Intersex Figures in Modern Japanese Literature and Art

Overview

Intersex Figures in Modern Japanese Literature and Art explores the history of intersex or futanari figures in modern Japanese literature and culture to examine the provocative discourses that defied a sexual regime as the modern nation-state of Japan advanced its national and imperial designs. As sexologists and medical practitioners continued reinforcing categories of “male” and “female,” “normal” and “pathological,” intersex literary figures garnered attention because the perceived subject was expected to be male or female—any variation was unintelligible. Many of the same century-old tropes and societal attitudes of needing to “cure” intersex persist. At the same time the 1991 novel Ringu by Suzuki Kōji testifies to a denial of futanari subjectivity, while the 1998 Japanese horror film (Ringu) and its 2002 American remake (The Ring) erase intersex all together.

Winston interrogates how the trope of the futanari is deployed for pragmatic or aesthetic purposes, thereby complicating the trajectory of the dominant sexological ideology of the time. Winston reads the figurative futanari in the works of Shimizu Shikin, Tanizaki Jun’ichirō, and Takabatake Kashō, and reveals how the artists’ different approaches to the futanari served their agendas and expressed views that challenged the dominant discourse on intersex.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780472077762
Publication date:	07/26/2025
Series:	Michigan Monograph Series in Japanese Studies , #105
Pages:	186
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Leslie Winston is Adjunct Professor at California State University, San Bernardino.

Table of Contents

List of Images
List of Abbreviations
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Chapter One—Intersections: France and Japan and the Modern Sexed Subject                                                 
Chapter Two—Shimizu Shikin: Perfect Bodies and Equal Rights
Chapter Three—Neither Fish nor Fowl: Tanizaki Jun’ichirō’s Fluid Bodies à rebours                                                        
Chapter Four—Takabatake Kashō’s Bishōnen and Shōjo Meet Halfway                                                                                                                                                 
Chapter Five—Representing and Erasing Perfect Beauty in the Contemporary Era: Ringu (Ring, 1991) by Suzuki Kōji and Kataomoi (Unrequited Love, 2001) by Higashino Keigo
Bibliography
 

What People are Saying About This

Jim Reichert

“Bold and original, Leslie Winston's Intersex Figures in Modern Japanese Literature and Art offers a groundbreaking interdisciplinary investigation into how intersex bodies (futanari) were mobilized to subvert dominant sexual epistemologies and challenge the cultural logics of modern Japan.”

Jennifer Robertson

“Even without the constraints of Abrahamic monotheisms, Japanese socio-cultural  conventions past and present share similar patriarchal features and hew to the heteronormative. That said, in Japan, the relationship of sex, gender, and sexuality(ies) remains fluid and their boundaries blurred as Winston demonstrates in exploring multiple applications of ‘intersex tropes’ in fiction and art. Writers’ and artists’ lives too traversed a spectrum of genders and sexualities.”

Michael K. Bourdaghs

“A pioneering survey of the representations of intersexuality in modern Japanese literature, visual arts, and popular culture. Explicating the tensions embedded in the figure of the futanari, Winston shows us how the intersexual has been used to both subvert and reinforce dominant gender binaries—often doing both in the same moment.”