Abstract

This chapter provides an overview of recent scholarship on genders, sexualities and bodies in modern Japanese history, surveying the period from the mid-nineteenth century to the present. The survey is informed by recent theoretical perspectives which interrogate both femininity and masculinity and look at their dynamic interaction; consider non-binary gender identities; consider sexuality alongside gender, caste, class, ethnicity, ability/disability and other dimensions of difference; look at both normative and variant sexualities; and consider the embodied dimensions of human experience.