6

Women Imagined, Women imaging: Re/presentations of Filipinas in 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 . 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 and 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 initial waves of entertainers. It sprang from different social circumstances, although both groups of women are sexualized due to their national-ethnic and class differences. Unlike "mail-order" brides elsewhere, the hanayome were brought in not as much to satisfy male sexual desires as to reproduce for depopulated communities and their basic constituent, the ie (household). Since its early establishment during the Meiji era (1868 to 1912), the Japanese modern state has controlled the population and social welfare through the institutions of marriage and the ie system (Garon 1997). Although legally abolished in 1947, the prewar population-control functions of the ie continue to overshadow contemporary Japan, and its effects have been pervasive in rural, especially in northern rural, communities. Local communities require fertile, able-bodied women for both biological and social reproduction of the ie. Continuing depopulation compelled rural administrators to say, "If there are no children, villages and towns will collapse. It's a matter of supply and demand. Don't we need to import people as well?"?

The ie structurally places its members in positions based on their sex, age, and insider/outsider relations to the 'institution (Hendry 1981). The favored pattern of consanguineous male head inheritance requires that a woman marry into the man's ie, which consists of the successor son and his parents. Because the ie's chief goal is continuity over time, one of the most important duties for an outsider woman is to give birth. preferably to a boy, The structural pattern also positions its members hierarchically, men above women and husband above wife. In addition, the heir's wife comes under the supervision of the senior wife, or her mother-in-law, and assumes the roles of a yome (a junior-outsider caretaker of the ie). Under these institutional positions and functions, the idea that the yome is a partner in romantic sexual relationships with her husband is rather irrelevant, and there is little institutional sanction for a married couple to enjoy an affectionate partnership. A yome is also expected to engage in unpaid family labor on top of their assigned duties as household caretaker.

Learning all this the hard way, numerous rural Japanese mothers have, ironically. encouraged their own daughters to leave communities for paid employment and subsequent marriages in cities (Mitsuoka 1987:54-67). Rural \ men, especially the heirs of ie, have thus been affected by a prolonged "bride famine" (yome kikin). Consequently, rural residents and local

180 WOMEN IMAGINED, WOMEN IMAGING administrators variously made use of their contacts with individuals doing business in the Philippines, as well as with commercial marriage bureaus promoting "international marriages" with "compliant" women from "poor Asia."

The first group of six Filipina hanayome in Asahi-machi, Yamagata Prefecture, arrived in 1985, and these marriages are considered the first batch of administratively mediated "international marriages" in depopulated communities (Shukuya 1988:40). The hanayome began appearing in national newspapers about 1986, and issues pertaining to their marriages were introduced to the Japanese public throughout the late 1980s.8 In these early publications, the Filipinas' ubiquitous smiles, their comments on their marital lives as "always happy," and descriptions of their relationships with their husbands, who were ten to twenty years their senior, as "burning with excitement" (atsuatsu), worked to cloak the body politic behind these new arrivals. Although Filipina hanayome continued to be cheered as "saviors" amid the "bride famine," the women's fertility came under villagers' incessant surveillance. People in their affinal families, villages, and marriage agencies constantly barraged the hanayome with questions and injunctions such as "Deliver a child soon!" (Shukuya 1988:76), "Have you got a baby yet? Not yet? Not yet?" (Ikeda 1989:85), and "How was yesterday? Do you feel like getting pregnant?"(Kuwayama 1995:37). Under these demands to conceive an heir, one Filipina yome expressed the feeling, "We were like breeding machines!" (Kuwayama 1995:37).

In assisting in the municipal governments' matrimony projects, the local media cooperated in constructing the model yome. Soon after the women arrived, the media loudly announced that Filipina hanayome had transformed into hardworking yome. For instance, the women in Higashi Iyayama were described this way: "The hanayome from the south have already become 'housewives of Japan (Nihon no shufu),' and besides doing cooking and laundry, they voluntarily help in the work on the farm" (Kageyama 1988:20).9 In several photos ofyome in Okura-mura, they were featured in typical farming clothes, wearing straw hats and long-sleeved aprons (kappogi) with thin towels around their necks, covers for lower arms and muddy rubber boots (Suzuki 1986).10 Yome. are also expected to take care oftheir husbands' aging parents and to perform ancestor worship. One of the Filipina yome to first appear in a national paper was thus portrayed as "carefully attending to the needs ofher aging father[-in-Iaw]" (Takada 1986). Her father-in-law, aged 77 in 1986, had been suffering from post-thrombosis conditions and required assistance in changing diapers, bathing, shaving, and walking. These villages

N. SUZUKI 181 with "laudable yome came to receive massive inquiries from other depopulated municipalities about how they, too, could acquire their very own fecund, hardworking women.

In the late 1980s, when Filipina-Japanese marriages attracted local officials' interest vis-a-vis their communities' population politics, numerous activists organized public debates. In contesting these administratively arranged "international marriages," a number of Japanese and Filipino activists alike saw that the economic power imbalance between "rich" Japan and the "poor" Philippines underlay this "trafficking in women." They invigorated the same rhetoric they had previously employed in speaking for Filipina "entertainers," and universally identified the hanayome as being "located on the same line as prostitutes" who had been imported to work in the sex industry (Iyori Naoko in Higurashi 1989:137; see also Yamazaki 1987). In June 1988;troubled by activists' criticisms of the "commodification" of the female body, NHK (Nihon H6s6 Kyokai, National Public Broadcasting) responded with a two-day program. Ohayo jdnaru: Asia kara no hanayome o kangaeru (Good morning journal: Regarding brides from Asia)." It focused largely on problems that the women came to face in their new destinies: living in bleak hamlets with aging populations; domineering mothers-in-law and their "unable-to-marry" sons; enormous social expectations and forces of assimilation; broken promises of an affluent lifestyle in "wealthy" Japan; failing marriages; lack of amenities; municipal officials' politics; and marriage brokers' creepy business operations.

No one can deny' the many hardships these foreign women have indeed undergone. Today, critics continue to deploy these depictions for their own political ends, and persist in viewing the women as completely lacking any ability to think and act."

