Transfiguring Women in Late Twentieth-Century Japan - James Welker

Transfiguring Women in Late Twentieth-Century Japan: Feminists, Lesbians, and Girls' Comics Artists and Fans examines three dynamic and overlapping communities of women and adolescent girls who challenged Japanese gender and sexual norms in the 1970s and 1980s. These spheres encompassed activists in the uman ribu (women’s liberation) movement, members of the rezubian (lesbian) community, and artists and readers of queer sho¯jo manga (girls’ comics). Individually and collectively, they found the normative understanding of the category "women" untenable and worked to redefine and expand its meaning by transfiguring ideas, images, and practices selectively appropriated from the "West." They did so, however, while remaining firmly fixed on the local. Thus, for many, this ostensibly Western focus was not a turn away from Japan but integral to their understanding of being a woman within Japan. Following broad historical overviews of the uman ribu, rezubian, and queer shojo manga spheres, the book takes a deeper look through the lenses of terminology, translation, and travel to offer a window onto how acts of transfiguration reshaped what it meant to be a woman in Japan. The work draws on a vast archive that encompasses early twentieth-century dictionaries, sexology texts, and literature; postwar women’s and men’s magazines and pornography; translated feminist and lesbian texts; comics and animation; and newsletters, fanzines, and other heretofore
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