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Intimate Japan INTIMATE JAPAN Book_6801_V3.indd 1 7/3/18 12:10 PM Book_6801_V3.indd 2 7/3/18 12:10 PM INTIMATE JAPAN ❖❖❖ Ethnographies of Closeness and Conflict Edited by Allison Alexy and Emma E. Cook University of Hawai‘i Press Honolulu Book_6801_V3.indd 3 7/3/18 12:10 PM © 2019 University of Hawai‘i Press Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Alexy, Allison, editor. | Cook, Emma E., editor. Title: Intimate Japan : ethnographies of closeness and conflict / edited by Allison Alexy and Emma E. Cook. Description: Honolulu : University of Hawai‘i Press, [2019] | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2018003982 | ISBN 9780824876685 (cloth : alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Intimacy (Psychology)—Social aspects—Japan. | Social change—Japan. Classification: LCC HQ682 .I58 2019 | DDC 303.4—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018003982 Cover photo by Photographer Hal. Reproduced with permission. An electronic version of this book is freely available, thanks to the support of libraries working with Knowledge Unlatched. KU is a collaborative initiative designed to make high-quality books open access for the public good. The open-access ISBNs for this book are 9780824882440 (PDF) and 9780824882457 (EPUB). More information about the initiative and links to the open-access version can be found at www.knowledgeunlatched.org. The open access version of this book is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), which means that the work may be freely downloaded and shared for non-commercial purposes, provided credit is given to the author. Derivative works and commercial uses require permission from the publisher. For details, see https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. For Reggie and Kohei Book_6801_V3.indd 5 7/3/18 12:10 PM Book_6801_V3.indd 6 7/3/18 12:10 PM Contents ❖❖❖ Acknowledgments xi Chapter One Introduction The Stakes of Intimacy in Contemporary Japan Allison Alexy 1 Chapter Two Students Outside the Classroom Youth’s Intimate Experiences in 1990s Japan Yukari Kawahara 35 Chapter Three Resisting Intervention, (En)trusting My Partner Unmarried Women’s Narratives about Contraceptive Use in Tokyo Shana Fruehan Sandberg 54 Chapter Four Romantic and Sexual Intimacy before and beyond Marriage Laura Dales and Beverley Anne Yamamoto 73 vii Book_6801_V3.indd 7 7/3/18 12:10 PM viii Contents Chapter Five What Can Be Said? Communicating Intimacy in Millennial Japan Allison Alexy 91 Chapter Six My Husband Is a Good Man When He Doesn’t Hit Me Redefining Intimacy among Victims of Domestic Violence Kaoru Kuwajima 112 Chapter Seven Power, Intimacy, and Irregular Employment in Japan Emma E. Cook 129 Chapter Eight Manhood and the Burdens of Intimacy Elizabeth Miles 148 Chapter Nine Gender Identity, Desire, and Intimacy Sexual Scripts and X-Gender S. P. F. Dale 164 Chapter Ten Beyond Blood Ties Intimate Kinships in Japanese Foster and Adoptive Care Kathryn E. Goldfarb 181 Chapter Eleven Making Ordinary, If Not Ideal, Intimate Relationships Japanese-Chinese Transnational Matchmaking Chigusa Yamaura 199 Book_6801_V3.indd 8 7/3/18 12:10 PM Contents ix Chapter Twelve Connections, Conflicts, and Experiences of Intimacy in Japanese-Australian Families Diana Adis Tahhan 219 Chapter Thirteen Reflections on Fieldwork Exploring Intimacy Allison Alexy and Emma E. Cook 236 Contributors 261 Index 265 Book_6801_V3.indd 9 7/3/18 12:10 PM Book_6801_V3.indd 10 7/3/18 12:10 PM Acknowledgments ❖❖❖ As for any ethnographic work, we want to begin by expressing our thanks and appreciation to all the people who were so generous to share their time, ideas, and experiences with the researchers in this volume. We are deeply indebted to everyone who worked with us and thank them for their willingness to share intimate parts of their lives. Putting together this volume has been a pleasure, with a wonderful group of thoughtful interlocutors. The editors thank the contributors for their hard work and careful thought. Years ago, when this project began, Katrina Moore was also involved. Unfortunately, she wasn’t able to par- ticipate in this final version, but we acknowledge her many contributions, excellent scholarship, and continued support. Likewise, we thank Nana Okura Gagné for her early involvement and collaboration. We extend our thanks to Glenda Roberts, one of the editorial reviewers, for reading the manuscript with tremendous precision. The volume is stronger because of her suggestions. William W. Kelly generously permitted us to include his reflections in Yukari Kawahara’s chapter and helped us as we reframed part of her work. He also gave extensive suggestions to improve the intro- ductory chapter. Stephanie Chun at the University of Hawai‘i Press has been supportive throughout this process, and we appreciate the work she did to strengthen the volume as it came to fruition. In the final stages of preparation, Madeline Kahl provided invaluable editorial assistance. We are grateful for Keiko Yokota-Carter’s help with licenses and permis- sions. Finally, we thank Haruhiko Kawaguchi, working