21st Century Japanese Queerness 

21st Century Japanese Queerness

In 1903 Douglas Sladen attempted to comprehensively document Japanese culture. His book, Queer Things About Japan, was little more than a prejudiced and superficial abuse of the Japanese way of life. The English adored it and it soon became a bestseller. More than a century later I have been given an opportunity to draw my own conclusions about Japan. These remarks are merely reactionary noodles of thought, coloured more by divergences from the familiar than by any profound knowledge of the Japanese way of life. These are the observations of a gaijin* who knows he won’t eat a proper sausage for another three months…