Gender And Family In Japan

Center:

Tokyo

Program(s):

Tokyo - Language Intensive [1]

Tokyo - Society & Culture [2]

Discipline(s):

Anthropology

Course code:

310

Terms offered:

Fall

Spring

Credits:

Language of instruction:

English

Instructor:

Nana Gagné

Description:

This course covers the anthropological work on gender and family in Japan from the post war to the contemporary period. For many, Japan represents a sweeping stereotype of extreme gender norms vis-à-vis Euro-American contemporary gender norms and manifestations. Such stereotypes are employed not only by outsiders to critique the society ethnocentrically, but also by some natives as well. Both sides frequently comment on the ways gender and gendered expectations shape and even determine contemporary experiences of “being Japanese.”

Moving between historical and contemporary definitions of gender and family to introduce change and continuity of gendered life ways in contemporary Japan, we will investigate cultural constructions of gender and family and key themes that revolve around them: identity, class, sexuality, and life course in contemporary Japan. By identifying these stereotypes and also critically questioning what gender/family means and how it is being shaped in and shaping contemporary Japan, the course will offer an entry into theories of gender studies and also introduce tools to critically analyze cultural differences and gender differences while at the same time learning more about Japanese society. Class sessions will consist of active group discussions and student presentations, and assignments for the course will ask students for active participation and weekly discussion questions, fieldtrips and reports, a reflective mid-term essay and a final exam.

Prerequisites:

None

Learning outcomes:

By the end of the course students will be able to demonstrate knowledge of social theories and approaches to gender, discern stereotypes from social facts, and contextualize and analyze gendered and gendering socio-cultural phenomena anthropologically. Students will also be able to construct analytical essays, give power-point presentations, and lead academic discussions. (With the fulfillment of the course requirement, you will receive 3 credits.)

Method of presentation:

Lectures, discussion, student presentation, and field studies.

Required work and form of assessment:

1) Class Participation/Discussion and Weekly Discussion Questions, 30% of Total
Regular class attendance is mandatory (see the IES Academic Policy Guidelines). Students are expected to attend all class meetings. The first and most important assignment is to read, think, and reflect on the reading and come to class prepared to talk about them. Please inform the instructor in advance if there is any reason to miss the class.

Every week (from the second week), students will post their 2 original questions on the Moodle site regarding the reading by the day before the class (Monday). Thus in this class, “participation” means students’ active reading of the materials, sending questions in advance, and sharing views and critiques in class.

2) Presentation, 10% of Total
Students will take turns presenting the assigned chapters or articles and initiating and facilitating discussions. "Initiating and facilitating" consists not only of simply summarizing reading, but also presenting the critical points with examples and critical questions and issues for discussion. Students are expected to draw from and relate with the larger concepts and issues introduced in the lecture and other reading and send me the outline 2 days prior to class (Sunday).

3) Fieldtrips and Reports, 10% of Total (TBA for the details)
Anthropology depends, in good part, on a particular method for understanding the world— direct field experience: participation and observation. During the course, we will visit two particular sites for participant-observation. Students are expected to choose one and write a field-report on your fieldtrip and analyze your experience through the concepts and issues you learned in class and the reading (2-4 pages, double-spaced, fonts 12).

4) Mid-term Paper (10/18), 20% of Total (TBA for the details)
As students are responsible for weekly reading, students will combine their reflection with their first-hand observations and experiences in Japan to write a critical reflection essay (3-5 double-spaced pages). What is important to remember is that this is not a mere summary, nor emotional reaction. It is a critical reflection where you analyze social theories and social phenomena and give reasons for your position and views. Your mid-term essay consists of your thesis, supporting examples, and conclusion and also shows how much you have digested the materials. It will be evaluated based on 3 criteria: theoretical and conceptual framework and arguments, ethnographic evidence, and writing and editing.

5) Final Exam Paper, 30% of Total (TBA for the details)
At the end of the course, you will be given open-ended questions to choose from and answer two questions in long-essay form (6-10 double-spaced, proofread and edited). This will be a take-home exam. Each student will answer the questions using the key concepts and examples we dealt with in the course reading, lectures, and other reading and submit a final paper in person and email on the final class date (both hard and soft copy). The final essay is intended to help you formulate some final thoughts about the broader themes of the course.

content:

PART 1: ANTHROPOLOGY AND GENDER/FAMILY

1st Session: INTRO TO ANTHROPOLOGY & MYTHS AND REALITY OF GENDER AND FAMILY IN JAPAN

Reading:

Susan Mann. “Presidential Address: Myths of Asian Womanhood.” The Journal of Asian Studies 59, no. 4. pp 835-62. 2000.
Bestor, Theodore C. "Gendered Domains: A Commentary on Research in Japanese Studies." Journal of Japanese Studies 11.1: 283 – 287. 1985.

