[1] Since the Japanese economic bubble burst in early 1990s, scholars have contextualized many of the changes occurring around gendered expectations and constructions of family, work, and home within this newfound sense of economic precarity. Traditional gender norms of the breadwinner husband and the "good wife, wise mother" became much more difficult to uphold as men no longer had access to the same kinds of stable lifetime jobs, and women could explore other options—both out of need and want. As opposed to the now unattainable (and unattractive) cis-heteronormative nuclear family unit, the ways in which fans relate to various popular culture goods and communities as alternative sources of emotional and physical intimacy have been particularly striking. It is in this context that Michelle H. S. Ho's Emergent Genders takes readers into the prepandemic world of josō/otoko no ko (male-to-female cross-dressing) and dansō (female-to-male cross-dressing) café-bars in Akihabara, a district in central Tokyo. Ho begins with an analysis of the documentary Shinjuku Boys (1995), the first piece of media to propel the lives of dansō and transmasculine individuals into international awareness. After establishing this context, she delves into her own expansive fourteen-month ethnographic study conducted between 2014 and 2017 of the employees and customers at two such café-bar businesses. Through this interdisciplinary approach, she traces a lineage of nonconforming gendered practices and ways of being that now coalesce into what she terms "emergent genders" in "late-capitalist Tokyo" (7).
[2] Akihabara is a critical character in this story. Ho is specific about locating her field site here, rather than Tokyo's historical gay and lesbian neighborhood, Shinjuku Ni-chōme. The rise and popularity in the 2000s of Paradise and Garçon, the pseudonymous josō and dansō (respectively) café-bars centered in this study, are directly linked to Akihabara's contemporaneous development as a hub of mass consumption and culture. Ho explains this neighborhood's rise within Japan's history as a "boom-based society," where certain subcultures become co-opted and mainstreamed (15). The subcultural form deemed different in some way—and therefore novel—is picked up by mainstream media and audiences, and that "difference" is continuously replicated through mass commodification and consumption, becoming a "boom" (16). After this novelty has been exhausted, another new, exciting thing is identified to be the next boom. In this case, going into the 2000s and the manga/anime boom, Akihabara became a mecca for otaku (fans of anime, manga, and games), who had already begun forming communities around playing with and performing gender in nonnormative ways through establishments and activities such as maid cafés and cosplay. Practitioners of contemporary josō and dansō culture and their fans/customers then emerged as providing yet other ways of creatively resisting proscriptive gender and sexual categories—categories often policed through medical institutionalization or imposed by US-centric discourse and scholarship. At Paradise and Garçon, employees and customers not only share drink and conversation but also watch anime and play video games together, and share fashion and beauty tips. This co-consumption cultivates emergent genders and the "'nonhegemonic formations' of societies and economies" in which they circulate (26).
[3] The cover, featuring Xavier Portelo's (2016) photo "Tokyo Glow—Reality is a manga," instantly transports us into the vibrant nighttime cityscape Ho's interlocutors call and make home. The following seven chapters include an introduction, five content chapters, and a coda. Peppered strategically throughout are images and stills from Shinjuku Boys (1995), promotional materials from the café-bars, and spreads from fashion magazines. For those unfamiliar with dansō and josō café-bars and what the people inhabiting these spaces might look like, these images give readers an idea of the diverse aesthetics dansō and josō practitioners and admirers might employ and enjoy. Readers who are already familiar with these aesthetics will have the chance to visually connect them to, for example, sartorial and aesthetic practices in visual kei, maid cafés, or Takarazuka Revue.
[4] The central argument of Emergent Genders lies in the queer-materialist approach Ho takes to understand how the gender nonconforming folks in these café-bars "search for ways to survive" within and against forms of cis-heteronormative productivity defined by capitalism (13). This approach makes clear how the material conditions of economic precarity that rendered the aforementioned gender norms impossible also set the stage for trans and nonbinary workers at these cafés to generate nonnormative forms of gender expression. Notably, this is done in part by capitalizing on new and recurrent booms in Japanese popular culture. In Chapter 1, Ho attends to the historical and material conditions that have shaped her interlocutors' understandings of gender and sexuality. For readers interested in learning more about gender crossing practices in Japan throughout history, the first few sections of the chapter provide a tight overview: from practices of gender performance in classical forms of theatre, such as Kabuki's onnagata (male actors in female roles); to the influence of Western sexology in 1920s on defining, then selling, "perverse" desires such as homosexuality and cross-dressing; to the more modern otokoyaku (women trained to play men's roles) of the all-women theater group Takarazuka; to the proliferation of the androgynous "beautiful boy" characters of shōjo (girls') manga starting in the 1950s.
