THE POLITICS OF ANDROGYNY IN JAPAN - SEXUALITY AND SUBVERSION IN THE THEATER AND BEYOND

The gendered body is constructed and performative. Androgyny involves the scrambling of gender markers (clothes, gestures, speech patterns) in a "surface politics of the body." I explore the politics of androgyny in Japan as they have been embodied and enacted by same-sex theater actors and expressed in Japanese society at large. The referent of androgyny, or the body of the androgyne, his changed over the past 300 years from male to female. Since the early 20th century, androgyny has been deployed in both dominant and marginal discourses to camouflage "unconventional" female sexual choices and practices by creating the illusion of an asexual identity. it has also been evoked in reference to females who "do" both "female" and "male" gender without being constrained by either.