Publications by Thomas Baudinette
South East Asia Research, 2023
Recent years have witnessed an explosion in Thailand of 'Boys Love (BL)' media that focus on roma... more Recent years have witnessed an explosion in Thailand of 'Boys Love (BL)' media that focus on romantic relationships between men. This article explores one site through which BL media is significantly impacting Thai consumer culture: the world of advertising. In this article, we theorize the rise of BL advertising in Thailand as an instance of queer affective media engagement. Through a case study of an advertising campaign for the confectionary MinMin starring an imaginary idol celebrity couple named KristSingto, we reveal how Thai BL commercials consciously produce a queer affect known as fin, which is central to BL fandom. By evoking nostalgia for BL series via specific semiotic codes, Thai advertisers tie affective responses to staged homoeroticism and consumer culture. The idol celebrities within Thai BL advertising thus do more than simply endorse products, they also bolster consumption among primarily female fans by satisfying desires for (staged) queer romance.
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Gender, Place, and Culture, 2022
Studies of the global spread of South Korean popular culture have often neglected the role that s... more Studies of the global spread of South Korean popular culture have often neglected the role that space plays in this transnational fandom and consumer culture. Explicitly exploring the geography of Korean popular culture consumption in Japan, this article draws upon a walking ethnography of Tokyo's 'Koreatown' of Shin-Okubo and interviews with selected consumers to reveal how 'K-pop spaces' within Japan have become tied to young women's consumer culture. We argue that spaces of K-pop promotion and consumption within Tokyo are inherently 'feminised' due to their linkage to pre-established promotional strategies in consumer districts specifically targeting young women. Through an ethnography of Shin-Okubo and interviews with K-pop fans who regularly visit this district, we further reveal how this 'ethnic enclave' has been reconfigured as another 'feminised' consumer space that caters to particular behaviours and attitudes based in K-pop fandom. Overall, this article charts the emergence of 'feminine' consumer spaces in Tokyo and interrogates how the ethnic enclave of Shin-Okubo has transformed into a gendered space tied to Japanese K-pop fandom.
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Norma, 2023
Previous research on Japanese K-pop consumption has predominantly focused on the experiences of m... more Previous research on Japanese K-pop consumption has predominantly focused on the experiences of middle-aged female fans who idealize K-pop idols' supposed 'soft' masculinity. Drawing upon ethnographic fieldwork, this article explores how Japanese gay men consume and understand K-pop. I destabilize assumptions common to the literature on Japanese fandom for Kpop concerning male idols' soft masculinity by critically investigating how gay Japanese K-pop fans position Korean masculinity as 'beastly.' I particularly investigate how gay fans situate Korean masculinity within the socio-semiotic system of 'Typing' that structures Japan's gay culture. I demonstrate that, counter to common-sense assumptions of K-Pop idols' softness which circulate in Japan, Japanese gay fans instead focus on their 'hardness' to strategically differentiate their desires for male K-Pop idols from those of heterosexual female consumers. In yearning for 'beastly' Korean masculinity, Japanese gay K-pop fans thus explicitly reject the valorization of masculine cuteness found throughout Japanese mainstream media.
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Queer Southeast Asia, 2023
The last several decades have seen a growth in the transnational circulation of Japanese queer po... more The last several decades have seen a growth in the transnational circulation of Japanese queer popular culture such as Boys Love Media, bara manga, and pornographic videos. Since the 1990s, the Philippines have emerged as an important market for Japanese media with queer themes. Drawing upon interviews with 31 Filipino fans of queer Japanese popular culture from a variety of gendered and class backgrounds, this presentation explores how Filipino consumers engage with fantasies of Japan as an “aspirational resource” that challenges experiences of societal heteronormativity. I reveal that Filipino consumers especially value the queer popular culture of Japan as it provides an affirming representational politics that they believe is absent within Philippine mainstream media, producing fantasies of Japan as an “LGBT paradise”. These fantasies, I suggest, play an important role in contouring how Filipino fans affectively experience and conceptualise their queerness, producing sexual knowledge grounded in Japanese popular culture. In particular, I chart how fans’ initial encounters with Boys Love and gay male pornography helped facilitate their identification with same-sex attraction and provided them with a vocabulary to express and make sense of their desires. I conclude the chapter by juxtaposing the informants’ attitudes towards the queer popular cultures of Japan and the US, which was a common theme in interviews. I specifically expose how the informants’ disavowal of the US as a site of queer liberation and their privileging of Japan reveals shifts in the “libidinal economy” of the Asia-Pacific within which the Philippines are situated.
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Journal of the Society for Asian Humanities, 2022
A reflective review of the state of the field of Japanese Studies through a discussion of "Pure I... more A reflective review of the state of the field of Japanese Studies through a discussion of "Pure Invention: How Japan’s Pop Culture Conquered the World," by Matt Alt (London: Crown, 2020).
