
Permitted and Prohibited Desires
Mothers, Comics, and Censorship in Japan
Anne Allison(Author)
University of California Press
1st Edition
Published on 14. January 2000
Book
Paperback/Softback
251 pages
978-0-520-21990-8 (ISBN)
Description
This provocative study of gender and sexuality in contemporary Japan investigates elements of Japanese popular culture including erotic comic books, stories of mother-son incest, lunchboxes--or obentos--that mothers ritualistically prepare for schoolchildren, and children's cartoons. Anne Allison brings recent feminist psychoanalytic and Marxist theory to bear on representations of sexuality, motherhood, and gender in these and other aspects of Japanese culture. Based on five years of fieldwork in a middle-class Tokyo neighborhood, this theoretically informed, accessible ethnographic study provides a provocative analysis of how sexuality, dominance, and desire are reproduced and enacted in late-capitalistic Japan.
More details
Edition
First Edition
Language
English
Place of publication
Berkerley
United States
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Illustrations
27 b-w images
Dimensions
Height: 229 mm
Width: 152 mm
Thickness: 18 mm
Weight
408 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-520-21990-8 (9780520219908)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

E-Book
09/2020
1st Edition
De Gruyter
€28.99
Available for download
Person
Anne Allison is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Duke University, and author of Nightwork: Sexuality, Pleasure, and Corporate Masculinity in a Tokyo Hostess Club (1994).
Content
List of Figures
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1 Different Differences: Place and Sex in Anthropology,
Feminism, and Cultural Studies
Story 1
Story 2
Divides Between Theory and Ethnography
Divides Between Gender and Sexuality
Disciplinary and Theoretical Divides
Toward the Bridging of Divides: Playing with the Phallus
2 A Male Gaze in Japanese Children's Cartoons, or,
Are Naked Female Bodies Always Sexual?
Sights/Sites of Gender and Sex: Western Theories
of the Male Gaze
Machiko-sensei and the Male Gaze in Japanese Children's
Cartoons
3 Cartooning Erotics: Japanese Ero Manga
Manga: Comics of (not only) Play
Ero Manga: Texts
Cutting the Other, Cutting Off the Self
Conclusion
4 Japanese Mothers and Obentos:
The Lunch Box as Ideological State Apparatus
Cultural Ritual and State Ideology
Japanese Food as Cultural Myth
School, State, and Subjectivity
Nursery School and Ideological Appropriation of the Obento
Mothering as Gendered Ideological State Apparatus
5 Producing Mothers
Kyoiku Mama: The Everyday Instiller of Everyday Education
The Discipline of Summer Vacation
Productive Mergences: Mother's Love and School's Discipline
Women's Experiences in Their Roles as Education Mothers
Conclusion
6 Transgressions of the Everyday: Stories of Mother-Son Incest
in Japanese Popular Culture
Evils of incest
Incestuous Pleasures
Incest, Taboos, and Two Myths: Oedipus and Ajase
Conclusion: Timing and Nationalism
7 Pubic Veilings and Public Surveillance:
Obscenity Laws and Obscene Fantasies in Japan
Travel and Borders
What Is Dirty, and What Is Clean?
Modernizing the Public, Fetishizing the Pubic
Covering Territories: State and Border Control
Lacking Parts
Postscript
Notes
References
About the Book and Author
Index
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1 Different Differences: Place and Sex in Anthropology,
Feminism, and Cultural Studies
Story 1
Story 2
Divides Between Theory and Ethnography
Divides Between Gender and Sexuality
Disciplinary and Theoretical Divides
Toward the Bridging of Divides: Playing with the Phallus
2 A Male Gaze in Japanese Children's Cartoons, or,
Are Naked Female Bodies Always Sexual?
Sights/Sites of Gender and Sex: Western Theories
of the Male Gaze
Machiko-sensei and the Male Gaze in Japanese Children's
Cartoons
3 Cartooning Erotics: Japanese Ero Manga
Manga: Comics of (not only) Play
Ero Manga: Texts
Cutting the Other, Cutting Off the Self
Conclusion
4 Japanese Mothers and Obentos:
The Lunch Box as Ideological State Apparatus
Cultural Ritual and State Ideology
Japanese Food as Cultural Myth
School, State, and Subjectivity
Nursery School and Ideological Appropriation of the Obento
Mothering as Gendered Ideological State Apparatus
5 Producing Mothers
Kyoiku Mama: The Everyday Instiller of Everyday Education
The Discipline of Summer Vacation
Productive Mergences: Mother's Love and School's Discipline
Women's Experiences in Their Roles as Education Mothers
Conclusion
6 Transgressions of the Everyday: Stories of Mother-Son Incest
in Japanese Popular Culture
Evils of incest
Incestuous Pleasures
Incest, Taboos, and Two Myths: Oedipus and Ajase
Conclusion: Timing and Nationalism
7 Pubic Veilings and Public Surveillance:
Obscenity Laws and Obscene Fantasies in Japan
Travel and Borders
What Is Dirty, and What Is Clean?
Modernizing the Public, Fetishizing the Pubic
Covering Territories: State and Border Control
Lacking Parts
Postscript
Notes
References
About the Book and Author
Index