct and indirect repurposing of

elements from translated literary works at the beginning of the 1970s.

These translated texts, like their transfigurations into sh!jo manga, were set in places that

were foreign to sh!jo readers. In many 1970s sh!jo manga works, not simply in sh!nen ai, the

foreign offered “a means to embody the dreams and akogare [longing] of the sh!jo.”163 It is easy,

therefore, to see its use in sh!jo manga as foreshadowing if not shaping the “narratives of

internationalism” that led to a boom in overseas travel and study of foreign languages among

young women in the 1980s and 1990s, narratives that Karen Kelsky argues were themselves

founded on akogare—a “long[ing] for something unattainable.”164 While the foreign sphere

offered a means of psychic escape, translated texts themselves—and in some cases narratives

surrounding the lives of their authors—offered more specific if not more vivid narrative options

for female and male readers in Japan. Keith Harvey, whose own “incipient and fragile identity

position as a gay man” was bolstered as a teenager in 1970s Britain through reading translated

texts by André Gide, Jean Genet, and Marcel Proust, recalls that rather than being put off by the

foreignness of their works, the “distance was actually … the space in which I was able to work

out the message I wanted to hear and could get nowhere else.”165 Similarly, for many sh!jo

manga readers and writers the space of the foreign was at once the object of an insatiable longing

and a means of sending and receiving messages about sexual and gender alternatives unavailable

elsewhere, most notably in the genre of sh!nen ai.

163
Terada Kaoru, “70-nendai enkyori sh!jo manga no jidai,” in Bessatsu Takarajima, no. 288, 70-nendai
manga dai hyakka (Tokyo: Takarajimasha 1996), 160–61.
164
Karen Kelsky, Women on the Verge: Japanese Women, Western Dreams (Durham, N.C.: Duke
University Press, 2001), 26.
165
Harvey, Keith Harvey, “Gay Community, Gay Identity and the Translated Text,” TTR: traduction,
terminologie, redaction 13, no. 1 (2000): 148, 150.

196
 As noted in chapter two, the first commercially published sh!nen ai manga narrative was

Takemiya Keiko’s In the Sunroom (Sanr"mu nite), which initially appeared under the title

“Snow and Stars and Angels…” (Yuki to hoshi to tenshi to…) in the December 1970 issue of the

sh!jo manga magazine Bessatsu sh!jo komikku [Girls’ comic extra](1970–2002).166 Like most

early sh!nen ai manga, the work’s protagonists were beautiful boys (bish!nen) in love with each

other and the story was set in Europe. Masuyama Norie played a key role in the genesis of this

genre, including this first work. Although she was not a visual artist herself, Masuyama was an

avid consumer from childhood of high-brow literature, classical music, and film. While she was

a fan of manga as well, her disappointment with sh!jo manga instilled in her a desire to elevate

sh!jo manga from its lowly position as a frivolous distraction for girls into a more serious,

literary art form. Drawn to the talents of Takemiya and Hagio Moto, Masuyama recommended to

the pair various works of music, cinema, and literature in hopes of inspiring them to incorporate

elements of these works into their own art.167

Among the novels Masuyama recommended were Herman Hesse’s Beneath the Wheel

(1906), Demian (1919), and Narcissus and Goldmund (1930), each attracting a large enough

readership and interest in Japan to have been translated into Japanese multiple times and

republished repeatedly from the late 1930s onward. All three novels feature adolescent male

protagonists in school environments in Germany. While none of the three depict overt

homoeroticism—in fact romantic or erotic relationships with female characters help drive their

plots—their narratives all revolve around strong bonds between the protagonist and another

youth or, in the case of Narcissus and Goldmund, a young teacher. Masuyama never directly

suggested that Hagio and Takemiya make a manga version of one of these novels, yet, as art and

166
Takemiya Keiko, “Sanr!mu nite,” in her Sanr"mu nite (Tokyo: San Komikkusu, 1976). See Ishida
Minori, Hisoyaka na ky!iku: “yaoi/b!izu rabu” zenshi (Tokyo: Rakuhoku Shuppan, 2008), 21, 23 n14.
167
Ibid., 52.

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film scholar Ishida Minori demonstrates, the texts played a pivotal role in the development of

sh!nen ai.168

Drawing on her own interviews with Masuyama and Takemiya, as well as existing essays

and commentary by Takemiya and Hagio, Ishida lays out a compelling case that these novels

were vital source material for pivotal early sh!nen ai works, including Takemiya’s In the

Sunroom and The Song of the Wind and the Trees (Kaze to ki no uta, 1978–1984), and Hagio’s

November Gymnasium (J"ichigatsu no gimunajiumu, 1971) and The Heart of Thomas (T!ma no

shinz!, 1974).169 In addition to the European boys’ boarding school setting, which serves as a

key site for seminal sh!nen ai narratives, and the use of male protagonists in and of itself, Ishida

argues that Takemiya and Hagio “drew great inspiration” from the rich and deft depictions of the

psyches of the youths in Hesse’s works.170 Attention to characters’ internal worlds is

emblematic of classic sh!nen ai manga—beginning with the internal monologue that opens In

the Sunroom—and, Ishida suggests, it is one of the ways sh!nen ai manga helped to foster

literary qualities in sh!jo manga in general.171 Ishida proposes, moreover, that the typical gender

balance between pairs of male protagonists in sh!nen ai manga, whereby one is positioned as

relatively masculine and the other feminine, can be traced back to Hesse as well.172 Finally,

168
Ibid., 298.
169
Ibid., 58, inter alia. Takemiya Keiko, “Sanr!mu nite,” and Kaze to ki no uta, 10 vols. (1976–1984;
Tokyo: Hakusensha Bunko, 1995); and Hagio Moto, “J!ichigatsu no gimunajiumu,” in her J"ichigatsu no
gimunajiumu (1971; Tokyo: Sh"gakukan Bunko, 1995), and T!ma no shinz! (1974; Tokyo: Sh"gakukan Bunko,
1995).
170
Ibid., 70–71.
171
Takemiya, “Sanr!mu nite,” 6–7; Ishida, Hisoyaka na ky!iku, 71.
172
Ibid. 76. Sh!jo manga critic Fujimoto Yukari has observed that this relative gender binary manifests
itself in the characters’ hair colors: the more masculine partner typically has dark hair and the more feminine, blonde.
See Fujimoto Yukari, “Sh"jo manga ga mederu otoko no karada,” Kuia Japan no. 1 (1999): 25. Many critics have
suggested that the “beautiful boy” (bish!nen) characters are not actually boys, or are at least open to being read as
girls. This sentiment was echoed by several of the women with whom I spoke about their sh!nen ai consumption.
However, other women I interviewed appeared to have never even considered that the beautiful boys were anything
but male. For a summary of this discourse and a discussion of the gender of the characters in The Heart of Thomas
and The Song of the Wind and the Trees, see James Welker, “Beautiful, Borrowed, and Bent: Boys’ Love as Girls’
Love in Sh!jo Manga,” Signs 31, no. 3 (2006): 846–55.

198
Ishida argues, Takemiya in particular draws on a latent romanticism and eroticism between some

male characters in Hesse’s writing, “emphasiz[ing] a tendency in Hesse’s works.”173 Takemiya

has written specifically of Beneath the Wheel that she finds something vaguely erotic—a sort of

“chaste eroticism”—in the youths depicted by Hesse.174

From the opening scene of two adolescent boys having sex, the overt eroticism of The

Song of the Wind and the Trees, goes far beyond anything possibly read into Hesse’s novels,

however. This can be traced to the eroticized beautiful boys celebrated in the writing of Inagaki

Taruho, whose Aesthetics of Boy Loving (Sh!nen ai no bigaku) inspired the name of the new

genre.175 As I discuss in chapter three, Taruho’s work draws extensively on both European and

Japanese traditions and customs surrounding the adoration of beautiful youths as depicted in

literature and historical scholarship; and, like his own use of the term “sh!nen ai,” Taruho’s

writing cannot be easily be classified as simply “Japanese.” While The Song of the Wind and the

Trees was not initially serialized until 1976, Takemiya had first conceived of the narrative and

began to pen drawings seven years earlier, before In the Sunroom was published.176 As

Takemiya recalls, when she decided to draw The Song of the Wind and the Trees is when she

read Taruho’s book. British public schools are frequently referenced in Aesthetics of Boy Loving,

and “so the first thing I decided was to make a public school-like place the setting for The Song

of the Wind and the Trees.”177 Yet, the manga’s setting is not a British public school, nor an

early twentieth century German one as depicted in Hesse’s novels, but a boarding school in

nineteenth century France.

173
Ishida, Hisoyaka na ky!iku, 72.
174
Takemiya Keiko, Takemiya Keiko no manga ky!shitsu (Tokyo: Chikuma Shob!, 2001), 217; Takemiya
Keiko, “Karaa irasuto kagami no kuni no sh!nentachi,” Peepaa m"n no. 14 (1978): 5–6, cited in Ishida, Hisoyaka na
ky!iku, 74.
175
Inagaki Taruho, Sh!nen ai no bigaku (Tokyo: Tokuma Shoten, 1968). See also chapter three.
176
Masuyama Norie, “Kaze to ki no uta no tanj!,” June no. 36 (September 1987): 55.
177
Quoted in Ishida, Hisoyaka na ky!iku, 88.

199
 Hagio, however, did set her two early sh!nen ai narratives in German boarding schools.

And yet Hagio credits the 1964 French film Les amitiés particulières (These Special

Friendships) as the inspiration for The Heart of Thomas, which she had begun working on before

November Gymnasium.178 Based on a semi-autobiographical novel by Roger Peyrefitte, the film

depicts two boys in a Catholic boarding school who fall in love and ends with the suicide of one

of them.179 This suicide that would be echoed by the titular character in The Heart of Thomas,

whose name, it should be noted, is given a Japanese pronunciation—“T!ma”—based on the

French, not German, version of “Thomas.” Takemiya, for her part, was initially most influenced

by the films of Italian director Luchino Visconti, whose Death in Venice (1971) was frequently

mentioned in correspondence from young female readers printed in the sh!nen ai-related

magazine Allan and, as mentioned in chapter three, on at least one occasion in the homo

magazine Barazoku [Rose tribe].180 In this Occidentalist blurring of all things European, Hagio

and Takemiya, and other artists, borrowed freely from settings, characters, and plot elements,

transfiguring into sh!nen ai manga the often nostalgic depictions of intimate friendships as well

as romantic and erotic relations between beautiful European boys in translated literature and film,

as well as in Taruho’s writing.

In literary studies, this kind of borrowing might be subsumed under the notion of

intertextuality, a practice long central to sh!jo culture, broadly defined.181 The concept of

intertextuality is often used to index the presence in one text of overt references—marked or

unmarked as such—to other texts, what Norman Fairclough calls “manifest intertextuality.”

178
Hagio Moto, “The Moto Hagio Interview,” by Matt Thorn, The Comics Journal no. 269 (June/July
2005); Les amitiés particulières, directed by Jean Delannoy (France: Paris: Progéfi, and LUX C.C.F., 1964).
179
Roger Peyrefitte, Les amitiés particulières: roman (Marseille: Jean Vigneau, 1943).
180
Death in Venice, motion picture, directed by Luchino Visconti (Italy: Alfa Cinematografica, 1971).
181
Tomoko Aoyama and Barbara Hartley observe that within sh!jo culture “girls … engage in highly
sophisticated and complex borrowing and interweaving of themes and ideas across texts.” See Tomoko Aoyama and
Barbara Hartley, “Introduction,” in their Girl Reading Girl in Japan (London: Routledge, 2010), 5.

200
Fairclough distinguishes this intertextuality from what he calls “constitutive intertextuality,” or

“interdiscursivity,” namely “the heterogeneous constitution of texts out of elements (types of

convention) of orders of discourse” rather than specific texts.182 I would argue that depictions of

Western adolescent boys such as by the pen of Hesse and through the lens of Delannoy, tinged as

they are with nostalgia as well as eroticism, can be seen to very loosely constitute an order—or a

field—of discourse from the perspective of Takemiya, Hagio, Masuyama, and Taruho, as well as

from their readers.183 It is from this field that these artists and others drew, manifestly and

obliquely, and it is this field that Takemiya and Hagio transfigured into a new genre of sh!jo

manga.

As Fairclough points out, “intertextuality points to the productivity of texts, to how texts

can transform prior texts and restructure existing conventions (genres, discourses) to generate

new ones.” And yet, he notes, this productivity is constrained by the conditions of power

operating in society.184 As has been discussed in numerous analyses of sh!nen ai manga,

however, it is precisely power relations in Japanese society—specifically, gendered relations of

power that constrain women’s gender and sexual expression—that Takemiya, Hagio, and other

sh!nen ai artists worked to undermine through their transfiguration of this world for sh!jo manga

readers.185 As Takemiya herself explains, sh!nen ai narratives serve “to mentally liberate girls

from the sexual restrictions imposed on us [as women].”186

This does not mean the artists themselves have ultimate control of the parameters of the

182
Norman Fairclough, Discourse and Social Change (Cambridge, U.K.: Blackwell Publishing, 1992), 85.
Fairclough defines “orders of discourse” as “total configurations of discursive practices in particular institutions”
(ibid., 9).
183
As is discussed in chapter three, Taruho interweaves into this discursive field a romantic and nostalgic
discourse on adolescent youth from Japan’s own past.
184
Ibid., 102, 103.
185
See, e.g., Welker, “Beautiful, Borrowed, and Bent”; and section three in Fujimoto Yukari, Watashi no
ibasho wa doko ni aru no? sh!jo manga ga utsusu kokoro no katachi (Tokyo: Gakuy! Shob!, 1998).
186
Quoted in Sat! Masaki, “Sh!jo manga to homofobia,” in Kuia sutadiizu ’96, ed. Kuia Sutadiizu Hensh"
Iinkai (Tokyo: Nanatsumori shokan, 1996), 162.

201
discursive field of sh!nen ai they created. Masuyama sees the metaphysical sphere of sh!nen ai

within sh!jo manga, as well as in Taruho’s writing, as quite distinct from “the world of

homosexuals” (homosekushuaru no sekai) such as depicted in the works of, for instance,

Mishima Yukio and Shibusawa Tatsuhiko, which, she believes, requires the presence of physical

male bodies.187 Yet, many readers of sh!nen ai manga in the 1970s and 1980s had their own

ideas, reading Mishima as well as Jean Genet and Jean Cocteau and discussing them in the same

breath as Hagio and Takemiya. This crossover interest is most saliently evidenced by letters

contributed by adolescent girls and young women to magazines aimed at fans of sh!nen ai and

those aimed at homo men, as well as vocabulary flowing between the two ostensibly separate

spheres.188 For many of these readers a clear line cannot be drawn between homo and sh!nen ai,

nor between homo men in Japan and gay men elsewhere. Indeed, the protagonist of Takemiya’s

The Song of the Wind and the Trees, Gilbert, is given the surname Cocteau, an obvious reference

to the French writer.

Similarly, a sharp distinction cannot be made between the sh!nen ai of Hagio and that of

Takemiya, although readers had their own preferences, endlessly discussed in their letters printed

in the pages of June, Allan and Gekk!, from the late 1970s onward. While they were each

developing their own versions of sh!nen ai, Takemiya and Hagio lived together in a small

apartment that came to be called the !izumi Salon on account of the constant presence of other

young sh!jo manga artists and other key figures. Unsurprisingly, given her relationship with the

187
Ishida, Hisoyaka na ky!iku, 99-100.
188
While largely derogatory now, “homo” was the most common term in use in the 1970s and 1980s to
refer to male homosexuals. I discuss letters from readers printed in magazines for fans of sh!nen ai and for homo
men in “Flower Tribes and Female Desire: Complicating Early Female Consumption of Male Homosexuality in
Sh!jo Manga,” Mechademia 6 (forthcoming), and “Lilies of the Margin: Beautiful Boys and Queer Female Identities
in Japan,” in Fran Martin et al., ed., AsiaPacifiQueer: Rethinking Genders and Sexualities (Urbana: University of
Illinois Press, 2008).

202
two artists, Masuyama herself was a neighbor and frequent guest.189 Even if Hagio, for instance,

claims to have herself found no appeal in the homo magazine Barazoku [Rose tribe] (1971–2004),

The Heart of Thomas and The Song of the Wind and the Trees sprang from the same fertile

intellectual and artistic milieu.190

***

Sometimes the intertextual references to translated literature were more blatant. And,

while relatively rare, queer sh!jo manga of the 1970s and 1980s sometimes included

representations of female-female romance and sexuality and non-normative gender identity.191

One example comes from the mid-1980s, Yoshida Akimi’s Sakura no sono [The cherry orchard],

initially serialized in the sh!jo manga magazine LaLa (1976–) from 1985.192 Through casting

her characters in Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard (1904), Yoshida temporarily transports them

into the liminal, liberatory space of the foreign. It is the encounter of the characters—students

entering their last year at a girls high school—with this translated play that helps to bring gender

and sexual alternatives to the fore.

Yoshida’s Sakura is, then, not a direct translation of Chekhov’s foreign text into sh!jo

manga but rather a redeployment of some of the elements of the translated work in a way that

renders them meaningful to the lives of both Yoshida’s characters and her readers. Like the less

obvious constitutive intertextuality of early sh!nen ai manga, such obvious redeployment of a

specific text, is one way translated literature has been subsequently transfigured in sh!jo manga.