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The Cambridge Companion to K-Pop, 2023
The practice of imagining idols within romantic and sexual relationships, known as “shipping,” is... more The practice of imagining idols within romantic and sexual relationships, known as “shipping,” is central to the global fandom of K-pop, allowing fans to develop affective relationships with celebrities through practices such as writing fan fiction. In particular, shipping that reimagines boy groups such as BTS within romantic or homoerotic relationships is especially common as a method of articulating fandom and exploring sexual agency, thus producing spaces within Korea’s patriarchal society where women’s sexual desires can be safely explored. International aspects of BTS shipping, particularly within Japanese and Anglophone fandom spaces (in Australian and the Philippines), is then analyzed. While BTS shipping in Japan tends to conceptualize homoerotic relationships between men via sexual practices and behaviors divorced from identity, Anglophone shipping tends to instead overtly deploy LGBTQ identity politics. Nevertheless, both practices possess queer potentials that allow fans to affectively explore their sexuality. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the role of shipping in affirming the presence of queer fans within global K-pop culture.
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Journal of Australian Studies, 2020
This article investigates how young Australians who consume both Japanese and Korean popular cult... more This article investigates how young Australians who consume both Japanese and Korean popular culture conceptualise their multicultural identities. Through semi-structured interviews with 14 fans, I chart how they first encountered Japanese and Korean popular culture texts within the Australian mediascape and how this discovery impacted their self-identities. I then analyse the interviews to argue that these fans mobilise their consumption of East Asian popular culture to position themselves as more "Asia literate" than the general Australian public. In so doing, I demonstrate that continued consumption of both Japanese and Korean popular culture in the Australian context potentially boosts intercultural communicative competence and thus provides consumers with a cosmopolitan identity. I argue that this cosmopolitanism is based in perceptions of a heightened tolerance for cultural difference that allows the fans to destabilise "monocultural" understandings of Asia that are common in Australia.
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Mechademia, 2020
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Routledge Companion to Gender and Japanese Culture, 2020
In this chapter I explore the complexities surrounding the gendered experiences of those Japanese... more In this chapter I explore the complexities surrounding the gendered experiences of those Japanese men who identify as “gay” (gei) across several different social contexts. Within this chapter, I particularly tease out the differences and similarities between the gendered ideologies attached to gay male experience within mainstream society and within Japan’s burgeoning gay sub-cultural spaces. I couple a survey of both activist and academic sources with the reported experiences of young gay men who have participated within my previous studies of media consumption in Japan to paint a broad introductory picture of the various gendered ideologies with which Japanese gay men engage in their everyday lives. Through this discussion, I introduce the key issues surrounding the study of gender and Japanese gay male experience.
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Porn Studies
This article investigates Chinese and Japanese fandom for the Japanese gay porn star Koh Masaki (... more This article investigates Chinese and Japanese fandom for the Japanese gay porn star Koh Masaki (1983–2013), exploring how consumption of Koh’s films impacted fans’ understandings of their
sexual desires and identities. I argue that both groups position
Koh as a symbol of a ‘Japanese gay masculinity’ that is
understood as normatively desirable. Interviews revealed that due
to this normative desirability, Koh acted as an aspirational model
in the everyday production of their identities as gay men.
Furthermore, Japanese gay men utilized Koh’s explicitly Japanese
masculinity to position themselves as legitimately masculine
within the context of a Japanese mainstream media landscape
that constructs same-sex-desiring men as ‘failed men’ due to their
supposed effeminacy. For Chinese gay men, Koh was deployed to
symbolically construct an ideal of ‘good Japanese guys’ that
helped them navigate systems of anti-Chinese xenophobia that
circulate throughout Japan’s gay cultural spaces.
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South East Asian Research, 2019
This article explores the adaptation of Boys Love (BL), a Japanese genre of homoerotic media prod... more This article explores the adaptation of Boys Love (BL), a Japanese genre of homoerotic media produced for heterosexual female audiences, to the Thai mediascape through an analysis of Lovesick, The Series (2014). This lakhon represented a watershed moment in representations of queer sexuality in Thai mainstream media, inaugurating a new genre of media known as series wai. Through an investigation of the narrative of the first series of Lovesick, this article shows how the narrative conventions of Japanese BL are ‘glocalized’ to conform to the heteronormative narrative focus of typical lakhon. The article argues that the series’ ‘wavering’ narrative focus between queer and heterosexual romance and its characterization of its male protagonists as stereotypical heterosexual men (phu chai) responds to the need for lakhon to privilege heteronormative romance. But the article also reveals that Lovesick sits within a broader social process whereby Japanese popular culture has come to influence Thai conceptualizations of sexuality. The article thus also shows how the lakhon educates its users into the affective reading practices of Japanese BL fans, introducing queer readings into the Thai mediascape. Overall, the article charts the historical development of a new, affirmative representational queer politics in the Thai mediascape.
