Japanese LGBT Diasporas


Book Description

With little existing scholarship on LGBT diaspora from Asia, this groundbreaking book examines the intersectionality of migration, sexuality, and gender, as well as race and ethnicity, through an analysis of the transnational experiences of Japanese LGBT diasporas in the USA, Canada and Australia. Employing a variety of methods, including a questionnaire, ethnographic analysis and case studies, the author demonstrates and analyses LGBT experiences where the notion of “gay-friendly” Japan prevails, looking at their reasons to flee the country and their diverse experiences in their host country. These include their needs and want for social services for Japanese LGBT diaspora. Findings are comparatively examined with LGBT refugees’ experiences, among LGBT subgroups, as well as across the three countries, highlighting the significance of gender, race and ethnicity, as well as immigration policy, in the experiences of LGBT diasporas from Japan. This book will appeal to students and scholars interested in Migration, Race and Ethnicity, Gender and Sexuality, and Asian Studies. Masami Tamagawa is Senior Teaching Professor of Japanese Studies, Gender Studies, and Asian Studies at Skidmore College, USA.




Queer Diasporas


Book Description

A groundbreaking collection of essays examining the effects of mobility and displacement on queer sexual identities and practices.




Global Diasporas


Book Description

Following its initial publication in 1997, Global Diasporas: An Introduction was central to the emergence of diaspora studies and quickly established itself as the leading textbook in the field. This expanded and fully-revised 25th anniversary edition adds two new chapters on incipient diasporas and diaspora engagement while carefully clarifying the changing meanings of the concept of diaspora and incorporating updated statistics and new interpretations seamlessly into the original text. The book has also been made more student-friendly with illustrations, thought-provoking questions, and guides to further reading. The book features insightful case studies and compares a wide range of diasporas, including Jewish, Armenian, African, Sikh, Chinese, British, Indian, Lebanese, Afghan and Caribbean peoples. This edition also retains Cohen’s rich historical and sociological descriptions and clear yet elegant writing, as well as his modified concept of ‘diasporic rope’ linking different features of diasporas. This updated edition of the definitive textbook in the field will be an indispensable guide for students and instructors seeking to explore the complex issues of diaspora, migration and identity.




Diasporic Ruptures


Book Description

Diasporic Ruptures: Globality, Migrancy, and Expressions of Identity lies at the intersections of various processes emerging from globalization: border-crossings, transnationalism, identity formations. Carefully selected and placed in two volumes, the essays here represent works of both well-seasoned scholars as well as emerging writers, academics and intellectuals. The volumes critically examine various manifestations of the trend now commonly known as globalization—manifestations that many diasporic communities, immigrants, and people from all walks of life experience. They also illuminate recent political, social, economic and technological developments that are taking place in a rapidly changing world. Volume One (see Volume 6 in Transgressions: Cultural Studies and Education)offers sophisticated insights into the nature of contemporary formations of diasporic life, internationalism, and hybrid identities. The volume asks bold questions around what it means to live in constantly shifting boundaries of nationality, identity, and citizenship. The type of methodological, discursive and experiential awareness promoted by this work helps us understand how millions of people face the challenge of living in a globalizing world; it also fosters a consciousness of how globalization itself functions differently in different environments. Volume Two addresses additional and more nuanced questions around culture, race, sexuality, migration, displacement and resistance. It also explores certain epistemological and methodological fallacies regarding conventional articulations of nation-state, nationalism, and the local/global nexus. The volume seeks to answer questions such as: What are the meanings and connotations of ‘displacement’ in a rapidly globalizing world? What are some dilemmas and challenges around notions of cultural hybridity, linguistic diversity, and a sense of belonging? What is the meaning of home in diaspora and the meaning of diaspora at home? Together, the volumes raise many topics that will be of immense interest to scholars across disciplines and general readers. While celebrating the increasing acknowledgment of difference and diversity in recent times, this work reminds us of the ongoing ramifications of dominant structures of inequality, relations of power, and issues of inclusion and exclusion. This work offers different ways of thinking, writing and talking about globalization and the processes that emerge from it.




