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Papers by Chigusa Yamaura

Japanese Studies 2024: 1-23., 2024

How should we understand the relationship between nationalism and discourses of national decline,... more How should we understand the relationship between nationalism and discourses of national decline, and more specifically the discourses of a shrinking nation? Driven by this question, this article highlights how bleak imaginings of the future also work to construct the relationship of the individual to the putative national community, creating forms of sentimental national belonging. This article analyses an emerging genre of best-selling books in Japan, Mirai no nenpyō [The chronology of the future] series, that present a dismal vision of Japan’s national demographic future. Their goal is to provoke a sense of national urgency by encouraging Japanese nationals to feel personally the shrinking nation through imagining its coming consequences for everyday life. Such narrations of an imagined shrinking community act to create a timeless sense of national belonging, with daily lived experience in the imagined future interpreted through the lens of the contracting nation. Importantly, the future that these discourses present is nationalized within boundaries separating it from global developments and intercourse. Ultimately, this form of nationalism is constituted not by dying for the nation, but instead by people seeing the continued stability of everyday life as intricately tied to the fate of the national community.

Critical Asian Studies , 2020

The shortage of public childcare in Japan – called the “waitlisted children problem” (taiki jidō ... more The shortage of public childcare in Japan – called the “waitlisted children problem” (taiki jidō mondai) – has assumed increasing
visibility and salience over the last several decades. This essay
analyzes how this “waitlisted children problem” has been
conceived, narrated, and addressed within the specific political,
economic, and historical context that is contemporary Japanese
society. Going beyond discussions of gender inequality in the
workplace and home, the paper interrogates the cultural logics
underpinning the recent urgency of debates over public childcare
provision in Japan. The key to understanding these developments
is recognizing how Japanese women’s reproductive desires have
become objectified within official and popular discussions as
obstructed and requiring emancipation. Correspondingly,
promoting gender equality by expanding childcare provision has
become a tool of bio-political intervention, a means to remove a
statistically calculated inhibition of women’s reproductive desire.
This links childcare with Japan’s national survival, and thus helps
to explain how both official and popular debates have converged
in seeing the issue as significant and pressing.

China. It focuses on the commercial matchmaking practices between a transnational marriage agency... more China. It focuses on the commercial matchmaking practices between a transnational marriage agency in Tokyo and Dongyang in northeast China. Regardless of the participants' initial hesitation to engage in transnational matchmaking practices, I argue that it was the negotiation of local marital norms on a transnational scale that rendered participants marriageable to one another. Specifically, I demonstrate how the brokers and participants in these practices negotiated the cultural boundaries of marriageabilityby constructing and reproducing essentialized similarities and proximities-within local-global contexts. On the one hand, the Japanese men involved sought to frame Chinese prospects as "almost Japanese brides" so that their marriages would be "almost national endogamous marriages." The Chinese women, on the other hand, attempted to marry off and into a "proximate" community where many friends had already wed. By both relying on and stretching local marital values, they engaged in flexible imaginings of marital norms on a transnational scale while simultaneously reaffirming them at the local level. Ultimately, this article provides

Books by Chigusa Yamaura

Cornell University Press, 2020

How do the Japanese men and Chinese women who participate in cross-border matchmaking—individuals... more How do the Japanese men and Chinese women who participate in cross-border matchmaking—individuals whose only interaction is often just one brief meeting—come to see one another as potential marriage partners? Motivated by this question, Chigusa Yamaura traces the practices of Sino-Japanese matchmaking from transnational marriage agencies in Tokyo to branch offices and language schools in China, from initial meetings to marriage, the visa application processes, and beyond to marital life in Japan.

Engaging issues of colonial history, local norms, and the very ability to conceive of another or oneself as marriageable, Marriage and Marriageability rethinks cross-border marriage not only as a form of gendered migration, but also as a set of practices that constructs marriageable partners and imaginable marriages. Yamaura shows that instead of desiring different others, these transnational marital relations are based on the tactical deployment of socially and historically created conceptions of proximity between Japan and northeast China. Far from seeking to escape local practices, participants in these marriages actively seek to avoid transgressing local norms. By doing so on a transnational scale, they paradoxically reaffirm and attempt to remain within the boundaries of local marital ideologies.

Ideally, Japanese should marry Japanese. That is the best marriage," said Mr. Tanaka. Mr. Tanaka ... more Ideally, Japanese should marry Japanese. That is the best marriage," said Mr. Tanaka. Mr. Tanaka is a marriage broker, but contrary to the ideal he articulated, his job is not to facilitate marriages between Japanese men and women. Instead he mediates marriages between Japanese men and Chinese women. Since establishing his transnational marriage agency in 1995, as of October 2010 he had brokered 242 pairings between Japanese men and women from mainland China. Although he is very proud of what he does, he did not hesitate to claim that the ideal marriage is always between co-nationals. After saying this, he continued, "But there are some Japanese men who cannot [marry Japanese women]. So I take them to China to find a Chinese bride." Mr. Tanaka's opinion was not unusual. From both other transnational marriage brokers and many of their Japanese clientele I had heard the refrain that for a Japanese man, finding a Japanese bride was the natural first choice.

