This book is a feminist reading of the history of gender performance and construction of the female role players, onnagata, of the Kabuki theater. It is not limited to a ''theater arts'' focus, rather it is a mapping and close analysis of transformative genders through several historical periods in Japan (the seventeenth through the twentieth centuries). In particular, the work focuses on undoing of binary genders, the sensual ambiguity of boy-ness, youth, and female-likeness and the cultural development of the aesthetics of eroticism, nostalgia, and cruelty based in female-like transformative gender acts. The work is also a visual cultures study as it draws not only on literary sources but also prints, photographs, film, and video documentation.
Author(s): Katherine Mezur
Edition: illustrated edition
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Year: 2005
Language: English
Commentary: 30165
Pages: 335
Cover......Page 1
Contents......Page 8
List of Illustrations......Page 10
Acknowledgments......Page 12
1 Transforming Genders......Page 16
2 Theory into Performance......Page 32
3 Precursors and Unruly Vanguards......Page 66
4 Star Designing and Myth Making......Page 94
5 Modernity, Nation, and Eros: Boys versus Women......Page 130
6 The Aesthetics of Female-Likeness......Page 152
7 The Intentional Body......Page 192
8 Performative Gender Role Types......Page 224
9 Toward a New Alchemy of Gender, Sex, and Sexuality......Page 254
Notes......Page 268
Bibliography......Page 308
H......Page 316
K......Page 317
O......Page 318
Y......Page 319
Z......Page 320
B......Page 322
D......Page 323
G......Page 324
H......Page 325
K......Page 326
N......Page 328
O......Page 329
P......Page 330
S......Page 331
T......Page 332
Y......Page 333
Z......Page 334
