(no subject)

[oyceter]

coffee_and_ink and yhlee asked a while back for an Asian history reading list, which I am finally getting around to writing.

Unfortunately, writing this up just makes me realize how woefully underread I am (particularly for China) and how extremely idiosyncratic my interests are. Mostly they are centered around gender roles and the subversion thereof, particularly in Edo (1600-1868) and modern Japan (1868-now), with a specific emphasis on popular culture. In other words, I got interested in yaoi and anime and manga, and the field gradually broadened from there. So many apologies, because the list is far from a good Asian history list, but it's a fairly good list for the very specific topic of gender and sexuality in anime and manga (hrm, guess what my thesis was on?).


General Chinese history:
Jacques Gernet, A History of Chinese Civilization -- exactly what it says it is. It's very fat and very thorough, and I really wish I had read the entire thing instead of just the chapters assigned for class (this will be a frequent complaint, I suspect).

General Japanese history:
Conrad Schirokauer's A Brief History of Japanese Civilization was assigned for my EAS overview class, but I wasn't too fond of it. It is a good overview, but it's too textbooky for me, and it never gave me the detail I wanted, so I ended up with a very fuzzy and general idea of each era.

Marius B. Jansen, The Making of Modern Japan -- sadly, I have not read the entire thing (it sits, staring, from my shelf), but it is a big book on the Meiji period, my absolute favorite period, with lots of detail and background. This makes me happy.

John Dower, War Without Mercy -- a really excellent and well-written look at the propaganda used by both the US and Japan during World War II. Highly recommended.

John Dower, Embracing Defeat -- another one of the books assigned for class that I wish I had read the entirety of instead of a single chapter. I'm already feeling completely embarrassed about daring to write a reading list when I haven't read most of the good stuff! I will, however, say that the single chapter was extremely well-written. Also, as far as I could tell, Dower is great at gathering information, and he tries to be as impartial as he can while presenting it. Plus, he gives multiple points of view (a real blessing) and accounts from various different parts of life in Japan at the time regarding the subject. This is all from just one chapter. Imagine how good the rest of the book must be. Er. Sorry, I forgot to say: I'm pretty sure this is currently thought of as the book on post-war Japan and the reconstruction of Japan as a nation. It's an incredibly touchy subject, and (from my limited POV) Dower does a great job taking it on.

Now on to things I actually know a little about:

Gender and Sexuality in Japan:
More accurately, gender and sexuality in Japan from 1600-now, except the Meiji period because no one ever seems to focus on it =(.

Cecilia Segawa Seigle, Yoshiwara: The Glittering World of the Japanese Courtesan -- so far, the definitive work on the floating world/ukiyo of Edo Japan. Yoshiwara was one of the largest licensed sex districts during the Edo period and was host to a bevy of courtesans. Seigle documents the beginning of Yoshiwara to its decline around the end of the Edo period (1850s), along with the culture of Yoshiwara and its courtesans. Note that the courtesans are not geisha.

Unfortunately, I haven't found a single book on geisha that I like. Liza Dalby's Geisha is currently the standard, I think. Dalby was the first non-Japanese person to become a geisha -- she did this for her thesis during the 70s. I think she was a little too into the geisha culture, though, to the detriment of her book. Leslie Downer has also written a book or two, but I personally think she is even more emotionally influenced than Dalby. Downer in particular seems to buy into the exoticness of the geisha, which really annoys me. But I did learn something reading the books, so there is that.

Ihara Saikaku, The Great Mirror of Male Desire -- one of the most popular works in Edo Japan on male-male sexuality (1), and an interesting look at the rhetoric of male-male love. It rather amusingly calls to mind several arguments for slash, except, you know, this was back in seventeenth-century Japan.

Gregory Pflugfelder, Cartographies of Desire: Male-Male Sexuality in Japanese Discourse, 1600-1950 -- the book I am totally jealous of and wish I had written, except in no way do I have the analytical skills or the competence to synthesize all that information. Read this book. It is of the good. It's a thorough look at male-male sexuality and how perceptions of it changed through the years in various different media. I think one of the most interesting chapters is the one on male-male sexuality and medical discourse. Also, tons of bonus points because it covers the Meiji era! Again, if you only read one book on male-male sexuality in Japan (truly a niche topic if there ever was one...), read this one!

