Laura Dales

Ohitorisama, Singlehood and Agency in Japan

Abstract: Postwar Japanese society has experienced significant demographic shifts. Of particular note are trends in marriage delay, increased divorce, increased rates of lifelong singlehood and an increased proportion of life spent unmarried. In this context, singlehood is increasingly experienced by women, for at least some period in their adult lives. Nonetheless, while greater numbers of Japanese are living as singles for a greater portion of their lives, marriage and childbearing remain key markers of contemporary Japanese womanhood. Living outside marriage – as a single, divorced or widowed person – suggests divergence from the ideal, even if it is just an unavoidable temporary state. This paper explores singlehood as a contested space of ideals and practices, and presents the notion of ohitorisama as one model of contemporary female singlehood.

Introduction: The Everyday Agency of Women in Asia

This issue of Asian Studies Review includes a themed section that addresses agency in relation to womens everyday lives and experiences in Asia. Four papers follow this Introduction: Siti Aisyah and Lyn Parker (2014) study domestic violence in Makassar, Sulawesi, Indonesia; Laura Dales (2014) explores singlehood for women in Japan; Tamara Jacka (2014) challenges stereotypes around older rural women in China; and Wanning Sun (2014) examines literary representations of rural migrant women in southern China. Building on a discussion begun in the edited collection, The Agency of Women in Asia (Parker, 2005), this collection revisits theoretical questions and explores some of the issues posed in that volume, but with a special focus on ordinary, everyday social practice in contexts of work, marriage, singlehood and maternity. In particular the papers in this collection contribute to the theorisation of agency, exploring not only the ways in which women express agency, but also feminist expectations of agency, the repercussions of the exercise of agency, the effect of negative representations of women on womens agency, and the ways in which scholars can understand and assess agency. Acknowledging the important theoretical work that already exists on agency (e.g. Comaroff and Comaroff, 1997; Mahmood, 2001 and 2005; Ortner, 2001 and 2006), and the minor spate of edited books on womens public activism in Asia recently (e.g. Burghoorn et al., 2008; Iwanaga, 2008; Roces and Edwards, 2010), this collection takes a different tack. Womens everyday lives, on the ground in lived situations, have been neglected in this new scholarship. In this collection, we focus on womens relational and emotional lives, their experience of domestic practices and daily social and sexual interactions, on the way they build relationships, and their involvement in forms of interdependence and mutual aid. Some pictures are intimate and intensely personal; oth- ers are of public behaviour - of women shouting out, or publishing on the internet. Some agency is transient, as when women are carried along with the ebb and flow of family relationships or economic ups-and-downs; some is more permanent in its effects,

Online Konkatsu and the Gendered Ideals of Marriage in Contemporary Japan

ABSTRACT In Japan the average age of first marriage continues to rise steadily, and people are spending a greater proportion of their adult life single. This is despite the fact that the vast majority of singles express desire to marry one day. The reasons for the rise in late and non-marriage are varied and complex, but difficulty in finding an appropriate or compatible partner has emerged as one of the key issues. Against this backdrop, the konkatsu (‘marriage-partner hunting’) industry has emerged, ostensibly to assist singles to find marriage partners. In this paper, we examine konkatsu popular literature, online matchmaking sites and the perceptions of single women and konkatsu workers to consider the ways that contemporary discourses of gender and marriage are reflected, (re)produced or challenged. The ‘male-breadwinner family’ model, based on the functional roles of ‘supportive wife’ and ‘provider husband’, is increasingly both undesirable and untenable for single Japanese women and men. However, values and norms pertaining to gender and marriage as portrayed in matchmaking sites and in some konkatsu literature remain remarkably unchanged. In this context, single women’s ambivalence towards konkatsu may reflect both ambivalence to marriage as a goal per se, and uneasiness with the gendered roles in marriage purveyed by konkatsu discourse.

Choosing love? Tensions and transformations of modern marriage in Married at First Sight

Abstract Anthropologists and sociologists frequently suggest that marriage is undergoing rapid, worldwide transformation. Yet, while trends in nuptiality and divorce are used to demonstrate its decline, heterosexual marriage based on romantic love remains a cultural ideal in many contexts. This tension is reflected in cultural products like television programmes, including the increasingly popular genre of reality romance television. In this paper, we focus on an Australian version of a recent programme format, Married at First Sight (MaFS), in which ‘singles’ are matched by ‘relationship experts’ and then meet for the first time at their wedding ceremonies. The show purports to document singles’ lives prior to, during and following their weddings. By considering the content and structure of the show, as well as public and media responses to it, we explore Married at First Sight Australia in the context of other reality romance programmes produced and popular in Australia. We propose that the show offers a discourse of marriage based on objective compatibility rather than individual choice, but nonetheless dependent upon scripts of romantic love. Further, MaFS reflects (uneven) realities and popular understandings of transformation in modern Australian marriage.

Alisa Freedman, Laura Miller and Christine R. Yano, Modern Girls on the Go: Gender, Mobility and Labor in Japan

‘Modern women had to define themselves in new ways’, observes the late Yoko McClain, in the autobiographical essay that concludes Freedman, Miller and Yano’s edited volume (213). These words captur...

