The Sad Marriage of Anthropology, Neo-Colonialism and Feminism: Or Why Japanese Sexual Behavior Is Always Intriguing

Abstract

This article aims to answer the question of why Japanese sexual behavior is a well-accepted topic in American anthropology even today, while the eroticizing gaze towards non-Westerners has been refrained from since the advent of postcolonial studies in the 1970s. My discussion is twofold: first, the more American anthropologists refrain from seeking for exotic- erotic Others in the so-called developing world, the more their eyes are directed toward Others in the industrialized world—the Japanese as a foremost example. Secondly, especially from the 1970s, it is more female researchers, rather than their male colleagues, who are both active consumers and producers of the representations of “seemingly modest but actually oversexed” Japanese (women), and who receive professional benefit by so doing. Through a critical examination of the genealogy and the intertextuality of texts on Japanese sexual behavior published by American women ethnographers, I elucidate this idiosyncrasy of American anthropology.