Linguistic Tactics and Strategies of Marginalization in Japanese 3030678245, 9783030678241

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Linguistic Tactics and Strategies of Marginalization in Japanese Edited by Judit Kroo · Kyoko Satoh

Linguistic Tactics and Strategies of Marginalization in Japanese

Judit Kroo  •  Kyoko Satoh Editors

Linguistic Tactics and Strategies of Marginalization in Japanese

Editors Judit Kroo Arizona State University Tempe, AZ, USA

Kyoko Satoh Yokohama City University Yokohama, Japan

ISBN 978-3-030-67824-1    ISBN 978-3-030-67825-8 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-67825-8 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2021 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: © Alex Linch / shutterstock.com This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Contents

1 Introduction  1 Judit Kroo 1 Marginalization as Concept and Theory   1 2 Social Identity   5 3 Intersectionality   7 4 Ba  8 5 The Social World of Japan  10 6 Chapter Overview: Modalities of Marginalization  12 References 18

Part I Marginalization and Natural Language Data  21 2 Strategies of Discourse (Re)-Framing as Micropolitics Among Contemporary Japanese University Students 23 Judit Kroo 1 Introduction  23 2 Discourse (Re)-Framing  25 3 Forms of Mitai Na 27 4 Data  28

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5 Analysis  30 5.1 Discourse (re)-framing and Female Strength  30 5.2 Discourse (re)-framing and Locating an Experience in the Everyday  34 6 Discussion and Conclusion  39 References 41

3 When the Model Becomes the Marginalized: Identity Struggles of Japanese Job-Hunters 43 Andrew Barke and Momoyo Shimazu 1 Introduction  43 2 Theoretical Framework  45 2.1 Social constructionist perspectives of self and identity  45 2.2 Gurōbaru jinzai  46 3 Methodology  48 3.1 Data collection  48 3.2 Research design  49 4 Survey Results and Discussion  50 4.1 Understandings and perceptions of a model gurōbaru jinzai 50 4.2 The myths and realities of gurōbaru jinzai 52 5 Identity Struggles  57 6 Conclusions  61 References 62 4 The Struggle Against Hegemonic Femininity: The Narrative of a Japanese Actress 65 Kyoko Satoh 1 Introduction  65 2 Background  67 2.1 Status of Japanese women  67 2.2 Women’s lifestyles, between choice and forced choice  68 3 Data  69

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4 The Stories and Analysis  70 4.1 Can you sell your body? Women cry and men work  70 4.2 As if I do something very wrong: Apology for being a absent mother  77 5 Discussion  80 6 Conclusion  81 7 Transcription Conventions  82 References 83 5 Intersectional Identities: Voices from the Margins of ELT in Japan 87 Yuzuko Nagashima and Luke Lawrence 1 Introduction  88 2 Literature Review  88 2.1 Native-speakerism in ELT in Japan  88 2.2 ELT in Japan as Gendered Practice  90 2.3 Marginalization in ELT  91 3 Methodology  92 3.1 Stage 1: Written Autobiographical Narrative  92 3.2 Stage 2: Reflexive Interviews  93 3.3 Stage 3: Focus Group Interview as Space for Sharing and Empowerment  93 3.4 Intersectionality  94 4 Data Collection and Analysis  94 4.1 Stage 1: Written Narratives  95 4.2 Stage 2: Reflexive Interviews  95 4.3 Stage 3: Focus Group Interview  95 4.4 A Note on Researcher Roles  96 5 Participants’ Biography  96 6 Findings and Discussions  97 6.1 Theme 1: Intersectionalized Discrimination in the Workplace 97 6.2 Theme 2: Networks and Mentorship for Personal and Professional Support and Solidarity 100