189
Takemiya, Takemiya Keiko no manga ky!shitsu, 217, 247.
190
Hagio, “The Moto Hagio Interview.”
191
An overview of same-sex love among females in sh!jo manga from the 1970s to the 1990s can be
found in James Welker, “Drawing Out Lesbians: Blurred Representations of Lesbian Desire in Sh!jo Manga,” in
Subhash Chandra, ed., Lesbian Voices: Canada and the World: Theory, Literature, Cinema (New Delhi: Allied
Publishers, 2006).
192
Yoshida Akimi, Sakura no sono (1986; Tokyo: Hakusen Bunko, 1994). An extended discussion of
Sakura can be found in Welker, “From the Cherry Orchard to Sakura no sono.” I use the Japanese title in my
discussion here to distinguish Yoshida’s text from Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard.

203
It is in no small part through this process of transfiguration of foreign texts and foreign spaces

within sh!jo manga—by writers and readers (and no clear line can be drawn between the

two)—that readers can begin to find a sense of affirmation and to make sense of, in sh!jo manga

critic Fujimoto Yukari’s terms, where they belong.193

First gaining prominence at the end of the 1970s, Yoshida is best known for works such

as BANANA FISH (1987-1994) and California Tale (Kariforunia monogatari, 1979-1982),

which are set in the contemporary United States and include male homosexual relationships.

Like many manga artists, however, she also writes about everyday school life in Japan.194 While

most of her best-known works focus on male homosocial environments, Sakura no sono is a

narrative about a female homosocial sphere, a Japanese girls’ high school. As just noted, through

their performance of Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard, the characters themselves are transported

to another space and time and, in the process, come to a deeper understanding of themselves.

As I outline in greater detail elsewhere, Sakura’s affirmative depiction of alternative

gender possibilities and same-sex affection, and its critique of the heteropatriarchal limits

imposed on women, mark it as a lesbian text and help liberate it from earlier sh!jo manga

narratives that ultimately retreat into “lesbian panic,” disrupting the possibility of female-female

desire.195 Further, in contrast to its sh!nen ai predecessors, Sakura portrays the trials and

tribulations of “very ordinary high school girls” in Japan, thus encouraging its readers to

193
Fujimoto, Watashi no ibasho wa doko ni aru no? A central thesis of Fujimoto is that one of sh!jo
manga’s most fundamental purposes is to help readers find affirmation and feel a sense of belonging.
194
Yoshida Akimi, Kariforunia monogatari (1979-1982), 4 vols. (Tokyo: Sh!gakkan Bunko, 1994); and
BANANA FISH. 19 vols. (Tokyo: Sh!gakkan, 1987–1994).
195
See Welker, “From The Cherry Orchard to Sakura no sono,” 163–64. Patricia Smith defines lesbian
panic as “the disruptive action or reaction that occurs when a character—or conceivably an author—is either unable
or unwilling to confront or reveal her own lesbianism or lesbian desires.” See Patricia Juliana Smith, Lesbian Panic:
Homoeroticism in Modern British Women’s Fiction (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997), 2. On lesbian
panic in sh!jo manga, see Welker, “Drawing Out Lesbians,” 164–68.

204
empathize, if not identify, with the characters.196 While many of the early sh!jo manga

narratives depicting female-female desire were likewise set in Japan, most were set in boarding

schools, still an “other” space for the majority of young Japanese readers.197 Aoyama observes

that in her works that depict homosexuality among young men, Yoshida was among the first

sh!jo manga artists to create narratives and drawings that “break the perfection of the ideal

homosexual world” and render it “more realistic.”198 One reader, in fact, explains that “Yoshida

Akimi’s work [Sakura] reveals the me I want to hide, I don’t want to know.” This reader

criticizes Sakura for being too realistic, thus making her relive the self-contempt she felt in high

school.199 Another reader, however, recalls feeling reassured on reading Sakura to find that she

was not the only one who was unable to accept being female.200

While Yoshida has not been associated with the lesbian community, in her own

transfiguration of Chekhov’s play, she inscribes a narrative that is in many ways emblematic of

the role of translation in constructions of “lesbian” in modern Japan.201 Moreover, her use of

Chekhov links Sakura to Japanese translation and theatrical tradition and, perhaps inadvertently,

to Japanese lesbian history. Chekhov has long been a very popular playwright in Japan, inspiring

countless locally produced critical works, translations of critical works from other languages, and

special issues of journals.202 His plays are still performed by professional and amateur groups

196
Nimiya Kazuko, Adaruto chirudoren to sh!jo manga (Tokyo: K!said!, 1997), 35; Fujimoto, Watashi
no ibasho wa doko ni aru no?, 205–6.
197
Ibid., 177–224.
198
Aoyama, Tomoko, “Male homosexuality as treated by Japanese women writers,” in The Japanese
Trajectory: Modernization and Beyond, ed. Gavin McCormack and Yoshio Sugimoto (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1988), 196–97.
199
Quoted in Manga yawa 4, “Yoshida Akimi, ‘Sakura no sono,” transcript of NHK BS2 Broadcast, BS
manga yawa (August 28, 1996), (Tokyo: Kinejunp!sha, 1999), 154.
200
Ibid., 156.
201
See Beverley Curran and James Welker, “From the Well of Loneliness to the akarui rezubian,” in
Genders, Transgenders, and Sexualities in Japan, ed. Mark McLelland and Romit Dasgupta (London: Routledge,
2005).
202
Nakamoto Nobuyuki, Cheehofu no naka no Nihon (Tokyo: Daiwa Shob!, 1981), 7–8; Ura Masaharu,
“Cheehofu no bunken mokuroku,” Yuriika 10, no. 6 (1978).

205
with some regularity, demonstrating their continuing resonance with Japanese audiences. The

Cherry Orchard was, in fact, “the first major postwar production of the modern theater,” staged

just four months after the end of the war203—which reflects the work’s position within the

Japanese modernity to which the theater troupes were attempting to return. Scholar of Russian

literature Nakamoto Nobuyuki has even asserted—perhaps by way of an explanation of

Chekhov’s popularity—that the Russian playwright’s works draw on imagery from Japan. The

aesthetic value assigned to cherry trees in The Cherry Orchard is one such example.204

Although a partial translation of the play appeared in the magazine Shin shich! [New

thought] (1907–1979) around 1910, it was bluestocking Senuma Kay! who produced the first

complete translation of the play—reputedly the first from the original Russian, serialized

between March and May of 1913 in the pages of Seit!.205 While The Cherry Orchard has since

been retranslated from Russian more than a dozen times, the characters in Yoshida’s Sakura no

sono, by coincidence or design, read from a mid-century translation by Yuasa Yoshiko.206 Yuasa

was a renowned translator and scholar of Russian literature who associated with some of the

feminists of Seit!sha and has been claimed as a Japanese lesbian foresister. While we cannot be

certain Yoshida made a conscious choice to use a translation by a woman (the majority of The

Cherry Orchard translations have been by men), she may well have been aware that Yuasa’s

romantic and sexual partners were exclusively women. In fact, late in life Yuasa expressly

203
Ted T. Takaya, “Introduction,” in his Modern Japanese Drama: An Anthology, (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1979), xxii.
204
Nakamoto argues that, as Russian cherry trees were not appreciated for their blossoms, the trees
Chekhov was imagining as he wrote The Cherry Orchard were undoubtedly the Japanese sakura Chekhov had
planted at his dacha in Yalta. See Nakamoto, Cheehofu no naka no Nihon, 132–47.
205
Uno J"kichi, Cheehofu no Sakura no sono ni tsuite (Tokyo: Bakush"sha, 1978), 16; Mizusaki Noriko,
“Gaikoku bunka no juy! to hy!ka: hon’yaku,” in Shin Feminizumu Hihy! no Kai, Seit! o yomu, 158. Senuma has in
fact been credited with having been the first to translate any of Chekhov’s works from Russian (see ibid., 158). My
thanks to Hiroko Cockerill for her efforts to verify this for me.
206
Anton Chekhov, Sakura no sono (1904), trans. Yuasa Yoshiko (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1950). On the
source of the translation quoted in Yoshida’s Sakura, see the note on the copyright page in Yoshida, Sakura no sono
(1994), 240. For a listing of postwar translations, see Uno, Cheehofu no Sakura no sono, 16.

206
applied the word “rezubian” to herself.207 Even if merely serendipitous, this both reinforces a

lesbian reading of Sakura and, in a sense, allows Yuasa to vicariously participate in the

production of this liberatory text nearly four decades after she penned the translation.

Like The Cherry Orchard, the themes in Yoshida’s Sakura include the fleeting nature of

time and the inability to return to the innocence of one’s childhood. Nostalgia is, in fact, doubly

inscribed in the very title of her work, given that sakura blossoms are themselves traditionally

associated with the passage of time. And, while the school’s name, !ka Gakuen (literally

meaning “cherry blossom academy”) and the lines spoken from the script are written in

contemporary kanji characters, in both the title of her manga and each reference to Chekhov’s

play Yoshida writes the word “sakura” with the pre-war and hence old-fashioned kanji character,

suggesting a certain lingering of a bygone era.208 Svetlana Evdokimova points out that The

Cherry Orchard’s central figure, Madame Ranevskaya, embodies the stark contrast between “the

bliss of childhood … [and] the heavy burden of … post-puerile adult life,” a burden that also

looms for the students in Yoshida’s narrative.209 Ranevskaya’s reluctance to accept the passage

of time and her adult responsibilities leads to the downfall of her estate and the felling of the

orchard. While the cherry trees at !ka Gakuen High School will not be chopped down—in fact

each graduating class traditionally leaves a new cherry tree behind—the protagonists, who are in

their last year of high school, will no longer be there to see the trees when they bloom again. The

protagonist girls of Yoshida’s manga face their own impending adulthood with a great deal of

ambivalence. Like Ranevskaya, these girls are to varying degrees excited about the possibility of

207
See Hirosawa Yumi [Sawabe Hitomi], “Dandi na Roshia bungakusha Yuasa Yoshiko h"monki,” in
Bessatsu Takarajima, no. 64, Onna o ai suru onnatachi no monogatari, 69.
208
The word “!ka” is written with the characters for “sakura” [cherry tree], which is alternatively
pronounced !, and “hana” [blossom], alternatively pronounced ka.
209
Svetlana Evdokimova, “What's so Funny about Losing One's Estate, or Infantilism in The Cherry
Orchard,” Slavic and East European Journal 44, no. 4 (2000): 631.

207
romantic and sexual relationships. However, their maturing bodies are also a constant source of

anxiety and at times embarrassment or even humiliation.210

Divided like Chekhov’s work into four “acts,” Sakura is narrated in turn from the

perspectives of four girls taking part in their school’s annual production of The Cherry Orchard.

Although the narrators speak from the present, their adult future is represented in the first “act”

by Nakano’s soon-to-be-married sister, ten years her senior, whose cameo appearance with her

fiancé toward the end of the last “act” marks a rupture in the lesbian script, reminding readers of

the heteronormative women’s narrative society holds in store for these students. Yoshida uses the

performance to force her characters to reconsider their own gender and sexual identities by

cross-dressing the performers. In this sense, the performance recalls the Takarazuka all-female

musical revue, which was founded in 1913—by chance the same year Senuma’s translation of

The Cherry Orchard was published—and which is sometimes associated with female-female

desire.211 This connection between the drama club performance and Takarazuka cross-dressing

is obvious to the girls of !ka Gakuen, some of whom still swoon over Kurata Chiyoko’s past

performances as an otokoyaku [“trouser role” player]. As will be demonstrated below, the effect

of this trans-gender performance, particularly given Sakura’s striving for realism, is a radical

exposure of “the fundamental contradictions marking female sexuality from its earliest

stages.”212 The behind-the-scenes look at the staging of Sakura also exemplifies through the

characters/performers’ struggles how, gender is not natural but “performative,” as Judith Butler

has famously elaborated. In effect, gender is rendered “thoroughly and radically incredible.”213

210
For instance, menstruation, a sign of the girls’ physical womanhood and their potential to become
mothers, is a repeated source of both lighthearted teasing and profound anxiety. See Yoshida, Sakura no sono (1994),
11, 82, 110–13.
211
See Jennifer Robertson, Takarazuka: Sexual Politics and Popular Culture in Modern Japan (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1998).
212
See renée c. hoogland, Lesbian Configurations (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997), 69.
213
Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New York: Routledge, 1990),

208
 In creating a fictive narration of Adrienne Rich’s notion of a “lesbian continuum,”

Yoshida reverses and subverts the expected high-school romance narrative—working

“backward” from a girl’s first sexual experience with a boy, to another girl’s first kiss with a boy,

to a third girl’s declaration of affection to a receptive fourth girl.214 While boy-girl relationships

are important in the first “act,” they gradually lose prominence—as female relationships

deepen—so that by the end of the story, rather than the typical narrative in which the lesbian

characters are erased, it is the boys who are expunged from the story. This erasure is

implemented through both dialogue and visual imagery. By the second half of the narrative the

few images of male characters are either literally cut out of the narrative frame, obscured by

dialogue bubbles, or turned away from the viewer/reader. Thus the text gradually moves toward

the state of “lesbian utopia” that Patricia Smith observes is common in “homosocial school

fictions” in British literature.215

While the possibility of a kiss is often the source of tension or humor in plays with

single-sex casts that occur in other queer sh!jo manga works, in Yoshida’s text, it is not the

possibility of a kiss but the self-questioning the performance arouses in the performers that

makes The Cherry Orchard so important for the development of the lesbian narrative. As a case

in point, although last year she performed as an otokoyaku—a role better suited to her height and

masculine traits—Kurata Chiyoko is cast this year as the heroine, Madame Ranevskaya, a part

she is clearly uncomfortable performing. In a twist on the trouser role, in costume Kurata looks

like a boy in drag, “mock[ing] both the expressive model of gender and the notion of a true

141 (emphasis original).

214
Rich has articulated the lesbian continuum as “a range—through each woman’s life and throughout
history—of woman-identified experience, not simply the fact that a woman has had or consciously desired genital
sexual experience with another woman.” See Adrienne Rich, “Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence,”
in her Blood, Bread, and Poetry (New York, Norton: 1986), 51.
215
Smith, Lesbian Panic, 135–36.

209
gender identity.”216 Kurata’s obvious discomfort with and desire to reject this female “role”

graphically illustrates “the duress under which gender performance always and variously

occurs.”217 As Honda Masuko elaborates specifically about the sh!jo, “Of all the classifications

concerning human beings, nothing is more desperate than the distinction between ‘man’ and

‘woman’…. For a girl to affirm her sex is to recognize that the world is a cold Other.”218 While

openly wishing she were more feminine, Kurata bemoans her most visible sign of being a

woman, her large breasts, which are all the more prominent in her ill-fitting costume. A

sympathetic Shimizu Y!ko—whose past unpleasant experiences have led her to reject men and

who is drawn to Kurata throughout the narrative—constructs a frilly ribbon to attach to the

bosom of the dress to cover and draw attention away from Kurata’s breasts. Honda observes that

swaying, “hirahira,” frills and ribbons function to conceal the body and yet “inevitably draw …

the attention of others,”219 allowing for the simultaneous denial of womanhood and emphasis of

femininity. And thus, as Yoshida illustrates, this figure of the girl embodies the tension between

being feminine and being a woman. The budding romance between Kurata and Shimizu shows

readers that it is possible for girls to affirm each other and their sometimes powerful affection for

one another.

The other cross-dresser in Yoshida’s narrative, Sugiyama Noriko, is trapped in an internal

conflict over her femininity and her willingness to adapt to heteropatriarchal norms. In this

year’s production of The Cherry Orchard, Sugiyama is made to perform an otokoyaku, Yasha.

While she takes on the role reluctantly, expressing jealousy toward others who are given

women’s roles, in her own life she vociferously rejects sexual double standards, dresses

216
Butler, Gender Trouble, 137.
217
Ibid., 139.
218
Honda Masuko, “The Genealogy of hirahira: Liminality and the Girl,” trans. Tomoko Aoyama and
Barbara Hartley, in Aoyama and Hartley, Girl Reading Girl in Japan, 36.
219
Ibid., 34.

210
somewhat androgynously, and—even as she is widely suspected of being sexually

experienced—is reluctant to date and kiss boys (although she is happy when she finally does). In

performing this male role, however, Sugiyama realizes that the other side of the gender fence is

no more comfortable for her. Yoshida’s critique of the patriarchal social structure via Sugiyama,

more than any other character, marks Sakura as an overtly feminist text.

Although Sugiyama and the protagonist/narrator of the first act, Nakano Atsuko, both

eventually find comfort and affirmation in the arms of an adolescent boy, the work as a whole

resists the implication that men offer the only opportunity for love and affirmation. Ultimately,

“the story’s emotional and intellectual focus, despite an ostensible preoccupation with the

problematical aspects of male/female relationships, indisputably lies with female same-sex

interaction.”220 Thus, even in the face of the heteronormative world looming outside the school

grounds and at the end of the school year, within the confines of the “cherry orchard” at the top

of the hill, the girls are at liberty to explore a range of women-identified experiences.

Rather than engaging in acts of literary translation, Yoshida and other manga artists are

deploying imagery and plot elements from translated texts. Nevertheless, their transfiguration of

translated originals has served as a means to circumvent the restrictions inherent in their own

identities as Japanese women. Moreover, it was through the act of transfiguring a foreign space,

a well-known name, or another era into something accessible to sh!jo that these artists hoped

also to liberate their readers. Yoshida’s Sakura no sono demonstrates how translation and the

transfiguration of texts can create spaces for new narratives, both fictional and real. Such

linguistic, cultural, and generic transformations inherent in the telling of this narrative enable the

construction, de-construction, and re-construction of multiple sexual and gender options. And,

while readers may enjoy the liberatory aspects of a Western liminal space as they read more
220
Hoogland, Lesbian Configurations, 83.

