Summary of SEAA Reads, session 16 from April 4, 2026

Emergent Genders: Living Otherwise in Tokyo’s Pink Economies by Michelle H. S. Ho. (Duke U. Press)

Starting in 2026 SEAA Reads is depending on anthropology students to select one of the books for SEAA Reads and to host the book club conversation online. On April 4 there were a dozen anthropologists ranging from graduate students to emeritus professors located in a wide span of time zones who were co-hosted by the currently in service student councilors for the Society for East Asia Anthropology, Xinyu Guan and David Tsoi. We began with brief self-introductions since only part of the readers are returning book club regulars. Then going from person to person each one was able to bring up a facet of the book that interested them most, to which others could reply or add onto.

Since Michelle Ho herself is a USA based Asian woman, not Japanese, and not transgender, the focal sites in Tokyo's Akihabara (cultural capital for otaku, and fans of manga - anime - and games) at a nightclub for cross-dressing as men and another one for cross-dressing as women were places that she was both participant and observer. At several points in the Zoom session the ideas of peri-capitalism (e.g. coined by Anna Tsing), precarious work & affective or emotional labor (Marxist perspective), and comparisons to the 1995 documentary (now YouTube), Shinjuku Boys came up. With just a little more than an hour to articulate each other's observations and responses to the many sides of the subjects described in Emergent Genders, it was hard to come up with a fully satisfying set of conclusions: more questions were raised than answered by reading and also by talking with fellow readers about the work.

The title itself gave food for thought: "emergent" has the meaning of fully formed and appearing, sometimes unexpectedly. By comparison "emerging" would have been more open ended or exploratory. And the choice of plural, "genders," takes new meaning in the context of the book, since clearly there is much more a binary masculine and feminine. The old assumptions about sex aligning with sexuality aligning with gender is demonstrated in these pages to be a faulty foundation. By putting "emergent" [newly arrived] next to "genders" [not limited to 2] in the title there is a creative tension baked into the face and the frame of the book.

Among the readers on this occasion there seemed to be few complaints or criticisms. But compared to the glimpse of family backgrounds and relationships in the documentary, Shinjuku Boys, the main characters profiled in Emergent Genders seem to stand without reference to family ties. Also by comparison to many other ethnographies on subjects other than this study from one part of Tokyo, Emergent Genders seems to exist on the page, unmoored from the specifics of Akihabara and the general features of Tokyo that contribute to the staff and the customers in the two venues of the ethnography. Far more of the book club conversation was in praise of the approach and the resulting readability of the project, given the delicate and fluid nature of the subject of gender expression that evolves historically, and in each individual that is growing through the lives they lead. The nature of the subject is difficult to approach, as is putting these experiences and intentions and interpretations into words that answer the anthropologist’s interview questions. Then with field notes in hand, it is also difficult for an author to transpose the participant-observations, interview responses, and one's own frameworks for understanding the layers of meanings into manuscript form that a publisher can work with. Would this approach work in fieldwork elsewhere in Japan (not Tokyo--centric), elsewhere in East Asia, or in the wider world? And is it particular to the 2015~2019 moment? That is hard to predict.

Some of the reader discussion centered on the time of the fieldwork in the 2015 and subsequent years before COVID-19: Japan's prolonged economic recession & use of non-salaried, contract workers, the migrants from other cities and from rural areas surrounding Tokyo, and the need for customers (and for staff at the nightclubs) to feel a sense of belonging, and to interchange emotional intimacy with others (cf. the themes in the 2025 movie, Rental Family). If not to substitute for organic family relationships, then perhaps the nightclub experiences are supplementing the performative 'model family' that fails to meet a person's own needs and wants.

As the session clock neared the end, the final word on the conversation about Pink Economies (in Japan, mainly) is that this intimate portrait of a couple of nightclubs in the heart of Tokyo's Akihabara is a valuable look and a valuable approach to participant-observation among people in extremely specialized circumstances that meet the needs of workers as well as the needs of customers in complicated and vital ways. 

The next session of SEAA Reads will be June 26, 8PM, EST: Kathryn Goldfarb (2025). Fragile Kinships: Child Welfare and Well-Being in Japan. DISCUSSION LEADER, Merry White.