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This paper examines Shōno Yoriko's trans-exclusionary turn as a logical consequence of her feminist writing. Drawing on Biddy Martin, I trace how Shōno's defense of a habitable "place" for female subjectivity slides from an embodied critique of the gender binary into exclusionary gatekeeping.

Paper long abstract

Shōno Yoriko is one of Japan’s most celebrated feminist writers, known for fiction that interrogates gender binaries through non-human protagonists, gender-ambiguous narrators, and bodies in constant transformation. Yet since 2020, Shōno has become vocal in trans-exclusionary discourse, framing trans women as threats to women's safety and denying the validity of gender self-identification. This paper examines the apparent contradiction between Shōno's seemingly gender-fluid fictional worlds and her exclusionary politics by tracing a common logic that underlies both: the struggle to secure a habitable "place" (ibasho) for female subjectivity.

Beginning in the 1990s, Shōno situated her literary practice within a struggle to carve out this ibasho—a concept resonating through works like Ibasho mo nakatta (1993) and her polemical defense of "pure literature" in the 'Don Quixote debate.' Central to this project is her notion of "ultra-private" language: a fiercely individualistic mode of writing that resists the gendered norms and capitalist logic of the literary establishment. The body occupies an ambivalent position in this framework: Shōno mobilizes it as the foundation of authentic writing, yet her fiction repeatedly figures the female body as something to transcend or inhabit only provisionally—something one cannot leave behind yet struggles to fully occupy.

I argue that Shōno's trans-exclusionary turn represents not a betrayal of her feminist project but a logical consequence. Literary portrayals of intransigent gendered bodies do not necessarily lead to transphobia; there is no necessary causal link between not transcending the gendered body and excluding trans women. Suspicion of gender-fluidity can itself be a queer-feminist position: As Biddy Martin (1994) argued, celebrations of gender-crossing can project 'reactionary' fixity onto gender-conforming embodiments of femininity. Traces of such a critique can be found in Shōno's engagement with Matsuura Rieko.

However, the feminist framework Shōno ultimately reached for—Japan's Women's Liberation movement—was not equipped to hold this critique. It offered her a language of embodied first-person experience, but had its own history of excluding queer bodies. This paper traces Shōno's engagement with feminist thought to show how her pursuit of an ibasho slides from an embodied critique of the gender binary into trans-exclusionary gatekeeping.

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This paper focuses on ways in which LGBTIQA+ rights language travels alongside anti-gender, anti-trans rhetoric in Japan. It critically examines the politics of translation employed in anti-gender and anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric that is disseminated and consumed alongside claims for LGBTIQA+ rights.

Paper long abstract

This paper critically examines the politics of translation within claims for LGBTIQA+ rights discourse and by anti-gender and anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric with a focus on how these are disseminated and consumed. Building on research on language ideologies, anti-genderism is understood as a register which can be adapted to local contexts yet “circulate(s) translationally with little to no variation” (Borba 2022: 60). Within this register, rhetoric of the sanctity of family, can be adopted to accommodate many different configurations and ideals about the family in different sociocultural contexts and LGBTIQA+ researchers and acitivists framed as "anti-family." This process of fractal recursivity (Gal and Irvine 1995; Irvine and Gal 2000; Gal 2005; 2016), or the (re)production of dichotomies at ever smaller scales, “allows and indeed invites erasures” (Gal 2005: 27). In this talk, I present findings from a multi-modal discourse analysis of promotional materials which traverse both virtual (eg online websites) and actual spaces (eg Pride Parades). The analysis elucidates how key words and phrases translated from a variety of languages and locales are mobilised in claims for LGBTIQA+ rights and in place-making projects. In some instances these are reactive to both global and local anti-trans and anti-gender rhetoric. As activists, advocates and scholars must navigate the tensions which emerge between LGBTIQA+ advocacy discourse and localised anti-genderism, such reactivisation can erase historical trajectories of queer and trans ways of being at the point of dissemination and consumption.