211
directly translated texts, Yoshida’s manga as well as the sh!nen ai manga and its reception

discussed above illustrates that, at some level, sh!jo readers remain aware of how these foreign

spaces may be transfigured into tangible local acts and understandings.

Conclusion

Levy suggests in this chapter’s opening epigraph that, in spite of translation’s centrality

to modern Japan, the project of elucidating its role in the (re)construction of Japanese culture is

still in its early stages.221 Yet there is a growing body of diverse scholarship on translation in

Japan, even if there is as yet no formal discipline of translation studies within Japan itself.222 A

majority of the scholarship on translation in Japan has, like the section above, focused on literary

translation. As the other portions of this chapter demonstrate, however, the translation of essays

and empirical studies also served as critical tools for those seeking challenge gender and sexual

norms in the twentieth century. Both through direct translation and more extreme transfiguration

of many kinds of foreign texts, the women and adolescent girls in the ribu, rezubian, and queer

sh!jo manga spheres worked to expand the possibilities for the category “women” in Japan.

My discussion of the uses of literary translation shows that neither the original texts nor

their translations need to be feminist for the texts to be transfigured toward feminist aims. This is

also true for other genres of writing. Setsu Shigematsu, for instance, demonstrates how, Tanaka,

who has long and vociferously rejected the possibility that ribu was imported, nonetheless draws

on Marx and Lenin, as well as Wilhelm Reich and others in her own theory of ribu.223 Tanaka’s

221
Levy, “Introduction,” 11.
222
Ibid., 11. The point that there is no discipline of translation studies in Japan is credited to Yanabu Akira,
whose own many works on translation in Japan occupy the last two pages of the volume’s annotated bibliography.
See Aragorn Quinn, compiler, with Joanna Sturiano, “Annotated Bibliography of Translation Studies in Japan,” in
Levy, “The Culture of Translation,” 265–96.
223
See chapter three in Setsu Shigematsu, “Tanaka Mitsu and the Women’s Liberation Movement in
Japan: Towards a Radical Feminist Ontology,” PhD diss., Cornell University, 2003.

212
use of Marx and Lenin is rather unsurprising given that, emerging as it did out of Japan’s New

Left, ribu discourse in general was heavily inflected by Marxist-Leninist discourse. Reich may

have been more revolutionary for Tanaka, however. Almost forty years later, Tanaka still recalls

in a published interview that reading Reich’s The Sexual Revolution was as if a veil had been

pulled from her eyes. She saw through him that “the nucleus of human consciousness was sex

(sei),” which helps account for the centrality that Tanaka gave gives within her own theory of

ribu.224 Even her famous concept of women being “toilets” (benjo) may be considered a

transfigured version of Reich’s positing that prostitutes are like toilets.225 Of course, Tanaka was

more concerned with rejecting the notion that she had been influenced by foreign feminists than

rejecting ties between her work and foreign discourse in general. In the same interview, moments

before gushing about Reich, she boasts with a laugh, “I’m not proud of it but I still haven’t read

Beauvoir.”226 Nevertheless, her transfiguration of ideas taken from a translated text, The Sexual

Revolution, helped form the foundation of the theory she spells out in her influential For Women

with Spirit, as well as the signature symbolism in her “Liberation from Toilet” pamphlet.

And translation goes both ways. Some women at Ribu Shinjuku Center, including

Sawabe Hitomi, formed Translation Group (Hon’yaku Gur!pu) in March 1974 to read materials

and letters sent to the center from abroad.227 Realizing they could also introduce the current

situation for women in Japan to women elsewhere, they created English-language materials,

which center members took with them in June, 1975 to attend the First United Nations World

Conference on Women, in Mexico City. Founded in the mid-1970s by Takagi Sawako, who had

224
Tanaka Mitsu, “Mirai o tsukanda onnatachi,” interview by Kitahara Minori and Ueno Chizuko, in
Sengo Nihon sutadiizu 2: 60, 70-nendai, ed. Komori Y"ichi et al. (Tokyo: Kinokuniya Shoten), 285; Wilhelm Reich,
Sei to bunka no kakumei, trans. Nakao Hajime (Tokyo: Keis" Shob", 1969).
225
Shigematsu, “Tanaka Mitsu and the Women’s Liberation Movement,” 163.
226
Tanaka, “Mirai o tsukanda onnatachi,” 283. Something she wrote in one of her early manifestos,
contradicts this: “Having read Marx, Engels and de Beauvoir, I now am left with a big wrinkle in my left brain.”
Quoted in Shigematsu, “Tanaka Mitsu and the Women’s Liberation Movement,” 153–54.
227
See RSSSHK, Kono michi hitosuji, iv-v; Sawabe, “Onna o ai suru onnatachi no monogatari,” 40.

213
been abroad and found herself unable to adequately explain the Japanese ribu movement,

Femintern Press released a series of pamphlets on the Japanese movement as well as other

feminist issues encompassing Asia more broadly.228 Akiyama Y!ko’s pamphlet introducing

Ding Ling and her translation from the Chinese of Ding’s “Thoughts on the Eighth of March”

helped introduce Ding to feminists outside of Asia.229 Within the foreign lesbian community in

Japan itself, Joni van Dyke, for instance, created a bilingual “Dyketionary” in order to “help

bridge the communication gap” between Japanese and foreign lesbians “to fight the patriarchal

strategies for blocking DYKE ENERGY!”230 And as BL and yaoi manga and anime have gained

a global following over the past two decades, earlier sh!nen ai texts have sometimes been

translated as well, this time by fans abroad. The anime version of The Song of the Wind and the

Trees (1987), for instance, is currently available with English and Spanish subtitles on

YouTube.231 The complex layers of translation and further transfiguration of subtly and not so

subtly queer European texts in the 1970s have come full circle not just in translation but in the

production and consumption of original yaoi abroad and in the seemingly borderless realm of the

internet. In the very physical space of conventions such as Yaoicon, first held in San Francisco a

decade ago, some foreign fans engage in cosplay, dressing as yaoi icons and physically

embodying, if only for a moment, characters whose lineage can be traced not just back to 1970s

Japanese artists, but also to postwar French cinema, pre-war German novels, and centuries of

228
Takagi Sawako, interview with author, April 2009. Examples of Femintern Press publications include
Tanaka, A Short History of the Women’s Movement in Modern Japan; Akiyama Y!ko, The Hidden Sun: A Brief
History of Japanese Women (Tokyo: Femintern Press, 1975); Matsui Yayori, Why I Oppose Kisaeng Tours:
Exposing Economic and Sexual Aggression against South Korean Women, trans. Lora Sharnoff (Tokyo: Femintern
Press, 1975).
229
Ding Ling and Akiyama Y!ko, Ting Ling: Purged Feminist, trans. Akiyama Y!ko and Larry Taub
(Tokyo: Femintern Press, 1974); Akiyama, interview.
230
“Why Have a DYKETIONARY?” (preface), in Joni van Dyke, Dyketionary, 2nd ed. (Tokyo: privately
printed, ca. 1985), n.p. Van Dyke writes that the need for the Dyketionary exists “because the boys keep words and
concepts like clitoris, compulsory heterosexuality, coming out…out of their dicktionaries” (ibid.).
231
Kaze to ki no uta: sanctus seinaru kana, directed by Yasuhiko Yoshikazu (Japan: Sh!gakukan/Herald,
1987).

214
idolizing beautiful boys in Japan.

Sandra Bermann urges that that we seek both evidence and the effects of globalization “in

the interstices, the nodes, those endless, precarious junctures where translation between cultures

and languages takes place. … Here conflicting histories make their claims, with their stories of

passions felt and decisions taken. … In these junctures lie unheard, muted voices of past and

present….”232 This chapter has shown that to even begin such a complicated and important task

requires attention to multiple fields of discourse and multiple approaches. Situating translation as

a mode of transfiguration encourages us to pay attention to the important distinction between

attempts at direct translation and attempts to more greatly transform a text, without losing sight

of the way both are often contained in everyday speech within a very loose notion of translation.

Yet even loosely defined, confining ourselves to pure translation would miss the way translated

texts are often, in turn, transfigured into texts like Stories of Women Who Love Women and The

Heart of Thomas. Transfiguration also steers us to look for effects beyond translated texts

themselves, beyond their translators and beyond even dramatically transfigured texts such as

these to the communities and the individuals who have been affected. It is here, in the sometimes

subtle ripples and reverberations, we can see how much translation really matters.

232
Sandra Bermann, “Introduction,” in Nation, Language, and the Ethics of Translation, ed. Sandra
Bermann and Michael Wood (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2005), 7–8.

215
 CHAPTER FIVE: TRAVEL

In the wake of EXPO ’70 in Osaka, Japan National Railway (JNR) began a campaign

encouraging young women to hit the rails and “Discover Japan.” This was a time in which

expectations lingered that, until married, a young woman would sleep in the family home under

parental supervision and not spend the night unsupervised in a strange place—a fact that added,

in the advertising campaign designer’s own calculations, a certain erotic liberation to the

journeys he was promoting.1 During this same period, domestic and, in particular, foreign travel

was also increasingly a part of the broader intertwined discourses of consumption and status,

with overseas holidays as one of the big three symbols of having truly achieved financial success

in the 1970s.2 And, while fixed exchange rates unfavorable to the yen as well as currency export

restrictions and other obstacles hampered travel abroad through the early part of the decade, in

the 1970s and 1980s foreign journeys slowly entered the realm of the possible for an increasing

number of Japanese, including women.

This period also saw a new wave of magazines targeting young women consumers,

beginning with An An (1970–) and Non-no (1971–) at the opening of the 1970s, followed by

Croissant (Kurowassan, 1977–) and More (Moa, 1977–) later in the decade. These magazines

simultaneously produced and reflected among their readers an interest in travel and eroticism,

along with other kinds of consumption. An An and Non-no in particular have been associated

with an increase among young women in both domestic and overseas travel, linked with their

1
Marilyn Ivy, Discourses of the Vanishing: Modernity, Phantasm, Japan (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1995), 36–38.
2
In the mid- to late 1950s, consumers were said to have first strived for the “three sacred treasures” of an
electric fan, a washing machine, and a rice cooker, or, alternatively, a washing machine, a refrigerator, and a black
and white television. This was followed by a car, an air conditioner, and a color television in the 1960s, and jewels,
a house, and an overseas vacation in the 1970s. See William W. Kelly, “Finding a Place in Metropolitan Japan:
Ideologies, Institutions, and Everyday Life,” in Postwar Japan as History, ed. Andrew Gordon (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1993), 195 n17.

216
promotion of Japanese tourist attractions, as well as—particularly from the mid-1970s

onward—foreign destinations including Paris, New York, and London.3 While prior to the

1970s overseas travel had been limited largely to (men’s) business trips and study abroad,

already in 1976, a quarter of all Japanese who traveled abroad, or roughly 732,000 individuals,

were women.4

The JNR campaign was built around the Japanese idea of tabi—a concept with “an aura

of the antique”—that originally implied a journey, most often on foot, with a purpose such as a

religious pilgrimage or a trip taken as part of one’s occupation.5 From ancient travel literature to

the present, tabi have also been tinged with the stuff of dreams.6 JNR is not alone in capitalizing

on—and stretching the meaning of—this traditional idea of a sometimes fantastic, often nostalgic

journey with a purpose. As Sylvia Guichard-Anguis points out, in contemporary Japan people

continue to make “tabi,” whether by train, plane, or the internet, and quite often to destinations

beyond the Japanese border.7 The initial inspiration for the JNR “Discover Japan” campaign, in

fact, came from abroad. The “Discover Japan” promotion’s creators transfigured a 1967

“Discover America” campaign aimed at keeping American travel money within the borders of

the United States into a series of advertisements encouraging young Japanese women to fill

3
Keiko Tanaka, “Japanese Women’s Magazines: The Language of Aspiration,” in The Worlds of Japanese
Popular Culture: Gender, Shifting Boundaries and Global Cultures, ed. D.P. Martinez (Cambridge, U.K.:
Cambridge University Press, 1998), 111, 116–17. The first issue of An An contained a feature on model Tachikawa
Yuri supposedly traveling on her own to Paris and London. An An was more focused on Europe and Non-no on the
US due to the magazines’ respective collaboration with the French magazine Elle and the US magazine Glamour.
See Barbara Holthus, “Sexuality, Body Images and Social Change in Japanese Women’s Magazines in the 1970s
and 1980s,” in Ulrike Wöhr, Barbara Hamill Sato, and Suzuki Sadami, eds. Gender and Modernity: Rereading
Japanese Women’s Magazines (Kyoto: International Research Center for Japanese Studies, 2000), 142.
4
From a 1977 Tourism White Paper, cited in Bamba Tomoko, “The ‘Office Ladies’ Paradise: Inside and
Out,” Japan Quarterly 26, no. 2 (April–June 1979): 242. Bamba does not provide a breakdown to indicate the
purpose of these women’s travel or who they were traveling with.
5
Ivy, Discourses of the Vanishing, 36–37.
6
Sylvie Guichard-Anguis, “Introduction: The Culture of Travel (tabi no bunka) and Japanese Tourism,” in
Japanese Tourism and Travel Culture, ed. Sylvie Guichard-Anguis and Okpyo Moon (London: Routledge, 2009), 2.
7
Ibid., 2–3.

217
JNR’s coffers by traveling around Japan by train.8

Moreover, the “Discover Japan” campaign was sold to these women as a journey to

discover oneself (jibun)—a journey that required leaving home to discover a self whose origins

lie imbricated in a nostalgic notion of Japan, a Japan that was also home.9 Marilyn Ivy remarks

that the “Discover Japan” campaign positioned young women simultaneously as the subjects of

these journeys and as objects. They were subjects who must leave a home that is “essentially

lacking: lacking both in the satisfaction necessary to keep women at home…and in the resources

necessary to actualize ‘woman’ as the desirable object of the male gaze.”10 In short, through

journeying in Japan, the targets of this campaign were expected to come to understand

themselves as having a self that was both authentically Japanese and a female, by definition the

object of male desire.11 The travel that is the focus of this chapter dates to the same period as the

JNR campaign and is also intimately linked with self-discovery and transformation through

venturing away from home. These journeys, however, served to challenge—rather than

reinforce—the gender and sexual norms that would position women as sexual objects. And in

some cases, they also unsettled the travelers’ Japaneseness.

Like translation, in the 1970s and 1980s travel in various forms played a vital role in

shaping the !man ribu, rezubian, and queer sh"jo manga spheres, as well as in reshaping the

self-understandings of many of the individuals associated therewith. By contrast with the mostly

rural destinations of the “Discover Japan” campaign, the domestic journeys for the women who

are my focus here most often entailed travel to, not from, urban centers. Arguably the cultural

8
As Ivy points out, while the man who conceived of the campaign claimed they were completely different,
he had in fact co-authored a book about the “Discover America” campaign, published in 1968. See Ivy, Discourses
of the Vanishing, 42. By coincidence, the subtitle in the chapter in which Ivy discusses this campaign is
“Trans-Figuring Japan.” Unfortunately, she does not define what she means by transfiguring, though clearly this
campaign is an instance of transfiguration as I have defined it.
9
Ibid., 40–42.
10
Ibid., 39.
11
Ibid., 39, 42.

218
capital of each of these three communities, Tokyo, in particular, had a centripetal pull that drew

many of the women to whose lives I have been referring—though, to be sure, the Osaka-Kyoto

area comes in a close second, especially within the ribu movement. My concern in this chapter,

however, is travel abroad, both real and vicarious.

Within my three focal communities, regardless of the purpose of any given journey, the

destination of foreign travel was most commonly—but not exclusively—located in the West.

Some of the interest within these spheres in occupying Western cultural spheres seems to

prefigure the akogare [yearning] for an ultimately unobtainable idea of the West that Karen

Kelsky found in her study of internationally-minded women in the late 1980s and the 1990s.

Those women rejected Japan for what they often later discovered to their disappointment had

been an overly idealized understanding of Western culture—and Western men.12 While the

akogare of the women in Kelsky’s study was imbued with and perpetuated an “attitude of

Japanese inferiority,”13 such an attitude, while also present to a degree in these three spheres,

does not appear to have not an overriding force among the women and adolescent girls in the

ribu, rezubian, and queer sh!jo manga spheres, who, with few exceptions, did not express the

same rejection of Japan as had the women in Kelsky’s project.

Aside from the United Nations First World Conference on Women in Mexico City, travel

to countries outside the West received relatively limited attention within these spheres in most of

the 1970s and 1980s. And there were few women from outside the West whose voices were

prominent in the discourse of these three communities. As discussed in previous chapters, queer

sh!jo manga narratives were predominantly set in the West for much of these two decades, with

12
Karen Kelsky, Women on the Verge: Japanese Women, Western Dreams (Durham, N.C.: Duke
University Press, 2001), 26
13
Ibid., 26. Kelsky does note that however enamored these women seemed to be with the liberatory
potential of the West, the narratives they told about their experience of the West were not blindly or unquestioningly
positive “but tentative, shifting, contradictory, and contingent” (ibid., 87).

