Forms of the Body in Contemporary Japanese Society, Literature, and Culture

Irina Holca is associate professor at the University of Tokyo. Carmen Sǎpunaru Tămaș is associate professor at the University of Hyogo.

Part I: The Performed Body

Chapter One: A Japanese Fox in a Woman’s Body: Shifting Performances of Femininity in Kij Johnson’s Reworking of Konjaku Monogatari
Luciana Cardi

Chapter Two: Call Me a Dog. Feeling (Inugami) Possession in Contemporary Tokushima Prefecture
Andrea De Antoni

Chapter Three: Kabuki: Performance of Gendered Bodies
Galia Todorova Gabrovska

Chapter Four: Home Is Where Mother Is, and the Way to a Man’s Heart Goes through His Stomach: Bodies in the Kitchen (Yoshimoto Banana)
Irina Holca

Chapter Five: The Body as Canvas: Osaka Drag Queens from Kabuki to Lady Gaga
Carmen Săpunaru Tămaș

Part II: The De-formed Body

Chapter Six: The Body in Motion in Butō: Passivity and Transformation in the Flesh
Caitlin Coker

Chapter Seven: Senility and the Body: Care and Gender in Contemporary Japanese Literature
Shun Izutani

Chapter Eight: The Cared for Dog and the Caring Dog: Ethical Possibilities in Rieko Matsuura’s Kenshin
Kayo Takeuchi

Chapter Nine: Pricking Pain Surrounds Us: Restraining, Shaping, and Taming the Body in Hebi ni Piasu
Emerald L. King

Chapter Ten: Literature as Social Activism and Reconciliation: Survivors’ Writing and the Meaning of Hansen’s Disease in Japan after 1950
Kathryn Tanaka

Chapter Eleven: The Bald and the Beautiful: Perspectives on Baldness in Contemporary Japan
Adrian O. Tămaș

Part III: The Conformed Body

Chapter Twelve: The Asian Body in the North American Context: Visual and Literary Racialization
Alina E. Anton



Chapter Thirteen: Bodies in the Dark: The Postwar Cinema Audience and the Body as ‘Ground Zero’
Jennifer Coates

Chapter Fourteen: The Confined Body in Ogawa Yōko’s The Ring Finger: A Beguiling Journey towards “Self-discovery”
Kayo Sasao

Chapter Fifteen: Bodies of Onna-no-ko: The Case of a Sex Establishment in Tokyo, Japan
Yoko Kumada