Dissertation

Title: Finding the Rainbow World: Transnational Queer Networks and Literary Translation in Cold War Japan

Dissertation Committee: Dr. Ayako Kano (Chair), Dr. Linda Chance, Dr. Jonathan D. Katz, Dr. J. Keith Vincent

Description: My PhD dissertation examines how Japan’s legal and cultural tolerance towards queer sexualities after World War II allowed it to become a thriving space for global queer artistic and literary production from the late 1940s to the 1970s. While the United States and other English-speaking countries increasingly sought to regulate queer sexualities in the early years of the Cold War, postwar Japan’s legal and cultural tolerance saw the emergence of transnational queer communities in Tokyo and other urban centers. These conditions also allowed for fruitful collaborations between queer Japanese artists, writers, and English-speaking translators and scholars who first came to Japan during the Occupation Period (1945-1952). The collaborations between these writers, scholars, and translators were crucial in the so-called “Japan boom” around the world during the 1950s and 1960s and in reshaping global perceptions of Japanese literature and culture in the aftermath of World War II.