Recommended Reading:

Edward Said. “Introduction,” in Orientalism. New York: Pantheon Books. 1978.
Peters-Golden, Holly. "Thinking Anthropologically.”In Thinking Anthropologically: A Practical Guide for Students, edited by Saltzman, Philip Carl and Patricia C. Rice. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall. Pp. 17-27. 2004.
James, Clifford. “Notes on (Field)notes.” In Roger Sanjek, ed., Fieldnotes: The Making of Anthropology. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Pp: 47-70. 1990.

PART 2: POST WAR JAPAN: GENDERING/GENDERED JAPAN THROUGH MODERN INSTITUTIONS

2nd Session: GENDER AND FAMILY

Reading:

Joan W. Scott. “Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis.” American Historical Review 91(5): 1053-1075. 1986.
Andrew Gordon. “Economic and Social Transformation.” In his, A Modern History of Japan: From Tokugawa times to the present. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Pages: 245-267. 2009.
Vogel, Ezra. Japan’s new middle class: the salary man and his family in a Tokyo suburb. Selected pages. 1963.
Suzanne Vogel. “Professional Housewife: The Career of Urban Middle Class Japanese Women.” Japan Interpreter 12(1): 16-43. 1978.

Recommended Reading:

Mary Brinton. Women and the Economic miracle: Gender and work in postwar. University of California Press. 1994.
Anne Allison. “Memoirs of the Orient.” Journal of Japanese Studies 27(2): 381-398. 2001.
Imamura, Anne E. Urban Japanese Housewives: At Home and in the Community. 1993.
Robin LeBlanc. Bicycle Citizens: The Political World of the Japanese Housewife. Berkeley: University of California Press. 1999.

3rd Session: GENDER IN SCHOOL

Reading:

Yoshio Sugimoto, "Diversity and Unity in Education," chapter 5 from his An Society, pp. 107- 135. Cambridge University Press. 1997.
Catherine C. Lewis, "Learning and Caring," chapter 7 in her Educating Hearts and Minds, pp.149-177. Cambridge University Press. 1994.
DeVos, George. Socialization for achievement: essays on the cultural psychology of the Japanese. Selected pages. 1973.

Recommended Reading:

Brinton, Mary. “Gendered Education.” In her Women and the Economic miracle: Gender and work in postwar. 1994.
Anne Allison. “Japanese Mothers and Obentos: The Lunch Box as Ideological State Apparatus.” In her, Permitted and Prohibited Desires: Mothers, Comics, and Censorship in Japan. Berkeley: University of California Press. Pages: 81-104. 2000.
Thomas P. Rohlen, "Five High Schools," chapter 1 in his Japan's High Schools, pp. 11-44.University of California Press. 1983.
Cave, Peter. “Bukatsudo”: The educational Role of Japanese school clubs. Journal of Japanese Studies. Vol. 30, No.2.
Brian McVeigh. Life in a Japanese Women’s College: Learning to be Ladylike. London:Routledge. Selected pages. 1997.

4th Session: GENDER AND WORK

Reading:

Brinton, Mary. “The Evolution of a Gendered Employment system.” In her Women and the Economic miracle: Gender and work in postwar. University of California Press. 1994.
Romit Dasgupta. “Creating Corporate Warriors: The “salaryman” and masculinity in Japan.” In Kam Louie and Morris Low, eds. Asian Masculinities: The Meaning and Practice of Manhood in China and Japan. London: Routledge. 2003.
Yuko Ogasawara. 1998. Office Ladies and Salaried Men: Power, Gender, and Work in Japanese Companies. Berkeley: University of California Press. Selected Chapters.

Recommended reading:

Thomas P. Rohlen, "The Office Group," in his For Harmony and Strength, pp. 93-120. University of California Press. 1974.
Brinton, Mary. Age and Sex in the Occupational Structure: A United States-Japan Comparison. Sociological Forum. Vol. 8. Pp. 93-111. 1993.
Brinton, Mary. Gendered work lives. In her Women and the Economic miracle: Gender and work in postwar. University of California Press. 1994.
Brinton, Mary. "Social Capital in the Japanese Youth Labor Market: Labor Market Policy, Schools, and Norms," Policy Sciences 33 (3-4) : 289-306. 2000
James Roberson. Japanese working class lives: an ethnographic study of factory workers. 1998.
Jeannie Lo. Office Ladies, Factory Women: Life and Work at a Japanese Company. 1990.
Glenda S. Roberts.” Careers and Commitment: Azumi’s Blue collar women.” In Anne Imamura, ed. Re-Imaging Japanese Women. Berkeley: University of California Press. 1996.
Allison, Anne. Nightwork: Sexuality, Pleasure, and Corporate Masculinity in a Tokyo Hostess Club. 1997.