219
most of the remainder set in Japan. Within the rezubian community, it would take until the

mid-1980s for rezubian groups to begin networking with other lesbians in Asia, and even those

connections were forged a lesbian event in Europe (discussed below). Some women’s groups in

Japan did attempt to directly reach out to and network with other Asian women from the very

beginning of the 1970s, but such efforts were seldom made by ribu groups specifically.14

Among ribu and other women’s groups, the most prominent discussion of Korea and elsewhere

in Asia in the 1970s was a campaign to end prostitution tours by men.15

As I have shown in the preceding chapters, elements from the West—primarily the US

and Western Europe—were transfigured in these communities by women and adolescent girls (as

well as men) in the process of redefining “women” in Japan. Many of these elements were

introduced via transnational travel—that is, flows of people across national borders. For instance,

the American radical feminist writing that was among the first to be translated into Japanese,

discussed in chapter four, was brought to Japan by a pair of Americans who had traveled to the

country to both protest US military aggression in Southeast Asia and to evade the draft. And the

multi-sited, multi-stage shift in pronunciation from “resubian” to “rezubian,” discussed in

chapter three, began with direct contact between American lesbians and a Japanese man who had

14
There are, of course, exceptions, for instance a special feature on “Chinese women’s liberation” in the
Nagoya-based mini-komi Women’s Rebellion: Onna no hangyaku, “Ch!goku no fujin kaih",” no. 4 (March 1972).
One prominent example of non-ribu feminists engaging with women elsewhere in Asia is the Conference of Asian
Women Fighting Discrimination=Invasion (Shinryaku=Sabetsu to Tatakau Ajia Fujin Kaigi), which arose from the
New Left and was founded in 1970, like many ribu groups. This group focused on how economic exploitation
differently affected women in Asia. Ties formed in mid-1970 led to 10 women taking a tour at the end of the year to
learn more about and strengthen connections with women in China. This tour is written about in Shinryaku=Sabetsu
to Tatakau Ajia Fujin Kaigi, Ch!goku o otozurete: Kichi de tatakau Nihon fujin daihy"dan (Tokyo:
Shinryaku=Sabetsu to Tatakau Ajia Fujin Kaigi, 1971), reprinted in Shinryaku=Sabetsu to Tatakau Ajia Fujin Kaigi
Shiry" Sh!sei Kank" Kai, ed., Shinryaku=Sabetsu to Tatakau Ajia Fujin Kaigi Shiry" Sh!sei, vol. 1 (Tokyo:
Inpakuto, 2006).
15
Most prominent in this struggle was female journalist and world traveler Matsui Yayori, who wrote
frequently about the topic, e.g., Matsui Yayori, “Watashi wa naze kiisen kank" ni hantai suru no ka: keizai
Shinryaku to sei Shinryaku no k"z" o abaku,” Onna erosu no. 2 (April 1974). This article was reprinted in English
translation in pamphlet form as Why I Oppose Kisaeng Tours: Exposing Economic and Sexual Aggression against
South Korean Women, trans. Lora Sharnoff (Tokyo: Femintern Press, 1975). Articles on these prostitution tours also
occasionally appeared in Ribu News, Women’s Revolt, and other ribu mini-komi.

220
journeyed to New York; this shift also involved other transnational voyages and face-to-face

contact between women from Japan and people from the US through which women from Japan

directly heard how the word was pronounced in English.

Like the transfigured words, texts, and practices discussed in previous chapters, the

purposes and effects of travel abroad within these spheres were sometimes the result of

coincidence rather than planning and were seldom as straightforward they might initially appear.

These trips often served multiple functions, and at times had unforeseen consequences. Among

the intended purposes of travel abroad in these spheres was escape. This escape might have been

from Japanese patriarchal norms broadly defined, from the parental home, from aspects of the

self, or from a combination of these. For the women with whom I have spoken, as well as within

the discourse of these three communities, however, these journeys were generally more focused

on the appeal of the destination than problems with the point of origin. That is, these were

framed as journeys to more so than journeys from. While this is a difference of degree rather than

kind, it is a distinction not without significance. For those in the ribu and rezubian spheres in

particular, rather than frame travel abroad as an attempt to merely escape oppressive gender and

sexual norms, these journeys were quite often undertaken for the purpose of networking with and

learning from women in other cultures—or at least thusly framed—so that they could bring back

knowledge that might strengthen women’s activism within Japan. Further, for some women these

journeys—including both short- and long-term sojourns abroad—were for work, either for an

individual’s own job, her partner’s, or a parent’s. Finally, as travel abroad became more

affordable, particularly in the 1980s and after, an increasing number of these journeys were

primarily for pleasure.

In the remainder of this chapter, I will focus real and vicarious travel experiences in the

221
ribu, rezubian, and queer sh!jo manga spheres. In contrast with the last chapter in which I used a

relatively narrow definition of translation, for my purposes in this chapter I provisionally locate

long-term, even permanent, dwelling abroad on the continuum of travel. I do so because the

choice to move away from—and in some cases to—Japan, can often be linked to experiences in

these communities and because women from Japan who have become long-term residents of

other countries and long-term foreign residents of Japan alike have contributed significantly to

the discourse of these spheres. Articles and letters appearing in commercial and non-commercial

publications in these three spheres from women on trips or residing abroad often provided

information about foreign cultures, including details about topics such as the status of women,

the dominant family structure, the state of feminist activism, the shape of queer communities,

and—in the case of discourse in the queer sh!jo manga sphere—the attractiveness of adolescent

boys and young men. Narrated from the perspective of women who had grown up in Japan, such

articles and letters allowed readers in Japan to vicariously share in the experience of someone

often very much like themselves.

Early Travel Experiences

Amano Michimi traveled to Europe by herself in 1968, an exceptionally early time for a

young Japanese woman to travel solo, particularly abroad. Her motivation for doing so was a

combination of a yearning for Europe, a dream to become a writer, and a desire to escape. Her

actual travel experience and its aftereffects were quite different from her expectations.
16
Born right at the end of the war, Amano had had an unusual upbringing. Her father,

16
This description of Amano’s experiences is based on an interview I conducted with her in April 2009,
follow-up correspondence in May and June of 2010, as well as Amano Michimi, “Women in Japan: Lucy Leu
Interviews Michimi,” The Second Wave 3, no. 4 (Winter 1974), an interview conducted with her when she was in
New York.

222
born in the Meiji era, held very traditional ideas about the position of women in the family and in

society, but her mother abandoned the family when she was four. She subsequently received

little in the way of discipline from either her grandmother, who raised her and her two brothers

for the next six years, or her stepmother, who joined the family when Amano was around ten

years old. Further, as she recalls, no one made much effort to inculcate in her normative feminine

behavior—a frequent complaint in the discourse in the ribu, rezubian, and queer sh!jo manga

spheres, and among the many women with whom I have spoken. Nevertheless, Amano

developed a rebellious streak and yearned to escape her family and Kyoto, the conservative city

of her birth. Her father allowed her to go to a four-year university—still somewhat unusual for

young women at the time—but not to a school in Tokyo, where she desperately wanted to live.

As a university student in the early 1960s, Amano tried to “act like an intellectual” and read what

those around her were reading, such as works by Marx and Engels as well as Japanese writers

like Yoshimoto Takaaki and Oe Kenzaburo, but found them too opaque. Upon the

recommendation of a friend, she read Beauvoir’s Second Sex and was instantly hooked. Amano

subsequently read everything else by Beauvoir that had been translated into Japanese and, in the

process, her intellectual infatuation with the philosopher developed into a strong desire to

become a writer and, concomitantly, an irrepressible yearning to directly experience the France

in which Beauvoir wrote. Knowing that her father and stepmother would try to stop her, she

planned her trip in secret and sprang it on them the day before she left.

Her actual experience of France was far from the rose-colored image she held of the

country before she arrived. She worked as an au pair for series of families over the course of

about ten months, and was often lonely and miserable. She had a great deal of difficultly

communicating with people, who often mistook her for a Vietnamese refugee. She was poorly

223
paid but when she had enough money, she spent time with a Japanese friend at a café Beauvoir

was said to frequent, eventually managing to see the object of her passion in person twice. While

in less than a year’s time her worried parents offered to pay for a flight back to Japan, Amano did

not want to appear that she could not take care of herself, so she moved to Copenhagen. There

she cleaned rooms at a Scandinavian Airlines-owned hotel for a year, long enough to entitle her

to a free flight back to Japan. Before she left, she did scrape together enough money to make

circuit around Europe, hitting spots then popular with the bohemian set she was trying to emulate.

While this journey was on the whole not as rewarding as she had hoped, and she does not speak

of it as a transformative experience, she did come back with a limited ability to speak French and,

more importantly, greater self-confidence. And, while Amano’s trip appears to have been little

more than an unusual adventure for a young Japanese woman in the late 1960s, it set in motion a

chain of events that got her involved in ribu and engaged in further transnational networking.

After returning to Japan, Amano was invited by someone she had met in Europe to a

party for British writer Angela Carter (1940–1992), who had moved to Japan in 1969. Among

the last people remaining at the party that evening were Amano and Larry Taub (1936–), an

American in Tokyo in part to protest the Vietnam War. Later Taub asked for her assistance in

getting permission from Tanaka Mitsu to translate Tanaka’s book For Women with Spirit.17

While that translation did not work out, Amano found herself pulled into the ribu movement,

first as a member of Group Fighting Women (Gur!pu Tatakau Onna). Amano believes that

Tanaka both invited her to join because she was so self-assured, and then kicked her out of the

group within about six months because, at almost Tanaka’s age and with a four-year degree and

two years experience living abroad, Amano threatened Tanaka’s authority.

Amano stayed involved in the ribu movement, however, taking part in the four-woman
17
Tanaka Mitsu, Inochi no onnatachi e: torimidashi !man ribu ron (Tokyo: Tabata Shoten, 1972).

224
collective, Red June (Akai Rokugatsu), a group with which she grew increasingly dissatisfied.

Before long, Amano had saved enough money to travel again, and this time chose to go to New

York. She told those around her she was going to learn about the women’s liberation movement

in the US, but, in fact, she merely wanted to extract herself from the community. Through Taub,

she did get introductions to New York-based radical feminists, most of whom, she says,

identified as lesbian. Amano supported herself and earned money for the return trip by working

under the table at a Japanese restaurant, and then at a hostess bar catering to Japanese business

men. In spite of being impressed by how openly women expressed lesbian desire in the radical

feminist community she had connected with, and in spite of being given small scale celebrity

status by constantly being introduced by one woman as “the only lesbian in the Japanese lib

[movement],” she was disappointed with her experience and stayed only five months.18 Back in

Japan, Amano wrote up her experience abroad for the readers of Woman Eros.19

Although she had openly identified herself as rezubian all the while she was involved in

ribu, Amano was not particularly interested in rezubian activism and was not drawn to the

emerging rezubian feminisuto movement. At Funamoto Emi’s invitation she joined the editorial

team producing Woman Eros, a position she continued through the late 1970s. While she would

go on to pursue other interests, including abstract art and acupuncture, Amano continued to

contribute to ribu and other feminist publications such as the Osaka-based From Woman to

Women through well into the 1980s.

Takagi Sawako (1947–) was another early traveler with connections to the ribu

18
Amano Michimi, “Onna kaih!: y! no t!zai o mazu toeba,” Onna erosu no. 4 (March 1975): 147. While
Amano told me in the interview that she found New York and the US in general boring, in a article about her
experience she published in Woman Eros soon after her trip, she described New York as “dangerous…dirty…[and]
traumatic”—shocking beyond compare—nothing like France, Denmark, or the other countries she visited in Europe.
See ibid., 140. Rather than any deliberate attempt to reframe the experience for me or to exaggerate the danger of
New York for readers of Woman Eros in 1975, I suspect that this aspect of her trip no longer forms a significant part
of her memory of being in New York.
19
Ibid.

225
movement that came about by coincidence rather than design. Takagi had attended a high school

unusual in that it offered courses in French and German in addition to English.20 The two years

of French she took along with a rather risqué film by Jean-Luc Godard piqued her interested in

the country. After finishing high school, Takagi continued to study French for another two years

while preparing to pass the entrance exam to gain admission to Waseda University, which had a

professor of French with whom she wanted to study. While she was in university during the peak

of the student movement and then the rise of !man ribu, she was so busy with work and study

she was unaware of the new women’s movement that was beginning to take shape. After

graduation she found a position with the Japan Family Planning Association (JFPA) in publicity,

at the time one of the few jobs besides teacher, doctor, and nurse open to women with a four-year

degree. Around 1971, on assignment at a gathering celebrating a milestone anniversary for the

Women’s Democratic Newspaper (Fujin minshu shinbun, 1946–), she first learned about the

existence of ribu from fliers being handed out, but she did not immediately get involved.

Through her job she would, however, continue to have occasion to interact with both old-school

feminists and new-school ribu activists, including Amano, who was to eventually become her

roommate.

In 1973, through her involvement with the French-speaking community in Tokyo, Takagi

met a woman involved in the French feminist movement who had followed her journalist

boyfriend to Japan on assignment. This woman told her about the upcoming International

Feminist Planning Conference, co-sponsored by the National Organization for Women, to be

held in Cambridge, Massachusetts, at the beginning of June. This time Takagi was sufficiently

curious to decide to attend on her own rather than as part of her job. Indeed, while the conference

20
This description of Takagi’s background and experiences comes from an interview I conducted with her
in April 2009. Larry Taub was present for the first half of the interview, and helped clarify some of the details.

226
was only several days long, she decided to quit her position at JFPA and combine the conference

with a three-month sojourn in the US. Unable to speak English sufficiently, she had requested an

interpreter, but the person provided by the conference organizers, a Japanese woman residing in

the US, disappeared after the first day. Prolific feminist writer Higuchi Keiko (1932–), ended up

spending her own money to hire an interpreter that she, Takagi, and Yoshihiro Kiyoko (1940–),

the only three participants coming from Japan, were able to make use of for the remainder of the

conference. While mere curiosity had gotten Takagi to the conference, it was clearly

inspirational to her, and she threw herself into the ribu movement upon her return to Japan,

speaking to the women at Ribu Shinjuku Center about her experience, as well as laying the

groundwork for further transnational exchange.21 Yoshihiro also shared with readers of Woman

Eros experience at the conference and subsequent participation in women’s liberation activities

in New York. The most striking point about the US movement for Yoshihiro—one which

occupies most of her article in the journal—seems to have been the prominence of lesbians in the

movement, something which stood in sharp contrast to the ribu movement and which would

stand out to varying effects for other travelers from Japan.22

During Takagi’s own time in the US, including at the conference, she found herself

repeatedly asked about feminism and women in Japan but unable to adequately explain

conditions. This was the inspiration for Femintern Press (Femintaan Puresu), which she founded

to publish English language materials about feminism in Japan and elsewhere in Asia, “not only

to satisfy the curiosity and chance questions that interested American, Canadian, European, and

21
In September of 1973, Takagi led a discussion on the international feminist conference at a community
center in Tokyo’s Shibuya neighborhood. See Ribu ny!su: kono michi hitosuji, “Sukej!ru,” no. 4 (September 1973),
reprinted in Ribu Shinjuku Sentaa Shiry" Hozon Kai, Kono michi hitosuji: Ribu Shinjuku Sentaa shiry"
sh!sei—hereafter, RSSSHK, Kono michi hitosuji—(Tokyo: Inpakuto, 2008).
22
Yoshiro wrote up her See Yoshihiro Kiyoko, “Amerika no ribu no atarashii nami,” Onna erosu no. 1
(November 1973).

227
other feminists may have, but also from the conviction that feminists in these countries have the

obligation to become informed about and support the actions of women in Asia, and particularly

in undeveloped countries.”23 The name of Takagi’s new press, which echoes Comintern, was

suggested by Taub, whom Takagi had met through Amano, and who would go on to assist with

translating and proofreading the press’s publications. From 1974 to around 1977, Femintern

produced a series of at least seven English-language pamphlets, which they promoted in

English-language women’s periodicals and newsletters.24 Incidentally, it was also around 1974

that the translation group at Ribu Shinjuku Center began producing their own materials in

English in response to requests for information from abroad, as noted in chapter four. One of the

earliest Femintern Press pamphlets was Kazuko Tanaka’s A Short History of the Women’s

Movement in Modern Japan, which was first published in 1975 and sold sufficiently well that it

was in its third edition two years later.25 The press also reprinted a paper by Akiyama Y!ko,

written at the suggestion of American scholar and women’s rights activist Evelyn Reed, and

presented for Akiyama at the 1973 conference in Cambridge by Takagi.26 In keeping with

Takagi’s belief that feminists in more developed countries must be aware of issues confronting

women in developing countries in Asia, one of the pamphlets focused on Chinese feminist Ding

23
Takagi Sawako, “A Short Message from Femintern Press: For International Communication,” in Shiry!
Nihon "man ribu shi, 3 vols., ed. Mizoguchi Akiyo, Saeki Y!ko, and Miki S!ko (1974; Kyoto: Sh!kad! Shoten,
1992–1995), vol. 2, 309 (emphasis original).
Further evidence of an expectation, or at least the hope, among women in Japan in this period that there
would be a more balanced exchange can be found in the foreword by Kazuko Tsurumi to an early edited collection
on women in Japan, in which she expresses the anticipation that it “may well be a harbinger of the new trend…of
the study of Japanese women by their foreign counterparts.” See Kazuko Tsurumi, “Foreword,” in Women in
Changing Japan, ed. Joyce Lebra, Joy Paulson, and Elizabeth Powers (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press,
1975), vi.
24
A list of Femintern Press publications can be found in Mizoguchi, Saeki, and Miki, Shiry! Nihon "man
ribu shi, vol. 2, 307. An example of a Femintern Press promotion can be found in Women’s International Network
News, “Japan,” no. 1 (January 1975), which in
25
Kazuko Tanaka, A Short History of the Women’s Movement in Modern Japan, 3rd ed. (1975; Tokyo:
Femintern Press, 1977).
26
See the acknowledgement in Akiyama Y!ko, The Hidden Sun: A Brief History of Japanese Women
(Tokyo: Femintern Press, 1975), 2.

