The Androgyne Patriarchy in Japan Contemporary Issues
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THE ANDROGYNE PATRIARCHY IN JAPAN CONTEMPORARY ISSUES IN JAPANESE GENDER by RACHEL SNYDER Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Arlington in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of MASTER OF ARTS IN ENGLISH THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT ARLINGTON August 2010 Copyright © by Rachel Snyder 2010 All Rights Reserved ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS There are many people without whose assistance this thesis would not have been written. I would like to thank my sister, Sara Snyder, who opened up her home to me in Japan, as well as Jun Itabashi, who patiently answered many of my questions about Japanese culture. I would also like to thank Tomo and Jessica for helping me with specific questions about Visual kei. My thesis committee has provided much support throughout my research and writing process. I would like to give many thanks to Dr. Wendy Faris, who graciously chaired my thesis, as well as to Dr. Penny Ingram and Dr. Stacy Alaimo, who served as readers. The subject of my writing is not something entirely well known in the English department, yet my committee welcomed my ideas and provided me with a wealth of ideas for expanding them. I would also like to thank my parents, Robert and Kay Snyder, who allowed my mind and interest to drift Eastward during my childhood. May 5, 2010 iii ABSTRACT THE ANDROGYNE PATRIARCHY CONTEMPORARY ISSUES IN JAPANESE GENDER Rachel Snyder, MA The University of Texas at Arlington, 2010 Supervising Professor: Wendy Faris This project seeks to identify recent trends in Japanese masculinity, particularly the inclusion of androgyny as a mode included in masculinity, while tracing their historical influence and the implications therein. The salary man is perhaps the best-known model of masculinity in Japan identifiable to the West; but with the economy faltering in the late 20th century, Japan has seen some interesting developments in acceptable forms of performable masculinity, which includes androgynous figures. In the first chapter of this thesis especially I deal with a historical analysis of three different eras of Japanese history that provide models of androgyny as masculinity: the Heian period, the onnagata, the female role played by a male, of traditional Kabuki Theater, and the mobo, or modern boy, of the early 20th century. The second chapter looks at the contemporary counterpart to the mobo, the hikikomori, or shut in. I also analyze hikikomori figures in the writings of Haruki Murakami, specifically Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the World and “The Kangaroo Communiqué.” I attempt iv to unravel the causes of and possible consequences for incorporating this mode of masculinity in Japanese masculinity. The final chapter is an analysis of a genre of musical performance art known as Visual kei. In this style, rock bands (typically) use the model of androgyny provided by the onnagata in order to create a uniquely Japanese genre of music and performance. I look at the possible reasons for its popularity in Japan as well as what it means in terms of subverting Western gender binaries; however, I find that this music style exemplifies a kind of androgyny as masculinity that upholds these Japanese gender binaries. v TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ...............................................................................................................iii ABSTRACT .....................................................................................................................................iv LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS ........................................................................................................... viii Chapter Page 1. ANDROGYNY AS MASCULINITY……………………………………..………..….. .......... 1 1.1 Defining Androgyny ......................................................................................... 8 1.2 Past and Present Japanese Androgyny ........................................................ 10 1.3 Male Beauty in Heian Era Japan................................................................... 12 1.4 Onnagata: Man or Woman? .......................................................................... 15 1.5 Modern Boys and Zero Boys......................................................................... 22 1.6 Conclusion..................................................................................................... 25 2. THE GENDER OF SOLITUDE.................................................................................... 28 2.1 It Begins at Home.......................................................................................... 31 2.2 From Zero to Hero......................................................................................... 39 2.3 Haruki Murakami and the Gender of Solitude ..................................................................................................... 42 2.4 Conclusion..................................................................................................... 51 3. THE ANDROGYNE PATRIARCHY............................................................................. 53 3.1 Subverting Manly Men................................................................................... 59 3.2 Defining Japanese Gender in Performance Art ........................................................................................ 63 3.3 Merry: Erotic, Grotesque, and Underground ................................................................................................ 73 vi 3.4 Visual Kei: Subversion through Performance.................................................................................................. 80 REFERENCES.............................................................................................................................. 82 BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION ................................................................................................. 85 vii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Figure Page 3.1 X Japan as an Early Example of Visual kei............................................................................. 57 3.2 Promotional Photograph of Malice Mizer Showing an Evolution of Visual kei ......................................................................................... 68 3.3 Merry’s Frontman. ................................................................................................................... 76 3.4 Photographs of Merry Promoting “Japanese Modernist” ............................................................................................................. 77 viii CHAPTER 1 ANDROGYNY AS MASCULINITY At the dawn of the 21st century, Japan is facing some very intriguing social issues that are, intentionally or not, kept out of sight from Western eyes, particularly in the area of gender deviation and plurality. These problems, however, are not altogether new or unpredictable based on historical observations. What Japanese society has created and reified is a wave of masculinity that strays far from the conventional Western masculinity they seem to have adopted. Japan seems to have embraced an inclusive masculinity in the post-1980s era, an era marked by economic instability and wide-scale social ennui. Previous generations of men had been driven by their government, bosses, and fathers to create, build, and modernize Japan, which defined their role as men; however, in contemporary Japan, no such call to action exists, and masculinity itself has lost its concrete definition. This new generation of men has often been called the “lost generation.” But what older generations have seen as something lost – the loss of nation-building incentive, the loss of job availability – has instead been the instigator of a renaissance of inclusivity in Japanese masculinity. Through an investigation of historical inclusive masculinity, I will show that inclusivity is directly linked to governmental involvement in defining the terms of gender: where there is no governmental intrusion, maleness and masculinity are flexible terms that encompass androgyny. Unlike Western gender theory, which seems to focus on the importance of determining a biological link to gender representation, the Japanese exemplify a gender theory that denies the corporeal body and instead focuses on pure gender performance. This difference in gender determination seems to lie in the relative lack of binaries in the general Japanese social 1 consciousness. Historically speaking, the Japanese have never participated in the Cartesian Dualist school of thought, a circumstance that has produced a culture of plurality, and hence it is only natural that this plurality would extend to gender representation as well. In other words, there is no conceptual tie between biological sexuality and outward gender representation. While this is the crux of theories of gender in the West, this idea of gender representation in the Japanese context is at once acknowledged and ignored. The chapters following will deal with two contemporary issues related to this history: one being a new look at the salary man1 model of masculinity and his contemporary counterpart, the hikkikomori, or shut-in, and the other the popularity of Visual Kei, a genre of music that models its visual performance on Kabuki style cross-dressing. These contemporary concerns are closely related to the history of Japanese androgyny and have emerged simultaneously as subversive modes of gender representation. As idyllic as the Eastern concept of fluid gender seems, complications in the traditional Japanese concept of nonphysical