| Great Mirrors Shattered: Homosexuality, Orientalism, and Japan (Ideologies of Desire) | 
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Avg. Customer Rating:   (based on 7 reviews)
Sales Rank: 1147699
Category: Book
Author: John Whittier Treat
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Studio: Oxford University Press, USA
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
Label: Oxford University Press, USA
Languages: English (Original Language), English (Unknown), English (Published)
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 256
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 6.1 x 1.2
ISBN: 0195109236
Dewey Decimal Number: 306.7660952
EAN: 9780195109238
ASIN: 0195109236
Publication Date: March 25, 1999
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
In 1986, John Whittier Treat went to Tokyo on sabbatical to write a book about the literature of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But once there, he found himself immersed in the emergence of new kind of Holocaust, AIDS, and the sweeping denial, hysteria, and projection with which Japan--a place where "there are no homosexuals"--tried to insulate itself from the epidemic.
Great Mirrors Shattered is a compelling memoir of a gay man thoroughly familiar with the Japanese homosexual underground, a man anxious for his own health and unsure of the relationship he has left behind in the US. It is also a highly self-aware analysis of Orientalism, which the author defines as "the Western study of everywhere else," and an exploration of how sexual identity conditions knowledge across cultures. Jump-cutting between such texts as Thomas Mann's Death in Venice, Pierre Loti's Madame Chrysantheme, Saikaku's The Great Mirror of Male Love, the writings of Roland Barthes, newspaper headlines, and his own experiences during a previous stay in Japan, Treat creates an intricately textured account of the problems inherent in how we "know" another culture. The questions of self and other, difference and sameness, time past and time present, America and Japan, are explored here with rare intelligence and unabashedly personal disclosure.
Great Mirrors Shattered gives us a brilliantly fractured reflection of a year in one man's life, and the first study of the sexual politics behind what the West has come to know not just about Japan, but any place Europeans and Americans have gone to escape the confining rules of their home cultures.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 2 more reviews...
 Very good, but not what it looks like May 18, 2006
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
...which is probably what's tripping most people up. The title is misleading; when I found this book I was expecting a scholarly analysis of homosexuality as it is viewed and practiced in Japan. Instead, it turned out to be about a year the author spent in Japan after fleeing America to escape the spread of AIDS, only to watch the epidemic unfold in Japan as well--a year in the life of an introspective, promiscuous, slightly amoral intellectual.
He draws from many different sources, sometimes juxtaposed in a manner that's difficult to follow, and touches on a variety of different topics that some way or another intersect with his conception of Japan, AIDS, and being gay. This is not an academic work, this is a personal essay stretched large, a chronicle set in the 1980s gay scene. He doesn't shy away from describing the uncomfortable aspects of that life any more than he flinches from discussing the equally uncomfortable racist, neocolonialist attitudes held by various generations of white conquerors, including his own. He deconstructs these views, analyzes the causes and logic behind them, but it is clear that he does not endorse them, no more than he would endorse the quotes that are hostile or offensive to homosexuals.
Racism and colonialism are inherited, and even if we as individuals choose to reject them, they are still inherent and pervasive in our culture. Where did these ideas originate, and why? Treat ponders such questions at length, and unfortunately that sets him up for attack from people who would rather disregard uncomfortable topics than discuss them.
This is not an anthropological book, or even an ethnography. It feels almost like fiction, which makes it an engaging as well as insightful read, but it is one man's experiences and not to be confused with any sort of authoritative treatise on homosexuality in Japan.
 Homosexuality, AIDS, and Japan August 18, 2003
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
I've been a big fan of Treat's essays since I read Contemporary Japan and Popular Culture, so I picked up this book with some understanding of his writing already. Anyway, I expected this book to be about gay life in Japan and Japanese literature, but it turned out not to be about that at all... or at least, not much. A lot of the book is a memoir/travel-diary that Treat apparently wrote on the side as he was living in Japan on fellowship money, working on Writing Ground Zero: Japanese Literature and the Atomic Bomb. Treat reflects on various lovers that he had in Japan, things they did together and places they went, what gay life is like in Tokyo and a few other places in Japan. And all that is interwoven into news stories about the growth of AIDS in Japan, stories from Japanese literature, and Treat's own experience being HIV positive and having to hide it during his stay. It's not, by any means, a comprehensive autobiography (Treat isn't so famous as to attempt that), but it's interesting in the way that stories about living in another country often are. On the whole, the book isn't so much about homosexuality and Japan as it is about AIDS and Japan. There are some very interesting sexual anecdotes in the book, all told with a kind of hyper-awareness of the historical relationship between the Occident and the Orient, and the roles the author himself, as a white man, plays in his sexual relationships. Despite being surprised about the main themes, I found it to be an interesting book, and all the personal anecdotes keep the theory from becoming too dry. The book is very honest and candid, and I came away from it with a greater understanding of John Treat as a person, which I liked. And I think a big part of Treat's intent with the book was to show how the "self" and "other" really have more in common than they think, and on that level he succeeded.
 lying on the fence of pleasure and distrust December 22, 2001
7 out of 11 found this review helpful
Reading everyone's comments of this book, I realize how controversial this piece must be and is in reality. That NO ONE rates this book anything but a 1 or a 5 speaks to its strong nature. You either love it, find meaning in it; or are repulsed by it. Speaking as a white American lesbian who has been studying queer culture in Japan and has also visited Japan, I am completed horrified by the certainity with which Treat dabbles in topics of enormous proportion. Why write a memoir if you are supposedly addressing so many key issues of social concern unless you are actually going to address them?! Besides that fact, he never once seems to apologize or doubt his masculinist and racist grip on his material. He is always a spectator, always the man behind the controls. It is sickening really. I have only read half of this book, but as I read, I read to see how much more I can become baffled at his arrogance of subject matter. His treatment of each subject, at best, leaves me cold and wondering why he even bothers to make it seem like he cares. It seems like a completely narcissistic attempt to get through some clearly lingering white suburban American guilt. I don't think the fact that queers in America have become involved with Asian Studies because is it an Orientalist gaze get's to be made into a "duh" statement or be left unquestioned. It is NOT ok, and DOES need to be discussed, not just left for stereotyping or pigeon-holing. The only part of this book that I can remotely enjoy is references to a country that I miss and experiences that may seem similar, but do not somehow excuse themselves as "boys will be boys" or some crap like that. Very disapppointing perspective, yet almost predictable from a white gay male with so much arrogance.
Personal Insights into Japanese Life August 23, 2001
3 out of 7 found this review helpful
For the reviewer from Mars: This book is a subjective account of life in Japan during the time of AIDS. This is not meant as a depiction of gay and lesbian Japanese life, no could it be. The Japanese misperception of American life is echoed in this review. I found this book soul-baring and intense. Well done!
Orientalism August 20, 2001
6 out of 10 found this review helpful
As an Asian, this book makes me uneased while reading it. Yeah, the author cites Edward Said's "Orientalism" couple times. But the tone of mighty American looking down the funny Japanese is running through lots of the pages. I really like to hear Japanese gays and lesbians's opinions on this book.
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