Asian Masculinities

The Meaning and Practice of Manhood in China and Japan

Kam Louie, Morris Low

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2005
• ISBN:
  9781134427598
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Cultural & Social Anthropology
• Index: Social Sciences

This book shows how East Asian masculinities are being formed and transformed as Asia is increasingly globalized. The gender roles performed by Chinese and Japanese men are examined not just as they are lived in Asia, but also in the West. The essays collected here enhance current understandings of East Asian identities and cultures as well as Western conceptions of gender and sexuality. While basic issues such as masculine ideals in China and Japan are examined, the book also addresses issues including homosexuality, women's perceptions of men, the role of sport and food and Asian men in the Chinese diaspora.

1

CHINESE, JAPANESE AND GLOBAL MASCULINE IDENTITIES

Kam Louie

East Asians as minorities

In the first sentence of the anthropological collection Dislocating Masculinity: Comparative Ethnographies, the editors Cornwall and Lindisfarne state that “[o]ver the last few years there has been a surge of interest in the study of men and masculinity. We are told that on both sides of the Atlantic men are starting to respond to the challenges of feminism” (Cornwall and Lindisfarne 1994, 1). Indeed, the book does cover topics such as Greek sexuality, prostitutes’ clients and gay male identities as well as masculine practices in countries in Europe, America and Africa. However, it has no chapters that focus on Asian masculinities. By disregarding half of mankind, it ends up offering analyses that distort comparative understandings of different masculinities in the global context. Such distortions have been a common feature of men studies in the West, and in the 1990s a number of researchers became “aware how far we still are from realising the type of inclusive scholarship we would find ideal” (Brod and Kaufman 1994, 6).

This concern for a more inclusive “international masculinity research” is echoed by R.W. Connell in the inaugural issue of the journal Men and Masculinities in 1998, where he calls for “an understanding of the world gender order” as “a necessary basis for thinking about men and masculinities globally”. Connell argues that the “ethnographic moment” in masculinity research, in which communities of men are studied, and compared, has been valuable, but that we should in the twenty-first century go beyond the ethnographic moment and adopt a more global approach that considers the international setting as an arena for study. Such an aim is praiseworthy, but unfortunately remains an unrealised ideal. This call was made in 1998, and since that time there have been some attempts to expand the scope of gender and masculinity research into a global arena, as demonstrated by Connell himself (Connell 2000). However, such research tends to be empirical and descriptive, and is almost always from a Western perspective. Furthermore, in the rare instances when Men and Masculinities itself publishes articles on Asian men, those articles tend to concentrate on Chinese or Japanese men in Western contexts (for example Chan 2000).

The study of minority masculinities in white America has long been a standard concession in men studies to understand “men of color” (Doyle 1989, 280). Groups such as Hispanics and blacks in particular feature prominently because they have been the more visible and oppressed “minorities” in white America or Europe. In this tradition, the Asian American male was stereotyped as “inscrutable” and “more conservative” (Doyle 1989, 290–1). Of course, the study of masculinities of ethnic minorities in predominantly white communities is important and can lead to valuable and fascinating insights. In recent years, some of the best work on Asian men has centred on the masculinities of Asian America, with some of the most interesting being on gay Asians (Eng and Hom 1998). For the most part, this research shows that, for Chinese and Japanese men, the experience of living as a man in the West can be so negative that it can be characterised as “racial castration” (Eng 2001). As Henry Yu observes:

[a]lthough often portrayed as sexual threats to white women, Asian men were also emasculated by stereotypes of passivity and weakness. The image of the Chinese laundryman and domestic worker or Japanese flower gardener, willing to do “women’s work” that no self-respecting white man would perform, served to feminize the portrayal of Oriental men.

(Yu 2001, 131)

While the Asian diasporas have had to come to terms with their bitter roots in foreign lands, the recent upsurge of research into their heritage has clearly empowered them. However, even though there have been more studies of Asian men (usually by the men themselves) living as minorities in the United States or Canada, their results tell us very little about Asian masculinities as understood by Asians in Asia. The trouble with studying ethnic minorities as examples of men of colour is that understandings of masculinity, femininity, sexuality and gender inevitably assume Western understandings as benchmarks simply because the “minorities” need to measure themselves against the mainstream and hegemonic culture in which they seek to succeed. To understand how Chinese or Japanese masculinities have evolved in the modern world, we must examine the archaeology of indigenous East Asian masculinities. Thus, in order to understand how being an ethnic minority in America, Europe or Australia affects one’s masculinity, it is vital that the superficial layers of identity formation be dug up and put aside, and the deeper layers exposed. In other words, indigenous conceptions of masculinity need to be exposed and analysed. Until very recently, though, there have been almost no book-length studies of general Chinese or Japanese masculinities. Exceptions, some of which are excellent, tend to be collected essays on specific aspects of these topics (Brownell and Wasserstrom 2002; Roberson and Suzuki 2002).

