Project MUSE - Male Love for BL, Shota, and Otokonoko Characters: Japanese Alternative Masculinities Mediating Different Modes of Existence

This website uses cookies to ensure you get the best experience on our website. Without cookies your experience may not be seamless. In contemporary Japanese society, popular genres such as manga and anime are used by male fans to obscure the prevalence of hegemonic masculinity through enthusiastically orienting nonbinary reading (and watching) practices and even acting on embedded alternative identities, genders, and sexualities presented by specific works. For example, cross-dressing cosplay or the reading of girls' manga lead male readers to expect possible alternative masculinities. Of those who have conducted research on danseigaku (men's studies) in Japan, Itō Kimio most clearly illuminates the sociocultural phenomena that enforce compulsory expressions of masculinity on Japanese men. For example, Itō demonstrates in detail how both formal and informal education teach Japanese boys to behave in a stereotypically manly fashion, encouraging them to take pride in being aggressive, a

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