Japayuki Entertainers as "Cunning Scavengers"

In the literature on Filipinas overseas, some have argued that poverty in the Third World and "family orientation" has served as the "push" factors compelling impoverished women to take jobs abroad in a search of greener pastures (de Dios 1992; Matsui 1997). Despite their vulnerability, the women are thought even to "seize the blade" tkapit sa patalim in Tagalog) for better life opportunities abroad. The women are thus "willing victims" who will do anything for greater material rewards. In contrast to the helpless "slave-doll" image, another dominant construction of Filipina "entertainers" is that ofwomen who sell sexuality in order to return home as panalo (Tagalog

182 WOMEN IMAGINED, WOMEN IMAGING for "winners"; Ballescas 1992:88). The Japanese popular media, focusing on these new female (im)migrants, have consistently illustrated this immorality­ for-money as being associated with the national hierarchy of "wealthy" Japanese being deceived by "pauper" Filipinas from the Third World (Shimizu 1996). In such illustrations, Filipina entertainers stereotypically manipulate their images as poor and yakuza-controlled in order to obtain additional money and goods.

One much-debated popular television drama, Filipina 0 aishita otokotachi (The men who have fallen in love with Filipinas, Mizushima 1992), which aired in December 1992, was indicative ofthis theme. One character in the drama, a club manager, described Filipina entertainers this way, "They look sweet, but they are double-crossers. Because of the absolute pauperism [in the Philippines], they would do anything to survive. Naive Japanese men can be easily cheated with a snap oftheir fingers!" In this drama, the Filipina villain-turned-protagonist, Ruby, develops sexual relationships with multiple men so as to earn more. Even when the Japanese protagonist, Toshio, begins to feel love for her, she continues to go out with other men for money. When Toshio finds out, Ruby justifies her business by saying that her "mother needed kidney dialysis," which is a lie, in order to obtain extra cash gifts. Upon leaving Toshi~'s home, fully aware of his feelings for her, Ruby says that she is "not Toshio's wife and so [she could] not become his woman only," hinting that only marriage would solve his problem.

As Maria Ballescas' (1992:88) research has shown, winning a marriage will indeed make women like Ruby the utmost panalo because it ensures their rights to earn yen. In the drama, Ruby eventually does win a marriage proposal from Toshio. But when she is about to leave Japan for the Philippines, and prior to Toshio's arrival at the airport, Ruby meets another man by whom she is "pregnant." In tears, Ruby appeals to this man that "for the sake of your wife, I will abort the child" while in the Philippines. Ruby receives a compensation of¥300,OOO (US$2,700 at US$I=¥110) and urges the man to leave her or "yakuza will get you!" After getting rid of this man, Ruby meets Toshio and receives another ¥300,OOO, this time, as a Japanese betrothal practice. Despite vigorous protests by Filipina and Japanese activists and scholars, this image of the Filipina as a "gold-digging hooker" (Baylon 1993) has been widely disseminated in the public space in Japan."

Stories of murders, embezzlement, and other serious and petty crimes involving Filipina (im)migrants as desperados have circulated repeatedly in the media throughout the last decade. One of the most recent and lurid is

N. SUZUKI 183 that of a postal worker in Noshiro, Akita Prefecture, who misappropriated a total of¥38 million (US$350,OOO) from the office's banking division to give to his 23-year-old married Filipina mistress in the form of cash and other gifts." In the summer of 1999, another Filipina dominated television and print media when she ·became a suspect in the murders of her two Japanese husbands and in the related insurance fraud, which totaled ¥1.28 billion (US$I1.64 million) (Shiikan Bunshun 1999a, b).

Some of these cases of crime and deception are real, and for those, social sanctions must follow. However, these nefarious cases tend to underscore the foreign status of criminals in a xenophobic society. The effect isto keep alive in 's minds countless other crimes with or against Japanese nationals that have happened in the Philippines 'and in Japan during the last quarter of the century." The popular association of Filipina "entertainers" and the yakuza, as well as their "corrupt morality," also serve as undercurrents of the women's "gold-digging hooker" images. As with sex workers elsewhere who are seen as the embodiment of "Third World pauperism," Filipina entertainers are popularly assumed to have "opted to do anything to meet their ends" (see Pheterson 1993).16 As will be discussed below, this conceptualization has also been transposed onto speculation about the motives of Asian women who marry Japanese men in Japan. Members of this camp tend to ignore the global and local structures in which these (im)migrant women have been marginalized by legal, national, linguistic, and gender barriers. Though disadvantaged, the women are aware of their situations and use their stereotypes in particular contexts for their own purposes. Furthermore, the way they deploy their tactics shows many dimensions of human relations. One Filipina bar hostess I know, for example, always tells her customers that she is raising her children. At the close of the bar, her clients may ask how she will get home so late at night. She responds with the pragmatically proper expression, "By kuruma;" knowing the double meaning of the word as both "car" and "taxi." Her clients always interpret this as "taxi" and insist. that she take an extra tip for the transportation. But she actually drives home in her own car. She explained her logic to me:

They think my life is hard and pitiful because I'm a Filipina raising my children. For them, such an image and me driving my own car don't match. Also, as men, the customers want to show off. If I don't take the money, they are surely offended.

184 WOMEN IMAGINED, WOMEN IMAGING So, what can I do? Also, at Japanese clubs, "Customers are gods," right?

To most observers, this sort of act is, perhaps, "cunning." Yet, the bar hostess's public persona is, as she points out, something that her clients want to buy. Considering the actual structural inequality and disadvantages that prompt these new (im)migrant women to keep up with their images, it is also an integral element with which subordinates attempt to negotiate with the situation. Thus dissimulation and controlled words function as popular and meaningful forms of resistance-resistance that is performed with knowledge of the stereotypes, entertainment business, , and power relations involved, all of which are based on gender, class, and nationality (see Manalansan 1994). The bar hostess's explication of the situation complicates a moralistic struggle between the positive and the negative, and reflects the multifarious dimensions of her experiences.

These dynamics of interaction occurring in particular contexts have been largely dismissed or flattened in the public debate about Filipinas. The circulation of lurid news stories and consequent speculations about "hookers" has generated the Japanese view of Filipina entertainers as further sources of social disorder. These tales of Filipinas have come to be tightly interlaced with the reproduction of the population and the polity of the Japanese state.

