Mediating Gender: Cases from Japan
This panel looks at numerous ways in which gender is mediated in contemporary
Japan. This includes: place, in the form of bars; organizations, in the guise of an
advertising agency; "traditional" media of communication, in the form of television and
popular song; content, emanating from the genre of advertising; and indigenous
cultural forms, embodied in "enka" music. Through these multifarious mediations,
identity, cultural values, social roles, human possibilities and outcomes are
communicated and influenced.
Approached thus, this panel presents communication in its multiple manifestations: as
medium, message and milieu. So, too, does it address communication in terms of forms,
processes, structures and practices. The panelists' perspectives are multi-disciplinary,
spanning: anthropology, sociology cultural studies, and linguistics. When placed
together, though, the numerous, distinctive ways in which gender is represented,
filtered and understood in contemporary Japan can be seen.
Paper Titles and Presenters:
"Gender Construction in a Japanese Advertising Campaign," Anka Veronika Badurina,
Kyoto University
“Typology of Male Homosexualities in Contemporary Japan and its mediatized
expressions,” Erick Laurent, Gifu Keizai University
“The Nature of Gender in Japanese Enka Music,” Debra J. Occhi, Miyazaki
International College
“Gen-Sex: The Explosion of Intimacy in Japanese Commercial Discourse,”
Holden, Tohoku University
Abstracts:
T.J.M.
Gender Construction in a Japanese Advertising Campaign
Anka Veronika BADURINA Haemmerle
Cultural Anthropology (Ph.D. Candidate)
Graduate School of Social and Environmental Studies
Kyoto University
E-mail: ankitza@yahoo.com
Representations of the female image inundate Japanese advertising.
Conspicuously coeval is an invocation to symbols of “Japaneseness”.
This paper
suggests that there is a complex and subtle relationship that ties one to the other.
Women are depicted through a remarkably consistent iconography that reminds us
that certain codes are very much still in place –namely/primarily a coding of class
and gender.
Based on fieldwork experience in the Creative Division of a Japanese
advertising agency, this paper draws on a particular ad campaign for a local
railway company to examine how a ‘typical/ideal’ woman was perceived and
constructed in the series of ads.
Special attention is given to the purviews the
project team held about ‘Japanese typical/ordinary young women’ (futsu no
onnanoko). The internal logic that operates in the process of constructing female
images and the different reasons creatives have to produce certain traits will be
analysed.
Furthermore, it will be explored how these traits are pieced together in
such a way that they come to look “natural”.
The paper exposes how this process of semiosis is shaped by chauvinistic
conventions on ‘Japanese’ femininity, and also on conventions inherent to the
advertising field, which entail a demarcated social practice between men and
women.
The fact that this is a highly political, middle-aged male dominated
sphere provides a reinforcement of those images which conform to the culturalist
narrative of “Japaneseness”.
“Typology of Male Homosexualities in Contemporary Japan and its
mediatized expressions”
Erick Laurent
Gifu Keizai University
The “categorization”, or typology, seems to be one of the major characteristics of the
Japanese homosexual world, of which bars are the most visible part. In guides,
they are classified precisely, according to their dominant mood, the age of the
customers and the type of encounter. It seems unthinkable, in the gay milieus, to
escape from this logic of the “types” that gives a typology of fantasms (wakasen
“specializing in young people” debusen “specializing in fat people”, gaisen
“specializing in foreigners”, and .so on), inside which each finds his own place and
that obviously bears a very practical side in searching either for a one-night stand
or a friend for life (Laurent, 2001).
This paper analyzes the ways such a typology is formed and how (that is through
which media) it is transmitted and mediatized in the gay scene. The
methodological implements used are a classical observant-participation fieldwork
in gay places like bars or cruising spots (mainly in Ky6to, Shizuoka and Naha),
formal interviews with 30 gay men (aged between 28 and 42, medium age 35.1),
and content analysis of the gay press and gay sites on the Net.
The “logic of the
types” is partly created and reinforced, in a word mediatized, in 3 areas in the
Japanese gay world: the bars, the press, and on the occasion of self-presentation,
on the Net for example. Let us look at each of these:
The bars are classified according to dominant mood ( 10 categories), age of
customers (7 categories) and types of encounter (7 categories), not being mutually
exclusive. Each bar thus bears a characterization of its own. In each city anybody
can choose the most suitable place to have a drink or meet people, according to his
particular needs or tastes. Moreover, the role of the bars in maintaining the
“typology” is quite strong as the first thing one is asked upon entry, after “where
did you find us?” is “what is your type?”. It is not unusual to be asked, politely, to go
and drink elsewhere (precise directions always given) in case one’s tastes or type do
not match the characteristics of the bar.
The typology of gay magazines follow approximately the same pattern, without
however the typology being so precise. In Japan 7 gay magazines are published
monthly, 2 dedicated to young ephebes (Barazoku, Adon), I to rather old and fat
people (Sanson), 2 to younger fat people ( Sabu. Badi), I to muscular macho-type
men ( G-men), I being less specialized (Za Gei). The vocabulary used, the pictures
shown, the type of stories or even the news found in each magazine show a
specificity, that tends to maintain barriers between the types. These magazines
bear quite a strong pornographic content, helping stress the types by giving
concrete pictures, or leading undecided young readers to choose “their” specific type,
by suggesting them.
