The four countries represented in this volume are East Asian middle powers with strategic constraints upon their traditional security policymaking. These middle powers have pursued diplomatic activities raising their international profile or footprint, and advancing their national interest, through normative foreign policy and humanitarian channels, including peacebuilding, development, and human security. In each case, therefore, there is a happy coincidence of the national interest of the middle power expressed though certain diplomatic "niches," and benefit to regional partners in peace and development. The Niche Diplomacy of Asian Middle Powers seeks to uncover the unique contributions of Asian middle powers to the furtherance of humanitarian and human-related policymaking, including the promotion of peace, development and democracy long associated with middle-powerism, with particular emphasis on their involvement in the Southeast Asian subregion. Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan have made Southeast Asia a focus for their attempts to get more "bang for their foreign policy buck" (or Yen or Won) and have adopted similar normatively justified variations on the theme of "new Southern policies." Meanwhile, Thailand looks to play a variety of middle power roles within a region where it is a major actor.

The boys love (BL) genre was created for girls and women by young female manga (comic) artists in early 1970s Japan to challenge oppressive gender and sexual norms. Over the years, BL has seen almost irrepressible growth in popularity and since the 2000s has become a global media phenomenon, weaving its way into anime, prose fiction, live-action dramas, video games, audio dramas, and fan works. BL's male-male romantic and sexual relationships have found a particularly receptive home in other parts of Asia, where strong local fan communities and locally produced BL works have garnered a following throughout the region, taking on new meanings and engendering widespread cultural effects. Queer Transfigurations is the first detailed examination of the BL media explosion across Asia. The book brings together twenty-one scholars exploring BL media, its fans, and its sociocultural impacts in a dozen countries in East, Southeast, and South Asia--and beyond. Contributors draw on their expertise in an array of disciplines and fields, including anthropology, fan studies, gender and sexuality studies, history, literature, media studies, political science, and sociology to shed light on BL media and its fandoms. Queer Transfigurations reveals the far-reaching influences of the BL genre, demonstrating that it is truly transnational and transcultural in diverse cultural contexts. It has also helped bring about positive changes in the status of LGBT(Q) people and communities as well as enlighten local understandings of gender and sexuality throughout Asia. In short, Queer Transfigurations shows that, some fifty years after the first BL manga appeared in print, the genre is continuing to reverberate and transform lives.