Japayuki Entertainers as Mothers of "Miscegenation"

Another consequence of the sexual liaisons between Japanese men and Filipinas is that they uncover intimately linked fears about a degeneration of , the racial, cultural, and political integrity of the Japanese state through miscegenation. During the course of their exodus to Japan, Filipinas began, unexpectedly and voluntarily, to deliver some tens of thousands of children, known as "Japanese Filipino Children" (Nippi konketsuji, or JFC), or the more derogatory Japino." whose stories have been circulated in the popular media and in public symposia (Gunji 1991; Hama 1995; Jo and Tsutsumi 1999; Matsui 1998). These children are the results of (forced) prostitution, without the protection of contraceptive devices, and of the failed relationships of parents who once loved each other, hoped to raise families together, and/or exploited their partners for their own purposes (Aso and Nishida 1998:50). The presence of these children became known in Japan in the late 1980s, when the popular media began exposing their impoverished lives in the Philippines.

N. SUZUKI 185 Understandings of the situation of these children are not uniform and again reiterate polarized views that they are the offspring of either "victims" or "hookers." Thus one of the most vocal figures among the JFC support groups has argued that the majority of these children and their mothers, including those of formal marriages, have been abandoned by Japanese men (Matsui 1998:8). These activists contended that only a handful of Filipina- . Japanese couples formally marry under Japanese law, whereas tens of thousands of such couples marry in the Philippines, and that their offspring are therefore granted no rights as Japanese citizens. Many of the "Japanese men continue to commit bigamy" (Matsui 1998:8).

Opposition groups, in contrast, have blamed Filipinas for becoming pregnant by design, so as to secure their visas to remain in or move to Japan." Once there, they seek yen through the legal rights established by their Japanese children (Kosuge 1998b; see also Ballescas 1992:99). Thus these women are considered to be committing shussan (delivery while working abroad, Kosuge 1998a:2). The activists in this camp repeat their advice to Japanese men: "If [a Filipina] has worked in the night, there is a strong possibility that the child is not yours [because] she is likely to have done 'sidelines' (in this context, prostitution) in search of a large amount of money" (Kosuge 1998a:2). Although their logic parallels the idea of becoming. winners (panalo), as held by Filipina entertainers themselves (Ballescas 1992:95,99), the activists' argument that most Filipinas take "sidelines" also encodes a view of the women as sexually and socially immoral because they come from an economically less privileged country. What are lost in these conceptualizations of Filipina mothers as "victims" or "hypersexual liars for yen" are the more complicated relationships of Filipinas and Japanese men from which children are born.

People who have been more directly involved in contacting the fathers of JFC seem to be aware of the complex nature of JFC issues. The members of these broken families were trapped in various problems that developed at different levels of national, cultural, sexual, and economic politics (Ito 1995; Nakazawa 1999; see also 1manishi et al. 1996). The coordinator of a JFC support group in Tokyo, for example, has come to realize that parent-child separation may arise from different understandings in the Philippines and in Japan of the family and of its members' duties (Nakazawa 1999). Whereas urban Japanese (unlike their rural counterparts) tend to consider the basic form of the family to be nuclear, including only spouses and their offspring, tend to include their natal extended families, especially when their families need economic support. Many Filipinas feel ashamed if they alone

186 WOMEN IMAGINED, WOMEN IMAGING are enjoying extra money and goods without sharing them with their families back home. When communication breaks down between spouses, and when Filipina wives value their natal families to the extent that their affinal families' financial base is undermined, their husbands feel drained. Some husbands come to understand their Filipina wives' family orientation (AFK 1996: 142­ 145; Suzuki forthcoming; Tamagaki 1995: 180-187), but others lose their emotional control and their economic security, and leave the family as a result.

One member of another support group is worried that by protecting the rights of mothers and their children deserted by Japanese men, she may violate the rights of those who are leading happy and responsible lives together with their children (Ito 1995). The activist, Ito Rieko, warns that by raising a particular issue in public, fellow activists may unintentionally supply inaccurate, biased images and evaluations of Filipinas and their families. The category ofJFC, which distinctly marks its members' "foreignness" and racial­ national mix, has spawned discrimination that has preyed on all Filipinas, JFC, and Japanese partners regardless of their individual situations-and at a time when they are already suffering from the general bullying of people of difference in Japan. The results are the negative stereotypes painted of Filipinas and their offspring of "abandoned relationships" and "miscegenation." Some of my subjects in the Tokyo area thus filed formal complaints with the Philippine Embassy in Tokyo and with JFC support groups in the Philippines for their careless use of the terms "JFC" and "Japino,"

As these activists have recognized, images of Filipinas require analysis that pays attention to the heterogeneity and transformation of Filipinas' experiences over time and in different contexts. The same is true of the tasks that Filipina entertainers perform in the "water trade" (mizu shObai) and in the sex industry (sei fiizoku sangy6)-two realms in which the services provided are neither the same nor all-inclusive. By the late 1980s, ten years after the "Japayuki Year One," except for notable cases like the Lapin one mentioned above, prostitution among Filipinas has declined significantly (Ishiyama 1989:21), to the extent that reporters had to "look for" such prostitutes (Ozaki 1993:34-35), although unfortunately, some cases have been hidden underground and are therefore invisible. Numerous Filipina entertainers today work as hostesses whose central functions in the Japanese context are to make and pour drinks, light cigarettes, sing karaoke, and facilitate conversation (Anderson 1999; Ballescas 1992; Suzuki 2000). The decrease in the number of Filipina entertainers seeking refuge at women's shelters or their embassy reflects this diversification, as well as some women's voluntary prostitution (Muroi and Sasaki 1997).19

N. SUZUKI 187 My interviews with former and current Filipina entertainers confirm this trend. In support groups for Filipinos in Tokyo, such as the Philippine Overseas Workers Assistance Center, HELP (House in Emergency of Love and Peace) Asian Women's Shelter, and Kapatiran, the Filipina counselors say that the decision to engage in sex work remains "'in' the person" (nasa tao, see also Ballescas 1992:63), although none said that forced prostitution did not exist." Despite changes taking place over time, the prevalent representations of Filipina entertainers delineated above have served to yoke the lives of many Filipinas in the Tokyo area (Suzuki 2000).

The struggles and complexity of Filipina entertainers' lives compel us to go beyond the dichotomized "victim-hooker" constructs and to pay attention to telling details of difference among Filipinas. Unfortunately, this is yet to be achieved. To conceal the sexual politics, the structural inequalities and the politics of "migrant-labor research industries" (Aguilar 1999:99), another set of practices has been mobilized in rural Japan to tame the rising minority voices.