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The advent of internet dating and gay dating applications on smartphones has caused anxiety among... more The advent of internet dating and gay dating applications on smartphones has caused anxiety among Japanese gay men who fear that these technologies, by facilitating social interaction between men, may eventually lead to the erosion of queer spaces. Despite these anxieties, Tokyo’s gay town of Shinjuku Ni-chōme remains a vital space for men to socialise under a limited anonymity. Reflecting upon ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Ni-chōme between 2012 and 2017, I argue that gay dating applications have instead reinforced the production of queer space. Drawing upon Soja’s influential theory of the ‘thirdspace’, I argue that Ni-chōme exists as both a real, physical space and a virtual, imagined space that is accessible via gay dating applications and social media services. Utilizing social media allows gay men to virtually participate in the scene at Ni-chōme, fostering a sense of shared community. Dating applications, through their use of GPS technology, also draw individuals to Ni-chōme by virtually mapping gay bodies/presence onto the district. I argue that the ‘virtual connectivity’ afforded by gay dating applications in the Japanese context has ultimately reinforced Ni-chōme’s status as a queer space and led many gay men to actively (re-)participate within the Japanese gay culture.
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The Linguistic Landscape of Tokyo’s premier gay district, Shinjuku Ni-chōme, contains much Englis... more The Linguistic Landscape of Tokyo’s premier gay district, Shinjuku Ni-chōme, contains much English-language signage. Previously described in touristic literature as marking out spaces for foreign gay men, this article draws upon an ethnographic study of how signage produces queer space in Japan to argue that English instead constructs a sense of cosmopolitan worldliness. The ethnography also reveals that participants within Ni-chōme’s gay bar sub-culture contrast this cosmopolitan identity with a “traditional” identity indexed by Japanese-language signage. In exploring how Japanese men navigate Ni-chōme’s signage, this article deploys Piller and Takahashi’s (2006) notion of “language desire” to investigate the role of LL in influencing individual queer men’s sense(s) of self. This article thus broadens the focus of LL research to account for how engagement with an LL may impact identity construction, with an emphasis placed on how learning to “read” an LL influences the formation of sexual identities.
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Law and Justice in Japanese Popular Culture: From Crime Fighting Robots to Duelling Pocket Monsters, 2018
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Journal of Language and Sexuality, 2017
By analysing 200 posts on a Japanese gay dating Bulletin Board System (deai-kei BBS), I investiga... more By analysing 200 posts on a Japanese gay dating Bulletin Board System (deai-kei BBS), I investigate how users strategically deploy language to construct desirable identities and " sell themselves " online. Drawing upon both quantitative and qualitative analysis, I demonstrate that users of the BBS creatively manipulate stereotypical identity categories known as Types (taipu) to construct highly nuanced yet specific discourses of the Self and the desired Other. Through a discursive analysis of the strategies users employ to construct their own identities , and the identities of their desired partners, I argue that identity categories marked as masculine and hunky (sawayaka) are privileged as more desirable than feminine and cute (kawaii) identities. Through this analysis, I suggest that users of this particular forum appear to valorise heteronormative masculinity, which they link to being hunky. Furthermore, I argue that being cute is considered undesirable due to its perception as transgressing normative masculine gendered traits.
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ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies, 2017
Shinjuku Ni-chōme (an area in central Tokyo) contains the highest concentration of queer establis... more Shinjuku Ni-chōme (an area in central Tokyo) contains the highest concentration of queer establishments in the world, with some estimates suggesting that there are approximately 300 gay male bars within its confines. Each of these bars targets a specific subset of the Japanese gay community, with bars coming to be associated with semiotic structures indexing certain subjectivities (known as Types). Through an ethnographic study of the district, I argue that signage plays a crucial role in differentiating Ni-chōme from the surrounding cityscape, creating a queer space. Furthermore, drawing upon the emerging discipline of Linguistic Landscaping, I analyse how signage can be read as “mapping” particular Types onto areas in Ni-chōme. I suggest that eroticised images of men, Japanese scripts, colour and language choice all act as queer semiotics that gay men visiting the district utilise to determine the Type of a bar. Finally, I discuss how this process of mapping normalises certain identity categories whilst marginalising others and how one particular identity category based in heteronormative understandings of masculinity has come to dominate the district, pushing other “niche” identity categories to the fringes of Ni-chōme.
