Kazuyoshi Kawasaka, Ph.D.(University of Sussex)
Lecturer – Japan in East Asia
Popular Culture and Japanese & Asian studies / Queer studies in Asia
Contact : kawasaka[at]g.ecc.u-tokyo.ac.jp
Profile
Kazuyoshi Kawasaka received his Ph.D in gender studies from the University of Sussex, United Kingdom in 2016. After completing his Ph.D, he worked as a post-doctorate researcher at the Institute for Modern Japanese Studies at the Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf Germany and then he became a principal investigator of the DFG-funded project (‘Sexual Diversity and Human Rights in 21st Century Japan: LGBTIQ Activisms and Resistance from a Transnational Perspective’ [Project No. 446477950]), from 2020 to 2024.
Research Interests
In his PhD dissertation, he focused on male same-sex sexual politics in postwar Japan and explored how gender and sexuality have contributed to cultural differences between Japan and the West in Japanese modernity and how male same-sex sexual politics has negotiated with Japanese sexual nationalism. His current research centres on Japanese contemporary LGBTQ rights policy and values of diversity in relation to globalization of LGBT politics including transnational human rights/diplomatic influence over Japan, transnational anti-gender/LGBTQ far-right movements, Japanese economic demands, race, and Japanese nationalism. In addition to his own research project, he is also investigating LGBTQ+ JET teachers’ experience in Japan from intersectional perspectives.
Selected Publications
Peer-review papers:
(2025) Human rights and affective diplomacy: The presence and strategies of foreign embassies in LGBTQ rights activism in Japan. Sexualities. Sage. https://doi.org/10.1177/13634607241304543
(Forthcoming) With Ami Kobayashi. Intersectionality in Japanese schools: The experiences and struggles of LGBTQ+ JET teachers in rural Japan. Olomouc Asian Studies, Vol. 3 - Bodies, Gender, Identities.
(2023) Queers and National Anxiety: Discourses on Gender and Sexuality from Anti-Gender Backlash Movements in Japan since the 2000s. in Stefanie Mayer and Judith Goetz (eds.) Global Perspectives on Anti-Feminism: Far-Right and Religious Attacks on Equality and Diversity. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, pp. 182-201. https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.3366/jj.7358671.14
(2023) with Ami Kobayashi. Surviving Under the ‘Hidden Curriculum’: The struggles of LGBTQ+ JET Teachers in Japanese Rural Areas. in Jeong-Young Kim and Lasse Lehtonen (eds.), Proceedings from Najaks 2022, Studia Orientalia vol.124, Finnish Oriental Society, pp. 145-161. https://journal.fi/store/issue/view/10975
(2018) Mishima Yukio and the Homoeroticisation of the Emperor of Japan. Feminist Encounters: A Journal of Critical Studies in Culture and Politics, 2(2), 23: 1–11. https://doi.org/10.20897/femenc/3891
(2018) Contradictory Discourses on Sexual Normality and National Identity in Japanese Modernity. Sexuality & Culture. 22(2): 593–613. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12119-017-9485-z
Books:
(2024) Kazuyoshi Kawasaka and Stefan Würrer (eds.) Beyond Diversity: Queer Politics, Activism, and Representation in Contemporary Japan. Düsseldorf: Düsseldorf University Press.
https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9783110767995/html?lang=en (Open Access)