Un des premiers objets de la discipline, c’est de fixer; elle est un procédé d’anti-nomadisme. One of the first objects of a discipline is to fix. It is a product of anti-nomadism. —Michel Foucault, Surveiller et punir, p. 254 Arriving at Edo by boat on the Sumida River, on his way to the kabuki, the…
The idea of bishōnen (beautiful boy) as object of erotic desire has been present since at least the beginnings of the Japanese language. The poetic anthology Kokinshū (c. 905), which some consider the first authentically Japanese-language literary work, the war tale Heike monogatari (c. 13 century), chigo (acolyte) scrolls, and many other works from early…