Title: Great mirrors shattered
First published: 1999
Description: In 1986 John Whittier Treat went to Tokyo on sabbatical to write a book about the literature of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But once there, he found himself immersed in the emergence of a new kind of Holocaust, AIDS, and the sweeping denial, hysteria, and projection with which Japan - a place where "there are no homosexuals" - tried to insulate itself from the epidemic.

Great Mirrors Shattered is a compelling memoir of a gay man thoroughly familiar with the Japanese homosexual underground, a man anxious for his own health and unsure of the relationship he has left behind in the United States. It is also a highly self-aware analysis of Orientalism, which the author defines as "the Western study of everywhere else," and an exploration of how sexual identity conditions knowledge across cultures.
Subjects: Homosexuality, Public opinion, Sexual behavior, AIDS (Disease), Gay men, Aids (disease), social aspects, Japan, social conditions
Places: Japan
LC classification: HQ76.3.J3 T74 1999