The other books on male-male sexuality in pre-modern Japan: Tsuneo Watanabe and Jun’ichi Iwata's The Love of the Samurai: A Thousand Years of Japanese Homosexuality is probably the first book on the subject in English (it was translated). However, it's also the worst and constantly falls prey to romanticizing the entire thing. Gary Leupp's Male Colors: The Construction of Male Homosexuality in Tokugawa Japan is interesting, but really has been blown out of the water by Cartographies of Desire. I read this a while ago, so I don't quite remember why, but I definitely had some issues with the author.

Alas, as you all may have noticed, there is a dearth of information on female-female sexuality in Japan (pre-modern and modern). I am guessing this probably has to do with the fact that sex was quite often equated with the presence of a phallus (or two, or three...). I've seen a few woodblock prints of two women looking at woodblock prints and having fun with dildos, but that's about the extent of it. The above books mention female-female sexuality but do not dwell.

Onto the modern era:

Anne Allison, Nightwork -- it's a bit dated now (it was written in the 80's, and obviously things in Japan have changed a great deal since then), but it's an interesting look at the Japanese mizu shobai, the "water trade," aka the sex industry. I have to temper this by saying it isn't really on the Japanese sex industry per se, but it is on the world of the night club and the women in the night clubs who entertain the salarymen after work. It's also on the division of sexuality and femininity, work and home, hostess and wife/mother.

Anne Allison, Permitted and Prohibited Desires: Mothers, Comics, and Censorship in Japan -- the essays are sometimes rather disconnected, but it's still an interesting look at women in Japan, erotic/pornographic manga, and the cultural effects of Japanese censorship laws (pubic hair and the depiction of genitals is not allowed). Very, very interesting. Although I would take the section on erotic manga with a grain of salt, because I think Allison mainly looks at erotic manga aimed toward a male audience, which makes a difference.

Jennifer Robertson, Takarazuka: Sexual Politics and Popular Culture in Modern Japan -- as far as I know, the only book written on the Takarazuka Revue, an all-female troupe in Japan. This would be worth reading for that bit alone, given the prevalence of all-male traditional theater (kabuki, Noh, etc., even though kabuki originated from a female priestess). Luckily, it is also incredibly interesting and a great contrast to the wealth of information on male-male sexuality and male-male culture ("wealth" is a relative term, in this case, heh). And as icing, Takarazuka has put on shows of The Rose of Versailles (very popular shoujo manga from the 70s) and of Utena! Robertson discusses the politics and gender issues involved with having women play all the roles and how the women who play the male parts become heartthrobs of other women (an interesting reversal of the kabuki onnagata, the men who play women and were sought after by other men). I saw a mention of a documentary on Takarazuka in a book... I think the documentary was called "Pretty Girls," but I haven't been able to track it down yet.

Mark McLelland, Male Homosexuality in Modern Japan: Cultural Myths and Social Realities -- a good, balanced view of the popular perception of the male homosexual in Japanese pop culture, particularly of the popularity of the male homosexual in narratives aimed toward young Japanese women (manga, film, etc.). I particularly like this because it's a good counterbalance to all the articles on shounen ai and yaoi in shoujo manga that I read, and it takes into account how the perception of male homosexuals and the realities clash and how they affect Japanese gay men.

Mark McLelland, "Male Homosexuality and Popular Culture in Modern Japan" -- this article is basically on the same topic as the above book, but short, and online.

Japanese Popular Culture:
(With a particular focus on anime and manga)

D.P. Martinez, ed. The Worlds of Japanese Popular Culture: Gender, Shifting Boundaries, and Global Cultures -- an anthology with various papers on Japanese pop culture. The papers really vary in terms of quality, and I am not overly impressed with most of them. They tend to fall into the trap that most scholarship on popular culture does and generalize too much for my taste; also, many of them seem to have the underlying presumption that there is One Japan that can be deciphered via pop culture and aren't multifaceted enough for my taste. Susan Napier does have an interesting paper in here on the four faces of the Japanese shoujo, but again, I found it too short to be satisfying. Her book is much better.

