Reconstructing Adult Masculinities

Part-time Work in Contemporary Japan

Emma E. Cook

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317433439
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Cultural & Social Anthropology
• Index: Social Sciences

Over the past two decades, Japan's socioeconomic environment has undergone considerable changes prompted by both a long recession and the relaxation of particular labour laws in the 1990s and 2000s. Within this context, "freeters", part-time workers aged between fifteen and thirty-four who are not housewives or students, emerged into the public arena as a social problem.

This book, drawing on six years of ethnographic research, takes the lives of male freeters as a lens to examine contemporary ideas and experiences of adult masculinities. It queries how notions of adulthood and masculinity are interwoven and how these ideals are changing in the face of large-scale employment shifts. Highlighting the continuing importance of productivity and labour in understandings of masculinities, it argues that men experience and practice multiple masculinities which are often contradictory, sometimes limiting, and change as they age and in interaction with others, and with social structures, institutions, and expectations.

Providing a fascinating alternative to the stereotypical idea of the Japanese male as a salaryman, this book will be of huge interest to students and scholars of Japanese culture and society, social and cultural anthropology, gender and men's studies.

1 Immature masculinities?

Freeter labour and adulthood

In popular discourse, the most common representation of freeters is that they are not acting like productive adult men, contributing to the economy or future of the nation. Instead they are portrayed as immature boys or as victims of economic recession and employment reforms. Male freeters have thus been primarily represented and understood as the antithesis of a mature adult masculinity and, as we will see in Chapter 2, this positioning as a subaltern, subordinated, immature masculinity is drawn on in varying ways in the narratives and experiences of individuals living and working as freeters, informing individual constructions of adult masculinities. This chapter explores the links between discourses of freeters, productive labour, masculinity and maturity through the predominant images and ideas of masculinities and freeters that emerged during fieldwork and through public discourses of these workers. We look first at gender and labour in post-war Japan and the links between masculinities, labour and maturity, before moving onto an analysis of images of masculinities and freeters that such workers were surrounded by and drew upon in their understandings of adult manhood and labour.

Gender and labour in post-war Japan

Middle-class gender ideals of men as salaried workers and women as full-time housewives emerged as dominant ideals during the post-war period. It was during this time that the salaryman as a model to be emulated came most forcefully to the fore and distinguished itself from an ‘old’ patriarchy that focused on tradition and pre-war subjectivities (cf. Sangari 2002; Walsh 1995). Together with notions of the ‘new’ middle class, which sought to reconfigure social gendered relations and subjectivities, it could be argued that Japan saw the creation of a ‘new’ patriarchy (cf. Chatterjee 1993). However, such ideas did not emerge suddenly but developed as a continuation of patriarchal reformulation that can be seen to extend further back to the Meiji period (1868–1912) and the Meiji state’s overhaul of social institutions whereupon gender relations were recast in ways that continue to influence the lives of people in Japan today. In particular the reconstitution of family via the ideology of the ie and the Good Wife, Wise Mother (ryōsai kenbo) ideals significantly reshaped the possibilities of women, and ideologically positioned them as the biological and social reproducers of the nation located primarily in the private sphere of the family.¹ In contrast, men were situated as the patriarchal heads of households and the providers and protectors of women, children and the nation, located primarily in the public sphere (Kondo 1990; Mackie 1995, 2003; Morris-Suzuki 1998; Pflugfelder 1999; Smith 1983b; Ueno 1996).² At the end of the Second World War the legal codes and constitution were completely overhauled, with liberal ideology the hallmark of the new constitution. Confucianism was officially considered to be outmoded as a feudal idea and Japanese people were positioned as citizens with inalienable rights rather than as subjects whose rights were granted by the Emperor (Hunter 1989; Mackie 1995, 2003: 127; Taga 2005).³ Yet the gendered division of labour and the idea of men and women’s ‘complementary incompetence’ (Edwards 1990) became only further entrenched. To understand this and the employment patterns with which freeters are compared, we need to briefly explore the significant socioeconomic changes that Japan experienced throughout the twentieth century.

Beginning for the late 1930s, but considerably picking up pace from the 1950s onwards, the composition of the working population began to shift. Significant numbers of people moved from rural farming work to urban employment (Allinson 2004; Fukutake 1981; Hunter 1989; Kato 1998; Moon 1998; Sugimoto 2003). This was facilitated by increased efficiency in the agricultural sector as a result of greater mechanisation, which served to release a large number of young male workers from working the land and enabled many to move to urban areas in search of salaried work (Hunter 1989). In just 20 years, job distribution became realigned. While in the 1950s self-employed farmers and small family businesses constituted more than half of the workforce, by the 1970s this had changed considerably, with the majority of the workforce involved in salaried labour at the beck and call of market forces in the national economy (Allinson 2004; Hunter 1989; Kelly 1993).

