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Japan
Organized Panel Session
Despite the continued prevalence of Japanese hegemonic masculinity, symbolized perhaps most vividly by the figure of the salaryman, legitimized ideologies of ideal manhood have come under scrutiny in recent years. Not only are the values associated with hegemonic masculinity being questioned through lived practice, but scholars are finding that the lines between hegemonic and alternative masculinities shift and overlap more than was originally thought. Sometimes complicit, sometimes approximating, and at other times wholly rejecting an increasingly hybridized hegemonic masculinity, alternative trajectories for men in Japan have in recent years increased in light of social pressures that include marriage and reproduction, precarious employment, and the effects of an increasingly unstable international order. Whether by reaffirming but playfully altering gendered norms in online communities, through questioning the necessity of sexual activity to adult masculinity among self-professed virgins (dōtei), by interrogating the interplay and conflict between US military and Japanese masculinity, or through a renewed take on fatherhood and family via participation in associations for “papas,” each of the authors demonstrates the blurring boundaries between multiple masculinities in a world where security, stability, and self-purpose are perceived as increasingly scarce commodities.
Mattias van Ommen
University of Hawai'i at Mānoa
Evan Koike
University of British Columbia, Canada
Christine Yano
University of Hawai'i at Mānoa
Mattias van Ommen
University of Hawai'i at Mānoa
Evan Koike
University of British Columbia, Canada
Carl Gabrielson
University of California, Santa Barbara
Elizabeth Miles
Kennesaw State University
Christine Yano
University of Hawai'i at Mānoa