This project uses the optic of hermaphroditism to examine late nineteenth and early twentieth century investigations of sex in Japan. It explores the role that scientific thinking played in rooting identity in the body rather than within a web of social interactions and in setting female in opposition to male at a cellular level. This codification of maleness and femaleness as essential, inalterable, and filterable through a prism of science contributed to the fact of sex being brought increasingly within the totalizing domain of medicine.

As the modern project to scientifically delineate the sexes ran into obstacles, it led to a fascination with those individuals whose sex could not be definitively classified. This dissertation seeks to illuminate this phenomenon by examining hermaphroditism and ambiguous sex at four sites. The first chapter explores broader theoretical issues by looking at the intersection of sex and nation-state through the prism of the conscription exam. The second chapter examines the creation of the disorder-concept of hermaphroditism (han'in'yo) within the Japanese medical establishment. Chapter three looks at attempts to delineate the sexes by examining the efforts of sexologist Sawada Junjiro to create a science of sexual difference. The final chapter analyzes Miyatake Gaikotsu's 1922 book Hannannyoko (Thoughts on Hermaphroditism) and situates it within contemporary concerns about the convergence of male and female.