The Communication Review, 7:285–303, 2004

Copyright © Taylor & Francis Inc.

ISSN: 1071-4421 print
DOI: 10.1080/10714420490492193

Women and New Men: Negotiating

Masculinity in the Japanese Media

FABIENNE DARLING-WOLF
Department of Journalism, Public Relations, and Advertising,
Temple University

One of the central issues for women’s prospects for equality is whether
men can and will change. (Pease, 2000, p. 1)

The opening statement of Bob Pease’s recent examination of the role (re)defini-
tions of masculinity play in challenging androcentricism illustrates a growing
concern among feminist scholars with men’s position within theoretical under-
standings of patriarchy increasingly complicated by such interlocking frame-
works as race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, class, and national origin. Taking the
above bottom-line acknowledgement to heart, scholars have started to address
the significance of the recognition that masculinity, like femininity, is a social
construct (Bourdieu, 2001; Strate, 1992). While some have pointed to the fact
that dominant constructions of hegemonic masculinity—cultural constructions
defined as natural yet serving to guarantee men a dominant position within the
gender system—are alive and well in most cultural environments (Connell,
1987), others have noted that identity formation is a complex process of negotia-
tion and renegotiation operating among multiple and potentially contradictory
currents within a specific social context (Saco, 1992).
Mediated popular cultural representations are one terrain on which this
negotiation takes place. As Stuart Hall wrote, “How things are represented and
the ‘machineries’ and regimes of representation in a culture do play a constitu-
tive, and not merely a reflexive, after-the-event role” (Hall, 1996, p. 443) in con-
structing social meanings and constituting viewers’ identities. But while media
texts create and circulate social meanings, the polysemy of mediated messages
(Fiske, 1995) also allows media consumers to actively engage in varied and mul-
tiple subjectivities, some of which may fall outside the confines of traditional or

Address correspondence to Fabienne Darling-Wolf, Department of Journalism, Public Relations,

and Advertising, School of Communications and Theater, 2020 N. 13th Street, Temple University,
Philadelphia, PA 19122-6068. E-mail: [email protected]

285
286 F. Darling-Wolf

dominant codes of gender representation (Barthes, 1975; Hall, 1980). While such
subjectivities may not necessarily displace dominant discourses about gender
(Hanke, 1990), they may open possibilities for different identifications.
Unfortunately, analyses of constructions of masculinity in popular cultural
texts have not quite yet fully addressed these numerous identifications. They
have tended to solely focus so far on male consumers’ interpretations of popular
representations of masculine behavior (see for example, Craig, 1992), largely
ignoring the potential significance of such constructions on women’s experience
of gender. Furthermore, few studies have adequately located the current process
of (re)negotiation of masculine identities in the context of an increasingly global
postmodern popular cultural scene on which texts and cultural forms are com-
modified, exported, and consumed in varied cultural environments (for a possible
exception see Beynon, 2002).
By focusing on Japanese women’s interpretations of cultural constructions
of masculinity currently omnipresent in their media environment, this article
attempts to address some of these lacunas. But before I go on to examine how
these women negotiated these mediated representations, a quick description of
the Japanese popular cultural environment and its specific significance to this
topic is in order.

POSTMODERN (?) JAPANESE MASCULINITIES

There are a number of reasons why Japan seems a particularly fertile terrain for
the study of masculinity and its negotiation. First, Japan has been identified—by
Western and Japanese scholars alike—as particularly hybrid and postmodern in
its cultural forms (Bestor, 1985; Fujie, 1989; Robertson, 1998a). It would conse-
quently be a likely terrain for multiple and diverse representations and interpreta-
tions of masculinity to emerge. Japan’s “postmodernity,” however, is significantly
complicated by, and entangled in, this country’s relationship to the West (Najita,
1989/1997) and its Asian neighbors (Kenzaburô, 1989/1997). As John Whittier
Treat reminds us,

The inquiry into Japanese popular culture cannot be much older than the
concept of the “popular” or of “culture,” both words that in their con-
temporary contexts run parallel to discourses of the “modern” and behind
them but never too far away, the “West.” (Treat, 1996, p. 4, emphasis in
original)

Japanese cultural constructions of gender are thus intricately related to this

country’s relationship to the West.1 Common stereotypes of Japanese masculin-
ity are often employed, for instance, to assert Western cultural superiority over
Japan—the implication being that while Japan may be the West’s economic
equal, it has a lot of catching up to do from a social point of view (Hammond,
 Women and New Men 287

