Japanese men and their quest for well-being outside Japan

Keywords:

• lifestyle migration
• well-being
• overseas Japanese
• Japanese men
• masculinity

“Japanese masculinity is in crisis” (Ito 1993); “the young and the hopeless” (Yamada 1994, 2001, 2011); “celibacy syndrome” (Haworth 2013) — since the 1990s we have seen more and more outcries in mass media over the decline in masculinity in Japan, often expressed in pronouncements and headlines of the same kind as those quoted above. The salaryman model of masculinity which had become naturalized and institutionalized in postwar 20th-century Japan, and which enjoyed its heyday in the decades of high-speed economic growth and the bubble years of the 1980s, has since started to show signs of disintegration. And yet, while sociologists and the public in Japan proclaim the decline in the mainstream mode of masculinity epitomized in the ideal of a white-collar breadwinner, this has so far brought only modest modifications to the gendered order of power in Japanese society. The continued presence of salarymen on the streets and in mass transit, the “fatherless society” problem of men spending too much time at work and away from their families, and the recent push by the state to re-interpret the constitution so that it will allow the Japanese military to engage in overseas combat, are perhaps some of the symptoms that make it hard to envision alternative roles for men in Japanese society.

At the same time, the mechanics of marginalization within the framework of what Connell has termed “hegemonic masculinity” (Connell 1995), work to discriminate not only against the female gender but also against men who occupy lower positions in the masculine hierarchy or who depart in some way from the mainstream version of masculinity. The competition among men over the hierarchy of prized masculinities in Japan plays out within the battleground of corporate space and is regarded as part and parcel of the salaryman work culture. That said, unlike in the bubble years three decades ago, in the 2010s the position of the salaryman as the Japanese masculine hegemon is no longer as uncontested as it once was. For example, we now have the “technologized masculinity” of the otaku (Okada 1996; Napier 2008; Frühstück and Walthall 2011) and the oppositional, “herbivore masculinity” of the sōshoku danshi (Fukazawa 2007; Morioka 2008; Charlebois 2013). Furthermore, in the last two decades some Japanese men have begun to opt for a life overseas, embarking on non-normative life paths outside the strictures of masculinities most highly prized in Japan (Naka, Maeda, and Ishida 2013). This special issue of Asian Anthropology seeks to provide input into contemporary debates on migration by increasing our understanding of self-motivated transnational mobility of young Japanese men. Who are they and what influences their decision to migrate? How do they choose their destinations? How do their experiences of life following their migration affect their gender, occupational, national and personal identities and existential concerns? In the conditions set by “liquid modernity” as proposed by Bauman (2000), entry to globalized society is open to everyone with their own stance and ability to fund it; with their economic resources and social capital Japanese migrants are well-positioned to take advantage of global migration structures.

Although Japanese men have been transnationally mobile since the 1960s, most of that mobility has been corporate-led and was limited to short-term expatriate-style postings in the overseas offices of a Japanese company. It was younger, working-age women who first forged the path to independent, self-motivated migration from Japan, when in the 1980s, the heyday of hegemonic salaryman masculinity, they began to escape the constraints of gender relations designed to discourage them from pursuing roles that extended beyond low-level non-career track corporate positions, marriage, and motherhood: the default livelihoods that awaited them. This first distinct wave of female migrants opened the gate to transnational migration for more recent groups of sociocultural “refugees” from Japan, as they were first called by Sugimoto (1993), those who used migration as either a temporary or long-term escape from the pressures of life in Japan. Whether they are “escaping from affluence” by pursuing more meaningful lifestyles as “spiritual migrants” in Australia (Sato 1993; Andressen and Kumagai 1996), striving to express their creative selves as “cultural migrants” in the US and UK (Fujita 2009) or looking for a more rewarding career and better life-work balance someplace else, their movements fall under Benson and O’Reilly’s label of lifestyle migration as the “spatial mobility of relatively affluent individuals of all ages, moving either part-time or full-time to places that are meaningful because, for various reasons, they offer the potential of a better quality of life” (Benson and O’Reilly 2009, 3).