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6.3 Theme 3: Self-sacrifice 102 6.4 Theme 4: Sexualized, Heteropatriarchal Stereotypes of Foreign Women in Japan 105 7 Concluding Remark 107 References108 6 Epistemic Primacy and Self/Other-­Marginalisation in a Parliamentary Debate: A Case Study of Female Japanese Politicians113 Keiko Tsuchiya 1 Introduction 113 2 Describing Epistemic Status 117 3 Female Politicians in Japan 119 4 Research Data and Method 120 5 Findings 121 5.1 Speaking Time and Word Count 121 5.2 Question–Answer Sequences 124 5.3 Self/other-Marginalisation Strategies 128 6 Concluding Remarks 132 7 Appendix: The Original Transcriptions in Japanese 134 References137

Part II Marginalization and Mediatized Data 141 7 “We’re family”: Japanese Characters’ Categorizations of a Gay Man in a TV Drama143 Junko Saito 1 Introduction 143 2 Analytical Approaches 146 3 Data 148 4 Analysis 149 4.1 Performing Incumbency in the Categories of Father and Mother 149 4.2 Performing Incumbency in Other Categories 154

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5 Discussion and Concluding Remarks 159 6 Transcription Conventions 162 References163 8 Street Corners and Hugs: Queer Japanese Challenges to Heteronormativity Through Social Media167 Gavin Furukawa 1 Introduction 167 2 Data 170 3 Analytical Approach 171 4 Analysis 172 5 Discussion 184 References186 9 Self-denigration Among Japanese Female Fans Online: Creating Community Through Marginality189 Giancarla Unser-Schutz 1 Overview 189 2 Methodology 193 3 Post 1: Do you hate otaku girls? 194 4 Post 2: Fujoshi, are you married now? 199 5 Discussion 204 6 Conclusions 207 References208 10 Connecting the Personal to the Collective: The haafu aruaru (things that happen to racially/ethnically ‘mixed’ people) Narratives on Twitter213 Rika Yamashita 1 Introduction 214 2 Background Information 215 2.1 The haafu Population in Japan 215 2.2 Twitter and Narrative 217 2.3 Haafu aruaru Tweets 218

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3 Aruaru as an Emphatic Response and Media Meme 219 3.1 ‘Aruaru’ in Spoken Discourse 219 3.2 Aruaru on SNS Texts 221 4 Methodology 222 5 Data 223 6 Discussion and Conclusion 227 References231 11 Afterward233 Judit Kroo and Kyoko Satoh Index237

Notes on Contributors

Andrew Barke  is a professor in the Faculty of Foreign Language Studies at Kansai University, Japan. His research interests include aspects of Japanese identity, politeness, and gender and he is presently a member of a group of scholars researching Japanese workplace discourse and communicative behavior in multicultural workplaces in Japan. Gavin Furukawa  is an assistant professor in the Department of English Studies at Sophia University, Tokyo, Japan, and specializes in discourse-­ related sociolinguistic research focusing on intercultural communication, language ideology, and mediatization. His previous research involves Japanese perceptions of English and the usage of Hawai’i Creole in the media. Judit  Kroo is Assistant Professor of Modern Japanese Linguistics and Comparative Cultural Studies at Arizona State University, USA. Her current projects consider the social construction of standard or desirable adulthoods in Japan and Korea, alternative economic practices among younger Japanese adults, and the construction of mediatized social personae. Luke  Lawrence is a lecturer in the Faculty of Sociology at Toyo University, Japan. His research centers around issues relating to teacher identity, especially native-speakerism and how linguistic status intersects with other aspects of identity. He is also interested in critical pedagogy and group dynamics in the English language classroom. xi

