ABSTRACT
As the chapter by Futoshi Taga in this volume outlines, while there had been earlier developments, the sudden “boom” in men’s studies and the widespread interrogation and questioning of masculinity as a construct only became visible throughout Japanese society in the 1990s. The rapid transition from the confidence of the 1980s’ “bubble economy” years to the growing sense of cultural malaise occasioned by the economic slowdown of the 1990s formed the backdrop to this inquiry into masculine values. In many respects, Japan’s industrial success, particularly in the postwar decades, had been premised on a hegemonic gender ideology which equated femininity with the private household sphere, and masculinity with the public, work domain. Consequently, men’s lives – at least as far as the hegemonic ideal was concerned – came to be defined primarily through work. However, as many of the assumptions – guaranteed lifetime employment, for instance – that had underpinned hegemonic masculinity in postwar Japan started to unravel in the 1990s, men’s lives, and indeed, masculinity itself, came under increasing public scrutiny. These critiques of hegemonic masculinity ranged from mainstream media coverage of such social problems as karo¯shi (sudden death due to excessively long work hours and stressful conditions) among middle-aged male employees, and the rise in suicide rates among men, through to personal accounts and reflective essays by men, to more academic and/or activist writing seeking to “deconstruct” Japanese masculinities. Many of these voices and strands started coalescing in the early to mid-1990s into a loose (yet distinct) social movement centered on men’s studies/men’s issues. The first of these “men’s groups,” the Menzu Ribu Kenkyu¯ Kai (Men’s Liberation Research Association) was set up in western Japan in the early 1990s, and similar groups formed in other regions throughout the 1990s. Underlying the thinking of most of the groups and individuals involved was the recognition that while men did benefit as a group from the patriarchal dividends of hegemonic masculinity, individual males could also be “victims” of the ideological expectations of patriarchy and hegemonic masculinity. What was needed was the provision of forums where men could talk about issues pertinent to their lives, such as relationships, work, and sexuality, and where the expectations of hegemonic masculinity could be publicly questioned and interrogated.
