Women Imagined, Women Imaging: Re/Presentations of Filipinas in Japan Since the 1980S

6 Women Imagined, Women imaging: Re/presentations of Filipinas in Japan since the 1980s Nobue Suzuki Images of Filipinas in Japan since the 1980s often have been dualistic and contradictory: "Japayuki " entertainers are s/exploited but are nevertheless conniving gold-diggers and mothers 0/ miscegenation: "mail-order brides" are saviors of the "bride famine" experienced in depopulated rural households and communities but are also victims of multiple oppressions, being passive pawns in the inter national trafficking ofwomen. More recently. local Japanese governments have mobilized Filipinas ' difference and exotic visibility as added values to enhance state-endorsed "internationalization" and "living together" schemes. Contrary /0 these images, shadowed by coherence and timelessness. urban Filipina wives have been engaged in acts of alternative imagings of themselves as tactics of resistance to such containments. This paperfirst traces the constructions ofthe pervasive images ofFilipinas in Japan's spatial-temporal contexts. It then discusses the everyday processes by which urban Filipino wives ofJapanese men negotiate with the dominant and persistent stereotypes, and through which they create and disseminate divergent images, constituting sites ofpossible change. In doing so, more than simple emancipation from their representational yoking of exclusion. their re/preseniations express the women's own changing subjectivities and agency in diaspora. 176 WOMEN IMAGINED, WOMEN IMAGING JAPANESE IMMIGRATION authorities called the year 1979 the "Japayuki Year One" (Japayuki gannen). This was the year when the number of Filipino women (Filipina) entrants to Japan exceeded ten thousand for the first time. "Japayuki" (Japan-bound)' is a term coined by filmmaker Yamatani Tetsuo (Yamatani 1985:27), and Filipina Japayuki often work as entertainers in a variety of establishments in Japan. Although their services vary considerably and have changed over the years, these entertainers are commonly identified as prostitutes. Since the mid-1980s, Japan has also witnessed a significant increase in "international marriages" (kokusai kekkon) between Japanese men and women who are for the most part from China, Korea, and the Philippines. Due to the novelty and visibility of these marriages, "Filipinas" in rural Japan have come to index the "problem of brides from Asia." As seen in the representations of Filipina "mail-order brides" elsewhere (e.g., Cahill 1990; Holt 1996; Tolentino 1996), various textual and media images have identified rural" Filipina "hanayome" (brides) within the categories of structural "victim" and "cunning scavenger." The extraordinary attention paid to the presence of Filipinas in Japan is a result of a "First World" voyeurism hungry for news of the "Third World" and narratives of difference.' Such a division and such markers of difference are invariably gendered, especially at the intersection of nationality, ethnicity, and class (Ortner 1996). In Japan, mass circulation of tales about Filipina entertainers and brides reached its peak in the late 1980s. In the English language, writing about the influx offoreign worker appeared in the early 1990s. Although analyses based on primary materials and intense participant-observation have detailed the lives of Japanese Latin Americans and of Nepalese (e.g., Takenaka 1997; Tsuda 1999; Yamanaka 1996,2000), few studies have discussed non-Japanese Asian women's experiences with the same vigor.' Consequently, Filipinas continue to be symbolically confined within the two dominant images of "entertainers" and "brides." To avoid confusion, let me state from the outset that, in speaking of Filipinas' negotiations with their image constructions, I am denying none of the hardships experienced by (im)migrant Filipina entertainers and spouses of Japanese nationals. My interactions with (former) Filipina entertainers and wives of Japanese in the Tokyo and Nagoya areas do confirm that dehumanizing and (over-)eroticizing situations happened and are happening to some women under certain conditions. The same is true about (im)migrants' antisocial activities. As discussed below, the women's own stories, as well N. SUZUKI 177 as my readings of a variety of texts (including films and documentaries), have, however, provided no simplistic or static view of the (im)migrant Filipinas in Japan. What these tell us is that unless the prevailing representations are placed in spatial-temporal contexts and the women's agency recognized, any effort to alleviate these (im)migrant women's difficulties may have adverse effects on the lives of those who do not identify themselves with the dominant images. In what follows, I first delineate how Filipinas in Japan have been popularly portrayed