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Notes on Contributors

Yuzuko Nagashima  works at the Practical English Center at Yokohama City University, Japan. Her research interests include intersectional identities in language learning and teaching, and critical and feminist pedagogy in language classrooms. Junko  Saito  is Associate Professor of Japanese at Temple University, Japan Campus. Her research interests include sociolinguistics, pragmatics, and discourse analysis. Her studies have been published in edited books as well as journals such as Gender and Language, Pragmatics, and Journal of Pragmatics. Kyoko  Satoh is Professor of Sociolinguistics at Yokohama City University, Japan. Her research interests include display of self and identity constructions through linguistics tactics in Japanese. Momoyo  Shimazu  is a professor in the Faculty of Foreign Language Studies at Kansai University, Japan. Her research includes the analysis of Japanese learners’ discourses and the narratives of Japanese language teachers. Her ultimate aim is to use her findings to construct alternative curriculums for Japanese teacher education. Keiko  Tsuchiya  holds a PhD from Nottingham University and is an associate professor in the School of International Liberal Arts and Graduate School of Urban, Social and Cultural Studies, Yokohama City University, Japan. She is the author of Listenership Behaviours in Intercultural Encounters: A Time-Aligned Multimodal Corpus Analysis (2013). Giancarla  Unser-Schutz is an associate professor in the Faculty of Psychology at Rissho University, Tokyo, Japan. She is particularly interested in how people’s perceptions of language and media are (and are not) reflected in real language use. Her research can be read in journals such as Gender and Language, Image & Narrative, and Names. Rika Yamashita  is an associate professor in English and Linguistics at Kanto Gakuin University, Japan. Her works include a sociolinguistic monograph on Japanese-Urdu bilingual pupils (in Japanese, Hituzi Syobo, 2016) and a contribution to Handbook of Japanese Sociolinguistics on codeswitching and language crossing (2019).

List of Figures

Fig. 2.1 Discourse (re)-framing of desirable gendered styles 33 Fig. 4.1 Rina’s responses to the question “What qualities and skills do you think gurōbaru jinzai should have?” 51 Fig. 4.2 Aoi’s responses to the question “Do you think you are a gurōbaru jinzai?”52 Fig. 6.1 MS’s self-marginalisation 128 Fig. 6.2 The OP’s self-centring 129 Fig. 6.3 OP’s other-marginalisation 131 Fig. 7.1 Main characters of My Brother’s Husband (NHK BS premium drama: https://www.nhk.or.jp/pd/otto/) 149 Fig. 7.2 Yaichi’s identification of Mike 161 Fig. 8.1 Categorizing people who hugged Eito and Kanata 179 Fig. 9.1 Comparison of the terms fujoshi 190 Fig. 9.2 BL at local bookstores (photo by author) 190 Fig. 9.3 Otaku goods at 3Coins, Musashi Koganei Station, Tokyo: Ota seikatsu ōen ‘Cheering the otaku life’ (photo by author) 191

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List of Tables

Table 6.1 Table 6.2 Table 6.3 Table 9.1

Speaking time, turns and word count The list of top 20 frequent words by OP The list of top 20 frequent words by MS Posts containing fujoshi and komyushō by the OP’s selfidentification and the number of unique reply threads Table 9.2 Number of replies to target posts Table 9.3 User of emotional and humorous contextualization cues in Post 1 Table 9.4 User of emotional and humorous contextualization cues in Post 2

121 122 123 194 195 198 202

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1 Introduction Judit Kroo

Contents

1  Marginalization as Concept and Theory 2  Social Identity 3  Intersectionality 4  Ba 5  The Social World of Japan 6  Chapter Overview: Modalities of Marginalization References

 1  5  7   8  10  12  18

1 Marginalization as Concept and Theory What does it mean to be marginalized or to marginalize? In the context of global economic, social, and spatial precarity (Lorey, 2015), the marginalization of less powerful individuals by more powerful groups,

J. Kroo (*) Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 J. Kroo, K. Satoh (eds.), Linguistic Tactics and Strategies of Marginalization in Japanese, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-67825-8_1

