Available From UC Press

The essays in this groundbreaking book explore the meanings of manhood in Japan from the seventeenth to the twenty-first centuries. Recreating Japanese Men examines a broad range of attitudes regarding properly masculine pursuits and modes of behavior. It charts breakdowns in traditional and conventional societal roles and the resulting crises of masculinity. Contributors address key questions about Japanese manhood ranging from icons such as the samurai to marginal men including hermaphrodites, robots, techno-geeks, rock climbers, shop clerks, soldiers, shoguns, and more. In addition to bringing historical evidence to bear on definitions of masculinity, contributors provide fresh analyses on the ways contemporary modes and styles of masculinity have affected Japanese men’s sense of gender as authentic and stable.

Sabine Frühstück is Professor of Modern Japanese Culture at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She is the author of Uneasy Warriors: Gender, Memory, and Popular Culture in the Japanese Army and Colonizing Sex: Sexology and Social Control in Modern Japan, both from UC Press. Anne Walthall is Professor of History at the University of California, Irvine. She is the editor of Servants of the Dynasty: Palace Women in World History (UC Press) and author of The Weak Body of a Useless Woman: Matsuo Taseko and the Meiji Restoration, among others.