PART 3: GENDER, SEXUALITY, AND IDEOLOGY

5th Session: 10/18 FIELD TRIP to TOKYO SEA LIFE PARK and Mid-term Essay Due

6th Session: CONSTRUCTING/PERFORMING FEMININITY

Reading:

Anne Allison. “Japanese Mothers and Obentos: The Lunch Box as Ideological State Apparatus.” In her, Permitted and Prohibited Desires: Mothers, Comics, and Censorship in Japan. Berkeley: University of California Press. Pages: 81-104. 2000.
Yoshiko Matsumoto. “Alternative Femininity and the Presentation of Self in Japanese.” In Shigeko Okamoto and Janet Shibamoto Smith, eds. Japanese Language, Gender, and Ideology: Cultural Models and Real People. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Pp. 240-255. 2004.
Jennifer Robertson. 1998. “Introduction.” In Takarazuka: Sexual Politics and Popular Culture in Modern Japan. LA: University of California Press.
Karen Nakamura. Female masculinity and fantasy spaces Transcending genders in the Takarazuka Theatre and Japanese popular culture. http://www.disabilitystudies.jp/nakamura/publications/2003- [3] TakarazukaMasculinity/TakarazukaMasculinity.pdf

Recommended reading:

Lebra Takie. Japanese women: constraints and fulfillment. University of Hawaii. 1984.
Kelly Foreman. Bad Girls Confined: Okuni, Geisha, and the Negotiation of Female Performance Space. In Miller and Bardsley, eds., Bad Girls of Japan. Palgrave Macmillan. 2005.
Kelsky, Karen. Gender, Modernity, and Eroticized internationalism in Japan. 1999.
Gretchen Jones. 2005. "Bad Girls Like to Watch: Writing and Reading Ladies Comics." In, Bad Girls of Japan. Laura Miller and Jan Bardsley, eds. Berkeley: University of California Press. Pages 97-110.
Long, Suzan Opet. Nurturing and Femininity: The ideal of Caregiving in Postwar Japan. In Anne Imamura, ed. Re-Imaging Japanese Women. Berkeley: University of California Press. 1996.

7th Session: CONSTRUCTING/PERFORMING MASCULINITY

Reading:

Romit Dasgupta. “Performing Masculinities? The ‘Salaryman' at Work and Play.” Japanese Studies. Vol. 20. Issue 2. Pp189-200. 2000.
Ishii-Kunz, Masako. “Balancing fatherhood and work: Emergence of diverse masculinities in contemporary Japan.” In Robertson and Suzuki, eds. Men and Masculinities in Contemporary Japan. Pp. 198 – 216. 2003
James Robertson. Japanese working class masculinities: Marginalized complicity. In Robertson and Suzuki, eds. Men and Masculinities in Contemporary Japan. 2003. Selected Chapters.

Recommended Reading:

Sreetharan, Cindi Sturtz. Students, Sarariiman, and Seniors: Japanese Men's Use of ‘Manly’ Speech Register. Language and Society 33 (1):81-107. 2004.
Jacob Raz. “Self representation and performance in the Yakuza way of life: A fieldwork with the Japanese underworld group.”
Sato Ikuya. Kamikaze Biker: Parody and Anomie in Affluent Japan. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 1991.
Allison, Anne. Nightwork: Sexuality, Pleasure, and Corporate Masculinity in a Tokyo Hostess Club. University of Chicago Press. 1994.
Laura Miller. "Male Beauty Work in Japan." In, James Roberson and Nobue Suzuki, eds. Men and Masculinities in Contemporary Japan: Dislocating the Salaryman Doxa. London: Routledge. 2003.

PART 4: RETHINKING CATEGORIES AND BOUNDARIES

8th Session: CONSTRUCTING YOUTH VIS-À-VIS ADULTHOOD

Reading:

White, Mary. “Rethinking the Life course.” In the Material Child: Coming of age in Japan and America. LA: University of California Press. Pp. 9-26. 1994
Jan Bardsley and Hiroko Hirakawa. “Branded: Bad Girls Go Shopping.” In Laura Miller and Jan Bardsley, eds. Bad Girls of Japan. 2005.
Sato Ikuya. 1991. Kamikaze Biker: Parody and Anomie in Affluent Japan. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 1991. Selected Chapters.

