Research interests
Gabriele Koch is a sociocultural anthropologist whose research focuses on the social meanings and consequences of care in contemporary Japan. Her first book, Healing Labor: Japanese Sex Work in the Gendered Economy (Stanford University Press, 2020, winner of the 2022 John Whitney Hall Book Prize from the Association for Asian Studies), explores the relationship between how adult Japanese women working in Tokyo’s sex industry think about what sex is and the political-economic roles and possibilities that they imagine for themselves. The book examines how Japanese sex workers regard their services as a form of socially necessary care and highlights the gendered interdependencies and inequalities that shape women’s work in the Japanese economy more generally.
Koch's current project focuses on new therapeutic uses of forests and changing human-forest relations in Japan.
Publications
Books:
2020 Healing Labor: Japanese Sex Work in the Gendered Economy. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
*Winner, 2022 John Whitney Hall Book Prize, Association for Asian Studies
Journal Articles:
2021 “Twenty-Four Ways to Have Sex within the Law: Regulation and Moral Subjectivity in the Japanese Sex Industry.” Journal of Legal Anthropology 5(2): 30-49.
2016 “Producing Iyashi: Healing and Labor in Tokyo’s Sex Industry.” American Ethnologist 43(4): 704-716.
2016 “Willing Daughters: The Moral Rhetoric of Filial Sacrifice and Financial Autonomy in Tokyo’s Sex Industry.” Critical Asian Studies 48(2): 215-234.