It was in this context that the image of the male salaried worker became entrenched as a status to be emulated. Although the ‘salaryman’ existed in Japan in the pre-war period, it was in the high growth era of post-war Japan that it became a symbol of aspiration (Dasgupta 2013). During this time of rapid industrialisation, the chance to transcend one’s class and move up into another one (for example, from rural farm worker to white-collar salaried employee) became imaginable and something to aspire to. Furthermore, income was high and employment was typically considered to be secure (Vogel 1963). Although white-collar positions were expanding, the vast majority of workers found employment in lower-status work and salaried blue-collar work in factories was far more prevalent than white-collar salaried work. Even so, the allure of upward mobility exerted its influence on many: ‘Indeed the symbol of sararii-man status became so potent that many blue-collar workers took to wearing white shirts and ties while commuting to and from work, hoping that others would smile on their apparent good fortune’ (Allinson 2004: 111).

While the post-war legal reforms that took place after the Second World War in the creation of the new constitution established equality for men and women in theory, Yoda (2000: 874–875) argues that it was ‘the national mobilization for economic growth that fundamentally transformed the Japanese organization of domesticity and gender relations therein, establishing women at the center of the home as a sphere putatively separated from that of capitalist production’. This was further reinforced by large corporations through:

[T]he compensation system that was based on the principle of a ‘family wage’ (or ‘living wages’ as it was called in Japan) for regular male workers, but also through employee benefits (e.g., health care, subsidized mortgages and benefits for dependants) designed to promote coupling between regular male workers and homemaking wives.

(Yoda 2000:. 874–875; also see, Iwao 1993; Mackie 1995)

In the new constitution, the post-war family system was constructed as part of the private sphere and was therefore theoretically less liable to shaping by policies of the state (Mackie 1995). Yet the separation of women (ideally) into the domestic sphere and men to the professional sphere was further solidified by tax and welfare programmes that served to favour families where the wife was either not working or was in a low-paying job (Iwahori 1999; Mackie 1995; Miura 2012; Yoda 2000). This therefore consolidated and maintained a gendered division of labour. This is not to say, however, that women in Japan necessarily stayed at home. As Kondo (1990) so clearly shows, the expectation to stay at home as a full-time housewife is very much a middle-class ideal. In working-class areas there is instead an expectation for women to be active economically outside the home. The ways that gender are actually enacted are clearly cross-cut by class (Kondo 1990: 284). While today many women are working, choosing not to marry or are waiting to marry and have children until later in life, or not at all, research suggests that individuals continue to make their choices in reference to a gendered division of labour (Nakano 2011; Nakano and Wagatsuma 2004; Nemoto 2008; Raymo and Iwasawa 2005; Sandberg 2010). Consequently gendered middle-class ideals continue to exert significant influence on understandings of ideal gendered roles and responsibilities, as can be seen when exploring the lives of women and men who attempt to create alternative paths for themselves.

Masculinities, labour and maturity in post-war Japan

As already discussed in the Introduction, throughout the post-war period, the working man, as manifested primarily in the figure of the salaryman, became the most prominent symbol of heterosexual adult Japanese masculinity. Of course, this is not to say that there weren’t multiple masculinities in Japan during this period, or that men have necessarily wanted to be a salaryman.⁴ A number of figures – historically dependent and related to class – have at various points emerged as prominent cultural (heterosexual) typologies of men. For example, in the twentieth century the soldier, merchant, farmer, yakuza, modern boy(mobo), itinerant peddler (Tora-san) and the salaryman all emerged as prominent figures of manhood (Dasgupta 2013; Frühstück 2007; Frühstück and Walthall 2011a; Gill 2003; Mason 2011; Roberson 2003). Moving into the twenty-first century, the otaku (geek), the so-called sōshokukei danshi (’herbivorous’ men), hikikomori (shut-ins) and freeters have emerged as newer types, albeit most prominently used to express a sense of failed masculinity and maturity in contrast to the more dominant types of productive manhood of earlier years (Condry 2011; Morioka 2008; Napier 2011; Slater and Galbraith 2011). In exploring both practices and discourses of masculinity in the contemporary context, the link between masculinity and productive labour has remained critical in understandings of adult manhood in Japan (Condry 2011; Dasgupta 2013; Gill 2003, 2012; Hidaka 2010; Roberson 2003; Slater and Galbraith 2011; Taga 2001; Tanaka 2009).

