[REMINDER] LECTURE: Michelle H. S. Ho, “Playing with Gender: Japanese Media Culture and the Sociality of Crossdressing.”

Adrienne Johnson Discussion

“Playing with Gender: Japanese Media Culture and the Sociality of Crossdressing.”
Michelle H. S. Ho (Stony Brook University)

Friday April 28th17:30-19:30
Faculty of Engineering Building 2 (工学2号館), Room 93B, The University of Tokyo, Hongo Campus


Directions to Campus: http://www.iii.u-tokyo.ac.jp/en/access

 

Abstract
This talk explores the relationship between Japanese media culture and josō (male-to-female crossdressing) culture in Tokyo from the mid-2000s to present. Although stemming from older practices in Japanese history, josō culture has fractured and become increasingly commercialized and popular among individuals in their twenties and thirties in the last ten years. How does the Japanese media depict josō culture and individuals who practice josō? In turn, how do josōko (amateur crossdressers) understand their own practices and relate to other people? What connections can we make between crossdressing, consumption of popular media, such as anime, manga, and video games, and gender identity and sexual orientation? To investigate these questions, I examine representations of josō on television and draw on interviews with josōko and observations at josō-friendly social sites. I suggest that while individuals in josō are typically treated as a form of spectacle in the media—in a tradition similar to onē or okama (effeminate gay) entertainers—josōko often capitalize on such appearances to provide meaning for their own practices and interactions with fellow crossdressers.

Michelle H. S. Ho is a PhD candidate in Cultural Analysis and Theory at Stony Brook University and Visiting Researcher at the Graduate School of Interdisciplinary Information Studies, University of Tokyo. Her current project, which is generously funded by a fellowship from the Japan Foundation, explores contemporary josô (male-to-female crossdressing) and dansô (female-to-male crossdressing) culture in Tokyo through an ethnographic study of crossdressing cafes. She has published several essays on the topic of gender and Japanese media, of which two are forthcoming in Japanese Studies and the Routledge Handbook of Japanese Media.

Lecture in English. No prior registration necessary.

The University of Tokyo, Graduate School of Interdisciplinary Information Studies
7-3-1 Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 113-0033
http://www.iii.u-tokyo.ac.jp