Something about gender in Japan
Of course, there’s a lot to be said about Japan becoming “Westernized”, and almost as much to say about the effect on the perception of “gender” in Japan.
Japan has traditionally been a male-centered society, wherein females fulfill subservient roles in hierarchy dominated by men. I mean to place no value judgment on the observation that they’ve traditionally been encouraged (or perhaps coerced) to confining themselves within the role of homemaker, and nothing else.
As well as to continue the discussion about Japanese globalization, consider the behavior of specified gender roles emphasized in the following video. I recorded it at an American-style (self-labeled so) nightclub in Kyoto:
(EDIT: If Flash player isn’t working for you, try the video’s flickr page.)
Televisions like this are scattered across the walls of the dance club, suggesting that the club wants to embody the imagery portrayed in such rap videos. That is, assertive men taking front-stage in rap videos, the backgrounds of which are filled with attractive women. The women, in none of the videos I saw on the screens all night, did anything more than dance, watch, and essentially validate the men.
I might mention as well that the videos were usually completely unrelated to the music being played in the club. Thus, only the imagery in the videos seems to have mattered.
The video, and the club where such activities portrayed in it are reenacted, reinforce the normal subservience of Japanese women… but in a sort of supplemental way to that in which Japan has typically defined “womanhood.” It may not have been the rap videos that caused the women in the club to dance just like those in the videos dance, but I think it’s highly likely. The videos elicit an orgiastic state (in the non-sexual sense… yet, in the ) among the club-goers. The women in particular became more forthcoming in their sexuality, pursuing men but yet maintaining a combination involving coyness which I have yet to fully understand. The state of the female gender in Japan seems to be changing.
Japanese women have been subjected to subservience so long yet now are encouraged to be more aggressive, as demonstrated by this poster on the wall of a train station:
In English, top to bottom, it reads something like “You are a criminal if you touch a woman’s body on the train.” Then in blue, “Women should be brave and speak out if they’ve been touched inappropriately on the train.” The bottom says to contact the police if you’ve been groped on the train. The issue it means to address is that, of course, it’s wrong to grope, but Japanese women are afraid to speak out about it. Therefore they’re encouraged to speak out about it and exhibit some of the outward assertiveness found in such clubs as the one mentioned above.
The very definition of gender in Japan is changing as well. Can a person with male anatomy who feels more like a woman be considered a woman? What about if they dress and behave like a woman or undergo sexual-transformation surgery?
Several days ago in a Kyoto night spot, some friends and I happened upon several (self-proclaimed) transvestites. Here, they kiss the cheeks of a friend who’d joined us for the night:
(Photo by Frank Ferretti)
They both insisted they no longer had penises, but it was unclear whether they replaced them with something we may or may not call vaginas. Their female mannerisms were very convincing, and I would have considered them as much “female” as any other. In fact, one of them very closely resembled a female friend of mine.
So, where do we draw the line between the “genders” in a place like Japan, where women are encouraged to be subservient yet assertive, and under Western influence are encouraged even further to embody ideals like “self actualization”?
2 years ago - read more...
