| Summary: | This paper discusses some concerns about Japanese gender identity as a construct and the subversive means to overthrow it. In my paper I claim that the eastern influences on Japan has created a gap between old and new gender- traditions and norms. This interspace is what the philosopher Judith Butler claims as the site for a possible gender transformation. As Butler claims gender identity to be a construct, I use her methods of understanding and subsequently queertheory, to investigate the construct of Japanese gender identity and also the norms that constitute a national identity. As I elaborate on this theory I use specific artworks from Morimura Yasumasa, Yoshiko Shimada and Bubu de la Madeleine and also the all-male theatre kabuki vs. the all-female revue takarazuka. These examples are not symptomatic for a queer culture. Rather they, as I, aim to in some stances challenge normative gender roles and in other cases offer an alternative vision of what gender identity can mean. As the paper will show, queertheory is a tool that is available for anyone who wishes to criticize and examine strategies of a normative gender. The artworks and the queertheoretical interpretations will, in this paper, offer a possibility to dream of another world.
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