Hanayome as Agents of "Internationalization" and "Living Together"

Responding to activists' critiques, and with their own commitment to the body politic that "cannot fail," rural municipal officials have organized various "aftercare" programs for Filipina-Japanese couples since the 1980s. Central to these programs has been the pervasive political rhetoric of "internationalization" (kokusaika) as the administrators attempted to incorporate the hanayome into their communities. Kokusaika is a fuzzy and convenient notion officially invoked in the early 1980s to increase knowledge among the Japanese about "foreigners" and "foreign cultures." Expanding on this notion, the newly endorsed scheme of "living together" (ky6sei) has been deployed since the mid-1990s in an effort to create an aura of' harmonious social coexistence with people of difference. In practice, these schemes have remained largely at the levels of global consumerism and information collection, and are scarcely built on neutral ground. Thus kokusaika and kyosei have taken on a more instrumental, and sometimes sinister, relationship to otherness, often serving to isolate and control alien entities (Pollack 1993 :694).

Local governments' discourse on international marriage has changed its form over time, from a crude socio-centered body politic to more diplomatic parlance. Although some village officials were deeply committed to "raising

188 WOMEN IMAGINED, WOMEN IMAGING the women as respectable second Japanese" within the ie institution and the village administration, the presence of Filipina hanayome was identified as a feature of the kokusaika of rural municipalities all over Japan. Okura-mura, for example, organized a three-day Philippine festival in July 1988, at which Filipino films and literature were introduced, along with commentaries provided by Filipino and Japanese experts. The motivation for holding this festival was the village officials' realization that "we keenly felt that we just had not known anything about the Philippines [prior to bringing the young women]" (Niigata Nipposha Gakugeibu 1989:63). Ironically, a large proportion of the participants came from Tokyo, and the active members in public discussions did not seem to be the foreign women or villagers but scholars, students, journalists, and activists who had come from elsewhere to collect information and to express their own theories of international marriages in rural Japan (Higurashi 1989:264).

Moreover, critical observers were suspicious of these municipalities' other, less articulated agenda, because the fame that the villages had gained through the presence of Filipina hanayome was deemed an added value for their projects to develop tourism to "the unexplored region where Filipina hanayome live" (Higurashi 1989:264). There were sincere intentions in some ofthese programs from which the Asian women must have benefited, although their images were consumed as adding an exotic, and therefore erotic, phantasm-under the banner of kokusaika-for the Japanese. At the Philippine festival in Okura-mura, some confused male visitors expected to watch sexually explicit "Philippine shows" like those performed at certain establishments in Japan's entertainment quarters and in sex joints (Niigata Nipposha Gakugeibu 1989:65).

By the mid-1990s, the notion of kokusaika seems to have been replaced by that of kyosei, as voices of various minority groups began to penetrate the social cartography of Japan. The discourse on Filipina hanayome has also reflected this major trend of political correctness in society. In 1999, NHK aired a documentary entitled "Ten Years of Foreign Brides and the Village: Tozawa, Yamagata" (hereafter referred to as Gaikokujin hanayome), which featured two women-one from the Philippines and the other from Korea -both ofwhom have been in Tozawa-mura, Yamagata Prefecture, for ten years." This seemed to be a follow-up of the 1988 program Ohayii jiinaru, discussed above. Unlike the earlier image of "sacrificing" for the needs of the village, the ie, and the men portrayed in Ohayii jiinaru, the women in this documentary appear to have settled into their new homes and community.

N. SUZUKI 189 Moreover, despite numerous obstacles over the years, the two wives featured in Gaikokujin hanavome are active in the community, 'introducing their respective cultures to their families and to the villagers.

The theme of kyosei is unambiguously expressed in closing remarks delivered by Daniel Kahl, a longtime American resident in Yamagata who is one of the programs' two narrators: "The people are trying to live together by surmounting the differences in their national origins and languages. Here, I witnessed the people's powerful breathing for life." With this comment, the program ends on a tone of friendship, in sharply contrast to the predominantly problem-focused media images of a decade before.

Kahl's emphasis on kyosei nevertheless eradicates ethnic differences between himself and the Filipina and Korean women who have become ostensibly undifferentiated gaikokujin (foreigners). One technique used to blur these ethnic lines takes the form of repeated comments on the acquisition of the Japanese language.. After asking how Myra, the Filipina wife, managed to learn the language, Kahl's voiceover generalizes her personal struggle as that of all foreigners. Myra says, "When I make mistakes ... for me, it's most important [not to sound awkward]. I don't like to be ashamed. I have my pride." Kahl then takes over and says, "At the early stage, when [we] begin studying Japanese, foreigners are always worried if [we] are wrong or ashamed." Throughout the program, he fully agrees with the Filipina and Korean wives' experiences in language learning and of discrimination, including ignorant comments by Japanese wives to a Korean wife, such as "Do you have televisions and refrigerators in Korea?" Behind this remark lies the pernicious Japanese conception that these hanayome married Japanese men because they had been poor and without enough formal education to become literate in their home countries."

Ignoring such prejudice, Kahl asserts that the problem is Japanese misunderstandings of all foreigners, including himself: '" understand her feelings so well. For usforeigners living in Japan, it's really hard when [the Japanese] do not understand the culture(s) and lifestyle(s) of our native country(ies)" (emphasis added). Since the Japanese language seldom differentiates singular from plural, the lack of clarity here about "culture" versus "cultures" helps obscure differences, among foreigners and their countries.

Although hardships and discrimination are real in most foreigners' lives in Japan, what escaped Kahl's generalization is the inequality of Japanese phantasms about specific groups of outsiders (Creighton 1997). White

190 WOMEN IMAGINED, WOMEN IMAGING American men like Kahl are by far the most privileged foreigners in Japan (Russell 1995:88-89), and it is inconceivable that the Japanese would think of them suffering material or educational deprivation in their countries. Yet Kahl's saying "I understand" and "us foreigners" groups a Korean woman, a Filipina, and an Anglo American man as sharing the "same" experiences in Japan. It is significant, however, that through the use of the term gaikokujin Kahl skillfully dissociates himself from this group. Since the massive inflow of foreigners into Japan that began in the 1980s, gaikokujin has commonly referred to non-white foreigners from Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America, while white Euro-Americaris have often been distinguished by the word ." Consequently, the individuals featured in Gaikokujin hanayome are implicitly divided into the Japanese versus privileged foreigners and underprivileged hanayome.

