I have read into some topics within a couple of the books I am using to investigate homosexuality in Japan. These are a couple of them:
Within Urban Japan: Its Foundations and Growth, there is the topic of the agrarian and agricultural lifestyles - there are obviously different types of societies (pre/post-industrial, agrarian, agricultural, etc), and each has their own unique perceptions of gender roles and those who deviate from those roles. For example, males and females tend to be more equal in agrarian and agricultural societies because these communities need the participation of both in order to succeed. In a post-industrial society, however, gender roles are not only different, but are also very unequal - for American culture, this is because of the established roles of males as the breadwinner and females as the homemaker. Furthermore, each has its own ideas of how connected sex (a biological notion) and gender (a societal notion) are. How gender deviants are perceived is very dependent on how the society in which they live relates sex to gender.
Japanese Americans: The Evolution of a Subculture serves more as a means of comparing societal views - in general - between those that actually live in Japan, and those who live in a different country - America, in this case - but still have some of the same ideals as those who reside in Japan.
Posted by arielle at October 11, 2004 01:03 AMOne book you should be sure to look at is Ian Buruma's A Japanese mirror : heroes and villains of Japanese culture (Leyburn-Level 4 DS821 .B796 1984b)
It's 20 years old, but still one of the clearest introductions I know. It's also published as
Behind the Mask: On Sexual Demons, Sacred Mothers, Transvestites, Gangsters and Other Japanese Cultural Heroes