The Japanese LGBTQ+ Community in the World


Book Description

This study of the Japanese LGBTQ+ community sheds light on the intersectionality of lived experiences, including gender, sexuality, family, (mental) health, race and ethnicity, migration, and nationality, offering a picture of a community whose experience is deeply embedded in the dynamic society around. The Japanese LGBTQ+ Community in the World takes an innovative approach, viewing the community as an integral part of the world in flux, rather than an isolated monoracial and monolingual tight-knit entity. Like the US and many other countries in the world, when the pandemic struck Japan, its citizens were not all equally equipped to withstand it. Due particularly to lingering systemic injustices, including stigma, ostracism from family and society, as well as lack of legal protection of their basic human rights, the pandemic has disproportionately affected the lives of LGBTQ+ individuals and couples in Japan. They face unique challenges within various facets of their lives. Their experiences are an integral part of understanding how this pandemic is affecting a societal response to an already marginalized group of individuals. This important study looks at the issues from a range of perspectives including public health care services, the media and cross-cultural experience. This book is ideal for students and scholars of gender studies, LGBTQ studies, sociology, health, and Asian studies.




Charting the Emerging Field of Japanese Diaspora Archaeology


Book Description

This book examines the Japanese diaspora from the historical archaeology perspective—drawing from archaeological data, archival research, and often oral history—and explores current trends in archaeological scholarship while also looking at new methodological and theoretical directions. The chapters include research on pre-War rural labor camps or villages in the US, as well as research on western Canada (British Columbia), Peru, and the Pacific Islands (Hawai‘i and Tinian), incorporating work on understudied urban and cemetery sites. One of the main themes explored in the book is patterns of cultural persistence and change, whether couched in terms of maintenance of tradition, “Americanization,” or the formation of dual identities. Other themes emerging from these chapters include consumption, agency, stylistic analysis, community lifecycles, social networks, diaspora and transnationalism, gender, and sexuality. Also included are discussions of trauma, racialization, displacement, labor, heritage, and community engagement. Some are presented as fully formed interpretive frameworks with substantial supporting data, while others are works in progress or tentative attempts to push the boundaries of our field into innovative new territory. This book is of interest to students and researchers in historical archaeology, anthropology, sociology of migration, diaspora studies and historiography. Previously published in International Journal of Historical Archaeology Volume 25, issue 3, September 2021




Sustainability, Diversity, and Equality: Key Challenges for Japan


Book Description

This book enables readers to understand contemporary Japanese society and culture. Since it is written by experts, it allows readers to start with any chapters they are interested in. It also provides a unique way to introduce Japanese society and culture to those who have never visited or studied Japanese society by reading articles from various authors on topics such as gender, family, economy, natural disasters and politics and laws. It provides scholars, academics, graduate students and the general educated audience all the information required to understand contemporary Japanese society and culture fully and see the diverse perspectives available.




Media in Asia


Book Description

This book is an upper-level student source book for contemporary approaches to media studies in Asia, which will appeal across a wide range of social sciences and humanities subjects including media and communication studies, Asian studies, cultural studies, sociology and anthropology. Drawing on a wide range of perspectives from media and communications, sociology, cultural studies, anthropology and Asian studies, it provides an empirically rich and stimulating tour of key areas of study. The book combines theoretical perspectives with grounded case studies in one up-to-date and accessible volume, going beyond the standard Euro-American view of the evolving and complex dynamics of the media today.




A Discontented Diaspora


Book Description

In A Discontented Diaspora, Jeffrey Lesser investigates broad questions of ethnicity, the nature of diasporic identity, and Brazilian culture. He does so by exploring particular experiences of young Japanese Brazilians who came of age in São Paulo during the 1960s and 1970s, an intensely authoritarian period of military rule. The most populous city in Brazil, São Paulo was also the world’s largest “Japanese” city outside of Japan by 1960. Believing that their own regional identity should be the national one, residents of São Paulo constantly discussed the relationship between Brazilianness and Japaneseness. As second-generation Nikkei (Brazilians of Japanese descent) moved from the agricultural countryside of their immigrant parents into various urban professions, they became the “best Brazilians” in terms of their ability to modernize the country and the “worst Brazilians” because they were believed to be the least likely to fulfill the cultural dream of whitening. Lesser analyzes how Nikkei both resisted and conformed to others’ perceptions of their identity as they struggled to define and claim their own ethnicity within São Paulo during the military dictatorship. Lesser draws on a wide range of sources, including films, oral histories, wanted posters, advertisements, newspapers, photographs, police reports, government records, and diplomatic correspondence. He focuses on two particular cultural arenas—erotic cinema and political militancy—which highlight the ways that Japanese Brazilians imagined themselves to be Brazilian. As he explains, young Nikkei were sure that their participation in these two realms would be recognized for its Brazilianness. They were mistaken. Whether joining banned political movements, training as guerrilla fighters, or acting in erotic films, the subjects of A Discontented Diaspora militantly asserted their Brazilianness only to find that doing so reinforced their minority status.




Queer Japan


Book Description

In this important contribution to international queer studies, sixteen people, spanning generations from pre-war to newly out young activists, tell their stories.