228
Ling and another on prostitution tours to Korea.27 Takagi sold enough of the pamphlets for

several hundred yen or several dollars each domestically and abroad that she was able to turn a

small profit.

While both of Amano’s sojourns in the West can be linked—if somewhat

tangentially—to her rebellion against normative restrictions on women, and she used her

experience in ribu to reflect on her journeys, she while seems to have taken away little except

broken French, somewhat improved English, the knowledge that New York was very dangerous

and that Japanese men were as dependent on women abroad as they are in Japan.28 She does not

reflect back on those journeys as shaping her identity as either a feminist or as a lesbian. Through

a series of unlikely coincidences, Takagi also traveled abroad in the early 1970s and became

acquainted with American feminists. But for Takagi, her encounter with feminists from the US

and elsewhere motivated her to become more engaged in feminism herself. Though, like Amano,

she was initially more interested in France and French than the US and English, Takagi founded

an English-language press to share information about ribu and women in Japan in general with

readers of English.

Other women who were already committed feminists, like Inoue Teruko, had a clearer

purpose for heading to the US. As discussed in chapter two, Inoue traveled around the country

specifically to learn about the emerging field of women’s studies, a trip which helped lay the

foundations for establishing women’s studies in Japan later in the decade.29 Finally, other

women went abroad for reasons completely unrelated to the ribu movement. Akiyama, who

27
Ding Ling and Akiyama Y!ko, Ting Ling: Purged Feminist, with translations by Akiyama Y!ko and
Larry Taub (Tokyo: Femintern Press, 1974); Matsui, Why I Oppose Kisaeng Tours.
28
Amano, “Onna kaih!,” 140, 141–42.
29
Inoue Teruko, Joseigaku to sono sh!hen (Tokyo: Keis! Shob!, 1980), 230. Inoue wrote up that trip for
Woman Eros in 1974: Atari Teruko [Inoue Teruko], “Amerika no josei to josei kaih! und!: ryok!sha no kaima mita
Amerika,” Onna erosu no. 2 (April 1974).

229
contributed two publications to Takagi’s press, was herself well-traveled by the mid-1970s,

though the traveling she did was not in conjunction with ribu activism. Akiyama’s first trip

abroad, as a graduate student, was a brief trip to Cuba in 1969, on which she found herself

invited by chance.30 And several years later followed her husband, a translator, to Moscow for

his work, where they, along with one and then two children, lived from 1974 to 1981.31 While

activism did not motivate these trips, Akiyama did send “letters from the Soviet Union” to

publications like Ribu News and Woman Eros, in which she discussed women, family structure,

and society in Russia, illustrating how she used her ribu involvement to reflect on Russian

culture.32

Taub, who gave the name to Takagi’s small press, was one of a number of foreigners who

found their way to Japan and interacted with the ribu movement in the first half of the 1970s,

many of whom first came to Japan in conjunction with the anti-war movement, beginning in the

1960s and including individuals mentioned in previous chapters, who attended and contributed

their voices and experiences at early ribu meetings and retreats. And even those foreigners who

came to Japan for other reasons entirely, sometimes found themselves involved in this sphere.

For instance, Angela Carter, mentioned above, came to Japan not as part of the war movement

but to “estrange” herself from her present life and continue to develop as a writer through a

process of self-discovery.33 She later wrote that through her experience in Japan, which she

funded with her prize money from the 1968 Somerset Maugham Award, she “learnt what it is to

30
Akiyama Y!ko, Ribu shishi n!to: onnatachi no jidai kara (Tokyo: Inpakuto Shuppankai, 1993), 8.
31
Akiyama Y!ko, interview with author, March 2009.
32
See, e.g., Akiyama Y!ko, “Sobieto kara no tegami,” pts. 1 and 2, Ribu ny"su: kono michi hitosuji no. 14
(November 1974), and no. 15 (February 1975), reprinted in RSSSHK, Kono michi hitosuji; and “So-ren kara,” Onna
erosu no. 13 (September 1979).
33
Gemma López, Seductions in Narrative: Subjectivity and Desire in the Works of Angela Carter and
Carter and Jeanette Winterson (Youngstown, N.Y.: Cambria Press, 2007), 39.

230
be a woman and became radicalised.”34 American scholars whose work focuses women in Japan

such as Susan Pharr and Kathleen Uno also made connections with activists at Ribu Shinjuku

Center.35 In addition to researchers, foreign feminist activists, including lesbian feminists,

regularly visited Ribu Shinjuku Center, as did foreign residents of Japan.36 Pharr was one of a

handful of foreigners, mostly Western visitors or residents of Japan, who contributed writing to

ribu and rezubian publications, thus participating in local discourse on the meaning of “woman”

from the perspective of someone who was almost an outsider, but not quite.37 That such

individuals are seldom mentioned in discourse on ribu and rezubian history speaks to the fact

that most played only temporary and seemingly marginal roles. Nevertheless, foreigners visiting

and residing in Japan did add to the discourse and occasionally set in motion changes of they

themselves may never have been aware.

***

Not all early 1970s travel can be tied to activism, however. In September of 1972, four

young women, sh!jo manga artists and denizens of the so-called !izumi Salon, Hagio Moto and

Takemiya Keiko, along with Takemiya’s muse and !izumi regular, Masuyama Norie, as well as

34
Angela Carter, Nothing Sacred: Selected Writing (London: Virago, 1982), 28, quoted in ibid. 40.
35
Kathleen Uno dedicates her influential article on the “good wife, wise mother” paradigm to her “sisters”
she had met twenty years before at the Ribu Shinjuku Center, including Tanaka Mitsu and Wakabayashi Naeko. See
Kathleen S. Uno, “Womanhood, War, and Empire: Transmutations of ‘Good Wife, Wise Mother’ Before 1931,” in
Gendering Modern Japanese History, ed. Barbara Molony and Kathleen S. Uno (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard
University Press, 2005), 293. Susan Pharr, then a graduate student at Columbia University, connected with the ribu
movement while researching her dissertation. To the first issue of Ribu Shinjuku Center’s Ribu News, she
contributed an article comparing women in Japan and women in the US—who she believed to be facing similar
issues: Susan Pharr, “Nihon no josei, Amerika no josei,” trans. K" Mami, Ribu ny"su: kono michi hitosuji no. 1
(September 1972), reprinted in RSSSHK, Kono michi hitosuji. Amano later met her in New York, though she felt as
though she was being interrogated by Pharr about why Japanese women, who were in such an awful position
socially, were not burning with anger. See Amano, “Onna kaih",” 142.
36
See, e.g., Wakabayashi Naeko’s comment in End" Misaki et al., “Ribusen o taguri yosete miru,”
Zenky!t! kara ribu e, ed. Onnatachi no Ima o Tou Kai (Tokyo: Inpakuto Shuppan Kai, 1996), 221.
While foreign visitors to the center were seldom mentioned in the interviews I conducted and rarely come
up in the written materials about the center, when I asked individuals involved in center activities, such as Yonezu
Tomoko and Akiyama Y"ko, I was told that there were often foreign women at the center.
37
Pharr, “Nihon no josei.”

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popular sh!jo manga artist and occasional !izumi guest, Yamagishi Ry"ko (1948–), set off for

Europe. Their journey might best be described as a research trip, but it was also certainly

motivated by the yearning that the artists themselves felt for the continent, a yearning instilled or

reinforced by the same works they transfigured into the sh!nen ai [boys’ love] genre.38

According to Masuyama, the artists had already run to all the bookstores in Tokyo that stocked

foreign books and bought and read over what few they could find on the history of clothing,

accessories, wallpaper, furniture and so forth. And they watched a lot of films. What they talked

about afterwards was not the plot so much as things like the way the pavement looked and the

shape of the windows and the doorknobs. Hagio and Takemiya believed that to “give life” to

their own stories, they needed their drawings to convey a certain realism.39 (Their desire for

authenticity is, of course, more than a little ironic given the Occidentalist blurring of cultures that

went into the genre’s creation, discussed in the previous chapter.) Realizing the limited resources

available to them in Japan were insufficient, they decided to visit Europe and see things for

themselves.

As scholar Ishida Minori points out, for young women to travel independently and with

their own money to Europe that early in the postwar era was exceedingly unusual, all the more so

because they went for professional reasons rather than just for sightseeing.40 When Masuyama

thinks back about the trip and how young they were—all four were around 21—even she seems

impressed, if not a little boastful. “At a time when the dollar was at 360 yen, a trip to Europe that

wasn’t part of a tour—well, it was pretty reckless. But if you’re going to draw a foreign country,

38
The !izumi Salon is discussed in chapter two.
39
Quoted in Ishida Minori, Hisoyaka na ky!iku: “yaoi/b!izu rabu” zenshi (Tokyo: Rakuhoku Shuppan,
2008), 140.
40
Ibid., 144.

232
don’t you have to actually see it?”41 Over the course of 40 days, the four young women traveled

across Russia to Stockholm and from there visited Brussels, Paris, Versailles, Strasburg,

Lausanne, Heidelberg, Vienna, Rome, and Venice.42 Takemiya explains that, rather than simply

taking in the beauty of famous sites, they spent their time examining things like how thick the

walls were and how the doors opened, an interest reflected in the photos, and later in their own

manga works.43 Their photos from the trip are of “benches, boys, and windows,” rather than

landmarks themselves, collectively forming a catalogue of objects for later reference.44

Rather than simply use the experience as a resource for their manga, however, Takemiya

and Hagio co-produced a five-part travelogue in manga and text, which they published in Weekly

Sh!jo Comic (Sh"kan sh!jo komikku, 1968–) at the beginning of 1973. They drew themselves

and their traveling companions in “gag manga” (gyagu manga) style, and Europeans as well as

the scenery in a somewhat more realistic—if beautifully exaggerated—sh!jo manga style.45 The

use of the gag style for artists to represent themselves is a common way for artists to insert

editorial comments, simultaneously placing themselves inside the narrative from and yet situate

themselves at a remove from the action—and show they do not take themselves too seriously.

Through this graphic travelogue, their fans were able to experience their tour vicariously, from

savoring the tranquility of Vienna, to posing for photographs with beautiful boys dressed in

unrealistically traditional clothing, to calculating expenses.46 It would take another decade or

more for fans of these artists to have the resources to themselves experience these things in

significant numbers, however. In the 1970s, Europe would remain for sh!jo readers the object of

41
Masuyama Norie and Sano Megumi, “Kyabetsu batake no kakumeiteki sh!jo mangakatachi,” in
Bessatsu Takarajima, no. 288, 70-nendai manga daihyakka (Tokyo: Takarajimasha, 1996), 170–71.
42
Ishida, Hisoyaka na ky!iku, 144.
43
Quoted in ibid., 146.
44
Masuyama and Sano, “Kyabetsu batake,” 171.
45
Ishida, Hisoyaka na ky!iku, 147, 150.
46
See Takemiya Keiko, “Konnichiwa, sayonara,” Sh"kan sh!jo komikku February 11, 1973, 116–17,
reprinted in Ishida, Hisoyaka na ky!iku, 148–49.

233
their longing and their fantasies.

1975 and Its Aftermath

The year 1975, United Nations International Women’s Year, was pivotal for women

around the world. Whatever the critiques of the United Nations-sponsored First World

Conference on Women in Mexico City—and there were many—the gathering provided

opportunities for one-on-one interactions among women across economic and cultural

differences, both at the official meetings and at counterdemonstrations, setting the stage for a

more global movement for women’s human rights.47 For the ribu movement, it is frequently

seen to mark either the end, or at least a major turning point leading toward its decline.48

Women from Japan attended the Mexico City conference as part of both official and

non-governmental delegations. Old-school feminists, including several members of parliament,

spearheaded the organization of women from all walks of life into the grassroots Group of

Women Taking Action for International Women’s Year (Kokusai Fujin-nen o Kikkake Toshite

K!d! o Okosu Onnatachi no Kai). The group, which sent a delegation to the conference, set its

mission as promoting women’s full participation in society and more equitable cooperation

between women and men, goals that were decidedly part of a liberal feminist philosophy.49 This

47
Charlotte Bunch, “Women’s Human Rights: The Challenges of Global Feminism and Diversity,” in
Feminist Locations: Global and Local, Theory and Practice, ed. Marianne DeKoven (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers
University Press, 2001), 131. The Mexico conference, as well as subsequent conferences in Copenhagen (1980) and
Nairobi (1985) were criticized for being more concerned with Cold War politics, Western imperialism, and racism
than basic rights of women, and conversely as a conflict between Western women, who wanted to focus exclusively
on “women’s issues,” and Third World women, who saw racism, imperialism, and economic exploitation as of
greater concern to them than rights based on Western liberal feminist ideals. See Rosemarie Putnam Tong, Feminist
Thought: A More Comprehensive Introduction, 2nd ed. (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1998), 228–31.
48
Kano Mikiyo, for instance, says that even if 1975 was not exactly the end of the movement, “the mood
[of ribu] really changed after International Women’s Year.” See Akiyama Y!ko et al., “T!dai t!s! kara ribu, soshite
joseigaku, feminizumu,” in Onnatachi no Ima o Tou Kai, Zenky!t! kara ribu e, 56.
49
Vera Mackie, Feminism in Modern Japan (Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press, 2003), 175–77. The
group was active as of 1980. See Vera Mackie, “Kant! Women’s Groups.” Feminist International [Japan] no. 2
(June 1980): 106–7.

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loosely knit organization was able to use the conference and associated International Women’s

Year and subsequent Decade for Women (1976–1985), as well as the Convention on the

Elimination of All forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW)—signed by Japan in

1980 and ratified in 1985—to put international pressure on the Japanese government, prompting

legal changes that would improve women’s legal status including the promulgation in 1985 of

the Equal Employment Opportunity Law.50

Several ribu activists went to Mexico City in conjunction with the conference as well, but

the consequences for certain individuals as well as the ribu movement were unforeseeable. Those

attending from Ribu Shinjuku Center were Tanaka, Wakabayashi Naeko, and Takeda Miyuki

(1948–), the latter of whom was involved in Tokyo Komuune, a group using the center.51 For

Tanaka, leaving for Mexico also marked her departure from ribu activism. Exhausted from all

the energy she had put into the movement, Tanaka needed to pull herself away but felt unable to

do so if she remained in Japan, so she settled down in Mexico City, where she lived for the next

four years.52 For Tanaka then, rather than an object of any sort of yearning or a place she hoped

to network with and learn from local women, Mexico was merely a convenient site that was “not

Japan,” and which served as little more than a backdrop for her recuperation. Tanaka did not,

however, cut off ties completely with individuals from the ribu movement, several of whom

visited her during the years she was in Mexico. When Tanaka finally returned to Japan she
50
See Yamashita Yasuko, “The International Movement Toward Gender Equality and Its Impact on
Japan,” trans. Elizabeth A. Leicester, U.S.-Japan Women’s Journal, English Supplement, no. 5 (1993). A discussion
of the Equal Employment Opportunity Law (Danjo Koy! Kikai Kint! H!), and its implementation can be found in
Yoko Kawashima, “Female Workers: An Overview of Past and Current Trends,” in Japanese Women: New Feminist
Perspectives on the Past, Present, and Future, ed. Kumiko Fujimura-Fanselow and Atsuko Kameda (New York:
The Feminist Press at the City University of New York, 1995), 283–89.
51
See End! et al., “Ribusen o taguri yosete miru,” 209. Tokyo Komuune, whose name combines “ko umu”
[birth a child] with “komy"n” [commune], was a group promoting communal living. Like Ribu Shinjuku Center,
discussed below, the departure of one of its core members, in this case Takeda, for the Mexico City conference was
the final blow to a group of already exhausted members. See Saeki Y!ko, “T!ky! Komuune,” in Mizoguchi, Saeki,
and Miki, Shiry! Nihon "man ribu shi, vol. 2.
52
Tanaka Mitsu, “Mirai o tsukanda onnatachi,” interview by Kitahara Minori and Ueno Chizuko, in Sengo
Nihon sutadiizu 2: 60, 70-nendai, ed. Komori Y!ichi et al. (Tokyo: Kinokuniya Shoten, 2009), 307.