Timothy J. Craig, ed. Japan Pop!: Inside the World of Japanese Popular Culture -- another anthology on Japanese pop culture that doesn't work too well. I mostly list them here because they were fairly early books on the topic. This book in particular annoyed me because it kept attempting to find the "Japanese" core in various aspects of Japanese pop culture, and I found that rather essentialist and reductionist. I also throw around big words to look more intelligent ;).

I haven't read most of the "Encyclopedia of Japanese Pop Culture" or "Everything Japanese in Anime" or whatever all those titles are, so I can't say much about them. I think I skimmed through one of them once, and was quite bored by the explanations of what a Shinto gate was, etc. etc., but this is also after I had been taking EAS classes. I am generally wary of texts that purport to explain the "Japanese mindset" to me, though.

Frederik Schodt, Manga! Manga! and Dreamland Japan -- still the essential introduction to manga. Both are rather dated now, particularly Manga! Manga!. And I take issue with the argument that manga is a long Japanese tradition going back to various woodblock paintings (it rather reminds me of saying comics are a long American tradition dating back to satiric cartoons during the Revolutionary War, not that people do. Yes, there is a tradition, but isn't it much more useful to look at the first superhero comic?). Manga! Manga! is the more general guide that focuses on the development in manga from early post-war European influences to the all-important Tezuka Osamu to sometimes around the 1970's and the rise of shounen ai in shoujo manga. Dreamland Japan is an interesting look at many of the popular manga magazines, from Shonen Jump and Nakayoshi to the more indie ones.

Susan Napier, Anime from Akira to Princess Mononoke: Experiencing Contemporary Japanese Animation -- my favorite book of the bunch, because while I occasionally disagree with Napier's analysis, she is maybe the only person to look at anime in and of itself and not in a broader cultural context. And while I see the usefulness of looking at pop culture in context, it's also nice to have someone just do close readings (close viewings?) of the primary texts, as opposed to constantly dragging in things like, "this is indicative of the Japanese schoolgirl's fear of her own sexuality."

Sharon Kinsella, Adult Manga: Culture and Power in Contemporary Japanese Society -- another favorite, because Kinsella also veers from the standard analysis. Unlike Napier, she doesn't focus on the content; instead, the book is all about the economics and dynamics of publishing adult manga. Very good (and probably the only) look at the industry.

And my very favorite topic of all, gender and sexuality in anime and manga:
(in which I list everything I can find, because even though I don't agree with most of them, there's not enough written)

Aoyama Tomoko, "Male Homosexuality as Treated by Japanese Women Writers." The Japanese Trajectory: Modernization and Beyond. Ed. Gavan McCormack and Yoshio Sugimoto. -- one of the earlier articles on the topic. She does manage to cover fiction as well as shoujo manga, but it is a fairly standard piece. Read any meta on slash, and you'll pretty much know most of the arguments.

Sandra Buckley, "'Penguin in Bondage': A Graphic Tale of Japanese Comic Books." Technoculture. Ed. Constance Penley and Andrew Ross -- like Anne Allison, Buckley mostly looks at erotic manga aimed toward the male audience.

Fujimoto Yukari, "A Life-Size Mirror: Women's Self-Representation in Girls' Comics." Review of Japanese Culture and Society 4 (1991): 53-57 -- this one was mostly on the female characters in a specific manga and was a rather fuzzy look at gender tropes and breaking out of gender roles.

Margaret Key, "Shojo Minds in the Gutter: Reading the Genji Manga." Gazoku Dynamics in Japanese Literature. Ed. Sekine Eiji -- I admit it... I mostly got this one because of the title ;). The rest of the article is, sadly, not as interesting.

Matsui Midori, "Little Girls Were Little Boys: Displaced Femininity in the Representation of Homosexuality in Japanese Girls' Comics." Feminism and the Politics of Difference. Ed. Sneja Gunew and Anna Yeatman -- I take back what I said about the Aoyama article. This is the ultimate meta on slash/yaoi. It's rather jargon-laden and Matsui draws on a great deal of Freudian theory (which I disagree with), but still worth reading. I admit, when I read this, I was mostly thinking, "Watch academics write out in fancy words what fandom talks about all the time!"

