Women and New Men: Negotiating Masculinity in the Japanese Media

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Notes

1 I use the terms “West” and “Western” throughout this paper as they are typically defined in the Japanese cultural environment—to refer to the United States and western Europe. Japan's relationship to these cultural environments was significantly shaped by two historical periods, the Meiji Restoration—during which Japanese leaders embarked on an intensive process of “Westernization” in order to thwart threats of colonization—and the postwar period of American occupation.

2 The term “New Man” was coined by theorists in the late 1980s to refer to popular cultural redefinitions of masculinity developed in the aftermath of the second wave of the feminist movement, in particular during the conservative 1980s (for an in-depth analysis of the concept see Chapman, 1988).

3 All names have been changed to protect informants’ anonymity.

4 I have found the concept of class, however, to be rather relative in the context of my fieldwork. First of all, it is important to keep in mind that women have traditionally tended to inherit their class status first from their father, then from their husband. Some of my informants’ class status had consequently greatly varied over the course of their lives. Furthermore, my informants tended to define themselves in middle-class terms no matter where they stood on the socioeconomic ladder, interpreting their own position to make it fit within middle- class standards. For instance, most of the women I interviewed deemed themselves “housewives” even when their responsibilities extended far beyond those normally associated with marriage and motherhood—i.e., I interviewed “housewives” of factory workers or farmers who worked “part time” forty to fifty hours a week. My informants also tended to attempt to maintain a level of consumption high enough to keep them in the ranks of the middle class even though most of them had to work very hard in order to do so. I consequently decided to assess my informants’ economic status not only on their levels of consumption but also on their social standing in the village, cultural capital, and education levels.

5 I tried to focus in my research on members of three-generational families living either under one roof or in close proximity. In the case of these two families, I interviewed and conducted extensive participant observation with members of each generation— grandmother, mother, and (grand)daughters.

6 As a super-tough hero of 1950s Japanese gangster movies, Takakura has been compared to Clint Eastwood for his machismo and strong-but-silent charisma. However, as Schilling (1997) notes, “whereas Eastwood's specialty was killing stylishly, Takakura's was dying beautifully” (p. 290).

7 As mentioned, Japanese celebrities frequently appear on comedy shows, talk shows, or variety shows as well as television dramas or music videos. While such appearances may be prerecorded and are carefully planned, they are made to look spontaneous and informal and actors/ singers are portrayed as showing their “true” personality through discussion or game-playing.

8 My informants’ assertion is supported here by the proliferation of men's fashion magazines, such as Men's Non-no or Smart, and even a customary look at the streets of Tokyo, such as Harajuku or Shibuya, where fashionable groups of Japanese youths like to hang out.

9 Esthetic salon. They originally from France and are very popular in Japan today, these extremely costly beauty salons offer skin treatments and makeup advice. While traditionally mostly frequented by women, the Japanese media has recently paid much attention to their increasing appeal among young men.

10 While African American figures are present on the Japanese popular cultural scene, they are mostly hip-hop stars, a genre still mostly enjoyed by young males in Japan (Condry, 2000).