ABSTRACT
Anthropologists view gender not as a collection of natural attributes, but as
socially constructed categories subject to continual reformulation according to
political agendas, institutional shaping, and human agency. Interestingly, this
view seemed self-evident to many of the volunteers I knew, perhaps because the
rules and expectations of gender in Japan had perceptibly changed in recent
memory, exposing competing state, corporate, family, and personal interests at
work in reformulating gender ideals. I still vividly remember the first time Nitta
Setsuko, in her late fifties at the time, joked with me about her husband’s lifelong
passion for volunteering. She invited me for coffee while her husband, a
seishonen shido¯in (state-commissioned childcare volunteer) was occupied with
running a youth rock concert at the ward auditorium. She explained:
Since we moved here, the old man [ojisan, referring to her husband] has
always been involved in all sorts of activities for other people’s children. He
hardly had time for his own! I had to take care of the children all by myself.
