Stephen Christopher (University of Copenhagen) donnera une conférence intitulée :
“Japanese Liberative Erotics in Manga Depictions
of Tibetan Monks”
Mercredi 9 novembre 2022, de 15h à 16h
Maison de l’Asie, 22 avenue du Président Wilson, Paris
Abstract
Men have historically dominated the artistic production of cultural exotifications in Japan. This article flips the script by analyzing how two prominent female Japanese manga artists—Kuranishi and Shinsan Nameko—illustrate Tibetan men, specifically Tibetan Buddhist monks, as embodiments of erotic potentiality. Through textual analysis and fieldwork conducted from 2019-21, we show how their manga depictions of Tibetan men and monks tend towards eroticization and sexual innuendo. This discursive and aesthetic trend in manga parallels ethnographic data on how Japanese women—facing unprecedented social precarity, seeking spiritual healing and self-transformation, and desiring alternate masculinities—look elsewhere, outside of Japan and the perceived inadequacies of gendered Japanese society. We explore how liberative erotics, especially homoeroticism and love of and between boys, fuses with Buddhist and alternative spiritualities in yaoi and shōnen-ai genres and gestures towards a changing landscape of female desire.
Stephen Christopher
He is a Marie Curie postdoctoral fellow at the University of Copenhagen. In 2019, he was a JSPS Postdoctoral Fellow at Kyoto University. He is currently writing a book about Japanese support of Tibetans.