This collection brings together fifteen chapters written by scholars specializing in disciplines ranging from anthropology and sociology to literature, film, and performance studies. These scholars analyze complex questions about how the body is lived and imagined as a locus of meaning-making in contemporary Japan. Exploring such topics as mind-body dualism, aging and illness, spirit possession, beauty, performance, and gender, this collection addresses the wide array of socio-cultural and literary contexts in which the body is interpreted in Japanese culture and thought.
Irina Holca is associate professor at the University of Tokyo. Carmen Sapunaru Tamas is associate professor at the University of Hyogo.
Part I: The Performed Body Chapter One: A Japanese Fox in a Woman's Body: Shifting Performances of Femininity in Kij Johnson's Reworking of Konjaku Monogatari Luciana Cardi Chapter Two: Call Me a Dog. Feeling (Inugami) Possession in Contemporary Tokushima Prefecture Andrea De Antoni Chapter Three: Kabuki: Performance of Gendered Bodies Galia Todorova Gabrovska Chapter Four: Home Is Where Mother Is, and the Way to a Man's Heart Goes through His Stomach: Bodies in the Kitchen (Yoshimoto Banana) Irina Holca Chapter Five: The Body as Canvas: Osaka Drag Queens from Kabuki to Lady Gaga Carmen Sapunaru Tamas Part II: The De-formed Body Chapter Six: The Body in Motion in Buto: Passivity and Transformation in the Flesh Caitlin Coker Chapter Seven: Senility and the Body: Care and Gender in Contemporary Japanese Literature Shun Izutani Chapter Eight: The Cared for Dog and the Caring Dog: Ethical Possibilities in Rieko Matsuura's Kenshin Kayo Takeuchi Chapter Nine: Pricking Pain Surrounds Us: Restraining, Shaping, and Taming the Body in Hebi ni Piasu Emerald L. King Chapter Ten: Literature as Social Activism and Reconciliation: Survivors' Writing and the Meaning of Hansen's Disease in Japan after 1950 Kathryn Tanaka Chapter Eleven: The Bald and the Beautiful: Perspectives on Baldness in Contemporary Japan Adrian O. Tamas Part III: The Conformed Body Chapter Twelve: The Asian Body in the North American Context: Visual and Literary Racialization Alina E. Anton Chapter Thirteen: Bodies in the Dark: The Postwar Cinema Audience and the Body as 'Ground Zero' Jennifer Coates Chapter Fourteen: The Confined Body in Ogawa Yoko's The Ring Finger: A Beguiling Journey towards "Self-discovery" Kayo Sasao Chapter Fifteen: Bodies of Onna-no-ko: The Case of a Sex Establishment in Tokyo, Japan Yoko Kumada
The body functions not only as a ground for the unique particularities of individual subjectivity, but also as a model of universality that mirrors the community and the society at large. Through this connection between the individual and the whole, the body thereby gives physical shape to the universal order and its microcosmos, while likewise serving in modern society as the political "field" through which the conflicts and contradictions between the two become visible. It is the nature of this "field" of body politics that Irina Holca and Carmen Sapunaru Tamas illuminate in their exploration of the varying representations of the body across contemporary Japanese literature, performance, and popular culture. -- Hideto Tsuboi, International Research Center for Japanese Studies This edited volume is a fresh and very rich addition to our understanding of a crucial topic-the body-as thought, felt, and acted by contemporary Japanese. It will enrich the field beyond Japanese studies, since it brings together two important elements; in addition to familiar names in Japanese studies, the editors-both Romanians with Ph.D.s from Japanese universities-have included authors from highly diverse backgrounds, and their 'ethnographies' engage with literature, performing arts, and everyday behaviors, rather than only social science materials. -- Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney, University of Wisconsin This is a refreshing collection of articles addressing the subject of the body from a variety of appealingly eclectic angles. Drawing on less well-known insights gathered by social and cultural anthropologists as well as literature scholars, the chapters offer surprise after surprise-approaches that bewilder the boundaries between human, animal, and spirit, and that amuse as well as inform. This is highly recommended for anyone interested in learning more about Japan's cultural creativity. -- Joy Hendry, Oxford Brookes University
