Christopher Reed
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780231175753
- eISBN:
- 9780231542760
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231175753.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
Challenging clichés of Japanism as a feminine taste, Bachelor Japanists argues that Japanese aesthetics were central to contests over the meanings of masculinity in the West. Christopher Reed draws ...
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Challenging clichés of Japanism as a feminine taste, Bachelor Japanists argues that Japanese aesthetics were central to contests over the meanings of masculinity in the West. Christopher Reed draws attention to the queerness of Japanist communities of writers, collectors, curators, and artists in the tumultuous century between the 1860s and the 1960s.Reed combines extensive archival research; analysis of art, architecture, and literature; the insights of queer theory; and an appreciation of irony to explore the East-West encounter through three revealing artistic milieus: the Goncourt brothers and other japonistes of late-nineteenth-century Paris; collectors and curators in turn-of-the-century Boston; and the mid-twentieth-century circles of artists associated with Seattle’s Mark Tobey. The result is a groundbreaking integration of well-known and forgotten episodes and personalities that illuminates how Japanese aesthetics were used to challenge Western gender conventions. These disruptive effects are sustained in Reed’s analysis, which undermines conventional scholarly investments in the heroism of avant-garde accomplishment and ideals of cultural authenticity.Less
Challenging clichés of Japanism as a feminine taste, Bachelor Japanists argues that Japanese aesthetics were central to contests over the meanings of masculinity in the West. Christopher Reed draws attention to the queerness of Japanist communities of writers, collectors, curators, and artists in the tumultuous century between the 1860s and the 1960s.Reed combines extensive archival research; analysis of art, architecture, and literature; the insights of queer theory; and an appreciation of irony to explore the East-West encounter through three revealing artistic milieus: the Goncourt brothers and other japonistes of late-nineteenth-century Paris; collectors and curators in turn-of-the-century Boston; and the mid-twentieth-century circles of artists associated with Seattle’s Mark Tobey. The result is a groundbreaking integration of well-known and forgotten episodes and personalities that illuminates how Japanese aesthetics were used to challenge Western gender conventions. These disruptive effects are sustained in Reed’s analysis, which undermines conventional scholarly investments in the heroism of avant-garde accomplishment and ideals of cultural authenticity.
Annmaria M. Shimabuku
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780823282661
- eISBN:
- 9780823285938
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823282661.003.0002
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Asian Studies
Chapter 1 presents a genealogy of sexual labor in Japan from licensed prostitution and the so-called “comfort woman” system of sexual slavery in the imperial period, through the state-organized ...
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Chapter 1 presents a genealogy of sexual labor in Japan from licensed prostitution and the so-called “comfort woman” system of sexual slavery in the imperial period, through the state-organized system of prostitution for the Allied forces in the immediate postwar, and to the full-fledged emergence of independent streetwalkers thereafter. It links protest against private prostitution in the interwar period to aversion toward the streetwalker in the postwar period through an examination of Tosaka Jun’s Japanese Ideology. There, he defined Japanism as the symbolic communion between the family and state and showed how Japanists attacked private prostitution for purportedly interfering with the integrity of both. What was at stake was the ability of a budding middle class to manage the reproduction of labor power for the biopolitical state. Through Tosaka, this chapter delineates a mechanism of social defence amongst the middle class that targeted life thought to be unintelligible to the state such as the streetwalker and her mixed-race offspring. Further, it shows how this occurred through cultural productions such as anti-base reportage that focused obsessively on the figure of the streetwalker.Less
Chapter 1 presents a genealogy of sexual labor in Japan from licensed prostitution and the so-called “comfort woman” system of sexual slavery in the imperial period, through the state-organized system of prostitution for the Allied forces in the immediate postwar, and to the full-fledged emergence of independent streetwalkers thereafter. It links protest against private prostitution in the interwar period to aversion toward the streetwalker in the postwar period through an examination of Tosaka Jun’s Japanese Ideology. There, he defined Japanism as the symbolic communion between the family and state and showed how Japanists attacked private prostitution for purportedly interfering with the integrity of both. What was at stake was the ability of a budding middle class to manage the reproduction of labor power for the biopolitical state. Through Tosaka, this chapter delineates a mechanism of social defence amongst the middle class that targeted life thought to be unintelligible to the state such as the streetwalker and her mixed-race offspring. Further, it shows how this occurred through cultural productions such as anti-base reportage that focused obsessively on the figure of the streetwalker.
Reto Hofmann
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- August 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780801453410
- eISBN:
- 9780801456367
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7591/cornell/9780801453410.003.0004
- Subject:
- History, European Modern History
This chapter examines the clash of fascisms in Japan between 1931 and 1937 due to a struggle for control over the many meanings the term “fascism” had assumed. Antifascist forces expanded the ...
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This chapter examines the clash of fascisms in Japan between 1931 and 1937 due to a struggle for control over the many meanings the term “fascism” had assumed. Antifascist forces expanded the definition of fascism to include the ideological and political changes in Japan, whereas the functionaries of Japanese fascism such as ideologues, bureaucrats, politicians, and the military fought for a narrowing of its meaning by making fascism congruent with Fascist Italy. This chapter discusses the emergence of various streams of right-wing thinkers and activists—such as Japanists, National Socialists, agrarianists—in Japan in the late 1930s and how they competed to define the theory and practice of a new domestic order. It also compares Italian Fascism to Nazism and Japanism to national socialism. Finally, it considers the right-wing ideologues' disavowal of Italian Fascism and fascism in general as a foreign ideology and how they worked out a fascist critique of fascism that acknowledged the links with Italian Fascism.Less
This chapter examines the clash of fascisms in Japan between 1931 and 1937 due to a struggle for control over the many meanings the term “fascism” had assumed. Antifascist forces expanded the definition of fascism to include the ideological and political changes in Japan, whereas the functionaries of Japanese fascism such as ideologues, bureaucrats, politicians, and the military fought for a narrowing of its meaning by making fascism congruent with Fascist Italy. This chapter discusses the emergence of various streams of right-wing thinkers and activists—such as Japanists, National Socialists, agrarianists—in Japan in the late 1930s and how they competed to define the theory and practice of a new domestic order. It also compares Italian Fascism to Nazism and Japanism to national socialism. Finally, it considers the right-wing ideologues' disavowal of Italian Fascism and fascism in general as a foreign ideology and how they worked out a fascist critique of fascism that acknowledged the links with Italian Fascism.
