Queering Japan: Transformational encounters within American fandom of Japanese popular culture

Abstract

Within the United States, recent years have seen a proliferation of gender identities thatresist and remix elements of what has traditionally been understood as “feminine” and “masculine.” This is seen in the emergence of not only such identificatory terms as "nonbinary," "genderfluid," and "agendered," but also new ways of being transgendered even among those who do express their gender identities along binary lines, as well as reinterpretations of femininity and masculinity among people who do identify with the gender they were assigned at birth. In 14 years of intermittent and sustained ethnographic work among members of American fandom subcultures dedicated to Japanese popular media--particularly anime (animation), manga (comic books), and Japanese street fashion trends such as gothic lolita--conducted at fan conventions as well as smaller local gatherings in both public and private spaces in person and online, I began to observe these identities, and the social attitudes that embrace them, nearly a decade before this phenomenon emerged on social media platforms and in academic settings. The character tropes and visual elements of manga and anime, particularly those inherited from Japan's fetishism of Europe and Euro-America during the modernization of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, are often used by gender dysphoric people and other self-identified gender misfits to forge new categories of identification, lifting them above the societal norms and expectations that they experience as oppressive, and which cause them psycho-emotional discomfort and distress. In particular, shōjo (girls') media's historical ethos of true love and the authentic self, coupled with a character aesthetic that has been historically influenced by the all-female Takarazuka theatre and the Taisho period that birthed it, provide LGBTQ fans and their allies with a symbolic framework, which they use to create a socially networked fantasy space in which elements of femininity and masculinity, previously seen as fixed, can be deconstructed and remodeled into new forms, granting fans the confidence to carry these discoveries into their everyday lives.