Ambiguities: Gender Flexing

I have been reading the wonderful, Borges-influenced, Japanese writer, Haruki Murakami's, novels lately and have found it very interesting how he handles GLBT issues. I wonder if this is partly the influence of one of Japan's greatest twentieth century writers, Yukio Mishima, a bisexual, whose work I haven't read yet BTW, or something attributable to Japanese culture in general. All of the Murakami novels, I have read so far contain characters who are GLBT in part or whole.

I have discovered similar, generous treatment of gender ambiguity in Japanese manga and anime, which even have a special genre called "yaoi", "boys love", whose target audience is tween/teen girls, "shojo". Even the muy macho Naruto inadvertantly kisses the equally macho Sasuke in what I interpreted as a humorous reference to yaoi style anime/manga. Yaoi is like a much, much, tamer version of slash fan fiction (longer paper on slash)but with a similar esthetic. (Slash is another fascinating literary subject IMHO.)

The Fruits Basket manga and anime series contains several sexually ambiguous characters, particularly the cross-dressing characters, Ayame, an adult who is the "Snake" of the Zodiac and who takes narcissistic pride in his attractiveness to both sexes, and the younger, more innocent Momiji, the "Rabbit", who risks getting bullied because he prefers to wear a girl's uniform to school. I also felt like there was also a subtle yaoi undercurrent between the two main male characters, Yuki and Kyo, which was expressed in the story's plotline as constant fighting and bickering.

In Western literature, depictions of ambiguous sexual orientation, by which I mean characters or themes having any sort of GLBT overtones, have traditionally been very controversial and potentially career-dampening for the writer (think Radclyffe Hall). Leading a GLBT lifestyle with any sort of openness was even more risky (think Oscar Wilde). Lately I have found more GLBT characters, who are out, literarily speaking, in the books that I read. I have been really pleased by the treatment of these characters by the authors as multi-faceted people and not just sterotypes.

Here is my short list.

Ironman by Chris Crutcher (2000 Winner of the Margaret A. Edwards Award)

The Egyptologist by Arthur Phillips
Prague by Arthur Phillips (his website)

The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst (winner of the 2004 Man Booker Prize - click for Guardian interview)

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon (winner of the 2001 Pulitzer Prize)

The Yiddish Policeman's Union by Michael Chabon

Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami
Sputnik Sweetheart by Haruki Murakami (He did not win the Nobel Prize in 2007.)

Momiji picture from a fansite, Aucifer. Available at http://fruitsbasket.aucifer.com/character_profile.php?ID=8. Accessed on 5/16/08.