Another uncanny feature of this documentary is that the previously expressed concern about the hardships of the hanayome is absent from the entire forty-five-minute program. After giving birth to two children each, both Myra and Yumi, the Korean wife, have been freed from social pressure to become pregnant and are pictured as though they were "ordinary" housewives and mothers of Japanese homes. There is no tyrannical mother­ in-law to keep them in the kitchen or on the farm: Myra has no mother-in-law, and Yumi shares meals, beer, and karaoke with her smiling mother-in-law. Furthermore, rather than being forced to assimilate into a Japanese way of life, Myra's husband sings a local song in "English" (with unmistakably Japanese pronunciation) while at work rowing a tourist boat on a river. Myra herself teaches their two boys English, although they do not seem to reply except with some "English" words.

Along with other Filipina wives, Myra has formed a Filipina wives' association. They perform a Filipino "bamboo dance" (tinik/ing) for the Japanese public, and their husbands help at their wives' events. Myra's aspiration to introduce Filipino culinary culture soon materializes at a public event. All these celebrations are held at the magnificent "Korean Palace" that the village of Tozawa built in 1996 as part of its kokusaika scheme. The scenes in the documentary are shot during bright summer days that work to eradicate the former dark, bleak image of the "snow-buried, depopulated, aging hamlets" of a decade before. Kahl repeats that "ten years after the arrival of foreign hanayome, the hanayome and the village are changing little by little," to the extent that an undifferentiated gaikokujin, Yumi, proudly claims to be not a Korean but a "Tozawan" (Tozawajin)!24

N. SUZUKI 191 NHK's "happy ever after" scenario unmistakably promotes the official invocation of kyosei. In doing so, it also works to tame Japanese anxiety about the presence of fecund and "prostituting" Asian women in rural Japan-and, by extension, in urban regions. It also heals Japanese guilt feelings lingering from the intensive discussions held a decade before about making foreign women shoulder Japanese women's roles and duties. With no mention of the continuing struggles on the part of the foreign wives," the program projects the idealized image of kyosei onto their daily experiences, so that both Japanese and foreigners seem to be able to harmoniously incorporate their differences, including bilingualism, into their family and community lives. The association of Filipinos with English, "the international language," ostensibly works to elevate their status as an "English-speaking people" who help nurture Japan's kokusaika (Takahata 1997), though Myra may have wished to teach her sons her Philippine language(s) as well." Yumi, in contrast, is only learning Japanese without being depicted as teaching her children and husband the Korean language.

Gaikokujin hanayome does reasonably serve to expand on images of Filipina hanayome as "victims of the flesh trade" and as yome whose roles no young Japanese women today wish to take on. These lifestyles, family relationships, and public projects are those I have also observed among Filipina wives in the Tokyo and Nagoya areas (Suzuki 2000). Ironically, the program's representations also produce coterminous boundaries that reaffirm the women's non-membership in Japanese society, just as Yumi's calling herself a Tozawan clearly binds her most fully within the designated locale. Furthermore, while blurring the differences and distances between Japanese and foreign residents and between ethnic groups, Gaikokujin hanayome identifies the women as hanayome-a term that normally refers to women who are getting or have just gotten married. It is quite unusual that this term would be applied to either Japan~se or white women married to Japanese . men for long periods of time and living in Japan. Thus, no matter how benign " these representations may appear, the celebrated term hanayome further subcategorizes the foreignness constructed through Daniel Kahl's narration and reasserts foreign wives' "Filipina" or "Asian" otherness.

This emerging discourse on Filipina hanayome has thus constituted the women differently over the last ten years. Whereas the hanayome were initially welcomed as "saviors," they are now claimed to have become agents of kokusaika and kyosei. In either case, the women's assumed differences in the Japanese eye-based on their gender, sexuality, class, and nationality-

192 WOMEN IMAGINED, WOMEN IMAGING have become integral parts ofthe local polity, from which they are nonetheless still also excluded.

John Russell (1995) has argued that by (re)establishing and consuming ungrounded myths of differences between Japanese and foreigners, the rhetoric of kokusaika in Japan works to defend the nation-state as composed only ofJapanese citizens. Complicit with this ideology, Gaikokujin hanayome also neglected to mention the fact that many of these women in Yamagata have become naturalized citizens of Japan (Kuwayama 1997:211). Moreover, the local governments have provided support to foreign wives as long as they remain in their marriages. Municipal officials, for instance, prohibited divorcees from joining the administratively operated language classes in some villages because these are offered only "for gaikokujin hanayome?"

By securing the boundaries of the nation, conflated with those of race and state, Russell (1995:92) contends that Japan's kokusaika (inter­ nationalization) has spawned another kokusaika (national fortification)" to exclude all who are marked with difference. What Gaikokujin hanayome then tells us is that the continuing recognition of the women as hanayome marks the disavowal by the Japanese of the women as fully integrated into their villages. In the words of a village mayor, the women in the program are "second Japanese."

These boundaries are robust, but they also imply the possibility of the women's own transgression from the delimiting images and locality. This is viable when we recognize the agency of Filipinas that are raising dissident voices that question the bounded images. Attentive listening to their voices allows us to go beyond a moralistic struggle over divided constructs such as "victim" and "scavenger," "naive" Japanese and "cunning" Filipinas, and "rich" Japan and the "poor" Philippines (see Spivak 199~). Such readiness to listen can be achieved when we are "willing to be effected and affected by them" (Foucault 1997:xviii). Filipina wives in urban Japan whom I have studied offer a variety of opportunities in their everyday activities for us to develop a listening ear and a seeing eye. In so doing, they attempt to "move" their representations from their fixities.

Refashioning Filipina Images

The images of the Filipinos [in Japan] are not good. "Why did you come to Japan?" "Because you want money?" ... People asked me these. "You want to have an easy life so you .. N. SUZUKI 193 married and came to a country which you know nothing about," they say. Really ... [pause] I felt bitter."

Countless times I heard this comment from my Filipina subjects in urban Japan. In this woman's case, the palpable pause and the rapid movement of her eyes, cast downward, spoke eloquently of the pain and anger that she was swallowing under her polite smile. Those who expressed their frustration were not only class-conscious women from the upper strata of Philippine society, but those who work(ed) as "talents"-as entertainers often call themselves-at bars. To combat the undesirable filters through which they are seen, many Filipinas in urban Japan take a gamutof actions as individuals and as groups. Others seem to refuse to engage in any particular movement and to be indifferent to the categories as their ultimate resistance: "Well, I don't care" (see Halberstam 1997:9).

