July 1995 ABSTRACT
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BEYOND COMMON SENSE: NEGOTIATING CONSTRUCTIONS OF SEXUALITY AND GENDER IN JAPAN W1MLUNSINO A thesis submitted in partial fulf'tlment of the requirements of Oxford Brookes University for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy This research programme was carried out in collaboration with Kyoto Seika University July 1995 ABSTRACT. This thesis is concerned with lifestyles in Japan that have hitherto remained largely unreported. The main research categor- ies are gay men, lesbian women, single men and women, and feminist men and women. In addition attention is given to transvestites, transsexuals and hermaphrodites. The main aim of the thesis is to provide an ethnography of the lives of the various categories, which is a new angle from which to view Japanese society. The research methods consist of participant observation and in- depth open-ended free attitude interviews. Participant observa- tion in this case includes all aspects of people's life: personal relationships and reading what people from the categories say they read. In addition I developed experiential research, i.e. experiencing what informants may experience. The major question from which the research started out is that of how people whose feelings, ideas or lifestyles do not agree with heterosexual marriage cope with life in a society in which everyone is expected to marry. In this sense the research goes a step beyond what much of anthropology does: establishing what are more or less standard lifestyles in a particular culture. After discussing the position of marriage in Japanese society in chapter three, including political and legal aspects, this thesis discusses how people of the various research categories may try to fit in with the idea that one should marry by entering marriage and the problems this may give in chapter four. In chapter five alternative lifestyles are discussed and in six ways of dealing with an outside world that has little understanding people with alternative lifestyles, feelings, or ideas. In chapter seven ways in which the various categories are regarded and relate to each other, especially the relations between gender and sexuality and discourses of sex and sexual activites are investigated, as well as debates within and between individual and circles consisting of people from the various categories. In conclusion four themes, that played a role in the background throughout the ethnographic body of the thesis, are drawn together: 1) space, gender and sexuality, 2) constructions of homosexuality, .3) selves, and 4) changes: developments that took place while the research was conducted and have continued since. Acknowledgements. Research for this thesis has been supported by the Austrian Ministry for Research and Science, the Japanese Ministry for Education, the Japan Foundation Endowment Fund, and Erasmus. It could not have been carried out without financial support of family and friends. I am indebted to many people for their advice and cooperation, but since some of those I would wish to thank most cannot be named due to their wish to remain anonymous, I will not mention names. Let it be understood that I am grateful to all. Contents. 1. Introduction 1 Common senses 2 Sex and gender 9 Finding selves 14 Historical developments and constructions 19 Feminism 19 Female homosexuality 23 Male homosexuality 25 Ethnography and scholarship 30 Notes 33 2. Methods and Ethics 35 Participant observation 35 Groups 39 Finding informants and determining biases 45 Interviewees 49 Setting and contents of the interviews 53 Ethics 57 Anonymity 58 Friends, love and sex 60 Inside the outside: A fieldworker's persona 64 Conclusion 70 Notes 71 3. Disourses and Politics of Marriage 74 Kekkon: Common sense notions of marriage 74 Some alternative views 84 Courting for marriage 90 Law and politics 96 Children: shiseiji, rabu chairudo, hichakushutsushi 103 Divorce: Rikon 109 Marriage and discrimination 112 Conclusion 117 Notes 118 4. Trying to Fit: Homosexuality and Feminism in 122 Marriage Male homosexuality and marriage 122 Marriage of convenience 127 Friendship marriage 128 Deceiving husbands 130 Latent Homosexuality 134 Feminism and female homosexuality in marriage 143 Opportunists 145 No choice 149 Latent feminism or homosexuality 151 Disappointment 158 Comparing men and women 164 Conclusion 166 Notes 167 5. Private: Alternative Lirestyles 170 Singles: dokushin, shinguru 170 Single by circumstances 174 Single against all intention 177 Single by intention 179 Alternative lifestyles 182 Group living 183 Male same sex relationships 186 Promiscuous gay men 195 Female same sex 199 Promiscuous women 204 Alternative female/male relationships 209 Tsutamori Tatsuru: Relations denying gender 212 boundaries Conclusion 215 Notes 216 6. Dealing with society: Practical problems, passing 217 and coming out Solving practical problems 218 Housing 218 Work 221 Coping with seken: Going along or ridiculing 225 Coming Out: With Whom, How, and