ABSTRACT
The previous chapter explored negotiations with the demands of work in relation to informants’ sense of masculinity, at a time when the contours of hegemonic masculinity were shifting rapidly. However, work, integral as it may be to hegemonic masculinity, is not the only determinant of it. Intersecting with work are other considerations that are just as significant in an individual’s engagements with the expectations of hegemonic masculinity. Arguably, of particular significance is the notion of the male as the provider, as the primary breadwinner upon whom the whole family unit depends for sustenance. Thus, with reference to postwar Japan, merely becoming a shakaijin and earning a regular income was not enough. Rather, the individual’s ability to conform to a specific public and visible discourse of (hetero-) sexuality – one signified by the public ‘markers’ of marriage and (to a lesser extent) becoming a father – had (and continues to have) a bearing on his ‘success’ at salaryman masculinity. It is through publicly acquiescing to these culturally privileged ‘markers’, that he could demonstrate his successful transition from one stage of masculinity (unproductive, non-adult, pre-shakaijin/student) to the next (productive, mature, shakaijin salaryman). Indeed, as Lunsing points out, ‘in order to become ichininmae no shakaijin [a fully adult social being] one has to marry . . . men who do not take upon themselves the responsibility of supporting a household are not considered fully mature and thus can not be given responsibility for the most independent or powerful types of work’ (Lunsing 2001: 74, 75). Moreover, as I suggested in the previous chapter, the post-Bubble structural changes to the employment sector have, if anything, worked to accentuate the desirability of attributes of hegemonic salaryman masculinity (such as the stability offered by full-time, permanent work) while simultaneously narrowing the entry to these dividends for growing numbers of young men. This chapter will focus on the intersections of a particular discourse of (hetero-) sexuality, at the core of which lie the institutions of marriage and fatherhood, with salaryman masculinity, at that historic moment when many of the assumptions surrounding these very intersections appeared to be unravelling. The first part of this chapter sets up a conceptual framework for this discussion. The second part moves on to focus on the ways in which my informants negotiated with the expectations of salaryman masculinity revolving around the public expression of sexuality.
