Gender Images in Contemporary Japanese Society (original) (raw)
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The Continuum of Male Beauty in Contemporary Japan
The Routledge Companion to Gender and Japanese Culture, 2019
This chapter examines male beauty in contemporary Japan, specifically related to the fully clothed body. It argues that male beauty is often understood, especially outside Japan, in a binary of muscular maturity and slender youthfulness. However, in reality, male beauty is a continuum, as recent TV commercials created for the Shiseido men’s grooming product line Uno (2016–2017) indicate. These advertisements offer a male image that is situated somewhere in the middle of the continuum between a rugged, mature, and brawny image thought to be preferred by men, to the slender, delicate, and youthful images designed to appeal to women. While such appreciation may depend on the sexual orientation and class of those evaluating beauty, the different modes of male beauty in Japanese popular culture, this chapter proposes, also signal a degree of flexibility in appreciating male beauty in Japan.
The Importance of Looking Pleasant: Reading Japanese Men’s Fashion Magazines
"Readers unfamiliar with contemporary Japanese media might be puzzled by the appearance of men in fashion magazines. This is particularly the case for images of Japanese young men whose strong concerns over their appearance and slender physicality seem to enhance their (hetero)sexual desirability. These publications suggest to their male readers that crafting fashionable looks through selection of the right clothes, cosmetics, fragrances, and maintaining a balanced diet is necessary to self-assurance and a successful life. Do Japanese men engage with fashion differently from men in Europe, Australia, and North America? The co-presence of Asian and non-Asian models can make these publications seem even more confusing. Readers might wonder if these models are another reification of the ‘Westernised’ nature of Japanese youth. This article shows that a rich study of subjectivity and aesthetics might be found in these Japanese men’s publications. Male aesthetic sensitivities at a cultural level and notions of “the self” might be understood in different terms than they are in many Euro-American cultures. Likewise, the male aesthetics favored by some contemporary Japanese youth might imply an attempt to reject the more established, dowdy mode of ‘salaryman’ masculinity. In short, I argue that Japanese young men’s almost narcissistic concerns about appearance and fashion might offer a different, more ‘relaxed,’ approach to understanding men’s relationship with fashion."
Japanese Fashion Cultures: Dress and Gender in Contemporary Japan
2015
Japanese contemporary culture, including fashion, has increasingly gained popularity outside Japan, making it a timely topic for both scholarly and wider publics. Most current studies of popular culture focuses on manga, anime, and other such forms of visual culture, and dress and design studies are also emerging as a rapidly growing field. Building on the works of McVeigh (2000), Miller (2006), Slade (2010) and Steele (2010), this book addresses this new interest in an innovative fashion, expanding the significance of dress and delving into a wide range of examples from films, magazines, music videos and literature. By connecting diverse topic areas including dress, gender, media and cultural studies, Japanese Fashion Cultures analyzes the relationship of fashion aesthetics and gender identity within an increasingly interconnected, transnational world. The book pays particular attention to the relationship of past and present. It examines contemporary Japanese fashion trends that adopt and restyle European historical clothing forms: the Edwardian dandy style, Victorian little girls’ dresses, and the Rococo and Romantic dress typical of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Japanese fashion culture actively promoted European clothing styles both politically and aesthetically, particularly since the country’s re-engagement with Euro-America in 1868. Throughout this book, I refer to the theory of “format” and “product” articulated by cultural sociologist Keiko Okamura (2003) where a cultural form, in this case Euro-American clothing styles, can be seen as a “format” when accepted globally. This standardized “format” becomes a carrier of the locality of cultures, allowing its “local” characteristics to be visible, measurable, and comparable with that of other cultures. Through this theoretical idea, I explain complex cultural theory using compelling examples. For instance, differences in preferred modes of masculinity and fashionability in Japan and Euro-America will be explained via garments and advertisement campaigns of Dolce and Gabbana. This process will therefore reveal the characteristics both universal and culturally specific to the Japanese context, including the ways in which Japanese men and women engage with fashion today. This poses a challenge to a widely held, often Eurocentric notion that Japanese men and women simply desire to imitate their Euro-American counterparts. Japanese Fashion Cultures provides comprehensive insights into representations of clothes and gender in a society still poorly understood by outsiders. I dispel the popular misconception that Japan approves of gender inequalities and that women still occupy inferior social positions to men, expressed also in clothing. I argue that using the lens of fashion reveals the complexities of gender relations in Japan. Four contemporary case studies position the argument: young men’s fashion magazines, female performers’ use of Lewis Carroll’s “Alice” in music video, “Lolita” fashion and Tetsuya Nakashima’s film Shimotsuma monogatari (Kamikaze Girls, 2004), and the