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institutions, and other networks of power (De Certeau, 1984) seems to be all pervasive. But as to marginalization itself, what does it mean and what kind of practices are being gathered up under this umbrella of meaning? We might start by thinking through some previous work that has considered how individuals and groups come to be located as ‘outside of ’ social cores and cut off from standard or desirable practices, spaces and ways of living. For example, Agamben (1998) considered how practices and ways of being come to be understood as ‘normal’ or assumed even as they exclude certain individuals or groups (e.g. women and non-citizens). He utilized the concept of ‘exception’ or inclusion through exclusion, a state in which certain groups or individuals are still made ‘part of ’ a practice or way of being but only to the extent that they are excluded. For Agamben, this state of exception is a fundamental motivating logic of contemporary nation states and pervades all aspects of the lives and selves of individuals. The state of exception is not just a political state, but is written onto the bodies of the individuals who constitute the ‘body politic’, as well as those bodies that are from the first unworthy, illegitimate, or in other ways already ‘outside’ of the state of citizenship, including refugees, children, and those who cannot work. And so, the state of exception becomes the state of everyday life and the regulation of lives and bodies under exception is the site of contemporary biopolitics (Foucault, 1978), or the structured control of physical selves to serve the interests of existent power structures. Control and regulation are especially pertinent in the context of neoliberal economic policies (Harvey, 2005), where great numbers of lives are gathered up and turned into sites of capitalist extraction. Under neoliberalism, the self itself becomes a site of market valuation under the guise of the freedom to make the self—while neoliberalism tells us that you and I are equally free, it elides over important differences in access to practices, including differences in economic, racial, and gendered privilege. Thus, under the illusion of freedom and the narrative mythologies of accessing the “good life” (Berlant, 2011), individuals become subject to (rather than subjects of ) cultural displacement (Povinelli, 2016), gendered economic peripheralization (Inoue, 2006), and violence (Crenshaw, 1994), among others.

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Thus, while these accounts do not use the term ‘marginalization’, they nonetheless describe social structures whose articulations in everyday life including (but not limited to) unequal access to the potentialities of selfhood, to economic practice, and to political participation can be read as instances of social, racial, gender, economic, and other such marginalizations. At the same time, this way of reading marginalization treats marginalization as something that is done to an individual. To the extent that marginalization is agentive (Ahearn, 2001), it is transitive. Marginalization is what is done to an individual, group, or form of life, or what some (more powerful) actor does to a (less powerful) individual, group, or form of life. One marginalizes another and one is marginalized by another. From the perspective of a less powerful subject (the subject of ), marginalization is separate from the subject’s agency (Ahearn, 2001); it is what is done to the subject, thereby treating marginalization as an effect of existent biopolitical arrangements that delimit particular forms of life. While this perspective is useful for teasing out the sociopolitical arrangements and hierarchies that organize the lives of many individuals under capitalism, we must also consider the ways in which individuals whose selves are rendered into states of exception respond to and resist their status (Povinelli, 2011, 2016). Marginalization can be its own site of praxis, where individuals remove themselves from social contexts or put themselves into a state of exception “tactically” (De Certeau, 1984). In other words, one marginalizes oneself, to carve out a space of alternative power with respect to existent hierarchies, to establish new hierarchies, or to demonstrate the insufficiencies of presently existing power structures. The chapters in this volume all deal with the question of marginalization, but they do so in ways that pose, rather than answer, the question of marginalization: they question the relation between gendered and racialized identities and the social cores from which these identities are marginalized, offering diverse perspectives not only on what it means to be marginalized but also on the ways in which individuals can make a choice to actively ‘step outside’ the center, self-marginalize as a tactic through which they may acquire different, alternative forms of agency or power.

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Indeed, the structure of this volume as a whole may be read as its own form of active or self- marginalization, since all of the chapters focus on linguistic contexts in Japan. While non-western languages are frequently used as testing grounds for theoretical approaches, they are less commonly the site from which theory emerges (Hanks et al., 2019; Hanks, Ide, & Katagiri, 2009). In contrast, the present volume takes Japanese linguistic contexts as the place from which new theoretical insights may emerge and new formulations may be developed. It also considers marginalization within  localized linguistic praxis. Focusing on localized interactions creates possibilities to create links between the micro and macro—between broad theoretical frameworks that describe the underpinnings of social life, and individuals’ interpretation of those frameworks. Qualitative linguistic analysis of the kind that is labelled as pragmatics or discourse analysis provides a powerful tool for engaging in this form of analysis because it attends to and highlights interactional shifts, stances and alignments (see, e.g., Bucholtz, 1999, 2003, 2011; Bucholtz & Hall, 2004, 2005; Du Bois, 2007; Irvine & Gal, 2000; Matsumoto, 2002, 2004; Ochs, 1991, 1993), tracking them within and across interactions and thinking through the ways in which they reference, negotiate, contest, and/or align with broader social norms and discourses. The discussion of marginalization as both a tactic of the less powerful and a strategy of the more powerful when applied to language links several interlocking areas that have received much attention in recent literature. It is impossible to do justice to all of the ways in which concepts of marginalization have been recruited to analyze the relationship between language and the social contexts in which that language is used. In the following three sections we will therefore touch on only a few core areas in which marginalization as concept and theory has played a prominent role. These areas were chosen not only because marginalization is central to their analyses but also because these areas are ones that the chapters in this volume make reference to and contribute to debates on. Section 2 focuses on social identity, or the relationship between language use and the performance of selves. Section 3 centers on intersectionality, the ways in which individuals’ identity performances are always plural, encompassing competing, overlapping and even oppositional dimensions, where

