Emergent Genders: Living Otherwise in Tokyo’s Pink Economies (Duke University Press)
My first book is now published with Duke University Press. Emergent Genders traces the relationship between trans/gender issues and capitalism in contemporary Tokyo, Japan, based on ethnographic field research I conducted in the 2010s at josō (male-to-female crossdressing) and dansō (female-to-male crossdressing) cafe-and-bars (女装 • 男装カフェアンドバー).
Read the Free Introduction
Pre-order the Book
(Get 30% off with code E25MHSHO)
Book Abstract
In Emergent Genders, 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.
Book Talks
2025
“Emergent Genders: Living Otherwise in Tokyo’s Pink Economies.” December 9. Speaker Series in East Asian Studies. Hosted by Pusan National University, Department of Global Studies (DGS). (Invited speaker). [HYBRID] Email TheKpopProf@gmail.com for Zoom link.
“Emergent Genders: Living Otherwise in Tokyo’s Pink Economies,” Japanese Studies Association of Australia (JSAA) 2025 Conference. October 2-4. Hosted by University of New England (Armidale, New South Wales).
Discussants: Thomas Baudinette (Macquarie University) and Karl Ian Cheng Chua (University of the Philippines Diliman).
“Emergent Genders: Living Otherwise in Tokyo’s Pink Economies.” September 17. Hosted by Rutgers University, Women’s Gender, and Sexuality Studies Department. Co-sponsored by CLAGS: The Center for LGBTQ Studies, CUNY. (Invited speaker). [HYBRID]
“Emergent Genders: Living Otherwise in Tokyo’s Pink Economies.” September 16. Hosted by the Humanities Institute at Stony Brook, Stony Brook University. Part of the Q/F/T* Series, a collaboration with the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Department and HISB. Co-sponsored by Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Department, Asian and Asian American Studies, and HISB. (Invited speaker).
“Emergent Genders: Living Otherwise in Tokyo’s Pink Economies,” Queer and Feminist Perspectives on Japanese Popular Cultures Symposium 2025. May 20-21. Hosted by the Media, Gender, and Sexualities Study Group, University of Tokyo. (Invited keynote speaker). [ONLINE]
Grants that have generously supported Emergent Genders in various stages:
2025
National University of Singapore (NUS) Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences (FASS) Book Publicity Scheme
2024
NUS FASS Book Grant Scheme
2019-2023
NUS FASS Start-Up Grant
2019
FASS-ARI (Asia Research Institute) Book Manuscript Workshop Grant
2018-2019
Postdoctoral Fellowship, Communications and New Media (CNM), NUS
2017-2018
Diversity Predoctoral Fellowship, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
2016-2017
Japanese Studies Fellowship, Japan Foundation
Aside from this book, I have also explored the lived experience, media representation, styles, and practices of transgender and gender nonconforming individuals in Japan.
Publications in this area are:
Ho, Michelle H. S. 2024. “Categories that Bind: Transgender, Crossdressing, and Transnational Sexualities in Tokyo” in Sexualities 27(1-2): 94-112.
Ho, Michelle H. S. 2024. “Androgynous Styles in Contemporary Tokyo.” In Berg Encyclopedia of World Dress and Fashion: East Asia, edited by John E. Vollmer. Oxford: Berg Publishers. DOI: 10.2752/9781847888556.Edch062501 (Invited chapter).
Ho, Michelle H. S. 2023. “From Dansō to Genderless: Mediating Queer Styles and Androgynous Bodies in Japan.” In Gender in Japanese Popular Culture: Rethinking Masculinities and Femininities, edited by Sirpa Salenius, 29-59. Cham: Palgrave MacMillan. (Invited chapter).
Ho, Michelle H. S. 2022. “A Different Kind of Transgender Celebrity: From Entertainment Narrative to the ‘Wrong Body’ Discourse in Japanese Media Culture” in Television & New Media 23(8): 803-821.
Ho, Michelle H. S. 2021. “From Dansō to Genderless: Mediating Queer Styles and Androgynous Bodies in Japan,” in Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 22(2): 158-177.
Ho, Michelle H. S. 2020. “Queer and Normal: Dansō (female-to-male crossdressing) Lives and Politics in Contemporary Tokyo” in Asian Anthropology 19(2): 102-118.
Michelle H. S. Ho 