1997). In fact, Western nations have long justified their imperialist aggression by
defining themselves as liberators of non-Western women from the particularly
severe oppression of “their” men, and Japan has been no exception (Iriye, 1967).
Even the term “postmodern” itself is politically and ideologically loaded
when applied to Japanese culture. Developed as a Western-imposed chrono-
logy—of pre-modern/modern/postmodern—based on historical circumstances
Japan did not experience, it can never be dissociated from the global geopolitics
mentioned above by Treat (see also Sakai, 1989/1997). While Japanese cultural
conditions might fit characterizations of postmodernism as it is described,
mostly, by Western intellectuals (Ivy, 1989/1997; Miyoshi, 1989/1997)—the dis-
persal and demise of modern subjectivity, the use of simulacra, parody, and pas-
tiche—the term cannot be understood in the Japanese context as a periodic one.
I thus use it here for lack of a better word, to refer to a cultural condition, keeping
in mind that Japan may have been “postmodern” long before Western theorists
came up with the idea.
Indeed, some aspects of Japanese masculinity that take on “postmodern”
characteristics actually have a rather long tradition. “Gender-bending” practices
of the Takarazuka review or Kabuki theater, for instance, have long provided
viewers with multiple avenues of interpretation. Jennifer Robertson writes that
the performances of Takarazuka otokoyaku (female actors playing male roles)
constitute a type of “strategic ambivalence” creating “bodies capable of being
read or understood in more than one way” (Robertson, 1998b, p. 21). Numerous
other texts introduce a similar ambivalence on the Japanese popular cultural
scene. Shôjo mangas, comic books describing boys’ romantic involvement with
each other and animation featuring androgynous bishônen (beautiful boys) are
two often-cited examples (Izawa, 2000; Tsurumi, 2000). Some of Japan’s most
popular male celebrities are also particularly androgynous—from the boyish
“Johnny’s Juniors” targeted at the high-school-aged female audience, to the Boy
George–like Hide or long-haired Kimura Takuya. By wearing dresses on stage or
in photo shoots, acting macho one day and ultrasensitive the next, these young
men symbolically toy on screen and in the pages of magazines with multiple and
complex constructions of sexuality (Darling-Wolf, in press).
Many of these constructions are, of course, developed for commercial pur-
poses. Even since the fifteen- to twenty-five-year-old female demographic group
was identified as one of the largest and most profitable media markets in Japan,
male idols and boy bands—all basing their popularity on the same basic princi-
ples of good looks, charisma, and (occasionally) a hint of talent—have been a
hot-selling item. Today, the Japanese media very consciously constructs young
male “talents” as “New Men,”2 the perfect representatives for the “new humans”
born at the height of Japan’s bubble economy. Indeed, as numerous theorists
have noted, media-driven representations of masculinity cannot be separated
from processes of consumption and commodification of images distinctive of late
twentieth- and early twenty-first-century capitalism (Chapman, 1988; Edwards,
288 F. Darling-Wolf

1997; Mort, 1996). Part of the new man’s appeal rests in his (alleged) greater
sensitivity to gender issues, and his willingness to occasionally take on tradition-
ally female roles. These are certainly characteristics exhibited, at least on the
small screen, by most young Japanese male celebrities, especially in “trendy-
dramas” targeted at a female audience.
Representations of the “New Man” also signaled a shift toward greater empha-
sis on male bodies as sexual objects in popular media targeted at both male and
female audiences (Bordo, 1999; Dotson, 1999; Luciano, 2001), a transformation,
as Craik puts it, of male bodies “into objects of the gaze, of display and deco-
ration” (Craik, 1994, p. 203). This shift is illustrated in late twentieth-century
Japanese media in the blatant display of young male celebrities’ bodies on
popular cultural texts ranging from carefully choreographed and often sexually
suggestive J-pop videos to television dramas and popular magazines. Motoki
Masahiro—one of Japan’s highly androgynous idols with a bad-boy attitude—
became nationally notorious after a photo book featured glimpses of his pubic
hair in the late 1980s (Schilling, 1997). Kimura Takuya, Motoki’s successor as a
top idol and also an androgynous bad-boy type, was featured naked in bed with a
woman in a series of highly suggestive photographs in the magazine An-an in
1998 (Hayashi & Saito, 1998). In 1999, Katori Shingo followed suit by posing
nude on the magazine’s cover (Onda, 1999). Television similarly, if not as
blatantly, exploits the sexiness of these multitalented individuals in numerous
dramas or comedy shows.
These evolving representations of masculinity are receiving increased atten-
tion in Japan today. For example, a Tokyo-based NGO called “The Men’s
Center” provides analyses of representations of masculinity—and critiques of
sexism—in various mass media. Focusing also on issues ranging from domestic
violence to the role of work in defining men’s identity, this activist group takes a
consciousness-raising, antisexist stance to encourage men’s greater participation
in the home and community (Men’s Center Japan, n.d.). Japanese feminist schol-
ars have similarly critiqued popular cultural representations of gender in their
country (see for example, Funabashi, 1995; Ito, 1995; Sakamoto, 1999; Suzuki,
1995) and examined men’s role in (re)defining such representations (Fujimura-
Fanselow, 1995; Yamaguchi, 1995).
The Japanese popular cultural environment is thus both representative of
larger phenomena taking place on an increasingly global media scene and unique
in its historical development in relationship and opposition to these phenomena.
Popular constructions of Japanese masculinity are consequently particularly
fascinating to study.