Recommended Reading:

Treat, John Whittier. “Yoshimoto Banana Writes Home: Shojo Culture and the Nostalgic Subject Author(s).” Journal of Japanese Studies, Vol. 19, No. 2 Pp. 353-387. 1993
Kinsella, Sharon. "Cuties in Japan," in Lise Skov and Brian Moeran (eds.), Women, Media, and Consumption in Japan, pp. 220-254. Hawaii: University of Hawaii Press. 1995.
Ogi, Fusami. “Female Subjectivity in Shōjō Manga: Shōjo in Ladies’ Comics and Young Ladies’ Comics.” Journal of Popular Culture, Spring Volume 36, Issue 4. 2003.
Laura Miller. "Youth Fashion and Changing Beautification Practices." In Japan's Changing Generations: Are Young People Creating a New Society? edited by Gordon Mathews and Bruce
White. London and New York: Routledge Curzon. Pp 83-98. 2004.
Gagne, Isaac. “Urban Princess: Performance and “Women’s language” in Japan’s Gothic/Lolita Subculture. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology. 2008. Vol. 18, Issue 1.

9th Session: MARGINAL WOMEN: FOREIGN WOMEN, SINGLE MOTHERS AND DIVORCE IN JAPAN

Reading:

Allison Alexy. “The Door My Wife Closed: Houses, Families, and Divorce in Contemporary Japan.” In, Richard Ronald and Allison Alexy, eds. Home and Family in Japan: Contemporary
Transformations in Houses, Households, and Relationships. London: Routledge. 2010.
Lieba Faier. 2007. Filipina Migrants in rural Japan and their profession of love. American Ethnologist.
Ekaterina Hertog. Tough Choices: Bearing an Illegitimate Child in Japan. Selected Chapters. 2009.

Recommended Reading:

Lynne Nakano. "Working and Waiting for an "Appropriate Person": How Single Women Support and Resist Family in Japan.” In, Richard Ronald and Allison Alexy, eds. Home and Family in Japan: Contemporary Transformations in Houses, Households, and Relationships. London: Routledge. 2010.
Lynne Nakano and Moeko Wagatsuma, "Mothers and Their Unmarried Daughters: An Intimate Look at Generational Change." In Gordon Mathews and Bruce White (editors), Japan's Changing Generations: Are Young People Creating a New Society? pp. 137-154. London and New York: RoutledgeCurzon. 2004.
Millie R. Creighton. “Marriage, Motherhood, and Career Management in a Japanese ‘Counter culture.’” In Anne Imamura, ed. Re-Imaging Japanese Women. Berkeley: University of California Press. 1996.
Hiroshi Ono. “Divorce in Japan: Why it happens, why it doesn’t.” EIJS working paper series no. 201. 2006.

10th Session: FIELDTRIP to Harajyuku Subculture

11th Session: MARGINAL MEN: FOREIGN MEN, SINGLE MEN, HOMELESS, HOMOSEXUALS, QUEERS IN JAPAN

Reading:

Jacob Raz. “Self representation and performance in the Yakuza way of life: A fieldwork with the Japanese underworld group.” In Goodman and Refsing, eds. Ideology and Practice in Modern Japan.
Gill, Tom “When pillars evaporate: structuring masculinity on the Japanese margins.” http://www.meijigakuin.ac.jp/~gill/pdf/When_Pillars_EvaporateN.pdf [4]
Mark J. McLelland. Male homosexuality in modern Japan: cultural myths and social realities. Published: Richmond: Curzon. 2000. Selected Chapters.

Recommended Reading:

Mark Mclelland and Romit Dasgupta. “Introduction.” In Mclelland and Dasgupta, eds. Genders, Transgenders, and Sexualities in Japan. 2005.
Tom Gill. Men of Uncertainty: The Social Organization of Day Laborers in Contemporary Japan. 2001.
Roth Joshua. Brokered Homeland: Japanese Brazilian Migrants in Japan. Cornell University Press, 2002
Taga Futosh. “Rethinking Japanese Masculinities: Research Trends.” In Mclelland and Dasgupta, eds., Genders, Transgenders, and sexualities in Japan. 2005.
Lunsing, Wim, “What masculinity?: transgender practices among Japanese ‘men’, In James E.
Roberson and Nobue Suzuki, eds., Men and Masculinities in Contemporary Japan: Dislocating the Salaryman Doxa. NY: Routledge Curzon, pp 20-36. 2003.

12th Session: FINAL CLASS – REFLECTION ON GENDER, FAMILY, SEXUAITY, IDENTITY, AND LIFE COURSE (FINAL EXAM DUE 12/6/11)

Required readings:

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