University of Michigan Press Intersex Figures in Modern Japanese Literature and Art: Volume 105 (Michigan Monograph Series in Japanese Studies)

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—anything else was unintelligible. Today, many of the same century-old tropes and societal attitudes of needing to “cure” intersex persist, as exhibited in the monstrous depiction of the futanari character in the 1991 novel Ringu by Suzuki Kōji, which inspired the eponymous horror film. Winston reads the metaphorical 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 or contradicted the dominant discourse. Straddling several disciplines within Japanese area studies–gender and sexuality studies, literary studies, studies of state power, Japanese feminist studies–Intersex Figures in Modern Japanese Literature and Art illuminates the counter-discourse to the domination of an increasingly polarized sexual economy.