Cartographies of Desire

Abstract

Abstract In this study of the mapping and remapping of male-male sexuality over four centuries of Japanese history, the book explores the languages of medicine, law, and popular culture from the seventeenth century through the American Occupation. The book opens with fascinating speculations about how an Edo translator might grapple with a twentieth-century text on homosexuality, then turns to law, literature, newspaper articles, medical tracts, and other sources to discover Japanese attitudes toward sexuality over the centuries. During each of three major eras, it argues, one field dominated discourse on male-male sexual relations: popular culture in the Edo period (1600–1868), jurisprudence in the Meiji period (1868–1912), and medicine in the twentieth century.