Urban Filipina wives offer an ample number of cases and also complicate the polar divisions used to discuss these various forms of resistance. Many wives here work(ed) as talents, crossing the "bride't-ventertainer" cleavage, and they form the largest segment of the Filipino population in Japan" who are also active organizing public events in an "internationalizing" Japan. The following vignettes, collected during my field research between 1995 and I 1999, illustrate how urban Filipina wives express changing subjectivity and diasporic agency more than simply emancipation from their yoking representations.

The image of "cunning" Filipinas in Japan has arisen from a Japanese conception that Filipinas are "immoral because they are poor." Some women respond to this with their diligence, discipline, and successful marriages. Julie, in her early 30s, began working in Japan in 1992 and married a Japanese public employee in 1995. Julie's work ethic developed from her desire to have a secure life, with housing and property, and to support her younger sisters' education. She initially held a student visa for two years, which she had gotten through her relatives who run a tourist agency in Manila. To raise funds for her goals, she picked up jobs that were available to her: coffee shop waitress, bar hostess, separating recyclable trash, and so on. She repeated numerous times that obtaining security was most important in her life. She thus kept a workload such as:

Night, day, night, day ... I worked. Then, I slept for a few hours. The coffee shop opened at 10A.M., sol began working at 9 A.M. for preparation till4 P.M. Then, I went home once. Five, six, seven, I started working at the omise (club) at eight. ,- 194 WOMEN IMAGINED, WOMEN IMAGING Can you believe this? Until one or two. My wage was ¥1,SOO per hour [at the club].

Prior to her marriage, with her high fluency in Japanese, she rose to a position of chi mama (junior floor manager) at an omise. After becoming a chi mama, her apartment rental was subsidized and her work hours reduced, although she enjoyed the same income. Like other hostesses, she also received tips from her customers, often ¥l 0,000 and as high as ¥SO,OOO. She saved: "I gave money to my parents and sisters, but out of 100 percent, I gave about 20 percent and kept 80 percent for myself."

For the first six months of her marriage, Julie was totally dependent on her husband financially. Realizing her dependency, she kept an extremely thrifty lifestyle, to the extent of unplugging appliances such as the microwave and toaster when not in use. After half a year, she began working at a food factory, where she kept up with all the demands of the management. She began work from eight in the morning and when the factory was busy, she stayed there until nine in the evening. Her husband's irregular work shift allowed her to pick up overtime and work on weekends and holidays for a higher wage. Initially, she took a day off only once a month. With her own income, she now pays utility bills for their home. She also remits money to her sisters and pays the mortgage on her fancy condominium in Manila, which she acquired in 199S at a contracted price of 1.2 million pesos, at that time equivalent to about US$48,000 or ¥4.8 million."

Aside from her diligence, Julie is deeply committed to keeping her marriage intact in order to counteract the negative stereotype of Filipinas. Echoing the quote above, she has been affected by remarks such as "Filipinas marry for money only." More than once she complained to me, "they say that at work." "Who are they?" I asked. She responded, "Those middle-aged women! They all think in that way! Not every Filipina marries only for money. How vexing! I don't want to succumb to it! So, I will make my marriage successful!"

For Julie, one way to achieve this is to discipline herself and stay away from a "happy-go-lucky lifestyle." During the time she worked as a hostess, she witnessed a number of married employees who began flirting with their customers. Others, Julie saw, were regularly taking drugs." When she decided to marry, she was then determined: "Absolutely, no. No work at the omise. Even when you're strong, you never know what's gonna happen, right?" For Julie, work at the omise made it too simple to earn money and also to engage in many vices. Thus she turned away from the "easy job" in the night, even though she knew she could double her income by remaining there. Being a

N. SUZUKI 195 hostess at an omise does not in itself bring vice or make a woman "cunning." Many other Filipinas I met (continued to) work as talents while keeping their families well (albeit with difficulty). For Julie, however, not working as a bar hostess is a way to express her assertion that "I don't want to succumb to [Filipinas' negative reputations]!"

Since Julie started working at the factory, she has made friends with many of her Japanese colleagues, most of whom are in their 20s. Even those who later quit have kept up their friendships and sometimes seek advice from Julie as their senior and a capable worker. Julie prides herself on their comments, such as "Why are you different from other Filipinas?" Still, the images are pernicious, and the "middle-aged women" are there with little change. Fired up by their sense of vexation, Julie's and other Filipinas' battles thus continue in their daily lives. Their resistance may be expressed in the words of the Filipina quoted at the beginning of this section: "Whatever happens, I must stick to my life because this is the path I chose. So, I'll stick to it. I'll do my hardest even more and more!"

While some Filipinas are negotiating with their images as individuals, others, in different contexts, do so as groups. In June 1994, there were 38 Filipino groups registered at the Philippine Embassy in Tokyo; by 1997, this number had soared to some 250. The objectives of these groups vary considerably: some are politically charged, others are occupation-specific, and still others are oriented toward socializing with and giving mutual support to their fellow country people. Filipina wives of Japanese are commonly active in organizing these groups and participating in diverse activities. To promote their kyosei scheme, local Japanese officials often invite these wives' groups to attend community events. As seen in Gaikokujin hanayome discussed above, such affairs are intended for local governments to generate the aura of kokusaika and kyosei, and many Japanese may only consume them as something "international."

Many Filipinas, however, consider them opportunities "to make the appeal to the governments in Japan ... that we are not like the images," as one leader said of the motivation for her group activities. Her group members have been compelled to do so because "we have to live here [in Japan]. Our husbands are Japanese. Our children are Japanese [Filipino children]." Another leader complemented this, saying, "Unless we initiate actions by ourselves, we are only going to lose our space in this society!" Such statements imply Filipinas' desire not only for their ethnic space but also for a condition of more genuine "living together" with the Japanese.