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these competitions, overlaps and oppositions can create conditions of marginalization. Section 4 spotlights the literature on ba ‘place’, which is to say the specific contexts and spatialities in which identity performances occur. Notably, the term ba is Japanese and is suggestive of the potential for theoretical frameworks to emerge from non-western geographic contexts.

2 Social Identity To speak of marginalization is frequently to talk about the marginalization of individuals or groups as a result of some aspect of self or ‘identity’. Concepts of ‘identity’ are thus central to marginalization. But how should we theorize identity? Is it constant and singular, a kind of essential aspect of the self? Or is it shifting, multi-faceted, and plural? Significant work on linguistic aspects of social identities has offered complex treatments of these questions and emphasized their contingency and heterogeneity, which is to say the ways in which they cannot be taken for granted or assumed and the extent to which they are not consistent wholes but are rather loose, jostling collections of characteristics and patterns involving significant difference and variety. In a similar way, the linguistic practices that are associated with social identities are understood as indirectly—as opposed to directly—linked with them (Ochs, 1991, 1993). The use or non-use of a feature does not point to a broad category, for example feminine or masculine identity, but rather conveys a stance (Du Bois, 2007) that is then associated with a particular ‘kind of ’ person, where this ‘kind of ’ person labelling may carry a gendered component. Social identity or social persona conveyance also depends on this conveyance being interpreted by an interlocutor. Influential treatments of identity, for example by Bucholtz and Hall (2005), locate identities as relational, non-predetermined, and open to heterogeneity and multiplicity. For them, “identity is the social positioning of the self and other” (italics in the original) (Bucholtz & Hall, 2005: 586). These insights are also applicable to instances of socially mediated marginalization. Marginalization from a social identity or a social space is not simple, obvious or uncontested. Not all individuals who are marginalized

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from a particular space are marginalized in the same way or to the same extent. Marginalization is a site of heterogeneity. Similarly, practices associated with marginalization are diverse and any given practice by itself might not result in, or directly index, that is carry the significance of, marginalization (Silverstein, 2003). Returning to Bucholtz and Hall’s (2004, 2005) work on the linguistic realization of the performance of socially mediated identities, marginalization can be read as embedded in several aspects of the tactics of intersubjectivity framework that they propose. Bucholtz and Hall propose a system of contrastive, scalar (non-binary) characteristics: adequation and distinction, authentication and denaturalization, and authorization and illegitimation. The first pair deals with sameness and difference as a feature of social identity practice; the second with how individuals articulate understandings of what is real and artificial; and the third with institutional recognition or dismissal of social identities. In each case, the negative term in the pair can create possibilities for marginalization from a social identity or a socially produced space. While Bucholtz and Hall’s work is focused on the specific linguistic (and to a lesser extent extra-linguistic) practices through which social identities are conveyed, more abstract theorizations of marginalization with respect to individuals and socially produced spaces also make reference to how senses of self, or subjectivities and subject-hoods, are inscribed or inscribe themselves in social space. Reading the individual as a subject of and subject to while concurrently occupying a space wherein they act as a subject, exercising agency (Ahearn, 2001), can subtly shift the emphasis from mere interactional practice to a more holistic reading that incorporates what Yoda terms “concrete historical processes and material conditions” (2004: 7). Like Bucholtz and Hall, Yoda also foregrounds identities as relational and grounded in the everyday, but whereas the former used this perspective to approach linguistically encoded interactions, Yoda applies her framework to subject-hood in  the sense of the self in general. Reading through diverse accounts of language (Tokieda, 1947) and gendered identities (Butler, 1990, 1993), Yoda advocates for more complex contextually bound subject-makings and identities “that are despised as well as valorized” (2004: 220).