But where do Japanese men stand in this? Although they are more likely to stay in Japan than their female compatriots, they have also started to face some of the same socio-economic pressures that until now have been more connected with female migration. As Japan went into recession in the early 1990s, many companies were left with a huge excess of employees; the switch to the new economy (Sennett 2006) and the power shift of “supercapitalism” (Reich 2008) that favored corporate interests have subsequently legitimized a hierarchical and unequal workplace, setting off a sorting mechanism that disproportionately rewards permanent “salaryman” employees and badly marginalizes part-time workers (Goka 2014). Because the formation of Japan’s middle class in the 20th century had been strongly based on bureaucratic and corporate employment with all of its connotations of masculinity, failure to secure a coveted lifetime position at one of the highly-prized corporations puts a man’s claim to masculinity, and by extension his ability to marry and enjoy a middle class life, on the line. Rather than put up with the strains in the Japanese employment system and the stigma connected with being a part-time worker, some Japanese men have turned to migration in a quest for a better, more-fulfilling way of life, even if it tends to be only a temporary escape.

The articles in this issue of Asian Anthropology build on the strengths of existing research in the field of lifestyle migration to document the socio-cultural dimensions of Japanese men’s decision to migrate and to question how we can better understand the existential concerns embedded in the decision to migrate and post-migration life. Transnational lifestyle mobility of young Japanese men has not previously been a subject of proper academic study; this collection offers ethnographic detail that can enable a better appreciation of this mobility.

The migrants’ individual paths and circumstances vary, but the direction of their movement is usually either Western-bound, usually to English-speaking countries in Europe, North America, or Australia, or, more recently, Asia-bound. In 2014, the countries with the highest numbers of Japanese residents in the world outside Japan included the US (414,000), China (133,000, including Hong Kong), Australia (85,000), Great Britain (67,000), Thailand (64,000) and Canada (63,000), (Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs 2015), with China and Thailand making this list only recently. The range of fieldwork locations presented in the articles in this special issue testifies to the broadening of the geographic horizon of lifestyle-led Japanese mobility observed in recent years. Together, the authors look into personal quests of Japanese migrants in Australia, Canada, Ireland, Thailand, and Hong Kong.

In her study of Japanese temporary residents in Australia and Canada, Etsuko Kato examines the relationship between class, gender and the mainstream discourses of work and masculinity, and how these internalized structures inform the self-constructed meanings of mobility and post-migration life for male migrants. Her article puts forward a critical discussion of the Japanese state-led efforts to promote the globalization of Japanese corporate human resources and how corporate nationalism may lead to disempowerment of the male (and female) workforce. The role of masculinity, manhood and maturity as essential dimensions that shape the migration experience is echoed in Ayako Suzuki’s ethnographic exploration of the practices of Japanese male mobility in Ireland.

Mayumi Ono’s paper takes us to Thailand, where a new pattern of Japanese lifestyle mobility has taken shape, underpinned by Southeast Asia’s overseas image as a backpacking mecca and tourist paradise (Yamashita 2009). The author investigates the low-cost, “survival” and sotokomori lifestyles of Japanese men in Thailand (Yasuda 2008), discussing the effect of transnational mobility on their male identities. Her article highlights the role of travel writings in shaping the ways in which place and lifestyle can be imagined; in other words, it highlights the imaginative and creative aspects of agency. At the intersection of migration studies and business ethnography, Reijiro Aoyama’s article explores how Japanese migrants working in the service sector in Hong Kong profit from their Japanese heritage. In his analysis of different types of businesses, he discusses strategies of producing authenticity and tensions between economic and cultural value creation.

We have been witnessing a surge in optional, voluntary and consumption-driven mobility featuring a variety of themes, such as counterurbanization themes of rurality and the slow pace of life (Benson 2011, Buller and Hoggart 1994, Hafacree and Rivera 2012), and sun and relaxation (O’Reilly 2000), as well as the exotic culture experience (Korpela 2009, 2010), and the charismatic urban center or hipster spaces (Farrer 2010, Fujita 2009, Kato 2009, Sato 2001, Knowles and Harper 2009), etc. We hope that by presenting a male-focused study of Japanese transnational mobility with its own separate themes the papers in this special issue can help us become more knowledgeable not only about mechanisms of contemporary lifestyle migration but also about social theories of gender identity, culture, consumption, and power.