When I first read the article, I had an impression that the way people see Tiger woods is quite different from the way we do in Japan. In our country, people were excited with his legendary skill, especially his swing. I was an elementary school student and still strongly remember that we all imitated his way of swing at school. On TV, many comedians mimicked him. They didn’t talk about his race or blackness. It was out of our interest. However, in the article, he described how people in the States treated him, focusing on his race or blackness. In the class, we learned the concept of visibility. Visibility is a starting point where controls or regulations come from. However, in my opinion, visibility can’t cause regulations or control over them by itself. There are other factors regarding to receivers to create that dominance. Through this blog, I am going to examine this tricky concept of visibility deeply.

Visibility is necessary when we categorize something because once we can find differences, we become able to name or understand particular groups. In this sense, visibility is where control or regulations come from. However, visibility doesn’t necessarily lead to regulations. There needs to be other factors regarding to people who receive the visible differences. For example, in Japan, of course we can tell the difference of skin colour between Tiger Woods and other players. At this point, the difference is visible. But they don’t pay attention to it because for us Asians, neither white nor black, the skin colour doesn’t have a big meaning and is out of our interest. In this sense, as we don’t use it as a representer, it is not a signifier. Learning from this experience, it is obvious that other factors at receivers’ side are necessary in order that visibility functions as a starting point toward regulations. To take an easiest example, as is often said, white people needed to represent clearly the difference between black and white people to conquer them. Here, one question comes out. Visibility is the existing thing? Or does someone create it, in other words, do people make it visible intentionally? If so, visibility itself is totally arbitrary. After all, everything can be visible, can’t it?

In this blog, I tackle on the concept of visibility starting from the difference I feel between the two societies, reflecting my experiences. As I examine this concept, it becomes more and more tricky. However, in this trickiness, there are significant things which structure the whole society and from which we can get a hint to improve the world. I want to continue to study this issue more deeply.

In the class, we explored the website called Black Girls Dangerous, which I felt personally has full of interesting stuff. In particular, one of the articles, which is about the letter from a mother to her gender-creative son’s pre-kindergarten class, had a lot of implications worth considering. Today, I’m going to talk about how big influence the culture and society have on gender creation of kids. Reading this article recognises us the importance of experiences and situations at young age. Later, I want to mention the differences between what we call modern Western society and non-Western society, reflecting my own experiences.

In the letter, she says ‘We have told Ocho that he can be whichever gender he wants, and that if he doesn’t want to choose, he doesn’t have to.’ For me, a person who has been grown up in the society where parents rarely imagine their child is gender-creative nor admit that, this letter sounds surprising and shocking, in that she gives him (her) not only a choice between boy and girl but also a choice of non-decision. This may be a new trend, especially among modern western society.

In Japan, since they are very small, boys and girls have been treated quite differently. This has an enormous influence on kids’ gender recognition. I’ll give some interesting examples. First, in Japan, we add gender specific word to all kids’ first name; ‘kun’ to boys and ‘chan’ to girs (for example, I’m called ‘Aoi-chan’). And this is socially structured. For example, every kindergarten, elementary school and junior high school checks the attendance with this name every single morning. For example, I was called my name ‘Aoi-chan’ every morning by my teacher. Let me give you another example. In Japan, we have strict gender colour; blue for boys and red for girls. This is not that they prefer their colour, but half socially decided. For example, it’s usually mandatory that all elementary school boys use blue or black backpack and girls use red one for school. (However, it’s interesting that these days we can find yellow backpack.) This backpack, ‘randoseru’, is a symbol of elementary school children, which has a lot of cultural meanings. Furthermore, school uniform has also a function as a decisionist of kids’ gender. Since kindergarten, they have the school uniform, which is gender specific; pants for boys, skirts for girls. As these example shows, since they are very small, they are strongly recognized their biological sex so that they are assumed to behave as their sex and don’t even recognize they can be different. In this sense, they have far less chances to be opposite or trans gender, compared to the situation in modern society like one in the letter. The difference of the number of children with gender-creative issues between western countries and Japan is partly because of this.

 Therefore, I can now point out two things as my conclusion. First, experiences and situations at young age have a significant impact on their gender identity. Before developing their own idea about gender, they have been treated as their biological sex by the society. So, they take it for granted. In addition, there is a difference among cultures. Generally, in what we call modern western society, they are getting to be more generous to gender-creative people and the same thing can be said around issues of gender-creative kids. On the other hand, in other countries, the old-fashioned gender norm is still dominant and kids have relatively few chances to recognize their own gender identity and behave as an opposite or trans gender person. To look at kids’ gender issue has many significant implications, so I would like to continue to do further research on this topic.

In the class, we analyzed the three concepts: Queer, Gay, and Post-Gay. Regarding to what we learned, I want to argue that the boundary between Gay and Post-Gay is blurring and that sometimes the two coexist. I’m going to explain about this showing an example of one Japanese famous artist, Akihiro Miwa.

Akihiro Miwa is one of the most famous and outstanding artists in Japan. The impact he has on the society is enormous firstly because he has a unique background as a gay and secondly because his songs are full of social and historical meanings. As I consider the three concepts which we learned in the class, we can find some features of both Gay and Post-Gay in this person. In terms of Gay, as he knew the existence of the concept of Gay in his teens and noticed that he belonged to this kind of people, his sexuality became visible. In addition, since he felt away from people around him such as his family and friends because of his sexuality, it can be said that this norm marginalized him. At this point, this issue is highly political. These are all features of the concept of Gay. On the other hand, it’s also true that now everyone in Japan recognises him as one great artist and has no bias against him because of his sexuality. When people see his performance, they simply appreciate him as an individual artist as they do to others. Here, we can see features of Post-Gay, which is its overcome of the Gay concept and individualisation. Therefore, through this observation of Akihiro Miwa, we can see the situation in which the two different concept of Gay and Post-Gay are coexisting.