[5] This historical overview shows how the gender categories that developed in the 1990s era of economic recession iterated on practices going back to the premodern, while also responding to a generative confluence of new factors: young people who were increasingly disinterested in or unable to access normative ideals of productivity (marry and have children), the rise of mass media, and the growth of commercial social/entertainment spaces. Paradise first opened its doors in this context, bringing the previously two-dimensional otoko no ko character, heretofore only seen in games and manga, into the real-life three-dimensional space of Akihabara itself. Otoko no ko characters in anime, manga, and video games usually identify as men but dress convincingly as girls, appearing in romantic or erotic stories—both those marketed to male and female audiences—where love interests can also be men or women. The employees at Paradise were encouraged to fully embody and claim josō (the act of dressing up as a woman), marketing themselves as 3D otoko no ko (the character trope). Ho's interlocutors share how being in community with other "women" (fellow coworkers in josō) is part of the appeal of this café-bar space. Similarly at Garçon, the gender-diverse staff in dansō find the active participation of customers in helping create and reiterate dansō culture by sharing information on "dansō-related topics" to be a primary draw (50).
[6] In Chapter 2, Ho expounds upon the idea of "home" that is created within these spaces when normative gender ideals of the salaryman and housewife are no longer possible. A sense of belonging is shared among both customers and employees at Paradise and Garçon, where, for example, customers with otaku interests can find family with others who might enjoy similar experiences of attending genderbent cosplay performances. Indeed, this level of sociality between customers and employees is critical in keeping these spaces legal. Adjacent businesses like host or hostess bars where customers seek out more sexually intimate companionship with employees of the opposite sex are strictly regulated by antiprostitution and public morality laws. Paradise and Garçon avoid this policing in their presentation as just another space in Akihabara for fans of popular culture. However, Ho demonstrates how both cis-heteronormative and nonnormative establishments are linked together in the same ecosystem of Japan's "pink economies," or spaces where sex, gender, and sexuality are negotiated through goods and services in media and entertainment. Complementing the more or less explicit sex work of other pink establishments, the owners of both Garçon and Paradise reference moe, or the affective attachment otaku feel toward characters they find cute or beautiful, as the kind of attraction to employees that keeps customers coming. By necessarily enforcing policies of physical distance, while encouraging emotional intimacy through conversation and the promotion of moe, a sense of home develops for customers and employees alike in these particular pink spaces. Together, Ho's interlocutors (re)imagine alternative forms of masculinity and femininity through shared otaku interests.
[7] Chapter 3 further defines Akihabara's pink economies, focusing on the pericapitalist bonds fostered between the individuals inhabiting them. Regulars at Paradise and Garçon not only spend money to pay for the time and attention of employees (capitalism) but also make an emotional investment to love and support their "idols" (noncapitalism). Thus, these spaces are pericapitalist: an in-between state where capitalism and noncapitalism coexist and seem to work together. Readers may find interesting the recurring crossover of fan culture terminology into these contexts. For example, one customer of Paradise transitioned from being an oshi (fan) of a specific employee to, after said employee's departure, becoming a hako-oshi, a term in otaku and idol culture for fan of an entire idol group—or, in this case, the entire establishment. Her attention was no longer on a single employee; she now spent most of her time mingling with fellow customers. Echoing Paradise's marketing strategy to name themselves as a 3D version of the 2D otoko no ko, Ho relays how an employee of Garçon understood dansō café-bars as "staffed by '2.5-dimensional dansō individuals'" (91), removed from the 2D world of anime, manga, and games, but still not quite 3D yet, and most enthusiastically supported by "heavy users" (people who spend a significant amount of time on games and social media). This 2.5D world is healing (iyashi) in the intimacies cultivated by customers with each other and employees, through both affective attachment and financial investment. What customers buy and how employees are compensated are no longer necessarily facilitated through monetary forms, but via a sense of belonging within oneself and with others.