Shiokawa Kanako, "Roses, Stars, and Pretty Boys: Symbolism in Japanese Girls' Comics." Asian Thought and Society 24 (1999): 206-230 -- sadly, less useful than it should have been. Shiokawa doesn't go too much deeper into the imagery and symbolism in shoujo manga than Schodt does in Manga! Manga!.

Matt Thorn, various essays. Again, read with grain of salt. Some of his earlier essays particularly tend to be a little too fannish about shoujo manga and don't necessarily look into the issues with enough subtlety (I, also, am extremely guilty of this).

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(1) People generally use "male-male sexuality" instead of "homosexuality" to refer to sexual activity between two males prior to the modern period in Japan because the concept of a set sexuality and therefore, of homosexuality as something entirely appart from heterosexuality, didn't exist then. I think it rather resembles the Greek mindset in that way, though I am not sure because I know nothing about ancient Greece.

Mini-glossary, just in case:

Manga - Japanese comics that tell a story (as opposed to newspaper "funnies")
Anime - Japanese animation, often based on manga
Shoujo - young girls (around pre-teen to teenage, I would say.. in that sexual no-man's-land between childhood and adulthood)
Shounen - young boys (see shoujo for age range)
Shoujo manga - girls' comics
Shounen ai - boys' love, usually used to refer to male-male love in shoujo anime and manga
Yaoi - slash. Tends to refer to more sexual relationships (I think).

----

Um, I'm not sure how useful that was to anyone but me, given the narrowness of the topic! But I had a good deal of fun writing all that out ;).

Comments

[coffeeandink.livejournal.com]

*speechless*

You ... you ... you ROCK.

THe NYPL online catalog doesn't list a dismaying number of these, so I guess I'll have to look into the frightening intricacies of interlibrary loan.

But you ROCK.

Thank you.

[yhlee.livejournal.com]

Oh, seconded. It may be years before I get to a fraction of these, but the having of a list is very, very useful! Niftiness!

And really--you've commented on your focuses and areas of interest, but because they're different from things I tend to focus on, I find this a useful potential means of broadening my reading. :-)

[oyceter]

Glad it's useful!

It's an incredibly narrow field of interest, heh... Most of the reading I did for general history ended up being various chapters from various books for class instead of a single textbook =(.

[oyceter]

Oh, good, I'm glad it's helpful! I was scared it was getting a little too specific to be much use at all.

I had a bit of trouble finding some of these even with the Princeton East Asian Studies library, sigh.

[avrelia.livejournal.com]

Wow, very intersting list. Thank you for putting it together. With the list of books I really have to read in the immediate uture and afterwards, I am not sure when I could use it, but it looks very delectable.

One question: anything focusing on before 1600, beside general history books? especially Heian period?

[oyceter]

Sure thing ^_^.

I don't know that much prior to 1600, but Ivan Morris' World of the Shining Prince is about the Heian period, especially with regard to the Tale of Genji. And of course reading Tale of Genji and the Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon for a taste of literature of the time.

[avrelia.livejournal.com]

Thanks, but the Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon was exactly the thing that drew me into this period in the first place. :)
I love it but I’d love to have a look from outside onto this court culture.

[oyceter]

Heh, yeah.. the Ivan Morris book may be the way to go then?

A few more books

[rozk.livejournal.com]

On the general Japanese history stuff, George Sansom's three volume book is good and pretty readable; he also did a book on the cultural history that's not bad. Ivan Morris' 'The World of the Shining Prince' is an account of the Heian period, the time of slightly fey courtiers obsessed with ritual before things fall apart and samurais start; his 'The Nobility of Failure' tries to cover the cultural context of Mishima Yukio's obsession with defeat and death.

Re: A few more books

[oyceter]

Oh cool, thanks!

I've heard of Ivan Morris' book, but only got around to reading a chapter or so. Think I may have read the one on Mishima, but I don't remember... was that a chapter in a book on Japanese heroes?