and then introduce the ways in which Filipina residents in urban Japan negotiate with their images. Japayuki Entertainers as "S/exploited Victims" By the mid-1980s, tales about migrant Filipina workers were circulated and consumed as newsworthy objects, because Filipinas "make' good cinematic subjects (e ni naru) with their beauty and other marketable stories like being highly educated mothers" (Yamatani 1985:28). Magazines, tabloids, and newspapers voluminously disseminated allegories of thesecommodifiable Japayuki subjects, linking sex work both with eroticized bodies and with organized criminal syndicates (commonly known as the yakuza) "operating in forced prostitution" (Sharaku 1983). Prior to and concurrently with the services provided by Filipinas in Japan, countless Japanese men traveled to urban areas of the Philippines (and to other Asian cities) for their infamous sex tours.' . During the early part of their migration history to Japan, Filipinas commonly worked at gekij6 (strip theaters) throughout Japan. At these "theaters," spectators are allowed to come up to the stage and participate in a "live sex show" with the strippers, who include Filipinas, Thais, Colombians, and Japanese. From young students to weary old men, the male spectators spend ¥3,000 to ¥4,000 (approximately US$I 0 to $13 in the mid-1980s)5 to have quick sex on the stage or in private rooms in the back. The women's sexual services were luridly portrayed in media such as Yamatani's book cover: "The brown, naked body of Maria, the stripper, was lit up [on stage] and a shabby old man was leaning over her. As he began' panting with sexual arousal, she inserted him into her body" (Yamatani 1985: book cover). Another common type of work for Filipina migrant workers in the early 1980s was to give sexual services at a mantoru (literary, a "mansion Turkish bath")-that is, a residential apartment unit where commercial sex acts are performed (Sharaku 1983). Managers in the sex industry had attracted 178 WOMEN IMAGINED, WOMEN IMAGING customers by inciting men's fantasies about "Asian" women as young, risque, and sexually available. For instance, to whet male sexual appetites, tabloid ads introduced their women workers' favorite phrases such as, "Do you want pussy?" (Yamatani 1985:84). Since some mantoru were located in residential complexes, the presence ofthese women became known. Japanese residents became aware of their work of "going out with customers" and "incessantly receiving phone calls and strange men coming into their rooms one after another" (Yamatani 1985:98-99). Responding to these complaints, late-morning television shows in the early 1980s, presumably targeting Japanese homemakers, began mocking Filipina workers in tears and tantrums as they were rounded up by the immigration police for their illegal prostitution (Yamatani 1985:200).6 Behind the images of Fi1ipina "entertainers" have typically been the yakuza who have commodified the women's bodies (Douglass 2000; de Dios 1992; Matsui 1995). These yakuza, or some club owners with the assistance of the yakuza, have sought the cheap sexual labor of women from the Third World in order to maximize their own gain. When the women try to resist, they are heavily punished physically, mentally, and economically. In addition, they are required or forced to take drugs and their documents are confiscated to prevent them from escaping. The Lapin case, which happened in Nagoya in 1988 to 1989, exemplified all aspects ofthe sexual, physical, and economic abuses committed against Filipina workers (ALS no Kai 1990). At the "snack bar" Lapin, the yakuza owner and employees confined the women in a caged apartment and forced them to serve men's sexual desires under their violent surveillance and control. This case disclosed not only the brutal conditions that some Filipinas suffered but the cooperation of some Japanese police officers with the yakuza as well. Consequently, Filipinas have come to be tightly linked in the public mind to the corruption and illegal businesses of the Japanese. In responding to these cases, many activists have made little effort to clarify differences among these workers. 111 their view, "the Filipinas are abused and exploited. These women don't come to Japan of their own free will ... [They] are victims of international trafficking in women" (Matsui 1997:137). As with similar representations ofprostitutes elsewhere, Filipina "entertainers" have been contained within prevailing images without being granted any sign of agency, and have thus been reduced to female "slave dolls" who come under the control ofomnipotent "masters" (see McClintock 1993). N. SUZUKI 179 Filipina Hanayome as "Saviors" and "Victims of the Flesh Trade" The influx of Filipina hanayome into rural Japan followed the

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