Single Women and Their Households in Contemporary Japan

State promotion of particular kinds of gender relations and household structures in Japan since the post-war period has constructed the reproductive family as an official ‘“absorber” of economic and social risks’ (Takeda 2008: 161). While the last three decades in Japan have seen the introduction of legislation and policy designed to encourage women’s participation in the paid workforce, a gendered labour division operates whereby household work and child-rearing are seen primarily as women’s work. Women who are neither mothers nor wives, and particularly women who are mothers but not wives, occupy a peripheral space in dominant constructions of the family as the basic social unit. Single women, particularly those who live alone, challenge what MacKenzie has called ‘conjugal order’, referring to ‘the broader social norms associated with marriage and the family, including the privileging of heterosexual sex’ (2010: 205). However, as unmarried women may also be workers and/or unpaid carers, their contributions to the household and broader economy are not insignificant. In contemporary Japan, an ageing low-birth rate society where increasing numbers of women (and men) are remaining unmarried, the households and consumption patterns of single women are increasingly significant.

Marriage in Contemporary Japan

Japan, like many industrialized countries, is experiencing significant demographic shifts in its marriage and reproduction patterns. Marriage delay and marriage denial are topics of considerable interest to social observers and scholars of Japan, and Yoko Tokuhiro’s book is a timely contribution to the discussion. In her concise study, Tokuhiro begins with an overview of perceptions of marriage from the pre-war to post-war periods, then moves directly to contemporary attitudes. Chapter 2 explores the impact of feminist discourses, from Meiji to contemporary, on norms of femininity. Tokuhiro suggests that marriage delay and denial reflect an increased desire among women to craft an individual identity, and also represent a rejection of motherhood and its suffocating demands (52). Tokuhiro’s study is sprinkled with interesting case studies, drawn from interviews conducted with single Tokyo-dwelling men and women in their thirties. The focus on this age group is justified because it is the demographic that has shown the greatest changes (in numbers of never-married) since 1975. As the author notes, the individuals in this age bracket critically shape marriage trends, either by raising the age of first marriage or by increasing the proportion of never-married individuals (15). The author canvasses perceptions of marriage, expectations of marital partners and experiences of romantic relationships among her informants. The case studies that result offer valuable insights into the beliefs and expectations that shape decisions to delay or avoid marriage. The book examines both masculine and feminine gender norms, devoting a chapter to each. In the discussion of masculinity in Chapter 3, the case studies of informants are supplemented with observations from fieldwork conducted at a ‘bridegroom school’, a grooming college for bachelors eager to marry. The author also draws briefly on certain sub-cultures – the b os ozoku and the nagare-mono of the feature film series Otoko wa tsurai yo – to illustrate her discussion of masculinity and gender norms. The discussion of femininity (Chapter 4) is appropriately focused on the roles of wife and mother, and presents a range of compelling reasons for marriage delay and denial among Japanese women. While the burden of mothering is carefully explored, both in the literature analysis and in the case study of Sachiko (85–86), an examination of women as daughters might also have shed light on women’s life-course choices. Sachiko is an example of the independent daughter seeking to escape the maternal bond; meanwhile, unmarried women who remain living with their parents into the latter’s old age may find care-related responsibilities to be salient to marriage decisions. Japanese Studies, iFirst article, 1–3

TWO DECADES OF GENDER AND DIFFERENCE: A Celebration of the Work of Chilla Bulbeck—‘A View from Japan’

Scholarly work is a kind of bridge between the past and the future. Examining where we have come from, both theoretically and materially, inevitably leads us to reflect on where we are headed, and scholarly texts represent artefacts of knowledge production as well as knowledge in and of themselves. We use the work of scholars who have come before us to chart our past, map our present and plot our future directions. In sketching the view from Japan it is difficult to know where to begin, let alone where to end, so I begin by acknowledging my enormous debt to Chilla Bulbeck and her intellectual labours. Chilla’s work has been woven into my understanding of and engagement with feminism from the very beginning of my academic career, so in fact it is difficult to assess just where her influence ends. I suspect that like all great teachers and scholars, her work will continue to ripple outwards for generations to come. This paper offers consideration on two specific questions. Firstly, what might feminism mean for Japanese women and, secondly, what might difference mean for those of us studying feminism of and in Other places? I pose the first question with intentional vagueness: the answer is inevitably multiple and varied, difficult*if not impossible*to contain in any bite-sized form. Chilla’s work, as we know, has always devoted considerable attention to considering the implications of difference among feminists and feminisms (see, for example, Bulbeck 1998, 2009). Feminism will mean different things to women of different generations in all contexts, and as Hester Eisenstein has argued (this issue) the term encapsulates a range of different discursive positions and claims. State or bureaucratic endorsement of particular terms*women’s issues, gender equality or jendā furı̄ (gender-free) in the Japanese case*can also mask ambivalence (even antipathy) to the substantive demands made by feminists, such that gender mainstreaming may offer only the artifice of equality. In Japan the issue of translation, linguistic and cultural, has made definition even more difficult to pin down. As Saitō Chiyo observes, while different approaches at different times may generate friction among feminists, ‘[g]iven the differences in social conditions in each place, the tone and hue of the feminisms should also differ’ (Saitō 1997, 267). It is precisely the breadth and vibrancy of feminist engagements that makes feminism relevant and powerful as a force for change. In terms of what it might mean for Japanese women and the broader society, I suggest that in a time of deep economic recession and demographic flux, attention to the diversity of women’s experiences is critical to finding ways forward. Legislative efforts to promote gender equal participation at all levels of society fall short of delivering effective