Josō or "gender free"? Playfully queer "lives" in visual kei.

Coalescing in the 1980s, visual kei is currently a Japanese music subculture known for flamboyant theatrics, a woman-dominated fanbase, and its performers' non-normative, often playfully queer gender expressions, which defy heteronormative binaries and hegemonic conceptions of gender and sexuality. This article illuminates the queer facets of visual kei through an in-depth investigation focusing on two forms of binary-destabilizing expression: onnagata/josō and "gender free" or gender-bending. The first involves complete adoption of feminine-coded clothing by self-identified male performers, the second a disregard or even intentional disruption of gendered boundaries. Combining ethnographic fieldwork data with close analysis of social media discourse, this paper explores the "queer lives" of visual kei performers through their personae. This double-pronged approach is necessary as these queer expressions are created and reiterated through both the "live" concert performance and the appearance of "lives" created through social media. In creating these "lives," performers often employ casual, fluid utilization of queer expression which destabilizes normative gender and sexuality narratives while not necessarily explicitly invoking any queer identity. Through elucidating these multifaceted, ambiguous yet queer performances, this paper aims to help complicate current discourse on queer lives in Japan and wider scholarship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]