196 WOMEN IMAGINED, WOMEN IMAGING 'Urban Filipinas are, in fact, eager demonstrators of various aspects of Filipino lifestyles and culture. They frequently give talks on their history, ethnic cuisine and dresses, performing arts, crafts, and so on at local schools and community events." On a number of occasions, one of the main attractions is to entertain guests with a variety of homemade Filipino dishes. At an annually held charity Christmas party in which I participated between 1995 and 1998,34 the Filipina organizers emphasized the fact that they "cook and enjoy seeing others eating well, as do wives and mothers everywhere." At this particular party, they avoided preparing certain items that they know most Japanese will not even .try, Instead, they served items that are similar to Japanese food in order to enter the culinary scheme of their Japanese guests, while at the same time the dining table was accentuated with other Filipino foods like roasted piglet and ham. The Filipinas aim to "introduce our • homemade food culture to the Japanese as tastefully different." Tapping into the Japanese gender configuration of housewife and mother, the women expect that their audience will reformulate classificatory categories more analogous to their own subjective conceptualization (see Bourdieu 1984:482­ 484)..

Fashion shows and dance performances are also an integral part of the re/presentations of "tasteful differences." One group enjoys the luxury of having a leader who owns dozens of ethnic dresses and dazzling Filipino ball gowns made by a well-known designer in the Philippines. Confronted by a quality one cannot dismiss, many Japanese told the leader that they were impressed by these re/presentations of Philippine culture through costumes, music, and dances. The leader in tum feels that her group has "won more respect from the Japanese in the community." Similar re/presentations have been held throughout the Tokyo area. At parties and other events, members always perform traditional dances in fancy ball gowns to show the height of their culture and the elegant demeanor ofFilipinas. Contrary to these Filipinas' intention, some Filipina activists see these performances as reflecting neither the realities of commoners of former times nor the present situations of the women themselves (Go and Jung 1999). But offering a self-representation normally associated with a higher condition helps win an acceptable place in the social order (Bourdieu I984:253)-and such a place is indeed something that these groups work to obtain.

A standard feature of the Christmas party is the introduction onstage of the organizers and all their family members at the end of the event. Wearing dresses inspired by the Barong Tagalog (the men's national attire), colorful dance costumes, or formal clothing, the women stand in the front row with

N. SUZUKI 197 their children. Their Japanese husbands, in formal Barong Tagalog shirts and black trousers or business suits, line up behind them. The audience will probably notice that some of the twenty or so couples have large age gaps and that some of the children's physical features are different from those of most Japanese children. Despite this, the families intend to send the message that they are "happy families, just like those in the audience." They can see this message countering the image of abandoned Filipina mothers and their "Japanese Filipino Children."

Foucault (1997:xxxvi) commented on gay experiences that "the problem of gays ... was not to uncover the truth of homosexual desire but to make homosexuality desirable." Foucault also underscored the fact that to achieve such a state requires one not to "create [one's] own culture [but] to create a culture" (Foucault 1997:xxxvi; emphasis in original). Similarly, as a minority group in Japan, at both individual and group levels, the Filipinas described above have at least partially attained social acceptance. Moreover, Foucault's emphasis on the verb "create" implies agency, and any action undertaken by the Filipina residents in Japan negates to some extent their image as "helpless victims." Such changes are taking place, however slowly, in part because .. local governments want to endorse kokusaika and kyosei schemes, but even more so because the women themselves have so passionately maximized the opportunities of public events for their own cultural production. Their practices have worked to refract and inflect Japanese perceptions. Thus, as suggested by some activists for JFC, the Filipinas' efforts will be rewarded if we, too, show our willingness to recognize their heterogeneous experiences over time and in different contexts.

Notes

Acknowledgments. This chapter is a slightly revised version of the original article that appeared in U.S.-Japan Women's Journal. I am most indebted to my subjects whose names and affiliations, by our mutual agreement, remain anonymous. I also thank Jeffry Hester, David Kaplan, Laura Miller, Nakamatsu Tomoko, and James E. Roberson for providing me with valuable comments and materials, and the Research Institute for the Study of Man, the Japan Foundation, the Matsushita International Foundation. and the Toyota Foundation for their generous financial support. 'The word Jupayuki is a combination of Japa- (Japan) and -yuki (to. go). It is a pun on the word Karayuki (China-bound). used for Japanese prostitutedling women who were deployed in greater Asia before World War II. Japayuki commonly refers to women migrant workers from Asia. while male workers may be marked with the male suffix -kun, as in Japayuki-kun. Some of these male workers have taken up jobs in the entertainment and sex industries in Japan as singers, dancers, musicians, disk jockeys, and bar hosts, including transvestite (bakla) hosts. Japayuki has entered the Tagalog