More commonly, Asian men are depicted in both the West and China as less “sexual” and more “intelligent” than both black and white men. These popular perceptions are often given academic respectability by social scientists like J. Philippe Rushton, who as recently as in the 1990s gathered data on measures such as brain size, reproductive behaviour and sex hormones to prove that “people of east Asian ancestry… and people of African ancestry… define opposite ends of the spectrum, with people of European ancestry… falling intermediately” (Rushton 1997, xiii). Such “scientific” studies have the effect of confirming Edward Said’s observation that discourses pertaining to the Orient emasculate it to such an extent that it “is penetrated, silenced, and possessed” (Said 1978, 207). Even though Said’s Orient refers to the Middle East, the portrayal of Chinese and Japanese men seems to confirm his assertion that under the Western gaze Asian men are feminised. In the Chinese case, in keeping with a tradition that would make Orientalism proud, both Chinese and Western descriptions of Chinese male sexuality focus mainly on Daoist bedroom techniques and exotic practices such as the men’s alleged obsession with bound feet.

Until the 1990s, there were very few academic studies devoted exclusively to the non-sensational aspects of Chinese and Japanese masculinity. While a body of literature on men’s studies has emerged focusing on Japan (Ito 1996; Nakamura 1996; Toyoda 1997; Inoue et al. 1998), the situation in China is still far from satisfactory. As Susan Mann opines, the poverty of studies on Chinese men is particularly vexing because “bonds among men were key to success and survival for rich and poor, elite and commoner, in Chinese history” (Mann 2000, 1,601). While it could be argued that these bonds were studied simply as human relationships that encompass all aspects of society such as politics, economics and law, the trouble with such an interpretation is that “man” as a masculine category again escapes attention. “Man” becomes a universal signifier that is not looked at specifically as a gendered object. In terms of research into male–male bonds, for both Chinese and Japanese, some of the best available tends to concentrate on the non-mainstream, particularly homoeroticism (Vitiello 2000; Volpp 2001; Leupp 1995; Pflugfelder 1999; McLelland 2000). There is little that examines the activities of Chinese and Japanese men as men, or Asian masculinities as social constructs.

Spotlight on Chinese masculinity

Of course, one can argue that the apparent poverty of research devoted to Asian masculinities in English is felicitous and appropriate. Having always had enormous social power and privilege, not to mention having perpetrated wartime atrocities in the name of masculine prowess (discussed by Morris Low in this volume), why should Asian men take centre stage yet again just when the women are getting a bit of attention? I myself faced this conundrum when I embarked on the project to study Chinese masculinity. I wanted to put Chinese masculinity under the spotlight without in any way lionising it. Whether I have succeeded or not remains to be seen. In any case, Louise Edwards and I worked on issues of Chinese gender in the mid-1980s and wrote an article on the wen-wu dyad (Louie and Edwards 1994). I have since written a book about Chinese masculinity based on this concept (Louie 2002). In this work, I argue that Chinese masculinity must be examined in its own terms before its trajectory in the global scene can be analysed. While this may sound trite, the reality was that until Theorising Chinese Masculinity was published there was no book-length study of wen-wu as a masculinity ideal. Since many of the essays in the current collection refer to the wen-wu concept, it is worthwhile revisiting some of my findings on this Chinese masculinity ideal here.

It is difficult to find English terms that capture the full meaning of wen-wu. Literally, it means literary–martial, and it encompasses the dichotomy between cultural and martial accomplishments, mental and physical attainments, and so on. It is an ideal that all men are supposed to work towards. Because it captures both the mental and physical composition of the ideal man, wen-wu is constructed both biologically and culturally. It has been a masculinity ideal throughout Chinese history, so there are many traditional idioms to describe perfect men as having both wen and wu. Yet despite its importance there was almost no scholarly analysis in any language of wen-wu as a key to understanding Chinese masculinity, even though there have been some analyses of it as a way of understanding phenomena such as ancient military strategy (Yang and Li 1991). Like many universally accepted practices, it was assumed that wen-wu was so well understood and its interpretation so well accepted that there was no need to analyse it.

