Sabine Frühstück, Gender and Sexuality in Modern Japan

Abstract

Women’s history was established in Japan with the politically motivated search for matriarchal structures in ancient society by feminist Takamure Itsue in the 1930s and led to a gendered reading of history in the 1980s and 1990s, when historians such as Wakita Haruko explored the pre-modern organisation of the household. In the past two decades, the field has been expanded considerably, not least by Sabine Frühstück herself. As the cover suggests—a picture of actor Nakamura Shidō, who has an androgynous appearance due to his painted brows and lose silk haori, as well as the skin-to-skin embrace of his newborn baby—Frühstück’s most recent book is an invitation to consider the order of sex, gender and sexuality, as well as the occasions that challenged that order in modern Japan. By drawing on methods from history and anthropology and making visible unequal relationships determined by ideals of the nuclear family and heterosexuality, Frühstück adheres to two main demands of gender studies: interdisciplinarity and the deconstruction of types of domination. She distinguishes between three levels of analysis: individuals to be brought out of historical anonymity, as first called for by women’s history; institutional mechanisms shaped by state regulations and societal expectations; and overarching developments, including imperialism, war, the US occupation, economic boom and post-modern identity crisis.