Asian masculinity celebrated and otherised

Abstract

Japanese writers portray Chinese and Korean men as physically masculine, which often involves heightened sexuality, in two ways. First, some female writers discuss Japanese women’s heterosexual desire for Chinese and Korean men by emphasising these men’s physicality and desirable masculinity. Second, Japanese novelists often assign hypermasculine language to Chinese and Korean male characters. By celebrating Chinese and Korean masculinity, such depictions offer a counternarrative to derogatory stereotypes that have circulated and continue to circulate in rightwing (often male) nationalistic discourses. At the same time, however, the language these writers employ otherises Chinese and Korean men by hypersexualising them and placing them outside mainstream Japanese society.