This panel examines queer and transgressive bodies in East Asian cinema as sites of cultural, political, and historical transformation. Through case studies of Irezumi (Japan, 1982), Swordsman II (Hong Kong, 1992), and Hebei Taipei (Taiwan, 2015), we explore how cinema mediates the emergence of non-normative expressions of gender identities and sexualities amid cultural and political ruptures. Each paper focuses on a gender-transgressive figure whose body, through stylized visual techniques, becomes an archive of trauma, agency, and memory. Rather than merely reflecting existing norms, these films construct gendered embodiment as a dynamic process through which power, resistance, and belonging are negotiated.

The films we analyze are set at key transitional junctures in East Asian history: the early 1980s in post-imperial Japan, the early 1990s in pre-handover Hong Kong, and the early 2000s to mid-2010s in Taiwan’s post–martial law democratic era. Each film stages gender performance as a response to these transitions, using aesthetic strategies to challenge the coherence of national, moral, and gender norms. In doing so, the panel engages a broader disciplinary question: How do aesthetic strategies in cinema mediate and make tangible the intertwined transformations of politics and gendered embodiment, given cinema’s role as a transnational medium? We bring this question into conversation with ongoing discussions in East Asian studies, feminist theory, queer aesthetics, film studies, and cultural politics, offering new perspectives to inspire further interdisciplinary dialogue.

We build on scholarship in East Asian cinema, gender theory, and postcolonial and Sinophone studies. Our papers extend key frameworks, including Rey Chow’s Writing Diaspora and Primitive Passions, Shu-mei Shih’s Visuality and Identity, and Homi Bhabha’s postcolonial cultural theories, which illuminate how gender and ethnic identities are negotiated in post-imperial, postcolonial, and diasporic contexts through visual culture and hybridity. In Japanese studies, foundational works such as David Desser’s Eros Plus Massacre have shaped understandings of cinematic modernity, erotic genre, and gendered aesthetics. Furthermore, Jennifer Robertson’s research on imperial spectacle and gendered subjectivity, alongside Angela Yiu’s work on women and literary modernism, further historicizes the rhetorical framing of female sexuality in Japanese media.

While these works offer rich insights, few bring these perspectives into direct dialogue across regional contexts or cinematic genres. Our panel redresses this gap by centering gender nonconformity as a cinematic strategy, expressed through specific visual, narrative, and generic forms—including visual symbolism, casting choices, and genre conventions. Together, the three papers examine how film embodies gendered instability during moments of ideological transition, offering a comparative framework for understanding how cinematic form participates in shaping political subjectivities.

Preeshita Biswas examines the Japanese erotica Irezumi (1982), reading the tattooed female body as a visual surface where imperial ideology, erotic power, and feminine agency intersect. Drawing on the concept of “visual haptics,” the paper analyzes how the film translates enfleshed sensation into cinematic language. The woman’s inked skin becomes a site of memory and symbolic violence, situated within and against patriarchal modernity and reflecting post-imperial Japan’s search for new gendered subjectivities.

Ruoyi Bian examines the reimagining of Dongfang Bubai in Swordsman II (1992), which transforms the self-castrated villain from Jin Yong’s 1960s novel into a gender-fluid figure through Brigitte Lin’s performance and stylized visual presentation. This paper explores how the film frames gender as performative and politically charged, constructing a hybrid identity that unsettles dominant power structures. Drawing on the theory of performativity and postcolonial accounts of cultural hybridity, the analysis argues that Dongfang Bubai enacts a space of negotiation that gestures toward an alternative cultural logic within Hong Kong’s contested postcolonial condition.

Tze-Lan Sang analyzes Hebei Taipei (2015), a long-form documentary about Old Li, a Chinese veteran exiled in Taiwan. Old Li’s cross-dressing and solitude are framed not as liberation but as gestures of survival and historical haunting. The paper explores how the film presents Old Li’s aging, gender-fluid body as a haunted landscape shaped by Cold War trauma, ideological estrangement, and gender dissonance. The film’s aesthetics—slow pacing, lingering close-ups, and grotesque visual cues—emphasize the unresolved affective and political tensions embodied in Old Li’s everyday life.

Bringing together scholars across career stages, institutions, and disciplines, this panel offers a comparative and generative framework for thinking through East Asian cinemas with a commitment to inclusive and responsible engagement. Each speaker will present for 13–15 minutes, followed by an 8–10-minute response from Chuanhui Meng, whose expertise in Chinese cinema, gender, and transnational genre circulation will help contextualize the panel. We will reserve 18–20 minutes for audience discussion, staying within the 75-minute session format.