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This article critically analyses the concept of ‘gay manga’ to ascertain how fan ‘produsers’ and ... more This article critically analyses the concept of ‘gay manga’ to ascertain how fan ‘produsers’ and casual consumers understand both geikomi (also known as bara) and Boys Love (BL) manga. Drawing upon interviews with four Japanese gay men, one Japanese-Korean man and one Japanese-Brazilian man, I investigate how ‘gay manga’ is understood as a locus for the construction of gay subjectivity. I argue that the informants understand BL and geikomi as two aspects of the same meta-genre, revealing how attitudes to the term ‘gay’ have evolved in Japan. For the informants, geikomi and BL are interconnected and they are both understood as legitimate expressions of gay subjectivity which play a crucial role in their understandings of gay desire. Importantly, by focussing upon readers’ subjective relationships with texts, this article demonstrates how ‘gay manga’ is understood through an affective lens, with consumers locating their understandings of ‘gay manga’ within their overall patterns of ‘gay media’ consumption. Throughout the article, I reflect upon the necessity for scholars to engage with genre in a more nuanced fashion in order to better understand how individual consumers engage with media texts in their everyday lives.
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Recent years have seen a worrying rise in anti-Korean and anti-Chinese xenophobia in Japan. This ... more Recent years have seen a worrying rise in anti-Korean and anti-Chinese xenophobia in Japan. This xenophobia has pervaded many aspects of Japanese society, and the gay male community in Tokyo’s Shinjuku Ni-chōme is no exception. Drawing upon an ethnographic study of Ni-chōme and interviews conducted with Japanese, Chinese and South Korean men, this article utilises Nagel’s theory of the ethnosexual frontier to examine how certain racial identities are rendered illegitimate in Ni-chōme. I argue that the stratification of Ni-chōme into spaces where only certain “racialized desires” (minzokuteki na seiyoku) are legitimated reflects broader ideologies of racial identity that circulate throughout Japanese society. I discuss how Chinese and South Korean men understand themselves as “ethnosexual sojourners” who visit Japan to form long-lasting romantic relationships with Japanese men, striving to adopt Japanese ethnosexual mores. I juxtapose the Chinese and South Korean men’s narratives with the voices of Japanese gay men who ambivalently position Chinese and South Korean tourists as a threat to the status quo of the Japanese gay sub-culture. I suggest that these men draw upon neo-colonial discourses of China and South Korea as “backward” which circulate throughout wider Japanese society to position Chinese and South Korean men as “ethnosexual invaders.”
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Although there has been a wealth of studies which have examined the discourses of masculinity and... more Although there has been a wealth of studies which have examined the discourses of masculinity and sexuality appearing within homoerotic manga marketed towards young girls and women known alternatively as yaoi, Boys Love or shōnen ai (in the West), there has been very little scholarly attention paid to the homoerotic genre known as bara, which is marketed towards homosexual men. This is despite the fact that various literary, sociological and anthropological studies of Japanese homosexualities have highlighted the important role bara manga play within the Japanese media, and particularly within gay magazines, which represent ‘gateways’ to knowledge about male homosexual desires in Japan.
This paper, drawing upon both quantitative and qualitative methods, examines how various stereotypical Types (taipu) of gay subjectivity are discursively constructed within the bara manga published in Bádi, a Japanese gay magazine. Analysis of these bara manga suggests that three different sub-genres of bara may be found within Bádi: Slice of Life, Humour, and Erotica. Each of these sub-genres is argued to present different discourses of gay subjectivity. Furthermore, subjectivities were found to be constructed through both linguistic and stylistic means, and this paper argues that language and physicality act as socially salient semiotics which index various tropes of stereotypical subjectivity. The paper concludes with a brief discussion of how discourses appearing within the sub-genre of Humour criticise tropes of physicality found within the other two genres.
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Publications by Thomas Baudinette
sexual desires and identities. I argue that both groups position
Koh as a symbol of a ‘Japanese gay masculinity’ that is
understood as normatively desirable. Interviews revealed that due
to this normative desirability, Koh acted as an aspirational model
in the everyday production of their identities as gay men.
Furthermore, Japanese gay men utilized Koh’s explicitly Japanese
masculinity to position themselves as legitimately masculine
within the context of a Japanese mainstream media landscape
that constructs same-sex-desiring men as ‘failed men’ due to their
supposed effeminacy. For Chinese gay men, Koh was deployed to
symbolically construct an ideal of ‘good Japanese guys’ that
helped them navigate systems of anti-Chinese xenophobia that
circulate throughout Japan’s gay cultural spaces.
