Consuming New Masculinities?—The Purpose of This Research
In the 1990s, Japan witnessed a boom in men’s lifestyle magazines. This boom is widely regarded to have occurred as a result of the changing socioeconomic environment of Japanese society. With the burst of the economic bubble in the early 1990s, the ideas of what a man’s life will be like and, hence, what a man will be like, started to change. The sararīman1 lost its position as an ideal to strive for and young men in particular began to seek other life histories. It seems that they started doing both to invent their own ideas of masculinity and to express them. But how is this connected to the boom in men’s magazines in the 1990s? Erhart and Herrmann give us a first idea of how social developments and the media are connected, affirming that “[t]he emergence of new images and manifestations of masculinities becomes particularly notable when different constructions of masculinity are competing with each other in times of drastic change” (1997, 20–21). Moreover, Clammer attests that Japanese magazines are a fruitful case study in order to understand what is changing within Japanese society:
In fact, the magazine world seems to reflect, or itself partly creates, a breaking up of homogeneity. Certain codes are still in place – a coding of race, class, and sexuality, for example – but not in a hegemonic way: the range of body types deemed attractive continues to expand. […] The illustrated magazine – a highly visible artefact of contemporary Japanese culture – proves to be a rich field for the exploration of Japanese society. (Clammer 1995, 218)
At first glance, these magazines look like catalogs of clothes, cosmetics, accessories, and similar items. They provide their readers with detailed information about brand names, product prices, places to purchase the presented items, and the like. However, they also convey information on hobbies, sports, and various other things. Accordingly, what the readers consume by reading a magazine is not just information on material commodities, but also on immaterial aspects—such as norms and values—of a particular lifestyle as a whole. Sociologist John Clammer has studied and analyzed consumption in Japan, and presenting his findings here is helpful in order to further examine what role magazines can play in the creation of a lifestyle in Japan. He notes that consumption is the connection of material culture with a person’s self (Clammer 1997, 6–9). In this sense, consumption is a crucial part in the creation of the self. Magazines thus play an important role in helping their readers to consume material items and immaterial ideas, which enable them to create their lifestyle. In doing so, consumption generates forms of social behavior and interaction. It is interesting, however, that in Japan, consumption follows specific patterns. A person consumes as is appropriate to his or her own situation and environment. That is to say, two things are communicated by consumption:
On the one hand, consumption creates and communicates affiliation with a certain group of people, which is, for example, characterized by age. A young person, such as a student, can dress in a very liberal style, and by doing so, expresses his or her youthfulness. This especially holds true in Japan, where the years studying at a university are most likely to be the most liberal time of all in a person’s life. Before going to a university, young people in Japan have to attend school. Since activities associated with school (such as attending classes, participating in mandatory clubs, and cramming for exams) are very time-consuming, attending school is by far the most time-consuming part of the life of Japanese youth. Schools in Japan teach their students to comply with the rules of society and common sense. The students should learn how to harmoniously become part of a group, instead of sparking their individuality. This creates a certain degree of uniformity—a concept that is not negatively perceived in Japan, but rather is a deeply rooted ideal of Japanese culture. It oftentimes translates into the fact that students in most cases have to wear school uniforms instead of their own clothes and that they have to comply with relatively strict school rules. Also, when starting a job after college graduation, they will once again have to comply with rules that govern their work and their workplace—of which wearing a suit is just one very visible example.
In his contribution to “Women Media and Consumption in Japan,” Clammer even speaks of the fact that women are not represented in magazines as individuals, but that individualism is replaced by categories such as the perfect housewife, the young mother, and the elegant working woman (Clammer 1995, 208). Hence, the magazines partake in conveying certain gendered ideas of women, which can be recreated by the readers by consuming the products and information that are presented and conveyed by the magazine. The same holds true for men’s magazines.
In Japan, as in any other society as well, affiliation with a certain group creates what can be called habitual security. That is, to obtain security and reassurance by complying with the norms of a certain group, since doing so creates affiliation with it. As already mentioned above, the desire to position oneself within one—and probably not just one—group is very strong in Japan. Merry White expresses this when she argues that: “[y]oung people […] like to belong to a type, like to feel that they are doing fashion ‘the right way’, even as they want the option of a range of ‘fashion personalities’” (White 1995, 269). The men’s magazines that boomed in the 1990s are a medium that enabled its readership to create and affiliate with groups that have different ideas about gender and masculinity in comparison with Japan’s hegemonic masculinity.