Finding Women to Talk to

It is not, however, representations of masculinity themselves that this article pro-
poses to explore but their interpretation by some of their most avid consumers:
 Women and New Men 289

Japanese women. Indeed, numerous theorists have noted that we cannot simply
analyze popular representations and draw conclusions about their potential signi-
ficance without paying attention to the complex process of negotiation these
representations undergo when distributed and consumed. Studies of the reception
of popular cultural texts have shown that consumers may be able to construct
unforeseen interpretations (García-Canclini, 1995; Martín Barbero, 1993; Radway,
1984). Or, as Henri Louis Gates puts it, “We shouldn’t be so quick to judge the
priorities of other people in other places” (Gates, 1996, p. 65).
In order to explore such (possibly unforeseen) interpretations, I went back
for the summer of 2001 to the small southern Japanese community where I had
previously conducted fieldwork and where I have lived for extended periods of
time. My first fieldwork experience in the area was in 1998–99 when I conducted
participant observation and more than forty in-depth formal interviews with
twenty-nine Japanese women ranging in age from sixteen to eighty-one on their
interpretations and negotiations of mediated gender representations. I was, how-
ever, familiar with the community from having previously lived there as an
English teacher for about a year. The majority of the women I had interviewed at
the time still lived in a rural environment, but three of them had grown up in the
village and moved to urban areas to attend high school or university. Most of
them were from a relatively lower socioeconomic background than their urban
counterparts with the notable exception of the members of the Suzuki3 family,
one of the most powerful families in the region.4
Because my informants all lived in close proximity to each other and often
visited me at home or invited me over, I was able to conduct extensive participant
observation with most of them. Several individuals, however, took a particular
interest in my research, opened the doors to their homes and let me observe their
daily lives even more intensively. These “key informants” included the female
members of the Suzuki family5 and those of the Tanaka family, from a lower
socioeconomic background, who even invited me to live with them toward the
end of my stay.
I had stayed in contact with these women while in the United States and
they were naturally the first individuals I visited when returning to the village.
I was able to interview again two of the three Suzuki daughters (ages twenty-
three and twenty-five) who had moved back to the village after finishing their
studies in the Kansai area and were waiting to decide “what to do next.” Unfortu-
nately, I was not able to formally interview members of the Tanaka family, as
their oldest daughter had moved to a larger town to attend university and was
about to get married, even though I did have several occasions to socialize with
them. I was also able to conduct additional interviews and participant observation
with two other women who had previously participated in my research. Chieko, a
factory worker, and Yukiko, an “office lady,” were twenty-three at the time of
the first set of interviews and twenty-five when interviewed again. They have
both lived in the small community most of their lives.
290 F. Darling-Wolf

The youngest segment of my group of informants, however, had typically

graduated from high school and were now either working or attending college or
university. Because I strongly felt that the perspective of a younger generation
of media consumer was essential to this analysis—as these women are the main
target of meditated representations of masculinity distributed throughout the
Japanese popular cultural scene—I decided to include in this analysis younger
individuals I had not previously interviewed. Older informants kindly volun-
teered to introduce me to their younger counterparts and I very much enjoyed
finding myself reimmersed in Japanese female high school culture after a two-
year absence. By the end of the summer, I had conducted interviews with nine
individuals in addition to the four already mentioned. Six were high school girls
(ages sixteen and seventeen), two were mothers of two of the girls—a forty-
seven-year-old piano teacher, and a forty-five-year-old identifying herself as “in
between jobs”—who became interested in my research through their daughters’
involvement, and one was a thirty-one-year-old housewife with no children.
None of these women expressed any strong religious preference, and none of
them were divorced or widowed. All of them defined themselves as heterosexual.
Because I specifically focused here on a small number of mostly rural
women, I do not pretend in any way that my informants’ opinions might be
representative of those of other individuals in their cultural environment, or of
Japanese women as a group. I agree with Kondo (1990) that “collective identities
like ‘the Japanese’ or ‘Japanese concepts of self’ no longer seem . . . to be fixed
essences, but rather strategic assertions which inevitably suppress differences,
tensions, and contradictions within” (p. 10). Scholars have indeed effectively
demonstrated that the search for “authentic” cultural forms is at best an imposs-
ible task, and often a dangerous endeavor.
The reader should also keep in mind this study was significantly affected by
my position as a white Western scholar and necessarily reflects some of the
biases associated with such a position. I believe it is important for researchers to
recognize that we cannot represent reality totally, but can only produce partial,
situated truths (Abu-Lughod, 1991). Our accounts of the world and ourselves are
always necessarily incomplete descriptions rather than unmediated represen-
tations (Caplan, 1988; Ganguly, 1992; Mascia-Lees, Sharpe, & Cohen, 1989;
Narayan, 1989). Truths, however, are not rendered useless because admittedly
partial and situated. As Bobo (1995) notes, while the people we interview may
not be representative of the majority, they are representative of a typical part of
what it is to be individuals operating under particular circumstances.