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Across the chapters of this book, the social facets through which marginalization is refracted are various, encompassing gender, sexuality, race, and socioeconomic and educational status. The modalities of marginalization are similarly diverse, and marginalization can be actively sought, managed, negotiated or even resisted. It can be the active movement through a despised identity, as much as it can also point toward individuals’ negotiation with valorized or desirable identities.

3 Intersectionality The perspective from the fields of identity in interaction detailed above emphasizes the ways in which identities are not internally consistent or homogenous. Another way of saying this is that social identities cannot be treated as discrete categories where what it means to be a woman is, for example, completely separate from socioeconomic status, sexuality, age and so on. Rather, and as work in the field of intersectionality (Crenshaw, 1994; Lorde, 2015 [1981]) articulates, facets of identity and difference can contribute to or mitigate marginalization. As Crenshaw points out, the very real, everyday violence that is experienced by women of color constitute an intersection of discourses of racism and patriarchy that can create marginalizations different from those of women. Consistent with this perspective, Lorde (2015 [1981]) reminds us that an emphasis on the heterogeneity of difference does not mean creating hierarchies of marginalization or succumbing to distrust: We have been taught to either ignore our difference or to view them as causes for separation and suspicion rather than as forces for change. Without community, there is no liberation, only the most vulnerable and temporary armistice between an individual and her oppression. But ­community must not mean a shedding of our differences, nor the pathetic pretense that these differences do not exist. (Lorde, 2015 [1981]: 95)

Lorde emphasizes here the delicate balancing acts that a commitment to intersectionality entails, including respecting the full range of human experiences and the heterogeneity of experiences that are gathered into

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broad social categories such as ‘women’, ‘younger adults’, ‘queer individuals’, ‘foreigners’ and so on. Respecting these differences while concurrently searching for points of commonality and community, which is to say intersections, is not only an analytic project but a political one as well. A focus on intersectionality opens up new political pathways and opportunities for engagement and community construction, ways to forge alliances that cross traditional boundaries. The chapters in this volume tackle the intersection and interrelation of facets of social personae head on—queer identities, identities of working women, non-ethnically Japanese identities are all sites of intersectionality, opening up possibilities for complex negotiations with the boundaries of what counts as standard or desirable life ways.

4 Ba The theoretical constructs described thus far are squarely located in western theoretical traditions and framing. The tendency to privilege western academic approaches in socially informed studies of language creates significant gaps and oversights. For example, such approaches frequently rely on English language data but concurrently present their insights as generally applicable. Moreover, such approaches may unknowingly present as taken for granted an understanding of the self as a discrete unit, separate from other selves, where this self exists within, but is not truly ‘part of ’, the spaces through which it moves. The consequences of such assumptions include assigning utterances to individual speakers, thus missing the ways in which utterances can be co-constructed, and treating the ‘spaces’ of interactions as contextual factors and so eliding over the ways in which interactions can ‘construct’ the spaces in which they occur. In this section, we turn to a theoretical approach that in some ways emerged outside of western academe and offers a radically different perspective on the relationship between interlocutors and spaces. In the field of Japanese pragmatics perhaps no theory has gained such wide traction as that linked to ba ‘placehood’, especially as it pertains to the relation between linguistically conveyed social identities and the socially produced spaces in which these conveyances occur. Explicitly articulated as