In my conclusion, I want to point out that the boundary between Gay and Post-gay is blurring and those two are going hand by hand rather than shifting from Gay to Post-Gay. It is quite interesting to analyze deeply how these two can coexist and influence each other.

In class, we discussed the politicization of identity. I’m going to talk about the dilemma this politicization of identity has and seek for a way to overcome it.

To show their identity, people make groups, which means they create people outside and they are required to be recognized to be a member. At this point, standards or definitions for the recognition are necessary. These standards reflect the practices in the society, that’s why it can’t be avoidable to become political. However, this human interpretation and politicization is problematic in that it often works as arbitrary force since this is a totally subjective process. Here is the dilemma: Identity is inevitable to be political, but the politicization is problematic.

To take an example from the class, I’m going to mention the problem around gay refugees. They have to prove with evidence that they are gay refugees in order to get the position as gay refugees so that they stay in the country. However, the problem is that nobody knows what is the real, more specifically, there is no definition of gay. That’s why how to apply this concept is highly subjective and political. In this example, those gay refugees have to prove it in a Western way, which raises many difficulties. Here, we can see the dilemma around the politicization of identity.

So, how can we do to overcome this dilemma? There doesn’t seem to be an obvious answer, but I’m going to point out that identity doesn’t always have to clearly appear in public. For example, different from Western countries, in Japan, LGBQT people don’t take any political action in public, on the contrary, they tend to hide their identity as JGBQT. Certainly, many people say that they are oppressed in the society and have no choice but live silently, but to take another viewpoint,  we can say that they may find their own ways of living, which satisfy them without showing their identity as minority in public. In this sense, to keep their identity and to make groups and take political actions are different. Identity doesn’t always have to be political. Here, we can see the possibility to go beyond the dilemma of politicization of identity.

In the context of post-human society, identity gets more and more importance. At this point, we need to consider it again and be careful not to overlook the essence in the deepest point.

Can people die from overwork?? Yes, we can. Today, I’m going to talk about ‘karoushi (death from overwork)’ as an example of how public feelings which are not examined in academic study affect the social structure.

Karoushi is a Japanese word meaning death from overwork. While Japan was experiencing ‘economic miracle’ from the 1960’s to 1980’s, a countless number of people died from overwork to keep the economic development. Ironically, as this crucial situation accompanying significant human cost came to be known around the world, the Japanese word ‘karoushi’ became a common word in the world. Now it’s even on Oxford dictionary!

The public feeling which we can see here is the shared feeling that didn’t allow them to express their emotions. They couldn’t say ‘I’m tired.’ I point out two reasons for this. One is this is a part of Japanese culture. In Japan, it was, or has been thought as virtue not to express our emotion or opinion in public. Therefore, however tired they were, they couldn’t show their tiredness at workplace. The other reason is the social structure. At that time, Japan was in the midst of economic development and nobody could or would stop it. If they said ‘I want to take a break,’ they would be kicked off and would never find a job. That’s how the public feeling of ‘karoushi’ was created and maintained.

Then, how this public feeling affect the social structure? Basically, this works toward fixation of the social structure. I’m going to explain this fixation in two ways. First, since this didn’t allow people to be against employers by showing their emotion and importantly, most of the profit, the fruit of their hard work went to the employers, this fixes the social structure, maintaing the division between the capital and the labour. In addition, the overwork deprived them of energy and they didn’t have motivation to take an action anymore. Thus, the ‘karoushi’ culture affected the society in a way that it fixed the social structure.

Though ‘karoshi’ is a sad word and as a Japanese, I feel very ashamed of this becoming a common word in the world, it implies a lot about public feelings. The more I had research, the more interested I am in the relationship between ‘karoushi’ and public feelings. I want to do further research and continuously consider this.

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Today, I’m going to think of feminism from the viewpoint of its exclusion of men.  In my opinion, one of the biggest reasons why feminism is often critisised and hated and can’t be a driver of the social change is that feminisim excludes men by focusing on women’s side too much.  See the ratio of men and women in this class!  Could this be an evidence of femisim for women?  Let me explain this aspect including what we learned in the reading and class.  In my conclusion, I want to claim that the goal of feminism should not be the winning against men, but harmonious coexistence with men where both men and women can enjoy their lives in equal ways.

In the readings and class, they say that as a big turning point, in the 1990’s women became an object of attention and the way of objectification apparently reflects men’s taste.  The advertisement of bras is a representative example.   Therefore, they say those women’s choice is limited previously and structurely.  However, I think this is overly protecting women.  I mean they are excessively emphasizing women’s side.  Let’s think about the objectification of people in two ways.  First, although there are lots of examples where women ‘act’ to be perfectly attractive for men, there are also many products and scenes where women behave not only to attract men but also enjoy women.  In addition, we can find many examples where men act to attract women.  This is a cover of a popular magazine for women:   

Here, men also act to be as mush sexy as possible.  Therefore, the objectification does not only mean ‘women for men’, but also ‘women for women’ and ‘men for women and also men’.  In other words, this is happening to everyone.  The reason is the prosperity of marketism and commercialism (I omit the deep explanation about it this time).  As I mentioned above, by payting too much attention to women’s side, feminism misses the other side and this leads to its exclusion of men, which makes their activities backfire.

In my conclusion, I want to emphasize that the goal of feminism should not be the victory against men but harmounious coexistence with men.  In order to create this situation, it is important to change the ‘protectionist’ way of thinking in which they focus on women’s side too much and reconsider the real equality.  I hope feminism can find ways to be accepted by everyone and play a significan role toward the better society.