Women's work

The interaction of how we are to understand each other and the values that run between nations and perceived nations is at the heart of what I research. Transnational perceptions focused on "nerd culture" is a rather narrow field, but I find there is often quite a bit to study when I keep my eyes open. This article on Lee Si-kap's collection of 85 satellite dishes to satisfy his Vietnamese bride, Bui Thi Huang, sets up an interesting picture of transnational ideas of gender.

"In recent years, the South Korean countryside has had an influx of brides from
poorer countries like Vietnam, China and the Philippines. Like Ms. Bui, they
marry South Korean farmers who have difficulty finding a spouse because so many
young Korean women have rejected rural life and migrated to cities."

There is an incredible amount of fascinating things going on here all at once in this phenomenon. First of all I wonder how it is that women in Korea have a greater ability to move away from their rural town into the cities. Is it easier for women to find work in the city than men? Is it difficult for women to find work in rural towns? I wonder if it is heavily pragmatic as this, or is it overlayed by symbolic ideas of men as "country boys" and women as "uptown girls" as portrayed in the US through shows like "Green Acres". The idea of a single women living the city is a long standing mythology which has existed as far back as "Ars Amatoria" by Ovid, with even then carried the same feeling to disdain/admiration.

Then on top of this, is the idea of finding women from "poorer countries" and having them move to South Korea to become wives plays an interesting role of how these men must perceive these women and what they represent for them and for their home country. As this linked article put:

The rising status of women in the United States sent American men who were
searching for more traditional wives to Russia in the 1990s.

Again the product of greater mobility and economic independence for women becomes a punishment for men who desire more "traditional" wives. So as these women move to greater positions in the world, men are left in the dust. It's a strange antagonising of progress for women that seems to unfairly bring guilt to women who want to move up in the world through the limited avenues available to them, and at the same time draws sympathy for men who are unwilling to change with the times. This is similar to the problematic solution presented by Betty Friedan of hiring maids and nannys (from poorer nations) to do the women's work while affluent wives build a career outside the home. If we are to truly understand how gender roles are changing and improving, we must pay close attention to how this is changing as a whole system. Having some women improve their lives to have their previous roles replaced by women of poorer nations may not be the path we are looking for in dramatically changing gender roles in society.

What makes a man a man?

(image from "七人の侍" 1954)

The Mainichi has an article on "reki-jo" (歴-女?), This seems to be a new boom and I've never heard the term before. The very end brings up an interesting commentary on what is going on with genders roles in Japan.

Tetsuaki Higashida from the Dentsu Communication Institute suggests that women are attracted to the masculinity of these warlords, compared to the more passive modern men that they know. "Gender role reversals have been taking place, with men cooking and women playing golf," he says. "It's not unacceptable nowadays for women to take an interest in warlords, which used to be an area of interest reserved for men."

The Dentsu Communication Institute is the think tank wing of The Dentsu Group who probably provided the data for this study. Most of the research I've seen them do usually concerns studies of social networking in Japan.

This idea of "gender role reversals" reflects this article from The Slate on "Grass Eating Boys" (草食女子) Personally in my experience, Japanese men tend to be rather stuck in 1970's America's idea of masculinity. Although it doesn't surprise me that the younger generation has rejected this idea of masculinity and is starting to prefer the opposite.

How are we to understand masculinity? I don't think there is such a strict bi-polar system of Samurai vs. "grass eating boys", or even a sliding scale in between. I wonder what forces are coercing these rigid forms of identity. Before I get too deep into gender, I'll just leave it off with a video about the modern Samurai.

East vs. West

Japan is a very "brand conscious" country. I know more women in the US who have never heard of Vera Wang and Hermes than in Japan by far; and you'd never see a man walk around town in a $800 Yves Saint Laurent bag.

Japundit, has a link to an article on the new Sanrio brand tartan being released. Yamanashi, the prefecture where I lived for awhile was the birthplace of the Yamanashi Silk Center, which was the company the later became Sanrio in the 1970's when the company figured out that printing cute pictures on their clothes sold better. Now that the silk industry of Yamanashi has completely bottemed out in recent years, this connection has long been forgotten.

What I find interesting here from a transnational standpoint was this comment here by Yuko Yamaguchi

Yuko Yamaguchi, the Hello Kitty designer since 1980, said the British capital was chosen as the feline's home because "London was the place Japanese girls admired in the 1970s."

Britain was a nation of fairy tales for Japanese girls who read "Alice in Wonderland" and the "Tale of Peter Rabbit," she said.