continuing remarking of “Ivy-League” style in Japan. These four examples are notable for their adoption of historic European and American clothing forms. Their relatively “mainstream” stature in contemporary Japanese culture comes with a “twist” or unconventional characteristics. The “mainstream” standing of these types of popular culture indicates their reach, consumed by a great number of individuals within Japan. Certain qualities they manifest, on the other hand, impose a subtle, almost “delicate” kind of revolt against a set of idées fixes surrounding the relationship between clothes and gender. Using media and cultural texts as a primary source for discussion enables consideration of these complex links between distortion and reality. As Diana Crane (1990) has argued, both are parts of the “real” world where these case studies are first produced. The first important issue this book raises is that, through negotiating male readers’ desire to attract admirers and to dress for their own pleasure, young men’s fashion magazines endorse the idea that crafting a pleasant look is the foundation of self-assurance and a successful life. Secondly, I show that female Japanese singers allow an accentuation of femininity without necessarily sexualization through the use of Japanese cute (kawaii) aesthetics. The third possibility this book explores is that highly decorative styles of Japanese Lolita fashion should not be read as symbolic of restriction and passivity. The fourth point this book addresses is that, as illustrated by the Japanese embrace of the “Ivy style,” both men and women engage with fashion in very similar ways. This is a major point of difference with the role of fashion historically in Euro-America. These readings offer novel ways to understand the relationship between gender and dress, which is often blamed for maintaining repressive distinctions between “man” and “woman” in contemporary culture. Ultimately, this book aims to show that the Japanese appropriation of European clothing forms shows that there might be different, and hence less rigid approaches to understanding the relationship between fashion and gender. Japanese refashioning of European clothing concepts, this book argues, offers a compelling case for the implication of the aesthetics of fashion, gender, and cross-culturalism. “Masafumi Monden's book is a gem. By bringing together and exploring colourful examples from Japan's vibrant street culture and fashion, he artfully demonstrates just how individualistic, innovative, and original the Japanese are. He also dismantles myths and misperceptions about gender relations, sexuality, and social relations in Japan.” – Brian J. McVeigh, University of Arizona, USA, “Monden provides a rich and detailed examination of the subtle intricacies of gendering and sexuality in contemporary Japanese fashion. While exploring the extremes of Tokyo street fashion he is able to illuminate some of the mechanism behind the perplexingly divergent ways to be a man or a woman in today's Japan.” – Toby Slade, University of Tokyo, Japan, “Masafumi Monden's fascinating and important book, Japanese Fashion Cultures, will be of great interest to everyone interested in fashion, gender, globalization, and youth culture. His research on young Japanese men and their attitudes towards fashion is especially significant, as it calls into question persistent stereotypes about how men and women are assumed to engage with fashion.” – Valerie Steele, Director and Chief Curator, The Museum at FIT, New York City, USA “From the possibility of subversion in lace-trimmed Lolita outfits and petite pinafores straight out of Alice in Wonderland, to the enchantments of Milkboy dandyism, Masafumi Monden's Japanese Fashion Cultures offers up a delightful combination of case studies that reveal the very best thinking in fashion theory today.” – Laura Miller, Eiichi Shibusawa-Seigo Arai Endowed Professor of Japanese Studies and Professor of Anthropology, University of Missouri–St. Louis, USA "Masafumi Monden’s Japanese Fashion Cultures shines a spotlight on many of the looks that brought the world’s attention to an island nation which, like Britain, has consistently punched above its weight in matters of dress and appearance...In Japanese Fashion Cultures you have some most interesting comments about gender and I for one have learned a lot about the less reported (in the West at least) looks for young Japanese males." - Ted Polheums, Author of Streetstyle: From Sidewalk to Catwalk
The Routledge Companion to Gender and Japanese Culture
2019
The space of debates Japan presents a paradox: How can a nation that is so highly developed be so gender-unequal that it ranks 114th out of 144 nations (in 2017) on the World Economic Forum's Global Gender Gap Index? Could it be that lack of consensus about gender equality-how to define it, how to achieve it, whether it is desirable-has something to do with this paradox? This chapter examines debates in Japanese feminism. I begin with the role of debate in Japanese publishing culture in general and the sphere of feminist debate in particular, then describe a series of debates about abortion, motherhood, housework, and paid employment. Debates might be a common feature of intellectual history in general, but the particular prominence of debate in modern Japan can be attributed to a few factors. At least since the late nineteenth century, an intellectual class and educated readership has supported the wide circulation of newspapers and journals, starting with the Meiroku zasshi (Meiji six journal 1874-75). This journal, for example, featured an early debate on the definition of equality between women and men (Yamaguchi 1989). Highly informed and motivated editors often stage-managed published conversations and contentions. In the 1920s and 1930s, as leftist