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distinct from western theoretical traditions, ba theory, as explicated in Ide (1989, 2006) and taken up in the framework of Emancipatory Pragmatics (Hanks et al., 2009; Hanks et al., 2019), makes strong claims regarding individuals' relational construction of identity, where relational refers both to interlocutors and to the social spaces. While ba theory has been refined and reworked over time, in its most recent form (Hanks et al., 2019), linguists working in ba theory advocate for a “theory of contextual interdependence” (Hanks et al., 2019: 64). Applying approaches to identity from the Kyoto School of philosophy, contemporary work on ba locates a primary ba ‘space’ as one devoid of distinctions between interlocutors and between individuals and their surround, with additional ‘spaces’ that are constructed through increasing parameters of distinction between speakers, interlocutors and the surrounding socially inscribed space. Ba theory thus emphasizes that space is constructed through interaction, where interactants do not comprise isolated and unconnected units. Interactants collaboratively make themselves and make each other through interaction. Ba theory might be said to reflect broader concerns within Japan-based and Japanese-focused studies of language. Of particular interest is Tokieda’s (1947) linguistic framework for analyzing Japanese. Like ba theory, Tokieda’s understanding of linguistic structures stresses the importance of attending to interactional context, to language as a form of socially inscribed performance. For Tokieda, utterances are composed of a referential component contained within a communicative component. This communicative component is deeply contextual. For example, it conveys speakers’ perspectives on referential components, where this perspective would include levels of formality, speaking situation and so on— aspects that are integral to the ba ‘placehood’ of an utterance. Interestingly, while socially informed linguistics has tended to overlook the spatialities of interactions, work outside of linguistics, including LeFebvre (1974), Soja (1996) and others, advocate for deeper treatments of the physical spaces in which interactions occur, treating space not merely as contextual or discursive but material, physical, and with its own logics, parameters, and regulatory effects. The chapters of this volume argue for a comprehensive notion of space,  not just as context but  as also implicating physical, digital, and

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social space alongside linguistic space. In this way, they interrogate the structures of space itself and demonstrate how space is both inscribed upon individuals and in turn a locus of inscription. We make the spaces (including digital spaces) through which we move but they also make us in turn.

5 The Social World of Japan In considering the margins and edges of the social world, the chapters in this volume all speak to or speak about social conditions and social structures in contemporary Japan. Many of them make explicit reference to hierarchies of inequality and precarity, whether based on socioeconomic status, gender, sexual orientation, racialized identities or age, all of which are sites of struggle through their seeming power to delimit the spaces of possible actions and through their ability to gather up and articulate socially salient discourses. The state of continuing, seemingly endless precarity that has marked contemporary Japan since the collapse of the 1980s asset bubble has led to diverse, sometimes seemingly unrelated, effects. Younger adults are coming of age at a time when more and more individuals are cut off from so-called seishain ‘regular, full-time worker’ jobs and are employed as contract workers (Brinton, 2010). Such workers frequently do the same work as seishain; however, their pay is significantly lower and they are excluded from many of the benefits of seishain. In the decades since the relaxation of labor laws and the neoliberalization of the labor market under the Koizumi administration, it is estimated that over 30% of workers are now engaged as contract workers or hiseishain ‘non-regular, non-fulltime workers’ (Yamada, 2015). While recent developments such as the Hataraki Kaikaku ‘Work Style Reform Law’ passed in 2018 include language that is meant to ensure that hiseishain ‘non-regular’ workers will earn equal pay for the work that they do, analysts argue that the effect of this law will be to reduce labor costs for corporations by enabling them to cut back on benefits to permanent employees and lowering their salaries (Okutsu & Sugiura, 2018).

