The lecture also addressed women who played men on stage (女生, nusheng), and a few famous historical/legendary figures who dressed as men in order to challenge societal norms, or in the case of Mulan, to fight for her country when she otherwise would not have been able to. While I am sure that such beliefs held in Japan as well to some extent, the onnagata pioneer Yoshizawa Ayame famously lived life as a woman offstage, and wrote about the necessity of doing this in order to more fully embody the role of the woman onstage. 5th-6th century) states that “yin should not become yang” or something to that effect (I apologize I’m working from memory of the lecture here), and that cross-dressing is a serious disruption of the natural order of things and of societal norms.

A document from the Northern & Southern Dynasties (c. “human monsters”), and, as in many cultures, cross-dressing is closely associated with homosexuality, transsexuality, and sexual deviance.

Cross-dressers are still today called 人妖 ( ren’yao, lit. While I am sure there are a great many differences, one which stood out for me was that cross-dressing offstage was seen as disruptive to the natural order of things, and was very much frowned upon. It was quite interesting to see how the nandan (男旦, female impersonators) of the various forms of Chinese opera differ from the onnagata of kabuki.

I attended a lecture recently here in Hawaii on the subject of cross-dressing in traditional Chinese drama.

Chinese opera drag