Michelle H. S. Ho, an assistant professor at the National University of Singapore, shares insights from her book on emergent genders in Tokyo's Pink Economies. She discusses the unique intersection of gender and popular culture in Akihabara, emphasizing how economic factors shape contemporary identities. The conversation reveals how crossdressing cafés navigate capitalism, offering spaces for gender nonconforming individuals. Ho also highlights the deep ties between beauty, fashion, and identity within marginalized communities, illustrating the vibrant nuances of gender expression in Japan.
41:28
forum Ask episode
web_stories AI Snips
view_agenda Chapters
menu_book Books
auto_awesome Transcript
info_circle Episode notes
question_answer ANECDOTE
Finding the Research Topic
Michelle Ho discovered the pink economies research topic after watching a YouTube clip about male-to-female cross-dressing cafes.
Intrigued, she made field trips to Tokyo to immerse herself and turned one paper into a dissertation project.
question_answer ANECDOTE
Late Nights Fieldwork Challenge
Michelle Ho detailed challenges including late-night fieldwork until 5 a.m. to align with social patterns at cafes.
She adapted her sleep schedule like managing jet lag to record observations promptly after visits.
insights INSIGHT
Emergent Genders and Capitalism
Emergent genders arise as individuals fracture, contest, and reimagine older gender forms creating new ways of being.
Markets and capitalism, especially in pop culture hubs like Akihabara, play a crucial role in how these genders emerge and survive.
Get the Snipd Podcast app to discover more snips from this episode
Michelle H. S. Ho traces the genders manifesting alongside Japanese popular culture in Akihabara. Ho shows how their owners, employees, and customers creatively innovate what she calls emergent genders, new practices, categories, and ways of being stemming from the simultaneous fracturing, contestations, and reimaginations of older forms of gender and sexual variance in Japan. Such emergent genders initiate new markets for alternative categories of expression and subjectivity to thrive in a popular cultural hub like Akihabara. By rethinking identitarian models of gender and sexuality, reconfiguring the significance of capitalism for trans studies and queer theory, and decentering theoretical frameworks incubated in a predominantly United States academic context, Ho offers new ways of examining how trans and gender nonconforming individuals may survive and flourish under capitalism.
In Emergent Genders: Living Otherwise in Tokyo's Pink Economies(Duke UP, 2025), Michelle H. S. Ho traces the genders manifesting alongside Japanese popular culture in Akihabara, an area in Tokyo renowned for the fandom and consumption of anime, manga, and games. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in josō and dansō cafe-and-bars, establishments where male-to-female and female-to-male crossdressing is prevalent, Ho shows how their owners, employees, and customers creatively innovate what she calls emergent genders—new practices, categories, and ways of being stemming from the simultaneous fracturing, contestations, and (re)imaginations of older forms of gender and sexual variance in Japan. Such emergent genders initiate new markets for alternative categories of expression and subjectivity to thrive in a popular cultural hub like Akihabara instead of Tokyo’s gay and lesbian neighborhood of Shinjuku Ni-chōme. By rethinking identitarian models of gender and sexuality, reconfiguring the significance of capitalism for trans studies and queer theory, and decentering theoretical frameworks incubated in a predominantly United States academic context, Ho offers new ways of examining how trans and gender nonconforming individuals may survive and flourish under capitalism.
New Books Network