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Over the past three decades, religious right-wing actors have driven antifeminist backlash in Japan. This paper examines how groups such as the Unification Church and Nippon Kaigi have reshaped local and national politics through anti-feminist and anti-LGBTQ+ mobilization.

Paper long abstract

Since the 1990s, religious right-wing actors have played a central role in antifeminist backlash in Japan. These attacks intensified in the early 2000s after the passage of the 1999 Basic Act for a Gender-Equal Society and the subsequent spread of municipal gender-equality ordinances. Core targets of this backlash included gender-equality policies, reproductive rights, sex education, affirmative action, LGBTQ+ rights, feminist scholarship, and the very concept of “gender” itself.

Key actors in this movement include Nippon Kaigi, an umbrella organization linking conservative religious groups such as the Association of Shinto Shrines and Shinsei Bukkyō; the Japan Policy Institute, a conservative think tank with close ties to the religious right; and the Unification Church (UC), headquartered in South Korea but with a significant political presence in Japan. While opposition to gender equality, sex education, and reproductive rights persisted, the mid-2010s marked a shift. Following the U.S. Supreme Court’s legalization of same-sex marriage and the introduction of Japan’s first same-sex partnership system in Tokyo’s Shibuya Ward in 2015, the UC intensified its opposition to LGBTQ+ rights — particularly same-sex marriage — in Japan.

Amid the global expansion of the anti-gender movement and the rise of transphobia, the UC subsequently emerged as a leading force opposing transgender rights, drawing heavily on U.S.-based anti-trans discourse. Other religious right groups, right-wing media outlets, and conservative factions within the ruling Liberal Democratic Party soon joined these campaigns, culminating in an intense backlash against transgender rights surrounding the 2023 “LGBT understanding” legislation. Following the assassination of former Prime Minister Abe Shinzō in 2022 and the resulting exposure of the UC’s political networks with the LDP, the UC’s influence on policy declined significantly. At the same time, other right-wing actors—including both established groups and newer movements as well as populist parties such as the Japan Conservative Party and Sanseitō (Party of Do-it-Yourself) —have moved to fill this space.

Based on ethnographic fieldwork and media analysis, this paper examines how religious right-wing actors in Japan have advanced antifeminist, homophobic, and transphobic agendas, and how these movements have reshaped both local and national politics in the context of transnational anti-gender mobilization.

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This paper examines how contemporary transnational anti-trans discursive flows have made Japanese anti-capitalist leftist movements merge into moral/religious rights movements.

Paper long abstract

This paper examines anti-gender/LGBTQ discourses from Japanese leftists, feminists and LGBTQ+ identifying individuals. While moral/religious right groups focusing on sexual morals and ‘traditional’ family values are prominent in Japanese anti-gender/LGBTQ movements since the late 1990s, Japanese leftist movements, including feminists, and LGB identifying pundits and influencers can be also observed to be driving contemporary anti-trans discussions in Japan. For example, Jōkyō, a new leftist magazine which started in 1968, featured trans issues in 2024 with vocal anti-trans opinionators. In these discourses, trans rights discourses are understood as a potential threat against women and freedom of speech, or creating new exploitation of Pharmaceuticalization and medical capitalism. This paper examines Japanese anti-trans leftist discourses from three viewpoints. First, it analyzes the leftist discourses on trans issues, examining how they demonize and oppose trans rights issues as anti-capitalist political positions. Second, it examines what kind of discourses have been introduced and translated for consolidating such ‘leftist’ positions, diverting other LGBTQ+ inclusive leftist positions. Third, it discusses how anti-trans feminist and cisgender LGB identifying individuals allows anti-trans leftists to still present themselves as promoting social justice and inclusion. Through these discussions, this paper examines how transnational anti-trans discursive flows have made Japanese anti-capitalist leftist movements merge into moral/religious rights movements.