This paper, drawing upon both quantitative and qualitative methods, examines how various stereotypical Types (taipu) of gay subjectivity are discursively constructed within the bara manga published in Bádi, a Japanese gay magazine. Analysis of these bara manga suggests that three different sub-genres of bara may be found within Bádi: Slice of Life, Humour, and Erotica. Each of these sub-genres is argued to present different discourses of gay subjectivity. Furthermore, subjectivities were found to be constructed through both linguistic and stylistic means, and this paper argues that language and physicality act as socially salient semiotics which index various tropes of stereotypical subjectivity. The paper concludes with a brief discussion of how discourses appearing within the sub-genre of Humour criticise tropes of physicality found within the other two genres.
sexual desires and identities. I argue that both groups position
Koh as a symbol of a ‘Japanese gay masculinity’ that is
understood as normatively desirable. Interviews revealed that due
to this normative desirability, Koh acted as an aspirational model
in the everyday production of their identities as gay men.
Furthermore, Japanese gay men utilized Koh’s explicitly Japanese
masculinity to position themselves as legitimately masculine
within the context of a Japanese mainstream media landscape
that constructs same-sex-desiring men as ‘failed men’ due to their
supposed effeminacy. For Chinese gay men, Koh was deployed to
symbolically construct an ideal of ‘good Japanese guys’ that
helped them navigate systems of anti-Chinese xenophobia that
circulate throughout Japan’s gay cultural spaces.
This paper, drawing upon both quantitative and qualitative methods, examines how various stereotypical Types (taipu) of gay subjectivity are discursively constructed within the bara manga published in Bádi, a Japanese gay magazine. Analysis of these bara manga suggests that three different sub-genres of bara may be found within Bádi: Slice of Life, Humour, and Erotica. Each of these sub-genres is argued to present different discourses of gay subjectivity. Furthermore, subjectivities were found to be constructed through both linguistic and stylistic means, and this paper argues that language and physicality act as socially salient semiotics which index various tropes of stereotypical subjectivity. The paper concludes with a brief discussion of how discourses appearing within the sub-genre of Humour criticise tropes of physicality found within the other two genres.
The study draws upon two interrelated sources of data: case studies of six young Japanese gay men’s consumption of media and content analyses of gay media. Data were collected through ethnographic participant observation conducted in Shinjuku Ni-chōme, intervention interviews with 50 young gay men, a series of in-depth semi-structured interviews with six principal informants, and quantitative and qualitative content analyses of gay magazines, pornographic videos, news sites and online dating services. The data were interpreted reflexively through the application of a Social Realist approach to research which posits that structural forces and an individual’s agency affect an individual’s discursive engagement with the world. To investigate the roles structure and agency played in the reflexive and historical process of meaning-making, the thesis drew upon Layder’s Domain Theory (1993, 1997) as a conceptual framework.
This study found that Typing dominated how gay desire was presented in Shinjuku Ni-chōme and the Japanese gay media. The six principal informants consumed a wide variety of this gay media, expressing that it allowed them to explore their desires in ways that challenged wider society’s conceptualisation of homosexuality, with consumption of pornography being particularly prevalent. Through their consumption, they learnt about Typing and viewed it as a method to understand individual and personal identity. However, as a classificatory system, Typing reduced desire to normative modes of consumption and identity was consequently reduced to the ascription of physical appearances and associated gendered performances. The study established that Japanese gay media promoted heteronormative understandings of masculinity as desirable, privileging hegemonic masculinity and youth whilst marginalising effeminacy. In particular, the figure of the heterosexual male was fetishized throughout Japanese gay cultural production, situating discourses of desirability within a heteronormative gendered binary. This privileging inculcated in some informants the normalcy of hard, rough masculinity and caused anxiety to those who felt they could not live up to such gendered ideals. Ultimately, this thesis argues that the dominance of Typing in Japan’s gay sub-culture limits the agency of young gay men in Japan, forcing them to fit their identities within its system in order to become desirable to others. Through this discussion, the thesis expands our knowledge of Japanese conceptualisations of sexuality, gender, masculinity and race, challenging dominant, Western-centric understandings of sexuality that underpin much queer studies research.
Through unofficial fan distribution of these TV serials via the internet, consumption of Thai “BL lakorn” such as Lovesick has become increasingly embedded within broader transnational BL fandoms. This is particularly true of the Philippines, where a large English-language fandom of “Thai BL” has developed online via social media. In the second half of this public lecture, I draw upon an emerging “netnography” of Filipino fans of Thai BL to investigate how the historically Japanese pop-cultural phenomenon of BL has become reconfigured as a fundamentally Thai phenomenon within the conceptual worlds of this fan community. I argue that the “Thai-ification” of BL represents an emblematic example of how Japanese popular culture has become disconnected from Japan due to its transnational circulation. To substantiate this claim, I present a brief survey of Filipino fan reactions to the perceived lack of “authentic BL tropes” in Lovesick and how this leads them to position BL as tied to Thailand.
