[This] book will serve as a welcome corrective to sparse earlier publications that have overly generalized, homogenized and singularized homosexuality and other queer experiences in Japan. The book will be appreciated by students of Japan's post–World War II era who have found it difficult so far to position Japan's queer culture in an international setting.
Asian Studies Review
... Read moreThis book provides an accessible and readable introduction to subcultures which have received little attention in English-language scholarship (or in mainstream Japanese scholarship), drawing on little-known archival sources and making good use of more recent Internet sources. There is no comparable study available.
Vera Mackie, University of Wollongong A detailed and interesting account. McLelland first discusses the emergence of the category of sexuality within Japanese discourse, then looks at the vast and neglected field of magazines and other periodicals that began to appear postwar.
Donald Richie
The Japan Times
In this important new book on Japanese culture, McLelland argues against using Western concepts when studying Japan, especially the topics of this book, since Japan historically had no categories of "heterosexual, bisexual, homosexual" or anti-gay oppression from religion, medicine, or law. . . . Highly recommended.
CHOICE
This is history of sexuality at its best, both insightful and finely detailed. Mark McLelland has identified cultural phenomena that might otherwise have been neglected, and has brought them together in a sustained and compelling analysis of queer Japan.
Peter Cryle, author ofThe Telling of the Act: Sexuality as Narrative in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century France Queer Japan from the PacificWar to the Internet Age is an important accomplishment in the field of Japan studies. [It] will be indispensable for anyone embarking on research on gender and sexuality in Japan, and will also be valuable in undergraduate and graduate courses to increase the diversity of our representations and understandings of Japanese society.
The Journal of Japanese Studies
. . . a major conribution to Japan studies.Queer Japan will be indispensible for anyone embaking on reserach on gender and sexuality in Japan, and will also be valuable in undergraduate and graduate courses to increase the diversity of our representations and understandins of Japanese society.
The Journal of Japanese Studies
McLellands' Queer Japan is a serious contribution to queer scholarship, blending as it does primary and secondary source materials, well-covered territories, and new information for Anglophone audiences. Overall, the book is well researched, well written, and well edited and brings new information forward for inspection.
Journal of Asian Studies
Meticulously researched and engagingly told. . . .McLelland's accessibly style and knack for provocative translation ensure it will appeal equally to those with a passing interest in gender studies, Japan, or both.
Justin Ellis, Japan Visitor Website A richly detailed history of sexual subcultures in postwar Japan. Making use of an impressive array of materials culled from journalistic accounts as well as literary, sexological, and social science texts, McLelland provides Anglophone readers with a wide-ranging introduction to the ways in which various forms of nonnormative sexuality have been imagined and experience in Japan from the 1920s to the present.
Journal of the History of Sexuality, January 2010
Show Less