Talks by Chigusa Yamaura

Japanese Studies 2024: 1-23., 2024

How should we understand the relationship between nationalism and discourses of national decline,... more How should we understand the relationship between nationalism and discourses of national decline, and more specifically the discourses of a shrinking nation? Driven by this question, this article highlights how bleak imaginings of the future also work to construct the relationship of the individual to the putative national community, creating forms of sentimental national belonging. This article analyses an emerging genre of best-selling books in Japan, Mirai no nenpyō [The chronology of the future] series, that present a dismal vision of Japan’s national demographic future. Their goal is to provoke a sense of national urgency by encouraging Japanese nationals to feel personally the shrinking nation through imagining its coming consequences for everyday life. Such narrations of an imagined shrinking community act to create a timeless sense of national belonging, with daily lived experience in the imagined future interpreted through the lens of the contracting nation. Importantly, the future that these discourses present is nationalized within boundaries separating it from global developments and intercourse. Ultimately, this form of nationalism is constituted not by dying for the nation, but instead by people seeing the continued stability of everyday life as intricately tied to the fate of the national community.

Critical Asian Studies , 2020

The shortage of public childcare in Japan – called the “waitlisted children problem” (taiki jidō ... more The shortage of public childcare in Japan – called the “waitlisted children problem” (taiki jidō mondai) – has assumed increasing
visibility and salience over the last several decades. This essay
analyzes how this “waitlisted children problem” has been
conceived, narrated, and addressed within the specific political,
economic, and historical context that is contemporary Japanese
society. Going beyond discussions of gender inequality in the
workplace and home, the paper interrogates the cultural logics
underpinning the recent urgency of debates over public childcare
provision in Japan. The key to understanding these developments
is recognizing how Japanese women’s reproductive desires have
become objectified within official and popular discussions as
obstructed and requiring emancipation. Correspondingly,
promoting gender equality by expanding childcare provision has
become a tool of bio-political intervention, a means to remove a
statistically calculated inhibition of women’s reproductive desire.
This links childcare with Japan’s national survival, and thus helps
to explain how both official and popular debates have converged
in seeing the issue as significant and pressing.

China. It focuses on the commercial matchmaking practices between a transnational marriage agency... more China. It focuses on the commercial matchmaking practices between a transnational marriage agency in Tokyo and Dongyang in northeast China. Regardless of the participants' initial hesitation to engage in transnational matchmaking practices, I argue that it was the negotiation of local marital norms on a transnational scale that rendered participants marriageable to one another. Specifically, I demonstrate how the brokers and participants in these practices negotiated the cultural boundaries of marriageabilityby constructing and reproducing essentialized similarities and proximities-within local-global contexts. On the one hand, the Japanese men involved sought to frame Chinese prospects as "almost Japanese brides" so that their marriages would be "almost national endogamous marriages." The Chinese women, on the other hand, attempted to marry off and into a "proximate" community where many friends had already wed. By both relying on and stretching local marital values, they engaged in flexible imaginings of marital norms on a transnational scale while simultaneously reaffirming them at the local level. Ultimately, this article provides

Cornell University Press, 2020

How do the Japanese men and Chinese women who participate in cross-border matchmaking—individuals... more How do the Japanese men and Chinese women who participate in cross-border matchmaking—individuals whose only interaction is often just one brief meeting—come to see one another as potential marriage partners? Motivated by this question, Chigusa Yamaura traces the practices of Sino-Japanese matchmaking from transnational marriage agencies in Tokyo to branch offices and language schools in China, from initial meetings to marriage, the visa application processes, and beyond to marital life in Japan.

Engaging issues of colonial history, local norms, and the very ability to conceive of another or oneself as marriageable, Marriage and Marriageability rethinks cross-border marriage not only as a form of gendered migration, but also as a set of practices that constructs marriageable partners and imaginable marriages. Yamaura shows that instead of desiring different others, these transnational marital relations are based on the tactical deployment of socially and historically created conceptions of proximity between Japan and northeast China. Far from seeking to escape local practices, participants in these marriages actively seek to avoid transgressing local norms. By doing so on a transnational scale, they paradoxically reaffirm and attempt to remain within the boundaries of local marital ideologies.

Ideally, Japanese should marry Japanese. That is the best marriage," said Mr. Tanaka. Mr. Tanaka ... more Ideally, Japanese should marry Japanese. That is the best marriage," said Mr. Tanaka. Mr. Tanaka is a marriage broker, but contrary to the ideal he articulated, his job is not to facilitate marriages between Japanese men and women. Instead he mediates marriages between Japanese men and Chinese women. Since establishing his transnational marriage agency in 1995, as of October 2010 he had brokered 242 pairings between Japanese men and women from mainland China. Although he is very proud of what he does, he did not hesitate to claim that the ideal marriage is always between co-nationals. After saying this, he continued, "But there are some Japanese men who cannot [marry Japanese women]. So I take them to China to find a Chinese bride." Mr. Tanaka's opinion was not unusual. From both other transnational marriage brokers and many of their Japanese clientele I had heard the refrain that for a Japanese man, finding a Japanese bride was the natural first choice.