intellectuals were forced out of academia along with the rise in militarism, they were recruited by the expanding journalistic world, and general interest magazines such as Chūō kōron (Central public debate 1899-) and Bungei shunjū (Literary seasons 1923-) became their chief venues of expressions. As these journals competed with one another, their editorial strategies evolved to include staged debates, along with interviews, dialogues (taidan), and round-table discussions (zadankai) that remain features of Japanese publishing to the present day (Ōsawa 2015). From its inception, women were part of this world as editors, contributors, and readers. Activists like Kishida Toshiko and Fukuda Hideko aspired to political roles, and public speech making (enzetsu) became a new outlet for women's expression in the early Meiji period (Anderson 2010; Patessio 2011). Such roles would eventually become restricted as the government clamped down on women's political activities, yet women continued to publicize their views through writing and circulating petitions. The first journal to be edited by a woman was Fujin no tomo (Ladies' companion 1906-), founded by educator Hani Motoko, which sought to promote ideals of feminine education and cultivation. We see the clear emergence of a feminist discursive space in the early twentieth century, with the founding of the journal Seitō
Clean-Cut: Men’s Fashion Magazines, Male Aesthetic Ideals, and Social Affinity in Japan
Introducing Japanese Popular Culture, 2018
What makes Japanese men’s fashion magazines striking is their almost full focus on men’s bodies and appearance. Such magazines are largely absent in Euro-American heterosexual men’s culture. With the exception of certain European titles, Anglophone men’s magazines such as GQ and Esquire, even with their inclusion of fashion contents, could not really be considered “fashion” magazines. Anglophone men’s magazines are indeed rarely referred to as fashion magazines due to the importance of appearance and dress in definitions of femininity and the feminine gendering of fashion. Therefore, magazines with fashion contents that are primarily targeted at men (and/or at unisex readership) are instead called “lifestyle magazines.” What significance can we then derive from looking at these Japanese men’s fashion magazines? In this chapter, I argue that the significance of analyzing magazines primarily targeting male readership lies in the possibility that representations of “masculinity” found in magazines might both reflect and shape certain ideals and ideas of gender, which are consumed by their readers. Fashion discourse, as produced through media texts like fashion magazines are themselves shaped by, and dependent on, wider social forces and their relations with other fields. We can then deduce that a collection of Japanese men’s fashion magazines at least allow calibration of the ways in which Japanese conceptions of masculinity are manifested. This chapter begins with a brief history of men’s fashion magazines in contemporary Japan and explain how magazines correspond with various, subtly nuanced styles. Then it examines how magazines deploy male models to help create a social affinity between readers, magazines, and models. These models can represent a slender, boyish, and kawaii (cute that implies vulnerability) male aesthetic, which, along with more muscular male ideals found in other sectors of Japanese culture, may be indicative of Japanese popular culture’s elastic approach to the representations of masculinity. The chapter then explores an amalgam of three desires these men’s fashion magazines evoke in readers in relation to men’s fashionability: 1) to attract women’s admiration, 2) to compete and emulate other men, and 3) to simply indulge in their own pleasures. Since fashion media are constantly evolving, it is important to observe how these magazines, which aim to create and maintain a close social affinity with their readers, are respond to changing notions of masculinity and publishing.
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.
Pakistan Journal of Gender Studies
Japan ranks 8th out of 177 countries in the Human Development Index which indicates the quality of life. However, Japan ranks 54th out of 93 countries in the Gender empowerment Measure (GEM), which means that Japanese women’s participation in politics and economy is very low. Why is there such a situation? First, it is not easy for women to have a job and do household chores at the same time because men tend to be forced to work for long hours and they do not have much time for household chores and taking care of children. There are also many men who tend to think that women are supposed to do household chores and take care of children. It is necessary to change working conditions of both men and women and also educate people about the importance of equality between men and women at school and communities as well as through media. There are women’s organizations which aim to improve the lives of women and children. It is encouraging that such women have been making great efforts to ...
Young men and masculinities in Japanese media: (Un-)conscious Hegemony, Ronald Saladin
Melbourne Asia review, 2020
Print magazines have been a staple of Japanese households since the 1980s, when women's magazines gained a great deal of popularity and many new titles were published. Even though men's tastes and preferences have been prioritised in the production of all Japanese magazines not explicitly aimed at women, magazines that specifically highlight fashion and lifestyle for men experienced a boom in the 1990s. Japan continues to have a strong market for print media of which popular publications such as men's magazines are an integral part. Author Ronald Saladin explores representations of masculinity in two Japanese