Intimate Japan: Ethnographies of Closeness and Conflict

by Allison Alexy (editor), Emma E. Cook (Editor), S.P.F. Dale (Contributor)

How do couples build intimacy in an era that valorizes independence and self-responsibility? How can a man be a good husband when full-time jobs are scarce? How can unmarried women find fulfillment and recognition outside of normative relationships? How can a person express their sexuality when there is no terminology that feels right? In contemporary Japan, broad social transformations are reflected and refracted in changing intimate relationships. As the Japanese population ages, the low birth rate shrinks the population, and decades of recession radically restructure labor markets, Japanese intimate relationships, norms, and ideals are concurrently shifting.

This volume explores a broad range of intimate practices in Japan in the first decades of the 2000s to trace how social change is becoming manifest through deeply personal choices. From young people making decisions about birth control to spouses struggling to connect with each other, parents worrying about stigma faced by their adopted children, and queer people creating new terms to express their identifications, Japanese intimacies are commanding a surprising amount of attention, both within and beyond Japan. With ethnographic analysis focused on how intimacy is imagined, enacted, and discussed, the volume's chapters offer rich and complex portraits of how people balance personal desires with feasible possibilities and shifting social norms.

Intimate Japan will appeal to scholars and students in anthropology and Japanese or Asian studies, particularly those focusing on gender, kinship, sexuality, and labor policy. The book will also be of interest to researchers across social science subject areas, including sociology, political science, and psychology.

284 pages, Hardcover

Published October 31, 2018

Reviews

[Rafael Munia · Rating 2 out of 5]

Maybe this book will please some readers, but personally I can't take any book that spends more time speaking of the "burdens" and "pressures" that society put ON MEN when it comes to relationships and marriage (or labor for that matter)seriously anymore... Specially when the book has a chapter on domestic violence, and I find myself reading a whole chapter on how men suffer with social expectations society puts on them, that contains an interview with a Men's Rights activist that just goes on and one, with long quotations given to him, portraying him as someone "resisting the pressures of society"...and then the other part of the chapter is on the male victims of society pressure who have to go to blind dates and stuff...and you go through all of this AFTER we just discuss women living on shelters fleeing domestic abuse. I kept questioning why are we wasting so much time and energy on these male issues and portraying men as equally suffering from patriarchy, when it the juxtaposition of both become a surreal joke...I mean, the author's description of "a young man" that "was certainly struggling" is of a full-time worker that feels to shy to speak to women and thus can't find a partner, and the author goes on to speak of how sad it is that he wasn't born decades ago to be easily married because he had a stable job and his family would do some arranged married to him...

Yes, that't right, instead of problematizing how male privilege used to be so pervasive that a men who lacks any sort of ability to talk to women would still marry a woman because his family would spend their money to secure a women for him using the fact he has a stable job so she could financially depend on him, the author instead chose to tell us how the real problem is that he can't just have a women be procured for him...

So yeah...for my personal outlook, this book is un-recommendable. But if you are into the "let's save the men, women can wait" wing of feminism today, you may be able to find this enjoyable.

[Ben · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5

Intimate Japan is an academic text, but for non-researchers interested in the topic, it’s not too heavy. “Intimacy” is a broadly treated word in this context, with each chapter tackling a different topic from a different researcher. These topics range from sexual intimacy to intrafamilial relations. That said, the ethnographic detail is skimpy in certain chapters. Many contributors will set up the breadth of their entire research, but will feature only a few individuals. However, this seems to indicate a problem by the editors of the volume rather than the contributors/researchers themselves.

Interesting research includes: Japan’s emergent X-gender as a popular identity for people who are uncomfortable with the “expectations”/gender norms of specific sexual identities (e.g. gay). Contrast this to many western countries, where the fluidity of sexuality is more readily accepted than the fluidity of gender identity.

Chapter 5, “What Can Be Said?” highlights the shifting intimacy practices among millennials in Japan. Intimacy is said to be fostered through “telepathy” between couples. Is this not just a sort of “emotional context?” Despite this confusion, the chapter is a great juxtaposition of traditional gender roles versus irreconcilable changes in family dynamic. In other words, Japan’s society has changed due to the global economy, despite its best attempts to stay the same.

[Cecile Bourguignon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really interesting insights on the intimate japan. I found particularly interesting the essay about intimacy in australian/japanese couple, foster in japanese culture, gender expectations,...

It made me want to read the complete version of most of the essays

[Arran Ubels · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was different not sure how I ended up reading it

[Mark McCormick · Rating 4 out of 5]

some pretty good chapters here. one or two were pretty bad, but all in all an interesting read