Negotiating Mediated Masculinities

Bombarded on a daily basis with the type of imagery described above, the women
I interviewed for this analysis had much to say about the men in their popular cul-
tural texts. First of all, they identified a shift in representations of masculinity,
 Women and New Men 291

which they argued occurred in the Japanese media over the last two decades or so.
They contrasted the stoic, distant, and more “manly” idols of the past to today’s
multitalented celebrities. As seventeen-year-old Yumi put it, “Today, many
people are cute. There are a lot of cute characters. But ten years ago, I think they
were more macho and manly, not physically, but mentally in their attitude.” To
which her friend Makiyo added, “In the old days, quiet men, men that were a bit
awkward, especially when trying to express their feelings, like Takakura Ken,6
[were popular]. But recently, young boys that are like our neighbors, except that
they’re cool and handsome—but not so outstanding—are more popular.” Even
older women, who might have been expected to feel relatively closer to idols
of earlier generations, agreed with their younger counterparts on this point. As
forty-five-year-old Ai noted, “I think that the earlier talents, my feelings is that
they were more distant, more romantic, more out of reach.”
Feelings of relative closeness occasioned by the rise to fame of “not so out-
standing” boys were generally related to the extreme omnipresence of these
young celebrities on the Japanese popular cultural scene and their numerous
“live”7 appearances on various media sites. The women I interviewed com-
mented on the multitalented nature of today’s Japanese male idols. For instance,
thirty-one-year-old Mieko notes that, “Young talents have many talents. Like for
instance, they’re singers and actors, and comedians. . . . In the past, idols were
only idols, all they did was smile.” Or, as forty-seven-year-old Makao put it in a
different interview, “In the past, they could do just one thing. Singers only sang,
actors only acted. But now, it’s different, they can do many things.” Thus, while
deemed particularly fashionable and, occasionally, talented the young men popu-
lating the Japanese popular cultural scene today were also perceived as the kind
of people one could definitely relate to, people doing “what ordinary people want
to do” (Makao).
Aside from their increased presence and familiarity, newer generations of
male idols were also perceived as differing from their older counterparts in their
looks and personality. As mentioned, the women I interviewed deemed earlier
celebrities more “manly” than today’s idols who were judged to definitely not be
“the macho type” (Ai). This change was attributed to a relaxing of Japanese atti-
tudes toward appropriate gender roles. As Mieko explained, “In the past, things
were very separated. Women were supposed to look a certain way and men were
supposed to look a certain way. Men had to be manly. But men now in Japan are
free to choose whatever they want to look like.” Thus, my informants saw the
particularly androgynous looks of many young Japanese stars as a natural evolu-
tion of contemporary gender identity. Often relating Japanese tolerance of
androgyny to its presence in traditional cultural texts, including Kabuki theater
and Takarazuka review or even comic books, they appreciated these young
celebrities’ ability and freedom to define what they perceived as their own unique
and cool personality through hairstyles, makeup, or jewelry. Hence, particularly
androgynous media personalities such as Kimura Takuya or the currently extremely
292 F. Darling-Wolf

popular Gackt, a relative newcomer on the Japanese popular cultural scene, were
argued to be simply employing all means available to them to construct compel-
ling media characters.
Furthermore, androgyny was not necessarily perceived as diminishing a
man’s masculinity. Most of the women I interviewed resisted the idea that young
male idols look any more “feminine” than their earlier counterparts, suggesting
that androgyny could be successfully integrated into definitions of Japanese mas-
culinity. Not all informants agreed on this point, however. Younger women, the
very target of these particularly androgynous representations, occasionally
rebelled against their omnipresence, stating that young men were too “girlish and
childish” and that they did not understand their appeal. Wondering why currently
popular male celebrities “looked like women” Kiyomi expressed her dislike of
such imagery: “I think they don’t look healthy, they look weak to me. It’s good
for some girls, some girls are interested in that. I don’t like it.” Seventeen-year-
old Mia, while also expressing her personal dislike of currently popular styles,
offered a possible explanation for their appeal among “other young women.” As
she noted, “I think that people like the way they look, some also like them
because they feel that they can take care of them, like be their mother. They’re
childish and cute so maybe people want to take care of them.” These young
women also tended to identify older men or Hollywood celebrities as their
favorite media figures. They nevertheless knew all the names of younger talents,
admitted to finding some of them attractive, and clearly were avid consumers of
the numerous popular cultural texts in which they appear. This seeming contra-
diction illustrates the complex process of negotiation popular cultural texts
undergo when distributed and consumed, and the feelings of ambiguity such texts
frequently occasion in those who happen to be their main target.
It should also be noted that my informants’ description of the evolution of
masculinity in Japanese popular cultural texts provided here is somewhat incom-
plete. Stereotypically “macho” characters were certainly present on the Japanese
popular cultural scene in the past few decades, but gender-bending did not com-
pletely disappear in the postwar era to miraculously reappear in the late 1990s, as
my informants seemed to imply. Similarly, while the extent to which today’s tal-
ents are omnipresent in the Japanese media may have reached new proportions in
the last ten years or so (Schilling, 1997), multitalented individuals were also popu-
lar in the past. Why, then, the selective recollection? One possible explanation is
that the women I interviewed were outlining for me their perception of the basic
trajectory dominant constructions of masculinity have taken in the Japanese media
over the past few decades. They certainly acknowledged androgyny as an essential
component of traditional Japanese masculinity—pointing, as mentioned, to Kabuki
theater or Takarazuka review. But their interpretation of postwar imagery suggests
that they perceived this period of intense economic competition with the West as a
time when these more traditional characteristics were subordinated to more Western-
identified forms of masculinity—such as that embodied by Takakura Ken, whose
 Women and New Men 293

