Normalizing the Japan Self-defense Forces via Marriage

Abstract

Feminist political scientist Cynthia Enloe urges us to always ask questions and be curious so as to prevent militarization occurring unremarked upon. Based on this advice, I turn my ‘feminist curiosity’ to the increasingly normalized idea of marriage between a civilian woman and a Japan Self-Defense Forces (JSDF) soldier. I apply feminist critical discourse analysis to a matchmaking website that pairs JSDF men with civilian women and the monthly Ministry of Defense public relations magazine, Mamor. Analysis of data from these sources forms the foundation of an argument that these cultural products contribute to the normalization of the JSDF by, firstly, portraying the JSDF as a quirky place to work, but also as an institution in the business of protection (with only infrequent allusion to its war-making potential) and, secondly, by focusing on family and marriage — concepts that soften and sanitize the institution’s image.

KEYWORDS:

• Japan Self-Defense Forces
• women
• marriage
• military
• popular culture
• konkatsu

Acknowledgments

The National Library of Australia, 2018 Asia Study Grant.

Notes

1 The title comes from the Japanese word for ‘protect’, mamoru.

2 Jieitai Premium Club and Jieitai Premium Bridal are two arms of the same matchmaking service. The former is concerned with dating and potential marriage and the latter is concerned exclusively with marriage. The content, however, is very similar and throughout this paper the term Jieitai Premium will be used to encompass both as a singular online matchmaking service that aims to pair up JSDF men and civilian women.

3 This is the official translation. All other translations are my own, unless otherwise stated.

4 A search of Yomiuri Shinbun newspaper articles (in the Yomidasu database at NLA) published between 1986 and December 2018 for the key words of jieitai and konkatsu yielded 15 results. (The word konkatsu is an abbreviation of kekkon katsudō, which refers to a set of activities whose objective is to find a marriage partner.) A search for the words jieitai and omiai (matchmaking) yielded 10 articles. Amongst those, there were six relevant articles, published since 2012. All mentioned that many more women applied to attend these events than could be accommodated.

5 Between December 2013 and December 2017, 12 women JSDF personnel were included in the classifieds pages; the remainder were men. Women constitute 7 percent of JSDF members (MOD) and more than 80 percent of married JSDF woman have JSDF husbands (Fukuura 2017: 123). As far as I am aware, there are no equivalent matchmaking sites for JSDF women. JSDF women are not often imagined as objects of desire or marriage partner material, quite the opposite (Dalton 2019).

6 Registration is limited to Japanese citizens, so I would not have been able to register even if I had wanted to. I am further disqualified by age. The upper age limit registering on the Premium Club site is 29 for women and 35 for men; for the Premium Bridal site it is 40 and 49 respectively.

7 Hitsuji has published a six-part series manga called Totsugeki Jieikan Zuma, chronicling life as a JSDF wife. She is also a frequent feature writer in Mamor.

8 See Dalton (2019) for further discussion of the ‘helpmate’ role of women in relation to the JSDF and the Japanese state.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Emma Dalton

Emma Dalton is a lecturer in the School of Global, Urban and Social Studies at RMIT University in Melbourne. She researches the relationship between women and the Japanese state, with a focus on women in politics.