[8] The next chapter turns to the trans and nonbinary employees working at Paradise and Garçon, and the nature of their pericapitalist labor in these spaces. While explicitly hired to promote josō and dansō—often for low pay—the employees receive "nonmonetary benefits" in the form of the gender-affirming alignment between their paid vocation and their own hobby/interest in anime, manga, games, and the practice of josō/dansō in and of itself. Using José Esteban Muñoz's (2009) idea of "surplus," or forms of excess that exceed capitalist constructions (110), Ho reframes the "failure" of these individuals to build normative familial or social relations (117), or the "lack" thereof, as a surplus in terms of community-building with other employees and customers and the sense of empowerment in being able to practice gender-affirming embodiment.
[9] In Chapter 5, Ho explores the ways in which the second wave of josō and dansō cultures get mainstreamed out of Akihabara in the 2010s, and into more diffuse practices of beauty and fashion. For example, dansō models begin appearing in fashion magazines; Paradise's josō employees get featured on variety television shows; dansō idol groups are created; and josō beauty contests are popularized at school culture festivals. Dansō and josō are no longer practices that were primarily popular for how they straddled the 2- or 2.5-dimensional worlds within Akihabara, but have now "materialized" into the 3D world through broader beauty, fashion, and idol cultures (149). As certain aesthetic conventions and expectations around performing femininity and masculinity are mainstreamed and newly normalized through these cultures, the desire and space for genderfluidity may be further marginalized, at times violently, as some josō practitioners—particularly those who identify as trans—experience. However, for each of Ho's interlocutors, the ability to transform one's body and experiment with clothes and make-up, as techniques and resources become more widely circulated and shared, remains an important site of resistance, empowerment, and survival.
[10] Emergent Genders ends with a coda reflecting on how Garçon and Paradise changed during the pandemic, several years after the bulk of her ethnographic work. Ho describes the struggles each establishment faced in reconfiguring how to interact and commune with customers amid COVID-19 restrictions. Detailing how these café-bars approached the use of social media and other online platforms differently, Ho leads readers through speculative questions regarding how these spaces made certain decisions, where certain regulars and employees might be now, and the ways in which the pandemic only served to exacerbate the challenges marginalized communities already faced. She concludes with observations on how new ways of being and doing gender have already begun emerging in the digital sphere, and reaffirms the need to continue uplifting queer and trans stories outside of the North American anglophone sphere.
[11] Overall, Emergent Genders provides an enlightening triangulation of Akihabara as a popular culture site, Japan's history of cross-dressing practices, and the material lives of those who resist normative ideas of gender and sexuality. Particularly useful for the scholar learning to rise up to Chen Kuan-Hsing's (2010) call for "Asia as method" is the way in which Ho engages with the challenge of employing US-Eurocentric terminology while continuing to explicate and problematize its limitations. Emergent Genders also speaks to scholarship calling for a "queer Asia" as method (Chiang and Wong 2017; Yue 2017). Through her emphasis on the role of the material worlds of Akihabara and recessionary Japan in shaping emergent genders, Ho responds to current calls in Asian Queer Studies to use local understandings of gender and sexuality to theorize queerness. What can we learn about the lives of gender and sexually diverse individuals in Asia when we resist the compulsion to adopt a US-centric queer theory (60)? What connections can we then start making with the transnational movement of ideas between diasporas and within the region?
[12] Fan studies scholars might be especially interested in how Ho's evocation of terms such as "pericapitalism" and "body work" correspond to how we think about fan economies and fan labor. This is particularly resonant in the work fans do to create queer interpretations of popular culture texts and, through these shared interpretations, the communities of solidarity and kinship they construct with each other. What kinds of nonnormative "homes" might be constructed within these fandoms, and how are they produced and circulated transnationally and transculturally? As fans, especially as those who might "live otherwise" ourselves, Emergent Genders shows us how we might survive together in this neoliberal world.