On the other hand, consumption also generates individuality. Each person has the freedom to choose and consume accordingly those items and ideas that correspond to his or her personal tastes. Thus, one’s own identity is expressed and a personal lifestyle is created via consumption (see Clammer 1997, 11). In particular with regard to doing gender, consumption is of major importance, as Angus Bancroft notes, saying that “the role of the individual as a consumer is of ever increasing importance. The body is both an object of that consumption, and a project, to be produced through specific forms of consumption. It is in this process that the body is gendered” (Bancroft 1998, 35–36). Especially for young people, consumption plays a particularly important role in creating their personal lifestyle, because they attain their “‘cultural autonomy’ most likely in the field of fashion and music. […] The social infrastructure is mainly provided by the market and industry. The young people take part in this world as active consumers” (Kreitz-Sandberg 1994, 259, translated by the author).
At first, uniformity or group membership on the one hand and individuality on the other seem to be opposites. However, these two concepts are not dualistic. On the contrary, the group and the individual do not appear antagonistically, rather the group merely forms the framework of norms, values, and codes, within which every group member—recurring to the regulations and the available “stylistic means”—expresses his or her self (see Clammer 1997, 69; Clammer 1995, 210). Thus, it is accurate to speak of an unhindered composition of one’s own individuality within the habitus of the group one belongs to. That is to say that Japan’s alleged uniformity guarantees the possibility of constructing both one’s own individuality and habitual security at the same time.
It is precisely with regard to this point that magazines play a prominent role in Japan. Consumption is, as already mentioned, the acquisition of a lifestyle, since it reflects decisions on the self, including personal tastes, the body, and social differences. However, in order to be certain of habitual security, young people must know the codes, norms, and values of the group to which they belong. The information necessary for this can be acquired through the consumption of youth magazines. They show in words and images which values, norms and, above all, codes are relevant. Therefore, they offer the tools to generate one’s own identity. On the other hand, at the same time they also provide the certainty of habitual security, since the readers who apply the information conveyed by the magazines can be sure they are acting within the boundaries of their group. White summarizes this capacity of youth magazines when she states that “one of the magazine’s complicated functions is to set high standards of acceptability, and at the same time reassure young people that they are ‘normal’” (1995, 260).
Japan is arguably one of the world’s biggest—if not the biggest—markets for print media. I myself realized this first-hand when I set foot in a Japanese convenience store for the first time. I was overwhelmed by the variety of commodities that were presented on the shelves. One part of this convenience store particularly hit my eye—the magazine corner; magazines are a very common sight in every kiosk, bookshop, and convenience store. I encountered a variety of print products that did not surprise me, but instead only matched my stereotypical image of Japan. Japan is obviously crazy about comics and so the abundance of manga2 magazines I found was just what I had expected to see. There were also many women’s magazines, which are likely to dominate the magazine shelves of bookstores in Europe as well. However, what I discovered after that did surprise me a lot. There were magazines—obviously for young men—that looked just like some of the women’s magazines. They would brim over with fashion pages and even features on cosmetics. Even more to my surprise, there was not just one such magazine—there were many.
Never before had I seen magazines for men in Germany like the ones I saw in the Japanese convenience store. There are, of course, men’s magazines like Playboy and Penthouse—magazines with sexual content. There are also magazines like Men’s Health that cater to fitness and educate readers on how to train their bodies. Some magazines, e.g., GQ, also feature fashion, but never had I seen such a number of magazines that aim to teach their male readership what is fashionable or how to combine different pieces of clothing to create looks that are “in”—not even to speak of promoting cosmetics and makeup for men.
This was my starting point for a journey through the world of Japanese men’s magazines. I soon began to realize that there was something vague within these magazines. Although they all—at least to my eye—conveyed information on similar clothes, looks, and hairstyles, among other things, the atmosphere of one magazine could differ to a great extent from that of another. I came to understand that there is much more to these magazines than conveying the newest fashion trends. Soon I realized that the greatest differences between the magazines were not found on fashion pages, but rather on pages that address other areas of life, such as relationships, hobbies, health care… and even sex. It was within these features that the actual differences between lifestyle and as such of the gender constructed in them came to the fore. These differences were the origin of the differences in the atmospheres of the magazines. Gender is an element of life that nobody can evade. It is prone to be invisible, and it is fluent, ever changing, and vague. It is as tangible as it is influencing our lives every minute and every second—no matter where we are or what we do. Knowing about gender means knowing about a key aspect of life, culture, and society. In the endeavor to understand culture and society, gender analysis is an important tool to understand ...