Queer Japan from the Pacific War to the Internet Age (Rowman & Littlefield, 2005) is a companion volume to my edited collection Queer Voices from Japan: First-Person Narratives from Japan's Sexual Minorities (forthcoming 2006).

Queer Japan is an exploration of the Japanese subculture of "kono sekai" - a term meaning "this world" which is frequently used by members of Japan's sexual minorities to refer to their discovery of and participation in a variety of non-mainstream sex and gender cultures. The book provides a historical outline of the development of sexual-minority identity categories and community formation in Japan's postwar culture through a detailed analysis of discussions in both niche and mainstream publications (including magazines, newspapers, biographies, memoirs, and Internet sites). Key texts discussed in the monograph will be translated, introduced and annotated in the companion volume Queer Voices from Japan.
 
Chapters
 
Introduction
 
1. Heteronormativity on the road to war
2. Japan's postwar perverse culture
3. Gay boys, blue boys and brother girls
4. The development of a homo subculture
5. Toward a lesbian and gay consciousness
6. Transgender lives

Afterword

Funding for this project was gratefully received from the Australian Research Council, and the Center for the Study of Sexual Minorities in the Military at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Image: "Homosexuals in uniform" from the 1947 magazine "True Tales" (Shinso Jitsuwa)