During self presentation, a Japanese gay has to announce to which “type” he
belongs; or alternatively he must specify that he has no precise type (daresen),
which is very often considered bad (cunning or sly). He will be refered to later (in
bars, gossip, stories, and so on) as such. This has in a way a similar function as the
meishi in Japanese society. In one of the most frequented Japanese gay site on the
Net designed to find a sexual partner, for example, advertisements are classified
according to more than 10 types (so called “inserter”/”insertee”, fat/slim,
older/younger, etc.), which allow anyone to search for (and find) a very precise
match. To my knowledge nothing with the same purpose exists so concretely on
Western sites. In that sense, the .role of the Internet in maintaining, more than
creating, the existing typology is quite obvious.
Through these “places”, typology has a strong influence on individuals in shaping
some features of their sexuality or their libido, and sometimes their way of life. A
young Japanese gay entering gay spheres for the first time, be it through bars,
Internet or even cruising spots like parks, has to place himself among those
categories. Among the people I interviewed, for example, a man who would
absolutely not define himself as “gaisen”, lives a double life, only having sexual
encounters, with Caucasians, when in San Francisco one month per year. His
sexuality is completely repressed when in Japan the rest of the time, where he
“plays hetero” in Japanese society.
In conclusion, the very existence of the typology and its logic has a certain (mainly
unconscious at the individual level) influence in shaping certain aspects of gay life
in Japan. One of the reasons for its success is that it emerges as a striking parallel
to Japanese society and culture in general, where nearly everything or everybody
has to be concretely “classified”, needs to have a “label”, that is needs to belong to a
“type” to be dealt with or referred to. This helps to (or even allows to) canalize the
encounters and/or situate “the other”; it also furthers gay encounters while
maintaining the culture of secrecy, functioning as a kind of (more or less hidden)
code.
References:
Laurent, Erick. 2OO I . “Homosexualities masculines dans le Japon contemporain”.
In Lucas, N. & C. Sakai (eds). Japon Pluriel 4. Arles,
Picquier. pp.299-310.
Lundsing, Wim. 2001. Beyond Common Sense. Sexuality
and Gender in Contemporary Japan. London, Kegan Paul. 41 Ip.
Otoko Machi Mappu (OMM). 2000. Toky6, Umitsubame Shob6. 282p.
“The Nature of Gender in Japanese Enka Music”
Debra J. Occhi
Assistant Professor
Miyazaki International College
In enka music, along with its pervasive themes of heterosexual heartbreak,
the rain cries, and the heart of an ocean wave is cold. At first glance one may consider
that these personifications of natural phenomena, and conversely, projections of human
attributes and actions into such natural things as flowers, are not uncommon in lyrics
cross-linguistically.
What distinguishes enka, even among other popular Japanese
contemporary song genres, is the way in which particular aspects of nature are
associated with gendered emotions and behaviors following stages in a (usually
unsuccessful) love relationship.
Enka contains multiple sites for delineating
traditional (post WWII) gender roles, particularly befitting those of its middle-aged
fans.
These associations are upheld quantitatively whether the performer is singing
a song within or across their gendered identity. A qualitative examination furthers
our understanding of the particular narratives within which gender appears. These
poetic uses of nature as human dwell within a larger context stemming from
grammaticized and metaphorical tendencies within Japanese, which are exploited
widely in popular media. The specifically gendered uses of nature narratives appear
in enka as indices of gender roles further specified by first person pronouns. Thus,
enka exploits poetic tradition, infusing it with a discourse on gender which is in turn
naturalized by its association with nature itself.
“Gen-Sex: The Explosion of Intimacy in Japanese Commercial Discourse”
T.J.M. Holden, Tohoku University
Department of Multi-Cultural Societies
Graduate School of International Cultural Studies
Tohoku University
Sendai, Japan
“How does it feel?” the Dylan song in a current Japanese car ad rhetorically intones.
More than a question, this is a fitting analytic position to take vis-à-vis Japanese
television advertising. For, historically such ads have relied on the deep-seated cultural
value of feeling to assist in delivering their message. Until recently, though, it was
emotional feeling (so-called “kimochi”) that dominated ad text. Thus, sound, color,
setting, and non-tactile human action were invoked to provide the sought feeling.
However, of late, it has been feeling of a different sort that has coursed through
Japanese ads: feelings expressed by actual tactile feeling. Via fingers and lips, through
clutched hands and interlocked limbs, in the guise of hugs, pats and kisses, human
touch is now all over the Japanese ad screen.
Once an act expressed exclusively by foreigners, now it is Japanese who are engaging
in public physicality. This sea change in sexuality is not confined to one gender. Men
and women both engage in acts of physical contact. At the same time, seldom are men
initiators and even rarer do they exhibit physical contact with other men. Women, by
contrast, are most often depicted as sexual aggressors—even predators—and are not
restrained by contact with other women. The overwhelming directionality of intimacy
and sexuality is: female—male, or female—female.
To support this longitudinal claim, this paper draws upon thousands of commercials
systematically culled over the course of the past decade, and qualitatively content
analyzed. The analysis presents numerous categories of intimacy and gender-based
representation that have emerged over the course of the research. The results enable
us to paraphrase another Dylan song: “you know something is happening here… and
you know just what it is…”
The whys of this phenomenon, though especially intriguing—and certainly telling
about aspects of Japanese social organization and culture--are much less clear.