Through interviews conducted with young gay Japanese consumers of K-Pop, I investigate how “Korean masculinity” is situated within the socio-semiotic system of “Typing” which structures knowledge of desire within Japan’s gay sub-culture. I demonstrate that, counter to the common-sense assumptions of K-Pop idols’ “softness” which circulate transnationally, Japanese gay consumers instead draw upon discourses of “beastliness” to position their desire for male K-Pop idols in opposition to that of heterosexual female consumers. I reveal through my analysis that the emphasis placed on consuming “beastly” K-Pop idols is situated within broader “regimes of desire” which structure the Japanese gay media landscape and which privilege heteronormative masculinity by constructing “masculine cuteness” (otokorashii kawaisa) as undesirable. In consuming, and yearning for, “beastly” Korean masculinity, Japanese gay consumers of K-Pop thus explicitly reject the valorisation of masculine cuteness found throughout Japanese mainstream media. I conclude by examining how Koreanness itself has become commoditised as a marker of “hard” masculinity within the Japanese gay sub-culture.
Reflecting upon ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Ni-chōme between 2013 and 2016, I argue in this presentation that rather than leading to the demise of the district, gay dating apps such as Grindr, Jack’d and 9 Monsters have instead reinforced the production of queer space. Drawing upon Soja’s influential theory of the “thirdspace,” I argue that Ni-chōme exists as both a real, physical space and a virtual, imagined space that is accessible via gay dating apps and social media services. Utilising social media allows gay men of all ages to virtually participate in the scene at Ni-chōme, fostering a sense of shared community. Dating apps, through their use of GPS technology, draw individuals to Ni-chōme by virtually mapping gay bodies/presence onto the district. Throughout the presentation, I reflect upon the conference theme of dis/connection to re-evaluate theories of queer space developed in the field of human geography to account for the increasingly mediated ways in which gay men interact with queer space via social media. In so doing, I argue that the “virtual connectivity” afforded by gay dating sites in the Japanese context has reinvigorated Japan’s gay towns and led many younger gay men to actively participate within the Japanese gay sub-culture.
Through a discursive analysis of the strategies users employ to construct their own identities, and the identities of their desired partners, I argue that identity categories marked as heteronormatively masculine and sawayaka (cool/hunky) are privileged as more desirable than feminine and kawaii (cute) identities. Through this analysis, I also suggest that users of this particular forum appear to valorise heteronormative masculinity, indexing its “hegemonic” status (Connell, 1995) by explicitly linking being sawayaka and otokorashii (masculine/manly) to notions of normality (futsū). Furthermore, I argue that being kawaii is considered undesirable due to its perception as transgressing normative masculine gendered traits, further constructing heteronormative masculinity as ideal. I conclude by reflecting on the globalising development of a “homonormative” (Duggan, 2002) desire for norms of masculinity tied to neoliberal models of heterosexual love and intimacy. I reflect upon the historical legacy of American discourses of the desirability of white, middle-class masculinity in Japan’s gay media, taking the Japanese gay dating BBS under examination as a site to explore the development of a Japanese understanding of a gay masculinity which takes heteronormativity as its starting point.
Drawing upon an ethnographic study of Ni-chome and interviews conducted with both Japanese and East Asian men, this paper utilizes Nagel’s theory of the ethnosexual frontier to examine how certain racial identities are rendered illegitimate in Ni-chome. The paper argues that through the stratification of Ni-chome into “sub-districts” where certain racial desires are rendered legitimate and others illegitimate, East Asian men are not provided with a legitimate space and are excluded from full participation in the Japanese gay scene. East Asian men perceive this as deliberately discriminatory and link this exclusion with experiences of xenophobia in wider Japanese society. The paper concludes by arguing that some, although not all, Japanese men draw upon racial stereotypes of Chinese and Korean men as “backward” to justify their exclusion of the “other” group.
I demonstrate that Japanese gay men view Ni-chome as a queer space which emerges from the heteronormative world. This emergence is indexed within their discussions of both the space itself and the gay media found within Ni-chome. For many Japanese gay men, Ni-chome acts as a counter-public space within which they can escape from the strictures of heteronormative society and interact with a community which supports and promotes the expression of certain gay subjectivities. Through analysis of gay media found in Ni-chome and analysis of my informants’ narratives, I demonstrate that the media and “scene” of Ni-chome promotes certain desires and identities as “normative.” In order to become socialised into Ni-chome, I argue, Japanese gay men are required to master a complex semiotic system drawn from the bars and media of Ni-chome which stratifies desires based on racial and gendered discourses. I conclude the paper by exploring how these discourses may be understood from the standpoint of queer semiotics, and how a semiotic analysis allows for the investigation of the legitimisation of certain identities and the marginalisation of others.
