Acting Straight? Non-heterosexual Salarymen Working With Heteronormativity in the Japanese Workplace .pdf (original) (raw)
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This paper looks at Japan over the Shôwa (1925—1989) and post-Shôwa, Heisei (1989—) periods through the discourse of masculinity embodied in the urban, middle-class white-collar " salaryman. " As a sort of " Everyman " of corporate Japan, particularly over the 1960s-1990s, the salaryman came to signify both Japanese masculinity in general, and more specifically Japanese corporate culture. In this regard the discourse of masculinity signified by the salaryman could have been regarded as the culturally privileged hegemonic masculinity. Moreover, despite the corporate re-structurings and socioeconomic and cultural shifts in Japan since the 1990s, the salaryman continues to be pivotal to the ways in which Japanese corporate culture, Japanese masculinity, and indeed Japanese national identity continue to be framed. This paper traces the emergence of the discourse of the salaryman in the first decades of the twentieth century, its entrenchment in the post-World War II (postwar) decades as the hegemonic blueprint for Japanese masculinity, and its apparent fragmentation over the decades of economic slowdown since the 1990s.
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In this chapter I explore the complexities surrounding the gendered experiences of those Japanese men who identify as “gay” (gei) across several different social contexts. Within this chapter, I particularly tease out the differences and similarities between the gendered ideologies attached to gay male experience within mainstream society and within Japan’s burgeoning gay sub-cultural spaces. I couple a survey of both activist and academic sources with the reported experiences of young gay men who have participated within my previous studies of media consumption in Japan to paint a broad introductory picture of the various gendered ideologies with which Japanese gay men engage in their everyday lives. Through this discussion, I introduce the key issues surrounding the study of gender and Japanese gay male experience.
Company Policy VS Domestic : LGBT Discourse in Japan
Proceedings of the 2nd International Seminar on Translation Studies, Applied Linguistics, Literature and Cultural Studies, STRUKTURAL 2020, 30 December 2020, Semarang, Indonesia, 2021
With the globalization, the idea of recognizing same-sex marriage becomes more expanding throughout the world. Japan doesn't want to be left out, especially the companies. Some Japanese companies have implemented LGBT inclusion policies and benefits for their employees. On the outside, the public seems to show their full support for the LGBT community In Japan. However, in the domestic sector there are still many dismays and disagreement towards the LGBT. Coming out as LGBT to the parents is especially very difficult. Many parents show disagreements and even lash out at their children who are a part of LGBT. This paper will examine the different points of view regarding LGBT in the domestic sector and the company sector using qualitative methods and analyzing the result of the value difference.
(Gay) Men at Work: corporate discourses and the normalisation of gay male identities
Drawing upon pro-feminist and poststructuralist feminist research which has scrutinised masculinities and men's practices within organisations, together with insights from gay and lesbian studies, we present the findings of a qualitative study of the work lives of ten openly gay men employed within a British National Health Services Trust. We suggest that, in the contemporary context, questions of gay and lesbian identities are being addressed by organisations with a greater sense of urgency, yet this presents a troubling paradox. Global changes have increased the range of ways in which gay men and lesbians can self-identify. Global in that the changing shape of family forms, intimacy and sexuality have precipitated transformations of everyday life as experienced at the micro level. Simultaneously, a view gaining currency within industry is that the exclusion of gay men and lesbians may hinder economic expediency. Thus, discourses of diversity have proliferated rapidly within c...
Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute
Japan has long been aware it has a gender disparity problem. The family model centred on female homemakers and male breadwinners became the norm in the post-war decades. While still favoured by many, it has grown ever less attainable in recent years, not least because of the drastic changes in Japan’s post-1990s economic landscape. The nation’s protracted economic slump has had far-reaching effects for the labour market, increasingly threatening men’s ability to follow the established path of landing a corporate job for life and starting a family. It has also laid bare the negative economic and social consequences of the gender imbalance in the workplace and at home. Japan ranked 110th (out of 149) in the World Economic Forum’s 2018 Global Gender Gap ranking, far behind other developed economies, scoring especially poorly in categories related to women’s economic opportunities and political empowerment. Official initiatives to support women in the workplace have had only limited effects. While the number of female workers has increased in the last few years, the quality of their employment has not – they take up part-time jobs and work in low-productivity sectors. One of the most widely circulated news stories in Japan in 2018, which epitomized entrenched gender interests, revealed the systematic blocking of female applicants by a well-known medical school in Tokyo. However, it is not only women who have to contend with the normative gender ideas. Just as traditional family patterns and the accompanying established gender roles are being challenged in Japan, either proactively or through socioeconomic necessity, Japanese concepts of masculinity are also due for a vital update. Cool Japanese men, edited by Brigitte Steger and Angelika Koch, is a collection of articles exploring this subject. This compilation of lively and thoroughly researched chapters introduces us to some of the specific dilemmas Japanese men face when they seek to express their manhood in ways that push at the boundaries of the socially and culturally mandated masculine status quo. Additionally, because men form and act out their masculinities not in isolation but vis-a-vis a female ` audience, the book provides us with a compelling peek into the ways Japanese women participate in shaping masculine hierarchies. A common theme that emerges from the book’s chapters highlights a departure from seeking work-related fulfilment towards self-fulfilment based to a large extent on leisure activities. Since so many Japanese men’s lives today deviate from the traditional patterns prescribed for them by mainstream society, the normative salaryman masculinity embodied by a white-collar worker fiercely dedicated to the company, who is a largely absent husband and father figure, may finally be losing its sway. In this context, Cool Japanese men provides interesting insights into the media discourses that help promote new, softer masculinities and some of the ordinary men who try to go against the norm. Or do they? The book’s chapters are right to conclude that many of the changes that purport to chip away at the unbalanced gender dynamic appear to be superficial, if not outright cosmetic, as demonstrated in Tso and Shirota’s chapter 3, which discusses the new cultural representations of ideal corporate male appearance and personal etiquette. Even in an ostensibly rebellious and anti-authoritarian setting provided by a mixed-gender university hip hop dance club, the uneven access to reputation-building resources between male and nominally equal female members frustrates the meritocratic potential of dance, as Mesimaki discusses in chapter 4. Read together, the main chapters can be seen as representing different stages, or aspects, of male Japanese adulthood: starting with a university extra-curricular club, moving on to a corporate job, and finally enjoying family life (Vassallo, chap. 2), or otherwise finding fulfilment through surrogate ‘relationships’ with female pop ‘idols’ (Dent-Spargo, chap. 5). This gives the collection a cohesive, common-sense quality, but it also means that the book’s range of representation is limited to what are all essentially various expressions of middle-class, productive, urban, white-collar, heterosexual masculinity. As a social group, such men are already well represented in media and popular culture. However, their dominant status and spending power make them a useful target for neoliberal marketing initiatives designed to convert gentler and more caring modes of masculinity into forms of consumption. This is consistent with the shift from the patriarchal tone of post-war-era industrial capitalism towards the softer, service-orientated economy of the twenty-first century. As the book also observes, Japanese men may be merely giving themselves a media-inspired, consumerist makeover, while the entrenched gender structures remain largely unchanged. Anyone with an interest in contemporary Japanese society will find value in this timely and engaging collection, but recommend it especially for advanced students in the field.
Manufacturing Men: Working-Class Masculinities In Japan
Hitotsubashi Journal of Social Studies, 1998
This paper examines the intersection of class and gender in contemporary Japan as reflected in the importance of class differences among Japanese men. In particular, I draw on recent literature on men and masculinities in order to examine the lives and identities of the working class men employed in the small manufacturing firm where I conducted ethnographic fieldwork.
Coming out or not? How nonheterosexual people manage their sexual identity at work (New Scholars)
Journal of Workplace Rights, 2008
The context of workplaces could be defined as heteronormative, from a structural, discursive and practical point of view. Sexual orientation is still an underresearched area of diversity in work organizations (Ward & Winstanley, 2005) because of the difficulties in accessing information around themes connected to sexuality. As a result, the framework provided by the present study produces a significant contribution to our understanding of minority sexual identity at work. Through the conceptual framework of performativity, this article's aim is to give voice to every individual who doesn't recognise her/himself in a heterosexual definition of her/his orientation, desires, behaviours , emotions, and identities. I propose to adopt Greimas's semiotic square (1970) in order to define a heuristic device relating to the " disclosure " and " silence " possibilities in workplaces. The empirical material in this article is based on 34 in-depth interviews conducted with nonheterosexual members of private and public Italian organizations.