silent machismo was characterized as more “Western” than the more androgynous
style of his successors by both younger and older informants. Post–bubble eco-
nomy hybrid constructions of masculinity in the Japanese media may successfully
integrate elements of both. The young men currently promoted as icons of mascu-
linity by media producers are not only consciously marketed as “close to the
audience”—i.e., as clearly belonging to the Japanese cultural environment
(Painter, 1996)—but also as embodying a careful selection of the more positive
character traits stereotypically associated in Japan with late twentieth-century
Western masculinity. The particularly hybrid nature of these celebrities’ masculin-
ity may further explain the feelings of ambiguity their presence occasioned in very
young informants having grown up in a relatively conservative environment.

From Television to Real Life

While the women I interviewed did not always know what to think of the kind of
representations of masculinity currently dominating the Japanese media, they
were even more ambiguous about their possible impact on Japanese men evolv-
ing outside the carefully crafted world of popular cultural texts. When questioned
about Japanese men in general, my informants’ first reaction was to ask, “Men
what age?” Making a clear distinction between “middle-aged men” and those of
younger generations, they argued that “average Japanese men,” like the talents
portraying them on television, have much evolved over the past decade or so.
They also identified the redefinitions of masculinity having taken place on the
Japanese popular cultural scene as contributing factors to such evolution.
For instance, several of the women interviewed for this analysis mentioned
that male celebrities may influence people’s attitudes toward such far-reaching
concerns as marriage or family. Mentioning the recent string of marriages among
extremely popular talents—including Sorimachi Takashi and Kimura Takuya,
whose wife Kudo Shizuka, also a singer and actor, had a baby in 2000—my
informants noted that young media consumers’ attitudes toward marriage may
have slightly shifted in response. As Mieko noted, “If they have a family, it
makes me wish I had a marriage like theirs, be happy like them. I’m also happy if
my favorite talent is happy. . . . I think it improves the image of marriage. For
example, Japanese men and women don’t want to get married, but they think get-
ting married is good if their favorite celebrity gets married.” In other words,
according to these women, the decision to get married on the part of male celeb-
rities renowned for their sex appeal and cool may have contributed to a renewed
interest in marriage as a fashionable thing to do.
A more obvious manifestation of celebrities’ influence on Japanese men in
general identified by my informants took place on a more physical level. The
women I interviewed argued that, like their more famous counterparts, “average”
young Japanese men had started sporting more androgynous looks and paying a
lot more attention to their physical appearance than men of previous generations.8
294 F. Darling-Wolf

But while my informants had generally expressed a fair amount of tolerance

for their favorite celebrities’ tendencies to wear makeup or grow their hair, they
felt quite differently when it came down to their “own men.” These young
women’s attitude toward the increased androgyny of average Japanese men can
be summarized by twenty-five-year-old Chieko’s statement that “it’s not a prob-
lem. As long as he’s not my boyfriend!” Or, as Mieko put it, “I think that’s good,
but not for my lover or partner to do.” While celebrities’ engagement in gender-
bending was generally interpreted as simply part of their image, my informants’
tolerance for men-on-the-street’s involvement in such activities did not go as far.
Several of the women I interviewed expressed, for instance, their dislike of long
hair, or of men who clearly care too much about their appearance. As twenty-
five-year-old Yukiko commented, “I don’t like long hair . . . or makeup. The
other day, I saw a man riding a bicycle who had really long hair down to his waist
and his hair wasn’t pulled up and it made me hot just to see him. I can’t stand
that!” Or, as this exchange between seventeen-year-olds Yumi and Mia similarly
illustrates:

Yumi: I don’t like [men who pay too much attention to their looks].
Today, men’s foundation, men’s cosmetics are sold everywhere. Now,
hairstyles, that’s good, but foundation, that’s a bit bad.
Mia: Some are plucking their eyebrows, I don’t like it. . . . It’s too
extreme. Some have almost nothing left, it’s strange.

Here again, however, ambiguity ran high as young informants weighed the
benefits and disadvantages of changing constructions of masculinity. Asked
whether they would consider dating a man who reads men’s fashion magazines,
Yumi, Mia, and their friend Makiyo, continued:

Mia: I don’t think so . . .

Makiyo: It’s OK, but he can’t do it in front of me.
Yumi: When we’re walking together, I don’t want him to look bad, I
want him to look good. . . . You don’t want a dasai, a boy who doesn’t
care about his appearance and does nothing but studying.

Chieko and Yukiko expressed similar ambiguity when trying to assess how much
a man would ideally care about his looks:

Yukiko: Ah . . . that’s difficult.