Following recent trends in sensory anthropology, I examine the sonic landscape of Shinjuku Ni-chome in order to understand what role sound, and silence, plays in organising space and mediating how individual Japanese gay men understand Ni-chome. Drawing upon ethnography and participant interviews, I argue that Ni-chome is subdivided into “soundscapes” where recorded music and spontaneous voices act as semiotic devices which index different gay subjectivities. I conclude by discussing how these soundscapes are drawn upon in Japanese gay men’s narratives of escaping the confines of heteronormative Tokyo through “entering a new [gay] world.”
Within this presentation, Thomas Baudinette provides an outline to the bara/gei komi genre, discusses its marketing and its consumption by gay men and introduces some popular producers of the genre. Thomas also discusses some of the major controversies surrounding bara/gei komi, particularly investigating its relationship to yaoi/BL.
https://tasayouth.wordpress.com/2015/01/12/negotiating-the-fetishisation-of-youth-in-the-gay-male-media-of-japan/
He’s looking at the kinds of images of gay men are disseminated throughout these media–whether they have tight bodies, a masculine highly built muscular bodies or whether they are slim.
And he loves his research.
His thesis topic? Investigating the Discursive instruction of desire–Japanese gay men and the media.
Thomas is also an encyclopedia of Japanese LGBT facts. We chat about the inclusivity of the LGBT movement, transgendered people in the media and workplace discrimination against unmarried men."
Podcast available through link.
1) Precarious Japan (Weeks 2, 3 & 4)
2) Gender and Sexuality (Weeks 5, 6 & 7)
3) Ethnic Minorities (Weeks 8, 9 & 10)
4) Japan in the World (Weeks 11, 12 & 13)
Topics covered include: cultural dynamics of the contemporary family; politics and civil society; economic cycles of boom and stress; environmental issues and tipping points; education; the pathway to adulthood; reconstructions of gender, Japanese sexual minority cultures; ethnic difference and communities; minorities and social peripheries; forms of popular culture; and Japan's place in the broader world.
This unit is taught in English and no prior knowledge of Japanese language is required.
8:30am to 10:15am
Venue: TBA
Chairs/Organizers:
Michelle H. S. Ho, National University of Singapore
Thomas Baudinette, Macquarie University
Discussant: Chung-Kang Kim, Hanyang University
Recent years have seen a growing interest in Hallyu (Korean wave) and Korean popular culture, with a strong research focus on masculinity and women audiences in its production and consumption across Asia. However, less attention has yet to be paid to the marginalized groups of K-pop (Korean popular music) artistes who openly identify as LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender) and LGBT-identified consumers of K-pop music and idol performances both within and outside South Korea. This panel explores the lives, media representations, and transnational fandoms of K-pop idols via a queer theoretical approach. Collectively, all four presentations interrogate K-pop idols and fandoms situated variously within and beyond Korea, Japan, and the Philippines using textual analysis and (digital) ethnography. Taking the case studies of male-to-female transgender idols Harisu and Choi Han-Bit, Michelle Ho explores their digital presence and fandom on social media. Thomas Baudinette argues that young Japanese gay men’s K-pop fandom is important for enabling the development of their queer identity. Alona U. Guervarra examines how Filipino queer teens’ reception and participatory fandom of K-pop provide avenues for promoting global Hallyu, gender equality, and safe spaces. Employing online observations, Jee Won Lee traces various tensions between international LGBT fandom of the heterosexual K-pop idol group BTS (Bangtan Boys) and the Korean LGBT community’s resistance towards such celebratory discourses. Contributing to Asia being constantly in motion and on the rise, this panel considers current debates on LGBT issues, politics, and individuals traversing Asia by charting the transnational flows of K-pop.
Transgender K-Pop: Male-to-Female Idols and their Digital Fandoms
Michelle H. S. Ho
National University of Singapore
“Don’t look at them like some silly girl”: Japanese gay men’s negotiation of female K-pop fandom in Japan
Thomas Baudinette
Macquarie University
From Vice Ganda's K-Style Fashion to Queer Teens in K-pop Cover Groups: Hallyu Reception by Filipino LGBTQ (2012-2017)
Alona U. Guevarra
Ateneo de Manila University
“LGBT loves K-pop”: Issues on LGBT fandom of K-pop and its potential
Jee Won Lee
Seoul National University
BL分析から見えるアジアの現状と日本の特異性―――
世界のBL、LGBT(Q)、マンガ研究の第一人者たちがいま解き明かす。
Originally a female-oriented genre emanating from Japan, BL media depicts male–male romance and sexuality. While BL first appeared as commercially published shōjo (girls) manga, BL media also includes fan works (dōjinshi, etc.), anime, light novels, drama CDs, cosplay, and goods.
BL Opening Doors examines the BL media phenomenon as it has spread and been transformed around East, Southeast, and South Asia, with chapters covering this media and its fans in China, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and Thailand.
