No romantic feelings – asexuality in Japan : Ren'aikanjou nai? Nihon ni okeru asekushariti

Asexuality is often defined as “lack of sexual attraction” and by this definition asexual person is a person who feels none or very little sexual attraction towards other people. In this master's thesis I am using anthropological ethnographic methods to paint a picture of what it means to be “asexual” in contemporary Japan. From the theoretical point of view I have found great inspiration from the concepts of socio-cultural construction and cultural discourses, though this thesis does not strictly belong to the field of discourse analysis. I am working with the research question “how the normative social relations and wider cultural discourses related to gender and sexuality shape how people identifying themselves as asexual perceive asexuality and their personal experiences in Japan?” Interviews conducted in Japanese with 7 individuals identifying themselves as asexual are the core of this project, but I have also referred to Japanese internet materials (such as blogs and web articles), as well as academic written materials and my personal experiences related to the larger cultural discourses on sexuality and gender in Japan. Thus far, many researchers have approached asexuality either deliberately or inadvertently with a substantialistic or essentialistic theory base (i.e. there is a distinct group of people called “asexuals” and the aim of the research is to find the universal “facts” about these people). Instead of looking for a universal definition of asexuality, I am interested in the possible socio-cultural ways of talking about asexuality. There has been hardly any research on asexuality in Japan and even in international research the socio-cultural point of view has been underrepresented. This thesis answers to the academic demands for more qualitative asexuality research, as well as the need for research on asexuality in different cultural contexts. I argue that the ways how asexuality can be perceived varies in different cultural contexts in relation to multiple interrelated factors, such as the local cultural discourses of gender and sexuality. For instance, besides "lack of sexual attraction", in Japan “lack of romantic feelings” (ren'ai kanjou) has also a central role in making sense of the asexual realities. In this thesis I illuminate some of the cultural logics that shape what it means to be asexual in Japan