I will also examine the links between gender studies, lesbian and gay studies and queer studies in North America. After importing and appropriating the concepts, Japanese feminists, LGBT activists and scholars further developed these intellectual tools as a means of undertaking reflection in their own language and exploring issues specific to Japan. Retracing this epistemology of the Japanese closet 8 means establishing the genealogy of the various concepts and attempting to understand how these sources of new knowledge managed to define and establish themselves as an academic field.