as Photographer Hal, for permitting us to use his image on the book’s cover. We hope his xi Book_6801_V3.indd 11 7/3/18 12:10 PM xii Acknowledgments evocative image conveys both the care and struggle involved in intimate relationships. The editors dedicate this volume to our partners, in acknowledgment and appreciation of all the support they have given us. We can’t imagine dedicating this, of all books, to anyone else. Book_6801_V3.indd 12 7/3/18 12:10 PM INTIMATE JAPAN Book_6801_V3.indd 13 7/3/18 12:10 PM Book_6801_V3.indd 14 7/3/18 12:10 PM CHAPTER 1 ❖❖❖ Introduction The Stakes of Intimacy in Contemporary Japan Allison Alexy In 2009, the New York Times ran a story about a Japanese man who was in love with a pillow (Katayama 2009a). More specifically, the article describes a man calling himself Nisan who is in love with a large body pillow printed with an image of Nemu, a teenaged character originally from a video game. The author, Lisa Katayama, narrates time she spent with Nisan and the ways he treats his pillow girlfriend: carefully put- ting her in a car and restaurant booth while talking to and about her as if she were a real person. Although the article focuses primarily on this one man, it claims such behaviors tell us something about Japan more generally, including a multitude of problems surrounding romance and intimacy. Using terminology that labels a human’s relationship with an imaginary character “2-D love,” Katayama makes macro claims that “the rise of 2-D love can be attributed in part to the difficulty many young Jap- anese have in navigating modern romantic life” (2009a).1 Citing national statistics about the high percentage of virgins and low numbers of people dating, Katayama presents a problematic but recognizable image of Japan that meshes well with similarly distorted representations frequently used by American news media. In such depictions, Japan and Japanese people are presented as the extremes of humanity: group-oriented but unable to form real attachments, dysfunctional but entertaining, and almost certainly harmless to the point of impotence. Such a profile describes a population fascinated by sex but not actually having any, fetishistically attached to both schoolgirls and inanimate objects, and thwarted by those very same preferences in any attempt to build real loving relationships. The tone of Katayama’s article 1 Book_6801_V3.indd 1 7/3/18 12:10 PM 2 Allison Alexy parallels Nisan’s earnest care of his pillow and employs an uncritical cul- tural relativism to suggest that while Nisan might be a bit extreme, his behaviors and preferences accurately reflect more general trends in Japan. Like problematic coverage in the same newspaper in years before (Zipangu 1998) and while purporting to share some true facts about Japanese culture, this article merely repackages long-standing stereotypes. Bringing a new twist to the “culture of contradictions” thesis first popularized through Ruth Benedict’s work (1946) and as a possible apotheosis of clickbait, this article resituates orientalism and exoticism by focusing on Japanese inti- macies.2 In fact, Katayama was simply wrong about her source; she either failed to understand or failed to report that Nisan is something of a per- formance artist intentionally presenting an overwrought extreme (James 2009).3 Moreover, before the article was corrected, it included survey data that Katayama had radically misrepresented to support her hyperbolic claims.4 The substantial inaccuracies within this article exacerbate popu- lar misperceptions about intimate Japan. Japanese intimacies command a surprising amount of attention, both within and beyond Japan. The New York Times’ focus on so-called 2-D love is only one example of non-Japanese media coverage on Japanese intimacies. Indeed, in recent years, a broad range of fluffy news pieces have centered on particular aspects of Japanese intimacies: Japanese divorce ceremonies, the “new phenomenon” of single Japanese women throwing themselves a wedding with no groom, Japanese men literally yelling confessions of love for their wives in order to save their marriages, Japan’s low rate of sexual activity but supposedly high rates of extramarital affairs, and the rever- berations as other media outlets picked up Katayama’s 2-D love story as if it were accurate.5 Much of this media coverage presents Japanese people as what I label “hypersexual virgins,” people who are unduly focused on sex but not actually able to convince anyone to sleep with them. This theme— unusual sexual preferences so strange as to render actual sex nearly impos- sible—functions as a Trojan horse enabling English-language news media to surprise readers with stories about sex that don’t include much sexual activity. Depending on the reader, perhaps this type of story allows titil- lation combined with a sense of superiority, evidence that once power- ful Japanese businessmen are so impotent now as to be a threat in neither sexual nor financial markets, making Japanese women both more grate- ful and more available to lovers who don’t have these sexual proclivities.
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