'Third Gender' Revealed in Classical Japanese Art This Spring at Japan Society Gallery

Japan Society Gallery announces the U.S. premiere of A Third Gender: Beautiful Youths in Japanese Prints, the first exhibition in North America devoted to the variety of gender and sexual expression in traditional Japanese society by focusing on wakashu, attractive male youths who, the exhibitions reveals, constituted a distinct gender category during the Edo period (1603-1868).

On view from March 10 to June 11, 2017, this groundbreaking exhibition features over 65 woodblock prints, as well as paintings, deluxe lacquerwork objects, and personal ornaments from the collections of the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM), Toronto, one of the most expansive collections of Japanese art in North America. The exhibition sheds light on the complex rules which governed sexual and societal constructs, offering a critical historical context for gender performance and sexual expression-topics that continue to resonate within today's political, public, and artistic discourse.

"We could not be more excited to bring this imminently relevant exhibition to New York City," says Yukie Kamiya, Gallery Director at Japan Society. "With our long history of presenting traditional and contemporary Japanese art, we look forward to exploring Japan's Early Modern era, which is often characterized as a moment of isolation, from an unexpected vantage point-namely, how the richness of lived experience in the Edo period can serve as a touchstone for issues that resonate within contemporary society."

In cultures around the globe, gender has historically been defined according to a binary framework based on biological sex. However, the exhibition suggests that in Edo-period Japan, a person's gender was defined according to several additional factors, including age and appearance. Fundamental to this structure were wakashu, who, being neither "men" nor "women", constituted a "third gender" occupying their own place within the social hierarchy. The term wakashu could refer generally to "beautiful youths" who had yet to undergo the coming-of-age ceremony that initiated them into the social role of adult manhood, but who were nonetheless sexually mature. While wakashu were the objects of desire for both men and women, the term also refers specifically to youths who were the companions of adult men in male-male erotic relationships, known as nanshoku.

Depictions of wakashu have often been misidentified as female figures, but in fact can be distinguished by certain characteristics such as hairstyle. Their prevalence as artistic subjects suggest their importance within the cultural fabric of Edo Japan, a fact that has gone largely unrecognized. Their historic artistic portrayals are most notably recognized in the century work of Suzuki Harunobu (1725-1770), Utagawa Utamaro I (1753-1806), Bunro (1800-1810) and Hosoda Eisui (1790-1823).

Beyond the focus on wakashu, A Third Gender also explores the complexity of gender and sexual expression in Edo Japan more broadly. Subsections within the exhibition focus on onnagata, or adult male actors who specialized in female roles in kabuki theater, and cross-dressing women like haori-geisha-geisha who wore men's clothes and assumed a tough manner for their clients. Examples of shunga, or erotic prints, will help provide additional context for the social and sexual landscape of the Edo period.

A Third Gender was organized by the Royal Ontario Museum, where it was on view from May 7, 2016, through November 27, 2016. More than half of the prints come from the collection of Sir Edmund Walker, an early benefactor of the museum who bequeathed a foundational collection of Japanese art including over 1,000 ukiyo-e prints. Several prints and three-dimensional works not shown in ROM's original presentation, but also from Walker's collection, will be presented in the Japan Society exhibition. The exhibition is accompanied by a 160-page catalogue published by ROM, distributed by Brill, and co-authored by Asato Ikeda (Fordham University, and curator of the Toronto presentation) and Joshua Mostow (University of British Columbia). It is a key scholarly reference work, beautifully illustrated with the exhibited artworks as well as additional material.

A host of related programs, ranging from lectures to performances and hands-on workshops, will be announced by Japan Society in the weeks ahead.

Japan Society Gallery is among the premier institutions in the U.S. for the exhibition of Japanese art and is a platform for reconsidering Japanese culture within a global context. Extending in scope from prehistory to the present, the Gallery's exhibitions since 1971 have covered topics as diverse as classical Buddhist sculpture and calligraphy, contemporary photography and ceramics, samurai swords, export porcelain, and masterpieces of painting from the thirteenth to the twenty-first century. Each exhibition, with its related catalogue and public programs, is a unique cultural event that illuminates familiar and unfamiliar fields of art.

Founded in 1907, Japan Society is a multidisciplinary hub for global leaders, artists, scholars, educators, and English and Japanese-speaking audiences. At the Society, more than 100 events each year feature sophisticated, topically relevant presentations of Japanese art and culture as well as open and critical dialogue on issues of vital importance to the U.S., Japan and East Asia. An American nonprofit, nonpolitical organization, the Society cultivates a constructive, resonant and dynamic relationship between the people of the U.S. and Japan.

Japan Society is located at 333 East 47th Street between First and Second Avenues (accessible by the 4/5/6 and 7 subway lines at Grand Central or the E and M subway lines at 53rd St. and Lexington Ave.)

Japan Society Gallery Spring 2017 hours: Tuesday-Thursday, 12 Noon - 7:00 pm; Friday, 12 Noon - 9:00 pm; Saturday and Sunday, 11:00 am - 5:00 pm; the Gallery is closed on Mondays and major holidays. Admission: $12/$10 students and seniors/FREE Japan Society members and children under 16. Admission is free to all on Friday nights, 6:00 pm - 9:00 pm. Docent tours are available free with admission Tuesday-Sunday at 2:30 pm (English), and Fridays at 6:00 pm (Japanese) and 7:00 pm (English); no reservations are necessary except for group tours.

Exhibitions at Japan Society are made possible in part by the Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Endowment Fund, the Mary Griggs Burke Endowment Fund established by the Mary Livingston Griggs and Mary Griggs Burke Foundation and Friends of the Gallery.

For further information, visit www.japansociety.org.

Pictured: Suzuki Harunobu Two couples in a teahouse, 1769-70. Courtesy of the Royal Ontario Museum, Sir Edmund Walker Collection. 926.18.280.