Chieko: Difficult . . .
Yukiko: If he cares too much . . .
Together: That’s a problem.
Yukiko: But if doesn’t care at all . . .
Chieko: That’s a problem too.
 Women and New Men 295

Or, as sixteen-year-old Kiyumi put it, “That’s difficult. It’s OK, it’s good. . . .
That’s better than them being dirty.”
Recognizing the benefits as well as the potentially feminizing aspects of
men’s engagement with fashion, these young women generally imposed stricter
limits on the behavior considered appropriate for the men they wished to date
than for those they admired on television or in the pages of popular magazines.
For instance, seventeen-year-old Izumi noted that “If they’re celebrities, it’s OK
[to wear makeup].” For boys her age, however, she asserted that “Hairstyles are
OK, piercings are OK, but not [going to the] este9 or makeup.” These women’s
tolerance for dyed hair and pierced ears, even among their peers, nevertheless
points to an evolution in conceptions of appropriate male physical definition, as
such practices are a fairly recent phenomena in rural Japan—at least in their cur-
rent manifestations.
My informants’ ambiguity toward what may be considered appropriate male
behavior—both in real life and throughout the Japanese media scene—went,
however, beyond stylistic choices. The women I interviewed found it difficult to
assess what characteristics were considered most valuable in a man. Mentioning
a combination of “new men” traits similar to those most often exhibited by young
male celebrities and more “traditional” values—such as financial security, reli-
ability, and moral strength—as necessary qualities, they critically considered the
pleasurable alternative constructions of masculinity offered by the media against
the backdrop of everyday reality. For instance, twenty-three-year-old Aya and
her twenty-four-year-old sister Yae balanced a desire for sensitivity and kindness
against the need for financial support when considering what Japanese women of
varying ages are looking for in a man today:

Aya: I think it depends on their age. My age, they want a boyfriend

who’s kind, not selfish.
Fabienne: Are younger women different from that? What do they want?
Yae: Looks.
Fabienne: What about older women?
Aya: Someone gentle and kind.
Yae: Sometimes women want men with business skills.

Seventeen-year-olds Itsumi and Michi and Itsumi’s forty-seven-year-old mother

Masao, similarly oscillated between more “traditional” traits and more “modern”
considerations:

Michi: [A woman wants] a protector. Someone who can protect her.

Itsumi: I don’t know. Someone who’s kind and gentle.
Masao: What do you mean by gentle?
Itsumi: A person who’s considerate of a woman’s feelings. . . . Now, they
are more egalitarian, but in the old days, men came first, men dominated.
296 F. Darling-Wolf

As the above exchange illustrates, older married women such as Itsumi often put
kindness and respect above other considerations. They were particularly critical
of men of their own and previous generations, but argued men’s behavior had
greatly evolved in the past few decades. Younger women identified a similar
shift in men’s behavior, or at least in women’s expectations, in the latter part of
the twentieth century. As Yumi and Makiyo explained:

Yumi: [I want a man who is] mentally strong and kind. A man I can
respect.
Recently, it has become important in Japan for a man to be able to help
with the cooking. Women want a man who can cook.
Makiyo: I would be a bit upset if he was a better cook than I am. Men
who are good cooks might complain about my cooking. Then again,
maybe he could teach me.

These changes were not, however, always interpreted as straightforwardly

positive. In fact, when compared to earlier generations, contemporary young
Japanese men did not always fare well in my informants’ eyes. Despite their
more egalitarian behavior, younger men were perceived as less reliable, “softer,”
and more indecisive than their older counterparts. As Mieko put it, “I don’t know
about young generations. I think that things are affluent now so there are many
things like mobile phones and it’s easy to become dependent on those things. So
they seem to have no opinion of their own, they just follow society’s plan.” Or, as
seventeen-year-olds Yumi and Mia commented:

Yumi: Many people today say that men born during the Meiji era were
mentally strong. . . . Now some men are weaker. In the past, men were
serious and physically strong. Now we have many things, we are afflu-
ent, we have too many things.
Mia: So they’re a bit lazy. In the old days, they had to work hard and be
strong.

The increase in material comfort following Japan’s spectacular postwar economic

development was consistently blamed for this weakening of men’s moral values.
This perceived disruptive impact of capitalist development and its accompanying
Westernization on idealized “traditional” cultural practices has been identified as
a common Japanese rhetoric by other scholars (Ivy, 1995)—a rhetoric parti-
cularly employed by conservative intellectuals. Whether Westernization and capi-
talism are actually to blame for the alleged weakening of men’s character is at
best unclear. Postwar gender-equal education and social changes prompted in the
second half of the twentieth century by feminist and other citizens’ movements as
well as governmental policies and law may have done a lot more to change men’s
attitudes than material abundance and Western influence. Besides, the women
 Women and New Men 297

I interviewed pretty quickly abandoned their critique of Westernization and capi-

talism when probed a little further.

