Beyond Common Sense: Sexuality And Gender In Contemporary Japan

First published in 2001. This volume is based on the author's visit to Japan in Summer 1986 on his findings about some of the questions he was asked whilst there. He was 25 and these questions centred around asking if he was married or had a girlfriend, when in his homeland of the Netherlands he openly identified as gay. This research is an investigation of how gay and lesbian people, women's and men's liberationaists, singles and other people, such as transsexuals, transvestites and hermaphrodites, whose ideas, feelings or lifestyles are at variance with Japanese constructions of marriage and inherently the construction of life, live in Japan. Chapter 1 Introduction; Chapter 2 Methods and Ethics; Chapter 3 Discourses and Politics of Marriage; Chapter 4 Trying to Fit: Homosexuality and Feminism in Marriage; Chapter 5 Private: Alternative Lifestyles; Chapter 6 Dealing with Society: Practical Problems, Passing and Coming Out; Chapter 7 Circles: Discussing Gender, Sex, and the Other and the Self; Chapter 8 Conclusion;