198 WOMEN IMAGINED, WOMEN IMAGING vocabulary, where it refers exclusively to women in the Philippines. It has been extensively disseminated and consumed in diverse public exchanges there. Many academic and popular writers have equated Japayuki with Karayuki and "comfort women" during World War II as they have been assumed to be all "prostituted" in order to satisfy the sexual needs of Japanese servicemen in the past and corporate "soldiers" in the present. While forced prostitution and rape did occur in the past and they continue to prey on some people in certain situations today, this equation is myopic and ignores the historical and political-economic .contexts in which Filipinas today make decisions to take up jobs as entertainers or Japayuki in Japan. The massive circulation of "Japayuki stories" in the Philippine media-such as numerous komik (comics), educational theatre performances, and the popular film Marien's Sioson, the Japayuki, as well as tales of kin and neighbors-has provided much information to modern Filipinas considering the option of working in Japan. Unless one is totally tricked or abducted to work abroad, as Filomeno Aguilar has contended, "there now seems to be little that is unpredictable or shocking about overseas work" (1999:99). The simple association of these different groups of women reduces the complexity of Filipinas' experiences and the historical contexts and social structures vis-a-vis which the women develop their decisions and imaginations. I use terms such as "Japayuki," "hanayome" (brides), "Japanese Filipino Children," (JFC), "Third World," and "First World" as discursive concepts that indicate the unstable identities of their referents-including their derogatory or disparaging connotations­ in particular social, historical contexts. For ease of reading, the quotation marks around these terms have generally been omitted after the initial use of each term in this paper (see Ivy 1995). In the References, I render Japanese names in the native order of family name first and given name last without a comma, when the authors' publications appeared originally in Japanese. Otherwise, the Western convention is followed. lSome feminist groups have tried to create dialogues between Japanese and new Asian residents in Japan; see Mackie (1998). lWatanabe (1998) has also offered participant-observation-based research notes on Thai sex workers. 'These sex tours are products of complicated global power struggles. Superficially, the men's sexual mores alone appear to be satisfied; however, massive political and economic interests of both the Japanese and Philippine governments and businesses in these tours have enticed the movements of men (and women). For details, see Muroi and Sasaki (1997), Richter (1989) and Truong (1990). "Fhe exchange rate in the mid-1980s of around ¥300 to US$I was used in making the currency conversion. Unless otherwise noted, the exchange rate used in other parts .. ' of the paper was ¥IIO to US$I . 6Mike Douglass speculates that "many Japanese are simply kept unaware of the scale and conditions" (2000:94) of these women working in night businesses. Uncritically buying into activists' and shelter-organizers' data and arguments, which are politically drawn, Douglass ignores the amount of media representations in Japanese widely circulated in the 1980s just as he conveniently disregards other oft cited works available in English (e.g., Aguilar 1999; Ballescas 1992; Osteria 1994; Watanabe 1998) that complicate the issue of Filipinas' and other Asian women's work and their agency for the sake of the theme of singularities in which he is singularly interested. 7NHK (Nihon Hoso Kyokai, Japan National Broadcasting) television program Ohayo jiinaru: Ajia kara no hanayome 0 kangaeru I, II (Good morning journal: Regarding brides from Asia I, II), 13-14 June 1988. 8Municipally-mediated group marriages with Filipinas in Yamagata, for example, reached a peak in the late 1980s. See Kuwayama (1995:15, 1997:206). .. N. SUZUKI 199 'According to Anderson (1999), only 0.1 percent of Filipina spouses work In agriculture. "'NHK television program. See note 7 above. "Ibid. "For a fuller discussion of the images of and subversive practices by rural Filipinas, see Suzuki (200 I). IJThis juxtaposition of Filipinas as deceitful and Japanese men as innocent was replicated in a popular television drama series called Ai 10 iu na' no moto ni (In the name of love), Story No.4 (Fuji Terebi, October 1992), and many others. "Focus (1999). The man actually embezzled a total of ¥38 million, out of which he spent ¥5 million for pleasure, hotels, drinking, and gifts. "Recall, the Wakoji case, in which Mr.Wakoji, the manager of Mitsui, Co. & Ltd. Manila Office, was kidnapped and kept hostage for over four months in 1986 (the same year that the former president Ferdinand Marcos was booted out of power). This Incident was intensively publicized in the media, in addition to numerous portrayals of impoverished sectors and the political and financial struggles in Philippine society. "Rubin (1984) argued that "the only adult sexual behavior that is legal in every slate is the placement of the penis in the vagina in [heterosexual] wedlock" in a nonviolent manner'for .procreation. Under this hetero/sexist scheme, these "entertainers" are indeed engaged in "bad" sex "for money," leading them to come under the-surveillance of what Rubin calls "the system of erotic stigma." "Ironically, the derogatory term Japino, used in Japan and in the Philippines, was coined by a Manila-based support group for Filipina workers returning from Japan (AFK 1996:275). "Since July 1996, the Ministry of Justice has formally allowed foreign custodians of children with Japanese citizenship to live in Japan when divorced from their Japanese partners, even after the loss of their spousal visas. These foreign custodians are normally granted long-term visas of various lengths. They can later apply for permanent visas. "For Thai women's voluntary prostitution, see Watanabe (1998). Watanabe contends that the sex workers with whom she dealt would not go to women's groups because ~hey knew they would only be told to go home, where they cannot find decent jobs. IOlncorporating issues of rape at the workplace and various forms of domestic violence against Filipinas are beyond the scope of the present discussion. For domestic violence against Filipina wives and lovers by their Japanese husbands and boyfriends, see Yoshida (2001). "The television program entitled Gaikokujin han ayome 10 mura no jti-nen: Yamagata' Tozawa-mura (Ten years of foreign brides and the village: Tozawa, Yamagata) was aired on 19 July 19lJ9. I1See the 22 July 1993 issue of the series Mura nu kokusai kekkon: Hanayometochi no sorekara No. 1-8 (Villages and international marriages: The aftermath of the brides No. 1-8), Yomiuri Shinbun, 20-29 July 1993. lIThe referent of gaijin is usually anyone who is white in the Japanese eye, including Hispanics and Middle Easterners as well as Anglo Euro-Americans. 24S ome people interpret this comment as Yumi's claim for her denizenship in the village of Tozawa while she resists becoming Japanese. Although such an interpretation is viable at the personal level, with John Russell (see below), I am still skeptical about such a possibility at the societal level in considering the present situation in Japan. I thank Kobayashi Fukuko and Yoshida Toshimi for a stimulating discussion. IjAs I witnessed a.mong my subjects in the Tokyo and Nagoya areas', Filipino and other foreign mothers are worried about their children being bullied because of their "foreignness"-and also about the ban on multilingual education at many homes and " 200 WOMEN IMAGINED, WOMEN IMAGtNG schools. Rural Filipina wives may also continue to be pressed to bear children and be responsible for a heavy workload. For these foreign wives' concerns, see, for example, Honda (1996), Kuwayama (1995) and the Yomiuri Shinbun (1993) series (see note 24 above) on international marriages in rural Japan. 26While many Filipinos are proficient in English, the power of the native tongue to express one's inner feelings remains undeniable. Filipinos may also use English for their own political goals because they are oppressed by foreign powers (Rafael 1991). 27Nakamatsu Tomoko, e-mail communication, 18 January 2000. 28This latter kokusaika is a pun in which the usual character, sai (edge), is replaced with another character, sai (fort), to denote what Russell (1995) argues about the actual practice of internationalization. 29Josephine Takahashi on the television program Tokumitsu no joho supirittsu: Kokusai kekkon iroiro arimashite (Tokumitsu's information spirits: Various things involving international marriages), which aired on Terebi Tokyo (Television Tokyo) IS March 1999. 30Based on the numbers of spouse-or-child visa holders, permanent residents, and '. long-term visa-holders, as well as ethnic demography by prefecture, the Tokyo area is estimated to hold the largest population of Filipina wives of Japanese nationals, followed by the Aichi-Shizuoka-Gifu area. For details see, for example, Ministry of Justice Immigration Bureau (1999). 31The equivalent values were calculated using the following exchange rates: PhP25=US$1 and PhP25=¥ I00. 320n problems of taking drugs and having affairs, see Ballescas (1996). .. 33See the Internet site Filipina Circle for Advancement and Progress (2000) for examples of such presentations by a Filipina wives' group: http://www.awave.or.jp/ homelficap/. 34For a fuller discussion of this event, see Suzuki (2000).

References

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