From Japan to “The West” (and Back)

Generally, the women I interviewed had little good to say about Japanese men.
They deemed them soft, indulgent, old-fashioned (Mieko), conservative, stub-
born, discriminating against women (Ai), shallow (Yumi), indecisive (Aya,
Chieko), workaholic (Aya, Yukiko), and suffering from a “mother complex”
(Ai, Chieko). They accused them of “not cleaning after themselves” (Yukiko)
and of “hating women” (Mia). On the other hand, “Western men” were consi-
dered active, gentle, not conservative, positive-thinking, warmhearted (Mieko),
family-oriented (Chieko, Yae), strong (Ai, Mieko), unique (Yumi), friendly
(Mia), kind (Izumi), cool (Izumi, Makao), and gentlemanly (Makao). They
were argued to be more positive and less perfectionist than Japanese men
(Chieko), and were credited with “treating women very gently and kindly”
(Aya).
Even when compared to my informants’ favorite male celebrities, “Western
men” tended to fare rather well. For instance, seventeen-year-olds Izumi and
Michi agreed that Hollywood actors “look better than Japanese men” and that,
unlike Japanese talents, they “look like they have their own opinion.” Yumi
argued that

Japanese actors are just handsome or just cool-looking, but Western

celebrities need to be really able to act. They have to be real actors. In
Japan, actors are just handsome, they can get away with that, it’s only
on the surface. But Western actors, they are better actors. They have to
participate in occasions like the Cannes festival, they have to act profes-
sionally. But in Japan, they are not required to be able to act at a profes-
sional level.

Or, as Aya put it, “Western men, they are good actors. I don’t see so many
Japanese actors, young people, who are so good at acting.”
Interestingly, my informants’ harsher judgement of Japanese celebrities’
was related to their perceived lack of impact on a global popular cultural scene.
As Mieko explained:

Mieko: They [Hollywood celebrities] are gorgeous (hamayaka)!

Fabienne: And you don’t think that Japanese talents are gorgeous?
Mieko: They’re beautiful, but Western talents are gorgeous.
Fabienne: What’s the difference?
Mieko: Western talents are known by everyone in the world. Japanese
talents are only known by Japanese people.
298 F. Darling-Wolf

In defense of Japanese celebrities—and Japanese men in general—the

comparison was unfair. My informants’ characterization of “Western men”—
intentionally used in quotes here to outline the artificial nature of the concept—
was mostly based on these women’s exposure to Western popular cultural texts,
as few of them had actually had extensive interactions with men from Western
cultural environments—with the exception of the two Suzuki sisters who
attended an international high school in Switzerland. For older women, “Western
men” were either American, British, or French white actors as portrayed in the
mainstream media. Younger women’s knowledge about “Western men” was
almost entirely based on Hollywood representations of white masculinity—none
of them mentioned African Americans or other minority figures as icons of West-
ern masculinity.10 Furthermore, these women knew a lot less about these Western
celebrities than they did about Japanese talents omnipresent in their popular cul-
tural environment. As Aya noted, “I don’t know much about Western celebrities.
I just see them in the movies.”
Finally, my presence in the room might have influenced these women’s
positive assessment of Western male behavior. Not only am I Western myself,
but I am married to a white Canadian, whom my informants all had a chance
to meet (and who took care of our two-year-old daughter during interviews).
Furthermore, my informants and I had a very cordial relationship and they may
have felt uncomfortable criticizing the cultural environment in which I currently
live. A number of factors suggest, however, that this was not the only explanation
for their interpretations.
First of all, the women I interviewed did not hesitate to criticize Western
women in my presence—deeming them “selfish,” “shallow,” and “vain.” More
generally, my informants at best expressed mixed feelings about Western cultural
environments, and particularly the United States, deemed dangerous and uncar-
ing. Finally, I was well known in the community as a fan of various Japanese
male celebrities. If the women I interviewed had simply wanted to spare my feel-
ings, they probably would have refrained from severely criticizing the men I am
infatuated with.
My influence was probably more subtle. My informants were attempting to
draw a picture of the Japanese cultural environment for a Western woman to see.
They actually probably did not believe that all Western men are more attractive
and egalitarian than Japanese men—in fact, it was quite easy to convince them of
the contrary in casual conversations. They were, however, keenly aware of Western
stereotypes about Japanese masculinity and were not ready to take on the task of
challenging these often-inaccurate conceptions. In fact, rather than defending
Japanese men against Western misconceptions, they perpetuated such stereo-
typical concepts as Japanese men’s “mother complex” or lack of determination.
While the women I interviewed could conceive, and did argue, that Japanese
men are attractive to Japanese women in part because of their cultural proxi-
mity, they expressed incredulity at the fact that women from other cultural
 Women and New Men 299

environments might find Japanese men attractive. In other words, by idealizing

Western Hollywood-style white masculinity in our abstract conversations about
men, these women upheld white Western masculinity as the dominant standard
on the increasingly global popular cultural scene.