BLが開く扉 ―変容するアジアのセクシュアリティとジェンダー―
BL ga hiraku tobira: Hen'yō suru Ajia no sekushuariti to jendā
BL Opening Doors: Sexuality and Gender Transfigured in Asia
ジェームズ・ウェルカー編著 James Welker, ed.
【目次】TOC
序章 ボーイズラブ(BL)とそのアジアにおける変容・変貌・変化(トランスフィギュレーション)
Introduction: Boys Love (BL) and Its Asian Transfigurations(1)
ジェームズ・ウェルカー James Welker
第I部BLの意味と欲望(Part I—BL: Meaning and Desire)
BLとスラッシュのはざまで 現代中国の「耽美」フィクション、文化越境的媒介、変化するジェンダー規範
Between BL and Slash: Danmei Fiction, Transcultural Mediation, and Changing Gender Norms in Contemporary China (1)
シュウ・ヤンルイ&ヤン・リン Yanrui Xu and Ling Yang
フェミニズムの時代、BLの意味を問い直す 2010年代韓国のインターネットにおける脱BL言説をめぐって
Rethinking the Meaning of BL in an Era of Feminism: Online Discourse on “Leaving BL” in late 2010s Korea (2)
キム・ヒョジン Hyojin Kim
「腐男子になる」欲望. 東アジアにおける異性愛男性BLファン比較研究
On the Psychology, Physicality, and Communication Strategies of Male Fans of BL in EastAsia: Cross-Cultural Analysis of Men’s Desires and to “Become” Fudanshi (2)
長池一美 Kazumi Nagaike
日本のBL その特徴に注目して
Japanese BL: With Attention to Its Particular Characteristics
守如子 Naoko Mori
神話からゲーム、そしてホモエロティック・フィクションへ. 中国、日本と台湾の「真・三國無双」BL同人誌
From Legends to Games to Homoerotic Fiction: Dynasty Warriors BL Textsfrom China, Japan, and Taiwan (2)
齋藤朝子パトリシア Asako Patricia Saito
コラム (Columns)
『おっさんずラブ』という分岐点
Ossan’s Love as a Point of Divergence
藤本由香里 Yukari Fujimoto
東京・新宿のゲイ・シーンにおける出会いと「多様性」トレンドな出会いの空間に着目して
Encounters and Diversity in Tokyo’s Shinjuku Gay Scene: A Look at Trends
石田仁 Hitoshi Ishida
第II部LGBT(Q)とBL (Part II—LGBT(Q) and BL )
憧れの世界を読み取る 一時滞在の中国人ゲイに対する「希望のよりどころ」としてのBL
Aspirational Reading: BL as a “Resource of Hope” for Temporary Chinese Gay Migrants in Japan (3)
トーマス・ボーディネット Thomas Baudinette
ゲイ「ファン」の「ファン」想像と存在のはざまから立ち上がるタイのボーイズラブ
Fan of Gay Fan: Realizing Boys Love in Thailand betwixt Imagination and Existence (1)
カン=グエン・ビュンジュ・ドレッジ Dredge Byung’chu Kang-Nguyễn
抑圧か革命か 同性婚合法化運動に対する台湾のBLファンコミュニティの反応
Repression or Revolution? On Taiwanese BL fan Community’s Reactions to the Same-Sex Marriage Legalization Movement (1)
ワン・ペイティ Peiti Wang
DESI DESU (インド人デス) インドの都市部における性、セクシュアリティ、BL消費
Desi Desu: Sex, Sexuality and BL Consumption in Urban India (1)
ラクシュミ・メノン Lakshmi Menon
不調和な情熱. インドネシアにおけるボーイズラブ・ファンのアイデンティティ交渉とLGBTに向けるまなざし
Dissonant Passions: Indonesian Boys Love Fans’ Identity Negotiation and Their Perspectives about LGBT Issues (1)
ギタ・プラムディタ・プラメスワリ Gita Pramudita Prameswari
あとがきラブ&エロの「やさしい世界」のクィアな欲望
Afterword: Queer Desire in a “Gentle World” of Love and Eroticism
堀あきこ Akiko Hori
(1) Translated by Mana Sato (佐藤まな)
(2) Self-translated
(3) Translated by Asako Patricia Saito (齋藤朝子パトリシア)
Through careful analysis of media such as pornographic videos, manga comics, lifestyle magazines and online dating services, this book argues that the commercial imperatives of the Japanese gay media landscape and the bar culture of Shinjuku Ni-chōme act together to limit the agency of young gay men so as to better exploit them economically. Exploring the direct impacts of media consumption on the lives of four key informants who frequent the district’s gay bars in search of community, fun and romance, Regimes of Desire reveals the complexity of Tokyo’s most popular “gay town” and intervenes in debates over the changing nature of masculinity in contemporary Japan.