ABSTRACT
This chapter explains the theoretical implications of the construct of ‘taken-for-granted-dualism’ to demonstrate how embodied and embodying practices of the self are gendered and largely imply a viewpoint of the somatic self within a stream of polar binaries that presents the male self and the female self opposing each other but with interdependent connections. It discusses how the dualistic and commonsensical framework could be applied to the social reality of Japan where contemporary gender relationships and the somatic self have been scripted in terms of a number of binaries. The chapter examines how Japan might have moved to an ‘abolished gender’ society, where the use of terms such as ‘femininities’ and ‘masculinities’ to refer to the gendered self might be symptom of how society has experienced the democratization and diversification of gender relationships. The concept of ‘script’ serves to view the somatic self through the prism of symbolic interactionism.
