Greetings!

 

On behalf of the International Japanese Studies Group at Kanagawa University's Minatomirai Campus, in Yokohama, Japan, I am pleased to announce the following lecture:

 

Why Is Cross-Dressing Perceived as a Fray in the Social Fabric? A Case Study from Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Japan

 

Daniele Durante

Postdoctoral Fellow, Dept. of Linguistics and Comparative Cultural Studies, Ca' Foscari University

Visiting Researcher, Faculty of Cross-Cultural and Japanese Studies, Kanagawa University

 

Wednesday, 18 June 2025 (in person only)
15:30-17:00
Room 8015
Kanagawa University, Minatomirai Campus
Yokohama

 

Abstract

Between the 1730s and 1840s, in Edo (modern-day Tokyo), Osaka, and Kyoto groups of women who belonged to different social classes, including prostitutes, commoners, warriors, and high-ranking women, donned the haori jacket, a garment usually worn by men. In the 1740s and 1840s, legislators enacted specific sumptuary laws to forbid this practice as it encouraged the mixing of women from dissimilar social backgrounds. However, in the legal texts the lawmakers did not specify the complex social, political, and cultural reasons why such mixing brought about by urban women's (mis)use of the haori was considered problematic. To fully understand this aspect of the phenomenon, it is therefore crucial to study supplementary sources which offer a more comprehensive overview of the issues linked with the practice. Examining "miscellanies" (zuihitsu, literally "following the brush") written by intellectuals of the time, this paper suggests that urban women's donning of the haori destabilised the very foundations of contemporary society: Early modern Japan and particularly its major cities were in fact structured as a garrison state wherein each individual occupied a precise "status" (mibun), which was visually signaled by his or her clothes. Furthermore, attire also optically denoted a person's gender. By serving as visible indicators of one's status and gender, dresses functioned as what Herman Ooms has termed "social tattoos." This paper argues that by wearing the haori urban women altered their markers of status and gender, thus shaking the social, political, and cultural organisation of the state at its core.

To Attend (in person only)

 

Preregistration via the link below at least a day in advance for those coming in person from outside the KU community is greatly appreciated. If you are coming from off campus, please also register as a Guest at the Information counter near the entrance before coming up to the room.

ご来場の⽅： 神奈川⼤学関係者は事前登録不要です。学外の⽅は前⽇までに下記のリンクにて事前登録をお願いします。当⽇は1FのInformationカウンターでGuest登録を済ませてから、部屋までお越しください。Zoom でのご参加は事前登録不要です。当⽇は上記の Zoom ミーティング ID とパスコードでログインしてください。

 

https://forms.gle/ji2nWbnZgxGpfcZE6

 

Inquiries・お問い合わせ: James Welker jrwelker@kanagawa-u.ac.jp

 

Future Lectures

The International Japanese Studies Group at Kanagawa University also plans the following future lecture the remainder of the Japanese academic year. All lectures will be from 3:30 to 5:00 pm at our Minatomirai Campus. Lectures will be hybrid when possible. (Which second semester lectures will be hybrid will be announced later.) Please mark your calendars. 

 

For abstracts and further details, please also refer to the flier here: http://human.kanagawa-u.ac.jp/kenkyu/symposium/pdf/spring_2025.pdf

 

Wednesday, 23 July 2025 (Hybrid)
Julia C. Bullock, Emory University
Beauvoir in Japan: Japanese Women and The Second Sex

 

Wednesday, 24 September 2025
Chen Yen-yi, Sophia University
Bodies Performed: Images and Worship of Shaka in Medieval Japan.

 

Wednesday, 22 October 2025
Alejandro Morales, Kanagawa University
Monstrous Obsessions: The Undercurrents of Desire in the Aesthetics of Izumi Kyoka

 

Wednesday, 19 November 2025
P.A. George, Kanagawa University
Difficulties of Translating Japanese Literature into Foreign Languages: With Special Reference to Malayalam Translation of Ishikawa Takuboku's Ichiaku no suna (A handful of sand)

 

Wednesday, 17 December 2025
Elise Voyau, Kanagawa University
Japan in Tension After 1968: The Workshop School of Photography in Focus

 

Wednesday, 21 January 2026
Quintana Scherer, Kanagawa University
Yokohama-e and the Imagined Foreigner

 

Details on upcoming lectures will be announced one to two weeks in advance. If you would like to be on our direct email list to be sure you do not miss an announcement, please contact James Welker (jrwelker@kanagawa-u.ac.jp). 

 

Best regards,

 

James Welker

Kanagawa University

===================================================================
|| James Welker  |  ジェームズ・ウェルカー  (he/him)
|| Professor  |  教授 

|| Department of Cross-Cultural Studies, Faculty of Cross-Cultural & Japanese Studies

|| Kanagawa University--Minatomirai Campus

|| 神奈川大学 みなとみらいキャンパス 国際日本学部 国際文化交流学科

|| jrwelker@kanagawa-u.ac.jp  |  jrwelker@me.com

|| Linktree (Professional profiles & social media)

===================================================================

Co-editor of the Global Queer Asias book series (University of Michigan Press)

Kanagawa University International Japanese Studies Talk Series, Spring-Summer 2025

Selected Publications:

--James Welker, Transfiguring Women in Late Twentieth Century Japan: Feminists, Lesbians, and Girls' Comics Artists and Fans (University of Hawai'i Press, 2024)
--James Welker, ed. Queer Transfigurations: Boys Love Media in Asia (University of Hawai'i Press, 2022)
--James Welker, ed. "Queer(ing)," special issue of Mechademia: Second Arc 13, no. 1 (2020)
--ジェームズ・ウェルカー 編著『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』(青土社  2019)  [James Welker, ed., BL Opening Doors: Transfiguring Sexuality and Gender in Asia (Seidosha, 2019)]