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Gender Noncomforming Practices and Identities in Japanese History and the Emergence of New Transgender Identities in the 21st Century

Sumi Cho 1

1명지대학교 방목기초교육대학

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ABSTRACT

This study compares new transgender identities and practices that emerged in 21st century Japan with gender-nonconforming practices in Japanese history. From ancient times to the Edo period, non-normative sexualities and gender nonconforming practices tended to be condoned if they did not challenge the feudal or gender hierarchy but instead remained in cultural enclaves separated from everyday life and deemed morally inferior. Gender nonconforming practices and representations from the postwar to the 1990s were most prominent in the entertainment and sex industries. They were interpreted in the context of Japan’s gender-crossing tradition and the West-imported discourse of ‘sexual perversion.’ Male-tofemale gender crossing was overrepresented in effeminate and flamboyant ‘gay boys’, ‘okama’, ‘new half’ celebrities and crossdressing hobbyists. Nonnormative sexual orientations and gender identities were often conflated in them and were considered to exist in a separate sphere from everyday life. The discourse of gender identity disorder (GID) emerged in the late 1990s, which emphasized the separation of gender identity from sexual orientation. The view of gender dysphoria as a “disorder or illness” has helped transgender people to be accepted as a part of everyday life and has helped them to actively demand social integration through medical transition and legal gender correction as an “acceptable minority.” However, GID has also been criticized as another form of confinement by pathologizing transgender people and reducing them to their bodies. The new transgender paradigm in the mid-2000s was inspired by the global LGBT movement, the WHO’s depathologigation of transgender people, and the new discourse of “diversity management” in various industries. Transgender as the “T of LGBT” tends to focus on issues of identity and express themselves in human rights movements and subcultures while distancing itself from the body-centered discourse and gender binary of the discourse. Under the new trend, transgender people demand full acceptance from society as equal members of society and a change in the legal and medical prerequisites for legal gender change and equal marriage.

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