Wen-wu is a useful construct for describing Chinese masculinity ideals because it is only used for Chinese men. The unique maleness of the wen-wu dichotomy becomes apparent when it is juxtaposed with yin -yang, the most obvious and most commonly invoked paradigm in discussions of Chinese sexuality. Discarding yinand yang is crucial for discussions of Chinese masculinity because incisive theorising of masculinity is inhibited by the amorphous nature of yin -yang. Both yinand yang are characterised as elements evident in femininity as well as masculinity, though in different proportions at different times. The yin -yang dyad is attractive because it seems to dislodge the exclusivity of elements that are male or female. By contrast, the wen-wu dichotomy is applied to men only. By structuring gender in such an inflexible manner, I may seem to be taking a regressive step. Indeed, I do argue that wen-wu is a regulative ideal that can perform an oppressive function. To expose this function, its ideological construction must be examined before its actual workings in society are explored.

Thus, I am not suggesting that women did not excel in literary or military pursuits. Chinese history is replete with images of talented women such as Zhu Yingtai and Hua Mulan. However, women such as Zhu Yingtai who tried to get recognition for wen accomplishments by sitting for the civil service examinations had to do so dressed as men. And the woman warrior Mulan also had to conceal her femininity while she took part in military exploits. Once these women put on rouge and satin clothing again, all their wen-wu attributes disappear. In all such cases, the women’s wen or wu achievements are acknowledged only if they publicly demonstrate that they are men, however superficially or transiently. Official recognition of wen-wu achievements was most commonly attained by passing the civil service examinations or the military service examinations. Both were only available to men. Moreover, these examinations were traditionally not available to foreigners. Thus wen-wu was also unattainable for foreign men, who were considered to be barbarians who were incapable of achieving such an ideal.

The influence of these traditional beliefs is evident everywhere in modern East Asia. For example, in contemporary Taiwan the continuing strength of wenvalues is evidenced by the listing of political candidates’ highest educational attainment in briefings for televised electoral coverage. The high number of political aspirants with doctoral qualifications contrasts sharply with that in Anglophone countries such as the United States and Australia. Even in the rare instance that they hold a doctorate, politicians in these latter countries would prefer to emphasise their “sporting” mass appeal rather than their elite education. Education in its wen sense is a feature that has popular appeal to a Chinese electorate because it symbolises the “right to power”. The cultured elite’s sense of superiority is manifest not only in the political arena: the educated in China have always felt that they deserved a leadership role in the moral and social dimensions as well. Thus, many writers in China have a strong sense that their visions for social harmony should be adopted to secure an ethical and wealthy future for China. Many older intellectuals still believe that Confucianism is a powerful system that is best suited to such a philosophy of life, and Confucius as the god of wen has been a potent symbol for sustaining Chinese notions of the ideal gentleman for millennia. During the Asian financial boom of the 1980s, some scholars nominated Confucianism as the mainstay of the “Asian values” responsible for economic prosperity. Some also argued that it had helped Chinese culture to survive among the Chinese diaspora even when that culture had declined in China (Tu Wei-ming 1991).

The above examples clearly show the vital connection between wen power and ideal masculinity. Naturally, Chinese masculinity also has many features that have elements in common with contemporary Western conceptions of the “real man”. Wu power is manifest as it has been throughout Chinese history through battles and large-scale wars, but it can also be invoked in non-military ways as evidence of peace-time, restrained wu. Displays of martial arts and qigong feature prominently in acrobatic shows or general public gatherings. New Year’s celebrations always include dragon dances or lion dances, which are usually performed by martial arts teams. These serve a similar function to the displays of military hardware and aircraft “fly-pasts” that feature in National Day celebrations or visits from other “heads of state”, but reflect the more restrained type of wuessence indicative of controlled force, persuasion and indirectness in the matrix of power relations rather than simple brute strength. Mere brawn has its uses, but those who rely on it entirely will always remain powerless, “macho eunuchs” who can never fulfil the ideals of Confucian m...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Full Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Notes on contributors
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Chinese, Japanese and global masculine identities
• PART I "Soft" masculinities
• PART II Martial valour
• PART III Tracing lives
• PART IV Global masculinities
• Conclusion
• Index