However, adulthood, and maturity more generally, have until recently been a relatively silent partner in academic discussions of post-war masculinities. Ideals of maturity have not been drawn on or theorised as a core element of the construction and practice of masculinities, perhaps because the links between becoming a socially legible adult and a ‘man’ are so supposedly obvious that they don’t emerge as discrete topics to be analysed (cf. Dyer 1997; Griffin and Braidotti 2002). Frühstück and Walthall (2011a) argue that this reflects the pre-modern period, in which masculinity, rather than maturity, was largely invisible.⁵ In recent years, some scholars in Japan (and elsewhere) have acknowledged the links between masculinities, maturity and employment.⁶ However, this has been done predominantly through arguing that full-time labour and marriage endow men with the status of full adult manhood, rather than exploring the complex ways that adulthood is constructed in interaction with norms and practices of masculinities (see for example, Dasgupta 2005; Hidaka 2010; Lunsing 2001; McLelland 2005).⁷

Two Japanese terms – shakaijin (member of society) and ichininmae (fully fledged adult) – are often drawn on to illustrate transitions to various stages of adulthood, but they also represent the ways in which adulthood is socially constructed in interaction with gendered expectations of individuals over the life course. Becoming a shakaijin is an important transitional status from adolescent to adulthood for both men and women, but it is not necessarily the same as being a full adult. Rather it can be understood to denote partial adult status. However, becoming a fully fledged adult (ichininmae) is more than being a productive working member of society. It is often understood to involve the ability to balance self-other desires, to be emotionally and financially independent, to not rely on others or require guidance. In addition, becoming a full adult involves the accomplishment of further status transitions, such as marriage, and subsequently requires demonstrating an ability to undertake particular gendered role expectations, such as becoming a responsible breadwinner, husband and head of household for men and wife and mother for women. These differing terminologies illustrate the gendered being and becoming of socially legible adulthood in Japan.

While authors such as Dasgupta (2005, 2013), Roberson (1995, 2003), McLelland (2005), Hidaka (2011) and Taga (2003) rightly link maturity, masculinity and labour, the complex interactions between ideals of adulthood and masculinity are often not interrogated. If productive labour – full-time work – and marriage are understood to be requirements for achieving ‘proper’ adult manhood, where does that leave the many men who are unable to work full time or marry? Are they automatically understood to be immature boys? Male freeters’ articulations and understanding of the intersection between adulthood and masculinities are analysed in Chapter 2. However, in the remainder of this chapter, I explore how social discourses of freeters and masculinities are drawn on to position male freeters as either immature boys or as victims, implicating dominant ideas of masculinity, productive labour and maturity. We turn first to how masculinity was imagined and understood by non-freeters in Hamamatsu.

Masculine men are …

During my fieldwork, masculinity was understood through characteristics, values and particular actions, rather than through physicality.⁸ Masculine men were those who were considered to be responsible, psychologically strong, loyal, hard working, kind, active and decisive. For example, Saki, a part-time worker in her 30s, explained her ideas of masculinity using her husband as an example: ‘My husband is masculine … like a man I think … his ‘atmosphere’ is masculine. He has a loud voice, clearly does things, clearly speaks his opinion, is frank and is not indecisive’. She described him as a ‘Kyushu man’(Kyushu danji): a strong husband, stronger than his wife and she went on to list stubborn (ganko) and strict (kibishii) as further attributes of a masculine man. Although not so strict in daily life, when at his parents’ home in Kyushu he embodied this role and expected to be served by the women of the household. She doubted whether most young women today would put up with this, suggesting that as more women work outside the home, this expectation is no longer sustainable. She continued: ‘Men should have courage/nerve (dokyō) and women grace/charm (aikyō). Men should want to say: Let’s do it! (Yoshi, ganbarō!) and do what needs to be done without hesitation, women should be demure and quiet’.⁹

Individuals often used famous characters to illustrate their explanations of masculine men. For example, Ken Watanabe’s characters from The Last Samurai or Letters from Iwo Jima (’Iwojima kara no tegami’) were understood to be particularly masculine. It was said that he exhibited a strong spirit(seishinteki ni tsuyoi) – a bushidō spirit – and was considered to be highly masculine not just for his warrior portrayals, but also...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Notes on transliterations and translations
• Introduction
• 1 Immature masculinities? Freeter labour and adulthood
• 2 Being and becoming: aspirational labour and masculinities
• 3 Familial (dis)connections: masculinities and labour at home
• 4 Marital desires and restrictive masculinities
• 5 Female labour and commodified selfhood
• Conclusions: reconstructing adult masculinities
• References
• Glossary
• Index