235
studied acupuncture, and then opened her own clinic in 1982.53

Tanaka’s long-term departure from Japan in connection with the UN conference is

sometimes linked to the end of the most visible phase of the ribu movement. Indeed, her absence

left had a huge impact on Ribu Shinjuku Center. Asakawa Mari believes that Tanaka’s absence

made it possible, or at least easier, to organize the “wonderful women” (subarashii onnatachi)

survey to find out about rezubian within the ribu movement and to produce the mini-komi of the

same name in 1976.54 As for others heavily involved in the center’s activities, exhausted

themselves, they ended their collective living arrangement and began taking turns managing the

center, before finally closing it in May 1977.55

Some of these women started up new feminist projects. Yonezu Tomoko, Mori Setsuko

(1948–), who had been in Thought Collective S.E.X. with Yonezu, and Doi Yumi formed the

core of a women’s printing collective called Aida K!b!. By the end of the decade, however,

relations within the group had grown poor, as had Yonezu’s health. Yonezu pulled out of the

collective, and in 1981 Doi headed to the US to “take a year off” and cool her head. Enjoying her

new life, Doi decided to stay long term and was able to parlay her experience in the printing

collective into a job at a printing company and eventually a green card.56 Though she had not

planned to live abroad permanently, and while she has maintained ties with friends from her time

in ribu, almost twenty years later Doi is still living in San Francisco.57

53
Ibid., 280.
54
Asakawa Mari, “Ribusen de deatta ‘subarashii onnatachi’,” oral history taken by Sugiura Ikuko, in
Nihon no rezubian komyuniti: k!jutsu no und! shi (Tokyo: privately printed, 2009), 8–9.
55
RSSSHK, Kono michi hitosuji, iii–iv. Without naming individual names, Ribu Shinjuku Sentaa Shiry!
Hozon Kai describes this as the result of the absence of three of the managing members of the center (ibid., iii), but
individuals recalling the experience, such as Asakawa, “Ribusen de deatta,” 8, suggest that it was largely Tanaka’s
absence that brought about the change in management and ultimate closure of the center.
56
Doi Yumi, interview with author, May 2006.
57
Doi appears, for instance, in the recent documentary 30-nen no shisutaafuddo: 70-nendai no "man ribu
no onnatachi (documentary), DVD, directed by Yamagami Chieko and Seyama Noriko (Tokyo: Herstory Project,
2004), and accompanied a 2006 tour of universities in the US Midwest and East, promoting the documentary. The

236
 Wakabayashi was another Ribu Shinjuku Center member who combined the Mexico City

conference with an extended sojourn in North America, but unlike Tanaka, Wakabayashi used

her time abroad to network with and learn from foreign feminists, and came back recharged and

ready to engage again in local activism.58 Wakabayashi went to Mexico via Los Angeles, where

she spent a brief time at the Feminist Women’s Health Center. After Mexico, she went back up

to LA and then onto San Francisco and Berkeley, the latter of which she loved for its hippie

atmosphere, so she decided to stay a while. In the house where she chose to rent a room, it turned

out that two of the women were lesbians. Through the people she had met at the health center in

LA, she found herself employed at the Feminist Women’s Health Center in neighboring Oakland.

Two things stood out at the health center. One was its promotion, in conjunction with the LA

center, of the use of speculums to help better acquaint women with their own bodies as part of

the broader women’s health movement, which can be traced in part to the Boston Women’s

Health Book Collective’s Our Bodies, Ourselves series, and which motivated Wakabayashi to

introduce speculums to women back in Japan and to work toward the establishment of women’s

health centers in the country (discussed in chapter four). The other was that her coworkers were

lesbians.

Wakabayashi had had a negative impression of lesbians prior to getting involved in the

ribu movement based on images circulating in public discourse, including pornography, but

through translating materials for Ribu News that had come from lesbian-feminists abroad for

tour was organized by Tomomi Yamaguchi, then a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Chicago.
58
This description of Wakabayashi’s experience is summarized from Wakabayashi Naeko, “Onna no
nettowaaku no naka de ikiru,” oral history taken by Sugiura Ikuko, in Sugiura, Nihon no rezubian komyuniti, 17–25;
and Aniisu, “Komyuniti no rekishi, 1971–2001: nenpy! to intaby" de furikaeru” (Summer 2001): 38–41; and
[Wakabayashi] Naeko, “Lesbian = Woman,” in Queer Japan: Personal Stories of Japanese Lesbians, Gays,
Bisexuals, and Transsexuals, ed. Barbara Summerhawk, Cheiron McMahill, and Darren McDonald (Norwich, Vt.:
New Victoria, 1998), 184–87. When asked in a 1996 roundtable why she went to the US, she could not remember
her initial reason, but Yonezu Tomoko, another roundtable participant recalled that Wakabayashi talked about
needing a change of scenery. See Endo et al., “Ribusen o taguri yosete miru,” 209.

237
Ribu News as well as through interaction with rezubian friends within the movement, her

prejudice against lesbians “quickly disappeared.”59 Nevertheless, prior to living in the US she

did not think women loving women had anything to do with her. But at the clinic, for the first

time in her life, she became romantically attracted to a woman, specifically an African American

woman who was the partner of a Filipina who regularly visited the clinic. While her attraction

led nowhere with this woman, it did lead her to the realization that liking women was the same

as liking men had been for her in the past. Having experienced racism herself for the first time

while in the US, Wakabayashi had become increasingly aware of race and identity, and she does

not believe her liking a woman who was African American was insignificant.60 As a result of

these experiences, while she had arrived in the US identifying as a heterosexual woman within

the ribu movement, Wakabayashi returned to Japan identifying as an “Asian lesbian feminist.”61

Other Transnational Stories of Women Who Love Women

Beginning around 1974, Sawabe Hitomi, like Wakabayashi, took part in translating

lesbian feminist materials at Ribu Shinjuku Center.62 Sawabe was specifically in charge of going

over the American feminist newsletter off our backs (1970–2008). It was through reading this

publication that Sawabe learned about lesbian feminists in the US, a knowledge that instilled in

her the desire to visit the country. At the time, no one she knew in the center was openly

rezubian. Details about lesbian life in the US were filled in for her by Kim, an American student

at Waseda University, information that reinforced Sawabe’s yearning to see the US for herself.

59
Wakabayashi, “Onna no nettowaaku,” 24.
60
Ibid., 24–25.
61
Wakabayashi, “Lesbian=Woman,” 185.
62
Information about Sawabe’s experiences are summarized from Sawabe Hitomi, “Onna o ai suru
onnatachi no monogatari o meguru hy!gen katsud!,” oral history taken by Sugiura Ikuko, in Sugiura, Nihon no
rezubian komyuniti, especially 39–45.

238
After she made up her mind to go, she began to study both English and the martial arts Shorinji

kempo and karate, for former to be able to communicate and the latter to be able to defend

herself in a place she thought would be frightening. And to combine earning money with an

education on rezubian culture, she got a job at one of Tokyo’s “rezu bars” with crossdressing

women on the staff, though she was extremely uncomfortable with the atmosphere there and quit

within a couple of months.

A few months before Tanaka, Wakabayashi, and other ribu and feminist activists headed

to Mexico City, Sawabe found her way to the US.63 In her diary, she wrote that her motivation

for the trip was to “discover some kind of legitimacy to being homosexual.”64 In three months’

time, she had visited places as far-ranging as Berkley, Seattle, New York, and Minnesota, and

found many lesbian feminists with whom she could identify, women whose expression of gender

seemed very liberated—neither particularly feminine nor masculine. This was a far cry from the

women at the bar where she had briefly worked, which expected women be one or the other. And

thus, the US lesbian feminists provided a model of lesbian identity she felt would work for her.

Reflecting back more than thirty years later, she says that meeting those women “was like a

baptism” into a new world for her.65 She took this new understanding of what it might mean to

be a lesbian back with her to Japan, laying the foundation for later projects, including Stories of

Women Who Love Women (Onna o ai suru onnatachi no monogatari), the “rezubian bible” she

produced over a decade later, a book which helped many women in Japan learn about and

connect with the rezubian community.66

63
In “Onna o ai suru onnatachi no monogatari,” Sawabe recounts that her trip began in the summer of
1975 (ibid., 42), but she mentions elsewhere that Tanaka was still in Tokyo when she returned (ibid., 44). Since
Tanaka had already left for Mexico by the summer, Sawabe probably went during the spring.
64
Quoted in ibid., 42.
65
Ibid., 44.
66
Ibid., 49. Bessatsu Takarajima, no. 64, Onna o ai suru onnatachi no monogatari (Tokyo: JICC
Shuppankyoku, 1987).

239
 Both Sawabe and Wakabayashi got involved in rezubian feminisuto activism right after

returning, with both contributing to the Wonderful Women project.67 Wakabayashi devoted

much of her energy over the next few years to women’s health issues, playing an important role

in the women’s health movement in Japan, while Sawabe focused on rezubian feminisuto writing

and activism, and later broader feminist work. Both, however, were involved in the creation of

the new rezubian feminisuto group Regumi no Gomame in 1985. And both went to Switzerland

to attend the eighth International Lesbian Information Service Conference, held in Geneva in

March 1986, a conference whose roots, in fact, trace back to lesbian organizing at the 1975 UN

conference in Mexico City.68 The connections they made there with the handful of other Asian

lesbians led to the creation of the Asian Lesbian Network (ALN), which held its first

international meeting in Bangkok in 1990, followed by a meeting in Tokyo in 1992.69 As

discussed in chapter four, responses to the article Sawabe wrote up about the experience,

published in the mainstream women’s magazine Fujin k!ron, helped motivate the production of

Stories of Women Who Love Women, just after the establishment of Regumi Studio Tokyo in

1987. For Sawabe and Wakabayashi, then, spending time among lesbian feminists in the US was

transformative. It ultimately changed their understanding of themselves and their options for

living their desire. In other words, how they made sense of their experiences abroad transfigured

for them the meaning of “rezubian” and, in the process, their own identities. And, like other

kinds of transfiguration, the ripples from their own experiences set in motion affected many

67
As noted above, Wakabayashi translated an article from English. Sawabe participated in the roundtable
discussion, Subarashii onnatachi, “Zadankai ‘rezubian !i ni kataru,” no. 1 (November 1976). See Sawabe, “Onna o
ai suru onnatachi no monogatari,” 45.
68
Sawabe wrote about this experience in Hirosawa Yumi [Sawabe Hitomi], “Sekai rezubian kaigi ni sanka
shite,” Fujin k!ron 71, no. 7 (June 1986). On the roots of the ILIS conference, see Charlotte Bunch and Claudia
Hinojosa, Lesbians Travel the Roads of Feminism Globally (New Brunswick: N.J.: Center for Women’s Global
Leadership at Rutgers’ University, 2000), 3–9.
69
See Wakabayashi Naeko, “Ajiakei rezubian toshite, ”Imago 6, no. 12 (November 1995). See also
Lesbian Histories and Cultures: An Encyclopedia, ed. Bonnie Zimmerman (London: Taylor & Francis, 2000), s.v.
“Asian Lesbian Network.”

240
other women.

The survey in Stories of Women Who Love Women demonstrates, however, that Sawabe

and Wakabayashi’s own transnational understanding of what it might mean to be a rezubian was

not unique. While there was nothing about the survey questions that directed respondents to talk

about life in other countries, such references do come up. A number of responses name foreign

films and fiction as helping respondents rethink their own same-sex desire, and some make

comparisons between the respondents’ experiences and lesbian life abroad. Other respondents

incorporate foreign travel or living abroad into their understanding of what might be a good life

as a lesbian. One woman explains that she and her girlfriend were considering having a child,

and that her girlfriend wants to raise it in the US, perhaps given the lack of models of lesbian

mothers in Japan.70 And another woman mentioned having gone to Europe the year before and

being shocked by the “culture of lesbianism” at women’s collectives, bookstores, and cafes she

visited, an experience that—even though she “had already started living with a man”—helped

her reinterpret feelings she had previously felt for women as romantic love (koi).71

Hara “Minata” Minako, who would go on to become a prominent member of the

rezubian community and to translate several important lesbian texts into Japanese, was among

the women who contributed her experiences to Stories of Women Who Love Women.72 From the

70
Hirosawa Yumi [Sawabe Hitomi] and Rezubian Rip!to-han, “Rezubian rip!to: Nihon de hajimete!
234-nin no rezubian ni yoru sh!gen,” in Bessatsu Takarajima, no. 64, Onna o ai suru onnatachi no monogatari, 217.
References to lesbian mothers abroad can be found as early as 1973 in Woman Eros. See Yoshihiro, “Amerika no
ribu no atarashii nami,” 109–10. While Stories itself contains a brief piece in which a family friend interviews the
five-year-old daughter of a lesbian couple, Ogura Y"ko [Sawabe Hitomi], “Kanojotachi no go-sai no musume,” in
Bessatsu Takarajima, no. 64, Onna o ai suru onnatachi no monogatari, I have encountered no earlier references to
lesbian mothers (rezubian mazaa) in Japan in this discourse.
71
Hirosawa Yumi and Rezubian Rip!to-han, “Rezubian rip!to,” 165.
72
This description of Hara’s experiences abroad comes from an interview conducted in July 2009. Hara’s
main lesbian translations are Lillian Faderman, Resubian no rekishi, trans. Tomioka Akemi and Hara
Minako )Tokyo: Chikuma Shob!, 1996), originally published as Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers: A History of
Lesbian Life in Twentieth-Century America (New York: Penguin, 1991); and Pat Califia, Safisutorii: resubian
sekushariti no tebiki, trans. Hara Minako (Tokyo: Taiy!sha, 1993), originally published as Sapphistry: The Book of
Lesbian Sexuality (Tallahassee, Fla.: Naiad Press, 1980).

241
age of eight to the time the volume was published, when she was around thirty, Hara had spent

more time living abroad than in Japan, an experience indelibly shaping who she was as an

individual, including her understanding of possibilities for expression of gender and of same-sex

desire. Around 1963, when Hara was an elementary school student, she accompanied her mother

to East Lansing, Michigan, while her mother was working on a PhD. Hara found herself more

comfortable at school there than she had been in Japan because there was little expectation

expressed by those around her in the US that she dress and act femininely. Uncomfortable back

in Japan both because of more rigid gender norms and because she felt ostracized on account of

her speaking English, she later followed her mother to the Philippines, where she finished high

school.73 In Japan she often tried to hide her English ability, whereas in the Philippines most

people around her spoke multiple languages so she felt normal being able to speak Japanese and

English, as well as Spanish, which she began studying there.

Back in Japan around 1973, she heard about the ribu movement and went to a ribu space,

but she did not get involved because she was disappointed with the absence of open discussion

about homosexuality—Hara had only been attracted to women from a young age—and the lack

of men, which made the space too feminine for her to feel comfortable. While Hara wanted to go

to a university in Mexico for the country’s similarities to the Philippines and to master a

language her parents did not speak, her plans did not work out, so she chose to study in Spain.74

During the last week of her first year, she told a close friend at her dorm that she liked women,

and the friend told the teachers and the dorm head, who temporarily removed her from the dorm,

a crisis that solidified Hara’s identity as a lesbian. She overcame this crisis, and, after receiving

73
In an ethnography of returnee families conducted in the 1980s, Merry White writes that returnees were
often treated as “contaminated” to the extent that they were foreignized in language and behavior. See Merry White,
The Japanese Overseas: Can They Go Home Again? (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1988), 13.
74
While she did not mention this in the interview, I suspect that Mexico was on her radar because of the
upcoming Mexico City conference.

242
her degree, moved to London for a year, before returning in 1982 to Japan, where she has lived

ever since.

Hara pointed out to me in my interview with her that the prejudice she experienced which

cemented her sense of being a lesbian just happened to have occurred abroad. Yet, it is also true

that her experiences abroad, particularly at a young age, helped her see that the extent to which it

was possible for her to circumvent or ignore the gender norms that she found oppressive. And to

experiment in both directions. In her early twenties when she was living in London, in order to

connect with the feminine part of herself, she decided to have a child but not to get married,

something she accomplished with a male friend/boyfriend. While some ribu activists had shown

in the early 1970s this was possible in Japan, more flexible ideas about parenthood, womanhood,

romantic relationships, and sexuality made this much easier to do in London.

***

As Hara’s experience shows, even if differences do not always work out in an

individual’s favor, merely being away from the country and culture of one’s birth, that is being

an outsider for whom local norms do not exert as much pull, can be liberating in various ways.

Even Japan, which Wakabayashi and Sawabe, as well as Tanaka, Takagi and others have found

oppressive for women in general and for rezubian in particular, has served as a liberating space

for foreign women coming from relatively privileged backgrounds. Many foreign lesbians in the

English-speaking lesbian community in the 1980s found freedom from blatant homophobia,

sometimes coming from their own families, combined with the solidarity facilitated in expatriate

communities and the special treatment often afforded Westerners, particularly Caucasians from

wealthy countries. For many Western lesbians, Japan was a safe, clean place to live where they

could earn a relatively large amount of money compared with what was possible in their home

243
countries.75 While Western women were subject to some of the same sexism and ideas about

female sexuality that oppressed (and oppresses) rezubian, the majority, those whose position

involved teaching English at a university, language school, or public school in or near an urban

area, were also somewhat protected from the worst of this by virtue of their ability to pull back

into what might be called an expatriate bubble. Unsurprisingly then, in the 1980s a majority of

the writing on oppression of lesbians in the English-language newsletter circulating in this

community, nicknamed The DD (1986–1996), was focused on oppression within Western culture,

rather than the Japanese culture toward which most members of the English-speaking community

had positioned themselves as outsiders.76

Participation in the English-speaking community also offered the possibility of a

temporary escape for lesbians from Japan with strong transnational ties, particularly at the

“Weekends” (Uiikuendo), the lesbian retreats first held in 1985 as a joint venture of the

Japanese- and English-speaking communities. While the Weekends provided a transnational

space for women from Japan, from English-speaking countries, and elsewhere, language and

cultural differences created a division between the Japanese- and English-speaking communities,

something noted in the discourse of both communities.77 The problem was not simply

differences of language, communication style, and worldview. While most English-speaking

lesbians would leave the retreats and return to the expatriate bubble in which many were able to

identify themselves at least to a limited extend as lesbians while working at relatively

well-paying jobs, most lesbians from Japan returned to lives in which that was not possible.

