The Lobster Dance

After a long hiatus, Japan Gender Reader is back! We’ve got queer stats, queer ice skaters, Yayoi Kusama’s art coming to the US, and more:

The installation, “Infinity Mirrored Room — Aftermath of Obliteration of Eternity” at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden . (Photo by Bill O’Leary/The Washington Post)

LGBTQ

Hakuhodo DY Group Holdings LGBT General Research Center. “2016 LGBT Awareness Action Survey.”

Some important statistics on being LGBT in Japan: just 4.3% of respondents are out at work; 10.4% to their families; 13% to their straight cis friends. 88.5% of non-LGBT people think they don’t personally know any LGBT people. We are everywhere, folks.
Via HuffPo Japan, via Takurei’s Room.

“Yuri!!! on Ice Voted as Tokyo Anime Awards’ Animation of the Year.” Anime New Network. 22 Feb. 2017.

Are you watching Yuri!!! on Ice? Let’s hear it for our canon queer romance! Despite all odds, this show defied all the tropes and was the only good thing to happen in 2016.

Art and Media

Hell no, Scarlet Johansson should not be playing Major Motoko Kusanagi. Representation matters.

Elizabeth Blair. “‘Priestess Of Polka Dots’ Yayoi Kusama Gives Gallerygoers A Taste Of Infinity.” All Things Considered. 1 March 2017.
Yayoi Kusama’s work is coming to the US and Canada! “Art dealer Richard Castellane says Kusama “shocked the living daylights out of people” with her art.”

And here’s an article about making her Infinity Rooms accessible to those with physical disabilities.

Fashion

Marc Bain. “Japan’s wild, creative Harajuku street style is dead. Long live Uniqlo.” Quartz. 22 Feb 2017.

The economic and social reasons behind the collapse of Harajuku fashion.

Aoki says there are no longer enough fashionable people who fit the look to put out a magazine every month, and so he’s shuttering FRUiTS, marking the end of an era. Depending how you define it, that era may have actually ended some time ago.

Mimi Matthews. “Japonisme: The Japanese Influence on Victorian Fashion.” Mimi Matthews. 29 March 2016.

Heads up, readers, the poem included is useful for seeing the lens through which the Victorians considered Japan versus, say, France, as the new center of fashion/art inspiration: Japan as The Other, lesser, “The East,” and “exotic.” (Including a slur!) The fashions are gorgeous, but they come steeped in–and inseparable–from the inescapable Orientalism.