The ways in which certain cultures and our association with how we perceive certain nations is a fascinating thing to study. As Ai Yazawa has shown us, many Japanese folks today still admire western fetishes as a mark of cool and trendy things. In her work "Paradise Kiss" many of the main characters take on "western" nicknames in an interest to sound exotic and otherworldly. Many people thought it was really cool that a guy that looked in many ways like a Japanese person, had a cool name like "Charles". On the other side of the pond, many people in the US and the UK see anything Japanese as the height of fashion and culture. Japanese things permeate almost everything in the US to give it "added value" or a flair of the exotic. At the same time in both cases this admiration of a national culture has nothing to do with the nation itself, but our association with being something other than we are. These associations reestablish global bounderies that places like the UK, the US and Japan remain as the other, and keep them as exotic distant lands. Despite cheaper transportation and communication between such nations, the distance between them is still far far away in the minds of its people.

gifts and violence

Yesterday I was in an antiques store in Leesburg, VA with some friends and I saw a beautiful Obi draped over a bench near the register. I could tell from the fact that the embroidery ran all along the length of the obi on both sides, it was pre World War II. There was hardly any discoloration and it was in excellent condition in which the colors were still very bold and pronounced.

The owner of the store said that it was once a gift to a Four Star General who had served in Japan during World War II and was brought back here to Virginia. After the man died, the properties of his estate was sold and this store had acquired quite a few of his items.

Obviously I could be falling for the oldest trick in selling. Tell an interesting story about the thing and suddenly customers will want it. Not to far away in the store were some brass bowls from China which were obviously made in China for tourist to buy. Separated merely by time and space the same occurrence could be happening to me.

But regardless, if it was true, it's an interesting thought on the travels of this piece of garment. The exchanging of hands from Japan to the US, the history of the cloth and it's symbolism as a gift to a US General. There are layers of meaning which cuts across different cross sections of class, nations, gender and race. Is there a significance to the giving of a woman's clothes as a gift to a General to mark the end of a war?

The collection of souvenirs of war service reminds me of a story my aunt once said of a man who was in service in Vietnam for a number of years. This man was struck by the beauty of the Vietnamese "áo dài" and wanted to take one home for his wife to wear. Now there are two parts to an áo dài, the top dress-like part which is similar to a Cheongsam has a slit which will typically go to about an inch above the hips. The man not knowing much about how an áo dài is worn only bought this part and forgot the crucial set of pants which go with it. When the man brought the dress home his wife was quite shocked about how revealing it was and was suspicious of her husbands endless praise on how beautiful it looked on the local women in Vietnam (and their sense of modesty.) So here we have an interesting scenario of the formulation of an intellectual intersection in concepts of gender between the husband, the wife and the women of Vietnam.

What meaning did the giver attribute to such a gift and what meaning did either military person take with him on receiving the gift. Did the gift have meaning for himself, or was it thought of only as a gift for a woman? The weight of these things hang on my head as I think of this obi now draped over a bench in some sleepy antiques store in Leesburg and I wonder who will pay the 450 to buy it and what meaning that buyer will give it.

Japanese Cultural Revolution

I have always felt that "Razor Ramon Hard Gay" was a champion for social change. This is especially true with his encouragement that even yankī aren't too cool to honor their father. Although he seemed like another crazy comedian stereotyping "homosexual behavior", I've felt that there was more going on under that pleather biker cap.

One of the toughest parts of being an English teacher in Japan is seeing a lot of really sweet kids run their lives into the ground. It's half their own doing, but society has some of the blame too. I've found myself on occasion arguing with teachers that we can't just give up on these kids now and label them as hopeless at 12. I know enough about child development to know that giving up on such kids at this age is the worst anyone can do to harm a whole life. But there is a culturally encouraged tradition in Japan to cast off people who are deemed "unworthy".

This is why it makes me really happy to see men like Yu Waki try to make an effort to turn things around for Japan. The Mainichi has a fairly good article on his work, and his book can be found here. The Japanese have a strange comfortable attitude about their organized crime popularly known as the "Yakuza". Someone once told me that they are the modern day representation of the Samurai clans. Although for the few more powerful families this may be factually true, I think it's a dangerous and manipulative myth in which the gangs put out. If you want to know more about the Yakuza, I'd suggest Tendo Shoko's book Yakuza Moon: Memiors of a Gangster's Daughter, and Robert Whiting's book Tokyo Underground: the Fast Times and Hard Life of an American Gangster in Japan. I actually sat in on a presentation by Hiroyuki Suzuki on his efforts of rehabilitation of members of the Yakuza. It's more of a chirstian based effort, but his movie "Jesus is my Boss" is pretty interesting to watch despite the low production values. I think small movements like this will inch Japan towards real social change that is rooted in the community and culture of Japan and not merely an acquisition of western ideas of social progress.