75
Margaret Diehl, “Lesbians in Japan,” Dykes Delight [Japan; also called The DD] no. 15 (Spring 1990):
13.
76
While American lesbians were occasionally criticized in The DD for assuming all foreigners came from
roughly the same background, most writing in the newsletter, regardless of the nationality of the author, tended to
assume the existence of a loosely defined “West” not too different from the Americentric idea of the West
predominant in Japanese discourse.
77
Hara Minako, interview with author, July 2009; Diehl, “Lesbians in Japan,” 14.

244
Foreign women who chose to avoid or were unable to be as shielded by the expatriate bubble,

however, might find themselves in a similar situation.78

And not all rezubian-identified women found life in the West liberating either. For

instance, “Sano Rie” (1964–), who grew up in the center of the country along the Sea of Japan,

had been interested in foreign countries from a young age.79 While a lot of her friends in middle

school had their eyes Europe, she became interested in the US, somewhat ironically, through

practicing karate. In the late 1970s, Sano was in her middle school’s karate club, when an

American karate team visited Japan. She befriended one of the team members, and began to

correspond with that person, who was from Georgia. Although she had not directly connected

with the rezubian community yet, while still in school she had realized that she was attracted

primarily to other women and from around 1980 she began reading sh!nen ai-themed Allan,

neither for the beautiful boys nor for the representations of Western culture but for the

correspondence from adolescent girls and young women who were romantically interested in

other women.

After she finished high school, Sano’s parents tried to convince her to go to a junior

college and would not support her desire to go to a four-year university, so she chose to go study

the travel industry at a technical college, hoping a career as a travel agent would take far her

away from home, possibly even abroad. After the program at the technical college, she found

work at a travel agency, but the job was extremely taxing and she quit within two years. Her next

job was as a secretary for a large firm, and by chance she was offered the opportunity to work in

their Atlanta division, which she immediately accepted. While Sano was excited to be able to

78
For instance, even in the early 1990s, Claire Maree, then a graduate student at Tokyo University, felt the
need to be very closeted about being a lesbian. See Marou Izumo and Claire Maree, Love Upon the Chopping Board
(North Melbourne, Australia: Spinifex Press, 2000), passim.
79
The experiences of “Sano Rie” are summarized from an interview conducted with her in March 2009.

245
live in Georgia, in which she had developed an interest because of her friend, her actual

experience was miserable. People around her frequently made very homophobic comments and

she felt the need to remain silent and to pretend to be heterosexual. Since she expected the

position to be temporary, she did not try to find a girlfriend or otherwise connect with the lesbian

community in Atlanta. Later, she was actually given the opportunity to make the position

permanent and to apply for a green card, but she turned it down thinking that if she remained

there she would need to get married for the sake of her relations with her American coworkers.80

Thus, for Sano, life in the US was actually more restrictive than life had been and would again be

in Japan. Indeed, when she returned to Japan a year and a half later, she came back with the

ability to say “no” to her parents, and was able to resist their pressure to go on o-miai [arranged

marriage] meetings with potential husbands.

From Fantastic to Real Voyages

By the time they reached an age at which they could travel at least somewhat

independently, the women who grew up in the 1970s and 1980s reading queer sh!jo manga were

also exposed to an increasing amount of media and advertising promoting foreign travel. And by

the 1980s, this would include discourse touting the appeal of study abroad, which grew

increasingly targeted at young women at this time. Indeed, while elite young men constituted the

vast majority of those from Japan who studied abroad through the 1970s, over the course of

1980s and 1990s this was reversed to the extent that by the end of the century, young women

made up over two thirds of students from Japan at foreign educational institutions.81 In this

context, it is significantly more difficult to directly link foreign travel with consumption of queer

80
This is particularly ironic given that it has often been said that (male) homosexuality is tolerated in Japan
as long as one gets married both for the sake of one’s family and for the sake of appearances at the workplace.
81
Kelsky, Women on the Verge, 102.

246
sh!jo manga and related texts than it is to link involvement in the ribu and rezubian spheres,

particular in the 1970s.

Moreover, while most discourse on the foreign in the ribu and rezubian communities

focused on the concrete, the queer sh!jo manga sphere was a realm of fantasy. This is true to a

great extent even beyond manga texts themselves. In magazines like June, Allan, and Gekk!, as

well as certain d!jinshi [coterie magazines], queer sh!jo manga blurs with representations of and

discourse about musicians, actors, and other flesh-and-blood Western male celebrities—as well

as, to a lesser extent, celebrities from Japan.82 In editorial and reader-submitted content in these

magazines, particularly Allan and Gekk!, foreign musicians and actors such as David Bowie,

Queen, and the Vienna Boys’ Choir, as well as Rupert Everett and River Phoenix, are profiled

and gossiped about alongside photos and drawings of beautiful, boys and young men, a majority

of whom are Caucasian. Advertisements also appear in these magazines promoting d!jinshi in

which amateur manga homoerotically parody Western performers, one way fans could claim

ownership over the celebrities they yearned for and fantasized about. Still, these

performers—rock stars, boys’ choirs, and actors alike—sometimes visited Japan. This pushed

them into the realm of the real for those young women who could afford and get (or get around

needing) permission to attend their concerts or to show up to greet them and send them off at the

airport—and, especially, for the those young women who followed them backstage or to their

hotel rooms.

Further, letters and other contributions from readers published in Allan, Gekk!, and June

do sometimes reference the foreign in more concrete terms, even as travel abroad for these

readers was as yet largely unrealistic. Editorial content as well occasionally offers descriptions of

82
While not entirely absent, female celebrities, from Japan or otherwise, were far less a part of this
discourse.

247
foreign countries and cultures in realistic terms, sometimes framed as travelogues. Most content

offering glimpses of foreign life was focused on the US and Europe and appears to have been

intended as more titillating than informative.83 The second issue of Allan, for instance, contains

an article by a Japanese woman describing aspects of gay culture she saw walking around New

York City—including gay publications for sale, gay bars, and gay couples, as well as male

prostitutes walking around in the vicinity of Christopher Street.84 A subsequent issue contains an

interview with “K,” who lived in Florida for a year and talks about illegal drugs in the US and

differences in morals between the US and Japan.85 Reflecting an increasing visibility of readers

interested in female-female romance in the magazine, a handful of articles on foreign culture

focused on lesbians, including one with a cursory description of the contents of magazines about

lesbians and gays that “you can get your hands on at train station kiosks” in Italy, and another

offering a “London Lesbien [sic] Report” with brief information about Gay Pride Week and

details about the contents of lesbian and feminist magazines, including a summary of and

response to an article on lesbians in Japan.86

June, which devoted most of its editorial page space to manga and fiction, ran fewer such

articles. One from the late 1980s used the content of foreign gay magazines to describe gay

83
The very first issue of Allan actually includes a feature on Hong Kong, which provides a combination of
history and information normally found in a travel guide, including Chinese phrases and information about the Hong
Kong dollar. See Allan, “Honkon ier! mappu: subete no korekutaa ga manzoku suru fantasutikku shiti Honkon no
subete!!,” October 1980. Though this was not repeated in Allan, the magazine’s successor, Gekk!, would run a
series on various Chinatowns, albeit without any suggestion of actual travel. The presence and then absence of
representations of Chinese culture seems to be a reflection of the interest of Nanbara Shir!, Allan’s editor, and its
publisher, Minori Shob!. These differences eventually led to Nanbara leaving the publisher and starting Gekk!, in
which he was freer to publish on topics of his own choosing.
84
Matsuo Setsuko, “Amerika no saishin GAY jij!: Matsuo Setsuko no Ny" Y!ku nikki,” Aran, January
1981.
85
Aran, “Amerikan doragu,” August 1984.
86
Azuma Reiko, “Itaria rezubika tansaku kik!,” Aran, October 1983; Yurino Reiko [Azuma Reiko],
“London Lesbien Report: Global Lesbianism,” Aran, October 1982. The article being summarized is Anne Blasing,
“The Lavender Kimono,” Connexions: An International Women’s Quarterly no. 3 (Winter 1982). Azuma writes that
the article does a good job of offering a snapshot of contemporary lesbian feminist groups, but criticizes it for not
mentioning “Japan’s traditional concealed group, Wakakusa no Kai.”

248
culture abroad.87 Another offered a personal account of following the band the Communards

around the UK, attending a gay film festival, and experiencing other aspects of the gay scene in

London.88 Similar articles would appear in the magazine with somewhat greater frequency in the

1990s, when the magazine’s tone began to change, perhaps in reaction to the “gay boom,” which

entailed an increase in popular media depictions of realistic images of (predominantly male)

homosexual culture, both domestic and foreign.

While relatively rare in these magazines, such descriptions of foreign culture, particularly

when presented in a travelogue format from the perspective of a Japanese woman, moved the

sphere of the foreign from purely fantastic to a space any reader could, if she so desired, imagine

herself experiencing one day. Still, though most of the with whom women I have spoken who

were passionate about queer sh!jo manga also traveled abroad on one or more occasions, the

same is true for women in the ribu and rezubian spheres. Few queer sh!jo manga consumers

linked their interest in or yearning for a specific foreign country primarily to consumption of

these manga or related magazines, although they sometimes linked an interest in a particular

place to a specific experience. Sano, for instance (discussed above), was a regular reader of Allan

but linked her interest in the US and Georgia in particular to a visiting American karate team.

Some women with whom I have spoken do name queer sh!jo manga texts or related magazines

as influencing their interest in Western culture, but generally only as part of an array of other

influences and experiences.

In a conversation I had with “Yamamoto Tomiko” and “Ikeda Taeko,” friends born in the

early 1960s who grew up near a medium-sized city in central Japan, the pair’s passionate

consumption of sh!nen ai manga in middle school blurred with their fandom of foreign male

87
Kakinuma Eiko, “Senmonshi de shiru igai na chomeijin, jinsei s!dan, kojin k!koku, gei-do chekku,”
June no. 39 (March 1988).
88
Nomura Fumiko, “Komyunaazu gei ando m"bii,” June no. 35 (July 1987): 50–52.

249
celebrities—echoing the discourse in Allan and June.89 Although both attended concerts of

foreign musicians in Osaka and Nagoya, while still in middle school Yamamoto managed to use

her then broken English to meet and socialize with band members, reinforcing an infatuation

with American popular culture that ultimately led to her spending significant time in the US in

her twenties. Though Yamamoto has had romantic and sexual relationships with American men,

she ultimately decided to live in Japan. She eventually married a Japanese man and had a child,

and seems quite content with her life—albeit it is a life that has been unconventional, including a

large contingent of foreign friends residing both in Japan and abroad, and returning to school in

her forties to start a new career. The other woman, Ikeda, has traveled overseas but did not

develop the same yearning to be in the West. She too married and has children.

While both women, Yamamoto in particular, are critical of sexual discrimination in Japan,

neither links her interest in Western culture directly with a critique of gender roles. Still, both

used the imaginary Western space of early sh!nen ai manga as the site in which they initially

explored sexuality in contravention of expectations of girls their age. And Yamamoto translated

her infatuation with the West both into seeking experiences abroad and into sexual relationships

with men that were not sanctioned by norms that dictated young women should remain virgins

until their marriage. In the end, however, the strongest assertion I can make about these women

is that their consumption of queer sh!jo manga in their youth is part of a larger matrix of fandom

and other interests tied to both their defiance of existing sexual norms and their varying degrees

of interest in travel to the west.

Another woman with whom I spoke does link her queer sh!jo manga consumption with

her interest in Western culture and eventual move abroad, but it her case too, it is not an entirely

straightforward connection. “Takeda Hiroko” (1966–) grew up reading queer sh!jo manga while
89
“Yamamoto Tomiko” and “Ikeda Taeko,” interview with author, June 2006.

250
she was still in elementary school. These texts, including both male-male and female-female

romance, were given to her by her uncle, whom she identifies as gei [gay].90 She was (and is)

particularly fond of Takemiya’s manga, including Song of the Wind and the Trees.91 It is

through Takemiya, she says, that she became interested in Germany and Austria and in studying

German, which she began in middle school. While her favorite of Takemiya’s works, including

Song of the Wind and the Trees, are set in France, she explained when I pressed her that it was

not Takemiya’s manga but the artist’s interest in the Vienna Boys’ Choir that led to Takeda’s

own interest—an intriguing blurring of cultures akin to what can be seen in the origins of the

genre sh!nen ai.92 Takeda added that she must have also seen programs on television about

these countries that helped promote this interest of hers. When Takeda was around 20, she began

to date an older German Swiss man who was teaching German at the language school she

attended. Eventually they married and moved to Zurich. While she had been living back in Japan

for several years to earn a professional qualification in her field while I was doing research in

2009, Takeda intends to move back to Switzerland in the near future. She also told me that she

had given up reading manga of any kind after getting married because her husband did not

understand her interest but clients in Japan had gotten her reading it again.

Based on Takeda’s own narration of her life, her consumption of queer sh!jo manga and

related texts set her on a path that led to her study of German, her marrying a German-speaking

Swiss man (although at over a decade older than Takeda, he was clearly not the kind of beautiful

youth idealizing in her favorite manga), and her eventual move to Switzerland. Such a direct

90
“Takeda Hiroko’s” personal experience is summarized from an interview conducted in July 2009. The
two texts she named that she received from him were Takemiya Keiko’s Kaze to ki no uta (1976–1984; Tokyo:
Hakusensha Bunko, 1995) and Ikeda Riyoko’s Onii-sama e (1974; Tokyo: Ch!" K"ron Shinsha, 2002).
91
Takemiya, Kaze to ki no uta.
92
This blurring is discussed in chapter four. Takeda writes about her interest in June. See, e.g., Takemiya
Keiko, “O-egaki ky"shitsu,” June no. 15 (March 1984), which, incidentally, includes a photo of Takemiya posing
with members of the Regensburg Cathedral Choir, another example of presenting travel experiences from the
perspective of a young Japanese woman.

251
correspondence between queer sh!jo manga consumption and the choice to travel, even live

abroad appears unusual. Like other women of her generation, however, Takeda grew up

surrounded by discourse about travel and the appeal of Western culture. Her own qualification

that television programs may have helped foster her interest in German-speaking countries and

the German language suggests this to be the case. It seems, then, that while sh!jo manga played a

larger role in steering Takeda toward the path she has been taking than was the case for most

women, Takeda—like other young women who grew up at the same time—read these manga in

the context of a broader idealization of the west in other streams of popular discourse, discourse

in which travel to the west was increasingly presented as a possibility, as well as meeting

individuals from Western countries who had traveled to Japan.

An article on foreign settings in sh!jo manga contained in a Bessatsu Takarajima volume

reflecting back on 1970s manga opens with a two-page spread of characters from various 1970s

sh!jo works, half from sh!nen ai narratives. Next to each character is the country in which each

of the manga is set: Egypt, America, Japan, Germany, England. And above is the heading, “The

dreams of the sh!jo freely transcend time and space.”93 I would suggest to the contrary that the

dreams of adolescent girls, and the ways they sometimes worked to transform them into reality,

can only be understood in the context of the time and space in which they transpired.

Conclusion

The word “travel,” observes James Clifford, “has an inextinguishable taint of location by

class, gender, race, and a certain literariness.”94 We can see all of these elements situated within

93
Terada Kaoru, “70-nendai enkyori sh!jo manga no jidai,” in Bessatsu Takarajima no. 288, 70-nendai
manga daihyakka, 159.
94
James Clifford, Routes: Travel and Translation in the Late Twentieth Century (Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard University Press, 1997), 39.

252
or beneath the personal narratives discussed above. Gender, of course, or rather the challenging

of gender norms is central to all of these trips. Even in the case of Amano’s early voyage to

Europe, while not overtly “about” contravening gender norms, she knew her father would try to

stop her because such travel ran counter to what a young woman “should” do. Hence, she waited

until it was too late to stop her to announce her plans to go on a journey that, by chance, later led

to her involvement in the ribu movement. Many of the other women discussed in this chapter

engaged in travel for the purpose of transnational feminist—or lesbian-feminist—networking as

part of a more overt questioning of gender and sexual norms.

Thus, unsurprisingly, to Clifford’s list I would add “sexuality.” And here I am pointing

not just to same-sex desire, but also to the erotic subjectivity that was central to Tanaka’s theory

of !man ribu, as well as to the broader ties between women’s sexuality and reproduction that

was so crucial to much ribu thinking and activism. Clearly, though, same-sex desire has played a

significant role in many of these trips, whether it was for young women tourists writing in June

and Allan, for whom overseas gay male culture as well as beautiful men in general were the

object of their curious and eros-laden gaze, or for the women like Wakabayashi and Sawabe,

who sought and/or found in the US new ways to be a lesbian. While these two women’s ability

to undertake their trips cannot be pulled apart from Japan’s role as an economic superpower built

on exploitation of former colonies, given Sawabe and Wakabayashi’s status as culturally and

racially Other in a still economically and politically dominant US, their experiences contrast

sharply with the privileged, often exploitative “gay tourism” that has drawn the attention of

academics in the past ten to fifteen years and of the travel industry for significantly longer.95

In this we see that race is also at issue. Indeed, in spite of the then (and still) prevalent

95
For a discussion of the power imbalances inherent in much contemporary gay tourism, see Jasbir Kaur
Puar, ed., “Queer Tourism: Geographies of Globalization,” special issue, GLQ 8, nos. 1–2 (2002).

