Crossdressing and the Negotiation of Gender in Nineteenth-Century Japan

In her seminal monograph Josō to Nihonjin (Male Crossdressing and the Japanese, 2008), Mitsuhashi Junko analyzes four case studies of biological men in nineteenth century Japan who donned female clothing to live their lives as women; in other words, they crossdressed and gender crossed. Mitsuhashi has proved the existence in nineteenth century Japan of a practice which allowed men to negotiate their gender identity, thus assuming not the male gender, as per societal expectation, but the female gender. In this paper, I will expand on Mitsuhashi’s results by examining the experiences of both crossdressing men and women from the nineteenth century drawn from diverse written and visual sources, ranging from zuihitsu (miscellanies), tribunal reports, nishikie (brocade pictures), fictional tales, and journal articles. I will examine the sources through contextualizing the data in the cultural and social milieu of the time. By comparing the life stories of crossdressing men and women, I will show that their experiences shared fundamental points as regards to: (1) the reasons why the subjects negotiated their gender; (2) the complex ways men and women used fashion to gender cross; (3) the social status the individuals occupied and the jobs they pursued; and (4) the linguistic items the sources used to refer to the individuals themselves, to their crossdressing, and to their gender identity. By illustrating these aspects of the practice, I will present a more detailed overview of crossdressing and the negotiation of gender identity in nineteenth century Japan. In particular, I will demonstrate that not only men but also women crossdressed and gender crossed. Furthermore, I will offer a more finely nuanced framework of the motivations behind the practice, the attire and accessories crossdressing people used, their status and the jobs which were available to them, and the linguistic concepts that were applied to the subjects. In this way, I will make an important contribution to the understanding of gender in the history of Japan.