Concluding Remarks
I hope to have hinted here at the complex and often contradictory nature of pro-
cesses of negotiation currently taking place on the Japanese popular cultural scene as
texts are interpreted and consumed in an increasingly global environment. The chan-
ging nature of constructions of masculinity in Japan identified by my informants
may actually be farther-reaching than they themselves realized. For instance,
Mieko’s assessment that “Japanese talents are only known by Japanese people” is
actually false. The multiple masculinities embodied by Japanese celebrities are actu-
ally today being exported all over the world. Japanese actors and singers have strong
followings in Taiwan, Korea, and Hong Kong and are in turn influencing the kinds
of representations found in these countries’ media (Ching, 1996; Iwabuchi, 2001).
My informants’ ambiguity toward evolving representations of masculinity
and differentiation between celebrities and “real men” also reveals their under-
standing of masculinities promoted in the media as constructions developed for
commercial purposes. Indeed, the women I interviewed were frequently critical
of the commercial nature of Japanese popular cultural texts and the grooming of
young male celebrities by talent agencies. They clearly differentiated between
“celebrities in dramas” and “celebrities in real life,” arguing that dramas were
clearly idealized representations of reality. In other words, they recognized popu-
lar representations of masculinity—both Western and Japanese—as pleasurable
fantasies developed for their enjoyment. While they generally readily engaged in
these fantasies, they also exhibited a much more pragmatic attitude when dealing
with everyday life. If my informants often viewed Western men as more egalitar-
ian and more attractive than their Japanese counterparts, they also deemed Japanese
men more adequate marriage candidates. A similar pattern is revealed in polls
about celebrities. Kimura Takuya, for instance, was—at least until his mar-
riage—consistently voted “sexiest man” and “man women most wanted to sleep
with,” but he never even appeared on the charts of men women wanted to marry.
Fantasies, however, should not be summarily dismissed because they are
admittedly unreal. As I believe my informants’ comments have again demon-
strated, such fantasies may at least affect women’s expectations of real men’s
behavior. They may also influence individuals’ experience of their own cultural
environment, in positive as well as negative ways—as in the still-strong hold of
the ideal “Western men” fantasy on my informants’ cultural imaginations. Con-
structed for commercial purposes, ideal representations of masculinity promoted
in the Japanese cultural environment may not have a revolutionary effect on gender
constructions. But they may hold a disruptive potential.
300 F. Darling-Wolf

Notes
1. I use the terms “West” and “Western” throughout this paper as they are typically defined in
the Japanese cultural environment—to refer to the United States and western Europe.
Japan’s relationship to these cultural environments was significantly shaped by two histor-
ical periods, the Meiji Restoration—during which Japanese leaders embarked on an inten-
sive process of “Westernization” in order to thwart threats of colonization—and the
postwar period of American occupation.
2. The term “New Man” was coined by theorists in the late 1980s to refer to popular cultural
redefinitions of masculinity developed in the aftermath of the second wave of the feminist
movement, in particular during the conservative 1980s (for an in-depth analysis of the con-
cept see Chapman, 1988).
3. All names have been changed to protect informants’ anonymity.
4. I have found the concept of class, however, to be rather relative in the context of my field-
work. First of all, it is important to keep in mind that women have traditionally tended to
inherit their class status first from their father, then from their husband. Some of my inform-
ants’ class status had consequently greatly varied over the course of their lives. Furthermore,
my informants tended to define themselves in middle-class terms no matter where they stood
on the socioeconomic ladder, interpreting their own position to make it fit within middle-
class standards. For instance, most of the women I interviewed deemed themselves “house-
wives” even when their responsibilities extended far beyond those normally associated with
marriage and motherhood—i.e., I interviewed “housewives” of factory workers or farmers
who worked “part time” forty to fifty hours a week. My informants also tended to attempt to
maintain a level of consumption high enough to keep them in the ranks of the middle class
even though most of them had to work very hard in order to do so. I consequently decided to
assess my informants’ economic status not only on their levels of consumption but also on
their social standing in the village, cultural capital, and education levels.
5. I tried to focus in my research on members of three-generational families living either
under one roof or in close proximity. In the case of these two families, I interviewed
and conducted extensive participant observation with members of each generation—
grandmother, mother, and (grand)daughters.
6. As a super-tough hero of 1950s Japanese gangster movies, Takakura has been compared to Clint
Eastwood for his machismo and strong-but-silent charisma. However, as Schilling (1997) notes,
“whereas Eastwood’s specialty was killing stylishly, Takakura’s was dying beautifully” (p. 290).
7. As mentioned, Japanese celebrities frequently appear on comedy shows, talk shows, or variety
shows as well as television dramas or music videos. While such appearances may be pre-
recorded and are carefully planned, they are made to look spontaneous and informal and actors/
singers are portrayed as showing their “true” personality through discussion or game-playing.
8. My informants’ assertion is supported here by the proliferation of men’s fashion magazines,
such as Men’s Non-no or Smart, and even a customary look at the streets of Tokyo, such as
Harajuku or Shibuya, where fashionable groups of Japanese youths like to hang out.
9. Esthetic salon. They originally from France and are very popular in Japan today, these
extremely costly beauty salons offer skin treatments and makeup advice. While traditionally
mostly frequented by women, the Japanese media has recently paid much attention to their
increasing appeal among young men.
10. While African American figures are present on the Japanese popular cultural scene, they are
mostly hip-hop stars, a genre still mostly enjoyed by young males in Japan (Condry, 2000).
 Women and New Men 301

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