253
belief that Japan is culturally homogeneous in terms of race, ethnicity, and class, we can see all

of these operating in the travel experiences discussed above. While I did not encounter evidence

in these spheres of a “faith in the racial and cultural superiority of the West,” that Kelsky found

in women’s “internationalist narratives” in the 1980s and 1990,96 in the ribu and rezubian

spheres there was a clear sense that women in Japan had things they could learn from women in

the US and elsewhere. This, though, was balanced somewhat by efforts to promote the exchange

rather than one way flow of information, such as by the translation group at Ribu Shinjuku

Center as well as by individuals like Takagi, who asserted that women in the West had an

“obligation” to know about women in Japan and elsewhere in Asia. Race was at issue on a

personal level as well, such as in Wakabayashi’s romantic interest in an African American

woman, which she saw as part of a larger discovery of herself as a racially “Asian” woman. It

was because of this “Asianness” that a handful of women at a international conference of

lesbians in Switzerland dominated by women from Western countries decided they needed to do

forge stronger connections among themselves and founded Asian Lesbian Network. In the queer

sh!jo manga sphere, the idealization of Western beauty found in sh!nen ai manga as well as

related magazines sometimes led to travel to Europe, and, perhaps less frequently, romantic or

sexual relationships with foreign men. It is important to remember, however, that this positioning

of Western boys and men as either real or fictive erotic objects was an act of an erotic

subjecthood on the part of these women.

Finally, while 90 percent or more Japanese are said to have considered themselves as

middleclass by the 1970s, this number is belied by disparities of income and education,97 which

96
Kelsky, Women on the Verge, 123.
97
Shigeru Aoki, “Debunking the 90%-Middle-Class Myth,” Japan Echo 6, no. 2 (1979): 29; Carol Gluck,
“Introduction,” in Showa: The Japan of Hirohito, ed. Carol Gluck and Stephen R. Graubard (New York: Norton,
1992), xli.

254
limited overseas trips to those who, in most of the early cases, had either the financial means or

time enough to work and save for overseas travel, or who were connected enough to receive an

official invitation and partial or complete sponsorship, as Takagi did to attend the Mexico City

conference.98 Moreover, most of the travelers discussed above were very unusual in that they

held—or were in the process of obtaining—four-year degrees.99 Although for women, a

bachelor’s degree was severely limiting in terms of career options in the 1970s and 1980s, some

of the few careers it did open up involved higher wages and status and greater opportunities to

travel. This distinction was, however, diminished by a stronger yen and a stronger Japanese

economy during the peak of the economic bubble in the 1980s, as overseas travel became

increasingly affordable for a majority of the population.

***

In the early 1970s, even as Japan National Railway was encouraging young women to go

on tabi, or journeys, in Japan through which they were expected to discover selves (jibun) that

were both women and authentically Japanese, individuals in the ribu, rezubian, and queer sh!jo

manga spheres were boarding trains and boats and planes to the West and back—and vice versa.

While the motivation driving these women’s voyages did not always overtly include

self-discovery, travel by women in all these spheres was transformative. As we have seen in this

and in preceding chapters, some of this transformation was produced through the transfiguration

98
Takagi, interview. An appearance on an NHK (Nippon H!s! Kyoku) television program about ribu after
she returned to Japan from her 1973 trip to the US got Takagi noticed by someone at the American Embassy in
Tokyo, leading to an official invitation through the United Nations and most of her expenses covered.
99
To be sure, the ribu movement’s strong links to campus activism, make this seem unsurprising. Yet, in
1970, only 6.5 percent of women (compared with 27.3 percent of men) entered a four-year university and a decade
later the figure for women had not quite doubled to 12.3 percent (and increased by over a third to 39.3 percent for
men), inching up to just 13.7 percent (and down to 38.6 percent) in 1985. See Kumiko Fujimura-Fanselow, “College
Women Today: Options and Dilemmas,” in Fujimura-Fanselow and Kameda, Japanese Women, 127. Contrasting
this with the nearly double the number of parents—27.7 percent (73 percent) —who desired their daughters (sons) to
at least obtain a university degree, it seems likely that the lack of income to invest in higher education for their
children is a factor. See Atsuko Kameda, “Sexism and Gender Stereotyping in Schools,” trans. Kumiko
Fujimura-Fanselow and Atsuko Watanabe, in Fujimura-Fanselow and Kameda, Japanese Women, 109.

255
of words, texts, and practices. Sometimes, it was individuals themselves who were transfigured

through travel. As a direct result of their own personal border crossings and encounters with

people from other cultures, some women came to new understandings of themselves—as

feminists, as lesbians, as women, as Asian. And the ripples of change these women set in motion

played a role not just in (re)shaping their communities in Japan, but other women in- and outside

of them.

256
 CHAPTER SIX: CONCLUSION

The mid-1990s collection Re-Imaging Japanese Women presents a revised image, or

rather images, of Japanese women that had arisen over the five decades since the end of the

Pacific War.1 In her introduction to the volume, Anne Imamura points to the 1970s in particular

as when “the image of the successful woman expanded to include varied opportunities along the

life course: education, work, marriage, community and child-related activities, hobby and study

circles, part-time work, and family leisure.”2 Absent from this description of success are women

who choose alternatives to the heteronormative life course of marriage and family. Those who

desired a professional career outside a narrow number of fields such as education and medicine

often chose to step off this path, only to find themselves denied promotions beyond lower level

management, as well as pitied for their lonely lives.3

Also in the 1970s, the women in the !man ribu movement and the rezubian community,

as well as the women artists and adolescent girl readers of queer sh"jo manga began to envision

and often actively sought options that could not be folded as neatly into this normative

understanding of “women.” The women and girls in these three spheres all variously worked to

expand the possible modes of sexual and gender expression available to them as women and

members of Japanese society. In a sense, they all sought to “queer” the category “women.” By

“queer,” I am both pointing to the language of queer theory to indicate a deliberate deviation

from norms, as well as following lesbian feminist Charlotte Bunch, who argued back in

1975—well before the word “queer” was reclaimed by LGBTQ rights activists and “queer

theorists”—that if you reject the centrality of men inherent in heterosexuality, “no matter who

1
Anne E. Imamura, ed., Re-Imaging Japanese Women (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996).
2
Anne E. Imamura, “Introduction,” in ibid., 3.
3
Ibid., 9.

257
you sleep with—you’re a queer.”4 Unlike contemporary queer theory which often seems to

assume the desire on the part of “queers” to be nonnormative—what Judith Halberstam calls

“willfully eccentric modes of being”5—for Bunch “[i]t is not okay … to be queer in patriarchy.

The entire system…must be changed.”6 While only some of these women and girls actively

sought to rent a hole in the social fabric woven with the threads of normative gender and

sexuality, the acts of the others often served to unravel it at the edges.

The goals of the women in the rezubian community have varied. Wakakusa no Kai

founder Suzuki Michiko sought simple social acceptance for those attracted to the same sex,

without making overt critiques of the patriarchal system itself. Rezubian feminisuto and ribu

activists, on the other hand, more broadly denounced gender and sexual norms that placed on

women restrictive expectations of “femininity” (onnarashisa) and denied them sexual

subjecthood. For ribu activists adhering to Tanaka Mitsu’s philosophy, the “liberation of eros”

(erosu no kaih!) was key to undoing norms that oppressed both sexes and to enabling women

and men to truly communicate with each other. While most ribu discourse is not framed in terms

of women’s “rights” (kenri), many ribu activists fought passionately to preserve women’s ability

to make choices about their own reproductive lives, including having access to abortion and

knowledge about their own bodies and reproductive health. Rezubian feminisuto sought to undo

not just expectations about marriage and children, but also about choosing men as romantic and

sexual partners, in an attack on—in the language of American lesbian feminists—the institution

of “compulsory heterosexuality.”7 In this same context, ostensibly heterosexual artists used

4
Charlotte Bunch, “Not for Lesbians Only” (1975), in Materialist Feminism: A Reader in Class,
Difference, and Women’s Lives, ed. Rosemary Hennessy and Chrys Ingraham (New York, Routledge, 1997), 56.
5
Judith Halberstam, In a Queer Time and Place: Transgender Bodies, Subcultural Lives (New York:
New York University Press, 2005), 1.
6
Bunch, “Not for Lesbians Only,” 58 (emphasis mine).
7
See Joni van Dyke, Dyketionary, 2nd ed. (Tokyo: privately printed, ca. 1985), s.v. “compulsory
heterosexuality”; Sawabe Hitomi, “Iseiai ky!sei to iu fashizumu,” Shin chihei no. 150 (June 1987); and Adrienne

258
queer narratives about beautiful boys in love with each other in a different time and place to

allow adolescent female readers the freedom to vicariously experience and experiment with

romance and sex, partially liberated from both the heteronormative romance script and from

norms that would not have adolescent girls (or women) as possessors of an erotically

objectifying gaze.

To what extent were the women in these communities successful in expanding the

possibilities contained within the category “women,” and, in the process, changing Japanese

society? The ribu movement may be consigned to reminiscences by former activists, but the

feminism and women’s studies, for which ribu helped create space, continue to have a small but

significant presence in public discourse as well as on university campuses. In spite of a new

round of attacks on access to abortion in the early 1980s, it remains legal, and at the end of the

1990s, women’s outrage at the approval of Viagra for sale in Japan shortly after it went on the

market in the US finally led to legalization of the birth control pill—though this was sought by

only a minority of ribu activists.8 And, even if the authority of doctors remains powerful, thanks

to both Japan’s massive publishing industry as well as the internet, women today have access to

far more information about their own bodies than they did in the ribu era. And the norms that

positioned women as sexual objects who should remain virgins until marriage and whose

pleasure was secondary to their husbands have largely vanished. While these changes cannot be

tied directly or solely to ribu activism, it was the ribu movement in the early 1970s that forced

many of these issues into the sphere of public discourse.

Still we can question the extent to which these changes might be seen as positive from the

Rich, “Ky!seiteki iseiai to rezubian no sonzai” (Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence), in her Chi,
pan, shi, trans. "shima Kaori (Tokyo: Sh!bunsha, 1989), originally published as Blood, Bread, and Poetry: Selected
Prose 1979–1985 (New York: Norton, 1986).
8
Tiana Norgren, Abortion Before Birth Control: The Politics of Reproduction in Postwar Japan (Princeton,
N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2001), 129.

259
perspective of ribu philosophy. In her recent “rereading” of the ribu movement, Nishimura

Mitsuko asserts that contemporary women may well have “internalized” the thinking behind the

“liberation of eros,” but the effect is not necessarily positive. Women on the whole, she observes,

have become sexual subjects (sei no shutai) and the traditional system of monogamy attacked by

Tanaka and others has “eroded from the inside,” but, rather than the open communication

between the sexes that Tanaka espoused, sex has become even more commodified and more of a

meeting of genitals than a meeting of spirits. Thus, she argues, the idea of the “liberation of eros”

has reached women in contemporary Japan, but in a “diffused, warped” form.9

Many women who grew up reading about beautiful boys in love graduated to “ladies

comics” (rediisu komikku), a genre of often pornographic usually heterosexual manga that

emerged in the 1980s. Others women, those who identify as heterosexual as well as those who

identify as rezubian, continue to enjoy sh!nen ai and its descendents, alongside a younger

generation of predominantly female producers and consumers around the globe in commercial

and non-commercial spheres, as discussed in chapter two. And while female-female romance

narratives were marginal at best in the 1970s and 1980s, they have in recent years become a

global phenomenon in their own right, albeit one with a far more gender-balanced readership

than manga depicting male-male romance and sex. While the now international label for the

genre, “yuri” [lily], sounds similar to “yaoi,” it derives from the homo magazine Barazoku, in

which it was created as a counterpart to the term “bara” [rose], used to name homo men. The

origins of the symbolism of the rose itself are unclear, however.10 While yuri/lily symbolism

was adopted to a limited extent within the rezubian community beginning in the 1970s, featured

9
Nishimura Mitsuko, Onna(ribu)tachi no ky!d!tai (korekutibu): nanaj" nendai "man ribu o saidoku suru
(Tokyo: Shakai Hy!ronsha, 2006), 16–17.
10
See James Welker, “Flower Tribes and Female Desire: Complicating Early Female Consumption of
Male Homosexuality in Sh!jo Manga,” Mechademia 6 (forthcoming).

260
for instance on the cover of the first issue of Regumi Communications to be published out of

Regumi Studio Tokyo in 1987, its use as a label from the genre is probably traceable to

American fan Erica Friedman around 2000.11 The term has since been adopted within Japan as

well, finding its way into the name of several commercial magazines that specialize in these

narratives, including Yuri Sisters (Yuri shimai, 2003–2004) followed by Yuri Princesses (Yuri

hime, 2005–), with a readership base of both women and men.12

As noted in chapter two, the rezubian community has never been stronger than it is at

present. While the community lacks a consumer base large enough to keep a commercial

magazine in print, books produced by and about the rezubian community as well as translations

of foreign lesbian books continue to be published regularly. And there are a number of popular

rezubian blogs and other websites as well as rezubian-related groups on social networking

websites such as Mixi that reach a far wider readership. The internal politics of its organizing

committee has meant that the Tokyo Lesbian and Gay Parade has been an on-again off-again

event, but parades and other pride events are regularly held in other major metropolitan areas

including Sapporo to the north, Nagoya and Osaka in the center, and Fukuoka to the southwest.

Queer topics, including issues related to lesbian culture have received increasing critical and

academic attention since the 1990s, and I have met a handful of women writing master’s and

doctoral theses on lesbian-related themes (whether they can ultimately find research and teaching

positions at Japanese universities remains to be seen).

While women still must confront or avoid confronting parents and other family members

11
Erica Friedman, personal communication, and “What Are Yuri and Shoujoai, Anyway?” in Yuricon ’05
in Tokyo, event program for Yuricon 2005 in Tokyo, April 16, 2005, 26.
12
In 2007, Ichijinsha, publisher of Yuri Princesses began to produce Yuri Princesses S (Yuri hime S). Yuri
manga fan and popular blogger, Erica Friedman speculates that the readers of the original magazine are around 70
percent female and 30 percent male, while the readership of Yuri Princesses S is the opposite (personal
communication, January 2009).

261
as well as employers who might expect them to get married, changing social norms about

marriage and family have made this easier for women who do not wish to “come out” (kamu

auto) outside the community itself. And it appears an increasing number of young women are

coming out both to family and friends and more widely. In the spring of 2008, as part of its

“Let’s Connect Our Hearts” (Haato o tsunagou) program, NHK (Nippon H!s! Kyoku)

Educational Network broadcast the first a series of shows portraying the lives of Japan’s LGBT

population, or “sexual minorities”—variously called seiteki sh!s"-ha (a literal translation),

sekushuaru mainoriti (a transliteration), and, within the community sekumai (an abbreviation of

the latter)—including rezubian, gei, and toransujendaa [transgenders]. What was striking about

the shows I saw was not just the fact that the producers appeared to have worked very hard to

accurately represent, in a non-sensational manner, issues of concern to sexual minorities in Japan

but the fact that a majority of the participants, including rezubian, chose to allow their own faces

and voices to be shown on TV, and not obscured as was common in the past.13

All of these situations—women’s increasing sexual autonomy, the global boys’ love (and

yuri) phenomenon, and the increasing visibility of the rezubian community can be traced to the

activities of women and girls in the 1970s and 1980s. And all of these can be traced in part to

acts of transfiguration. As should be clear by now, to state this is not the same thing as saying

that these situations are evidence of “imported culture.” As we have seen, while “loan words”

can carry meanings very similar to those in the language whence they came, terms like “loan”

and “borrow,” fail to convey the process of transfiguration that goes into these ostensibly simple

imports and which can reshape the meaning of “native” words as well. Similarly, while

translation has played a key role in all three of these spheres, it was the further transfiguration of

13
New programs on LGBT issues have been broadcast since the original programs aired in April 2008.
Details about the program are available on the NHK website at http://www.nhk.or.jp/heart-net/hearttv/.

262
texts, not the initial translation, that most often had the greatest impact. Finally, while overseas

holidays have long been a relatively common leisure activity among Japan’s population,

beginning at the tail end of the 1960s, the women in the ribu, rezubian, and queer sh!jo manga

spheres engaged in travel that was often far more transformative than a mere vacation. As noted

in earlier chapters, the women in these three spheres were not starting from scratch, but rather

building on layers and decades of transfiguration that have gone into the construction of

contemporary Japan.

While some women in Japan, including members of these communities, turned to what

they perceived as an advanced West for solutions to or an escape from local issues, most were

firmly focused on the local—even as they selectively adapted, even celebrated, Western practices.

For the majority of even the most radical women, as we have seen, the Western turn was not a

turn away from Japan. Rather, it was integral to being a woman within Japan. More significantly,

among women and girls in the "man ribu movement, the rezubian community, and the queer

sh!jo manga sphere—and, ultimately, beyond it—the act of transfiguring Western cultural

practices into something locally meaningful, as well as the products thereof, resulted not just in

change at the individual and community level, but the transfiguration of the category “women”

in Japan. This more expansive notion of the female accommodated not merely a significantly

increased number of public roles not bound to being a mother or a wife but a greater diversity of

gender and sexual expression.

263
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