to What Effect 239 Friends, classmates, colleagues 245 Parents 254 Media 261 Conclusion 267 Notes 268 7. Circles: Discussing gender, sex, and the other and 270 the self Sex and gender: Female and male, feminine and 270 masculine Transvestism and transsexuality 271 Femininity and masculinity 277 Talking sex and having sex 286 Circles: Discussing the self and the other 298 Feminist women 299 Lesbian women 302 Gay men 306 Conclusion 313 Notes 314 8. Conclusion 316 Space, sexuality and gender 318 Constructions of homosexuality 324 Selves 333 Changes 341 Notes 346 Appendix A: Glossary 348 Appendix B: Groups and Circles 357 References 360 1 1: Introduction. My first visit to Japan took place in 1986. I was aged 25 and stayed in Japan for one long hot ..summer. Contrary to my expectations, from the moment I descended from the plane I felt familiar with the people and the environment, almost as if I had come home. It was the clearest example of deja vu I ever experienced. This did not mean that everything about Japan was unproblematic. One of the things I found disagreeable, was that people frequently asked whether I was married and if I was not, whether I had a girlfriend. Since I was openly gay in the Netherlands, such questions were as good as new to me and I had difficulty dealing with them without upsetting those who asked them. This made me wonder what Japanese like me do with such questions, and, indeed, how they cope with an environment in which everyone is expected to marry. Because of the almost total lack of material on homosexuality in contemporary Japan I limited my MA thesis to discrimination against women based on a rubric in Japanese women's magazine Fujin K6ron, called Watashi no Kokuhatsu (My Complaint), which refers to the magazine's request that readers write about sex discrimination. Marriage was the major focus of the complaints (Lunsing 1989) . After I graduated I visited Japan again, in 1988. I contacted gay groups and spoke with lesbian and feminist women. In gay circles it was thought that most gay men in Japan marry, which was seen as detrimental to the formation of a gay movement. Among feminist women I found that marriage was a much discussed 2 theme, whether they were married themselves or not. My research theme was decided. I would investigate how gays, lesbians, women's and men's liberationists, singles and other people, such as transsexuals, transvestites and hermaphrodites, whose ideas, feelings, or lifestyles are at variance with Japanese construc- tions of marriage, and inherently the construction of life, live in Japan. Common senses. Common sense is a cultural construction which differs from one culture to another (Geertz 1983). Since many people think that common sense is a matter of using one's brain and sensible people will come to the same conclusion, if one questions it one may encounter reactions varying from ridicule to aggression, something I experienced often in England where common sense is held in high esteem. An example of common sense is the idea that milk bottles are ecologically more friendly than milk cartons, as The Guardian recently (May 1995) wrote. Dutch research, however, proved that the amount of energy and chemicals used to transport and clean the bottles for reuse is more polluting than the total pollution caused by manufacture, transport and discarding of cartons, as a Dutch newspaper, NRC Handelsblad, reported about a month earlier. Since many people perceive common sense as a manifestation of intelligence, it is little questioned. Common sense is a cultural phenomenon, liable to 1 change • Geertz wrote that: 3 It ••• perhaps it is an inherent characteristic of common-sense thought precisely to deny that (it is a cultural phenomenon) and to affirm its tenets are immediate deliverances of experience, not deliberated reflections upon it (Geertz 1983:75)." The Dutch equivalent of common sense is gezond verstand, which literally means healthy sense. This made me aware at an early age of common sense's potential lack of sensibility. My mother said: "Why don't you go and play outside like a healthy Dutch boy?" And I thought: "I don't wanna be a healthy Dutch boy." As Geertz writes, the idea of naturalness is one of the features characterizing common sense thought (Ibid.: 85) . Instead of common sense, Ohnuki-Tierney uses the term " ... naturalization to refer to a historical process whereby cuturally determined values and norms acquire a state that makes them seem 'natural', not arbitrary, to people" (Ohnuki- Tierney 1993:6, borrowing from Bourdieu) . Naturalized ideas are part of common sense. Durkheim's "normal" sociological phenomena, phenomena that can be found in all or at least a majority of individuals in a society (Durkheim 1964:55), are, when it concerns collective thought, common sense ideas. He calls variations present in minorities "morbid" or "pathological" (Ibid.) and writes that the healthy is by 4 definition normal (Ibid.:58). This view denies the possibility of alternative ideas with a positive value.