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At the same time, women continue to find themselves subject to diverse forms of economic marginalization. For example, Japan ranks 121 out of 153 countries surveyed in terms of gender equality and continues to rank the lowest among G7 economies (Osaki, 2019). Social factors that contribute to this ranking include the lack of participation of women in the political sphere, the low percentage of women in leadership positions at corporations, and the lack of parity in pay. The difficulties associated with full social and economic participation are also experienced by individuals whose racialized identities locate them as ‘non-Japanese’ (Ryall, 2019). Without marriage to a Japanese national (and even in the context of such a marriage), it is very difficult for non-­ ethnic Japanese to gain Japanese citizenship, and as such non-ethnic Japanese are effectively excluded from the country’s political life. In the context of Japan’s shooshikooreika shakai ‘society of decreasing birthrate and aging population’, government policies have supported an influx of non-Japanese workers to combat shortages in elder care nursing facilities, and  construction and cleaning services, among others. However, these workers continue to suffer ill treatment, low pay, difficult conditions and everyday racism, which make it difficult for them to live long term in Japan (Ryall, 2019). In particular, while Japan has a severe worker shortage across multiple sectors, policies aimed at attracting foreign workers are designed to be temporary or short term, with the understanding that the worker eventually return to their ‘own’ country. While analysis of this trend (Ryall, 2019) has tended to focus on lower wage blue-collar workers, it is by no means restricted to these types of jobs—indeed, more prestigious jobs associated with white-collar professions such as education can also be read through this lens. For example, the English language teaching program JET, which hires recent college graduates to teach in Japanese public schools, pays for a return ticket to and from Japan, underscoring that participation is both designed to be temporary and to be followed by departure from Japan itself (jetprogramme.org). Finally, while the foregoing has emphasized the ways in which precarities and exclusionary social hierarchies are articulated across large-scale social categories, marginalization and peripheralization are also deeply implicated in the performance of complex social personae. Returning to

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the discussion of intersectionality, and as chapters in this volume underscore, it is not the case that all women in Japan are subject to identical forms of marginalization or that they all have access to the same resources for negotiating and contending with the terms of their marginalization (Tachibanaki, 2008). This point is also important with respect to identities or personae that are considered central with respect to some criteria but not others. For example, gendered identities that are masculine marked and do not conform to heterosexual norms can be concurrently marginalized and have access to certain forms of power (Kroo, 2018).

6 C  hapter Overview: Modalities of Marginalization The chapters that follow offer a complex perspective on marginalization, one that incorporates both marginalization from social loci as a strategy of powerful, normalizing networks, individuals, and institutions, and self-marginalization as a tactic of less powerful individuals. As a tactic of the less powerful, the chapters demonstrate how marginalization can result in the destabilization of center/periphery hierarchies. As a strategy, they point to the persistent regulatory effects of large-scale discourses and ideologies. And in the tension between tactic and strategy they point to ways in which marginalization articulates and provides analytic entry into a wide array of seemingly unrelated linguistic and extra-linguistic practices. The chapters are organized into two parts and broadly divided by topic. The first half of the book (Chaps. 2–6) treats natural language data across a variety of interactional contexts. Chapters 2 and 3 focus on the ways in which Japanese university students navigate and manage marginalization both in naturally occurring daily conversation and in more organized self-narratives. In contrast to contexts that bookend it (high school and entry into the working world), the space of Japanese university, as an interactional context and a site of self-making, has not received much attention in the literature. However, as these studies demonstrate, university is a liminal space that combines aspects of school and working-world contexts. As they move through

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university, younger adults confront potential marginalization related to social expectations, including gendered expectations, and with respect to standard or desirable economic sphere practice. Their responses to these precarities hint at the diversity of tactics available to individuals in their negotiation of marginalization and risk and at the ways in which these tactics have the potential to resist or prop up dominant ideological schema. In Chap. 2, Judit Kroo looks at the ways in which young women subtly re-work interpretations of what counts as standard or desirable gendered personae or practice. Kroo uses the term discourse (re)-framing to describe linguistic practices through which individuals take stances toward conversation salient discourses that also re-make those discourses and analyzes one linguistic element, utterance final mitai na, that is associated with discourse (re)-framing. Using natural conversation examples from a group of cheerleaders at a university in Yokohama, Kroo demonstrates how they use mitai na to re-work what counts as desirable femininity and standard dating practice, arguing that although younger women may appear to be conforming to normative gendered expectations, they are doing so in ways that alter the composition of those gendered expectations—in other words, apparent conformation is a site of an indirect resistance. In this way, these younger adults re-make the sites of their own potential marginalization, locating themselves as futsuu ‘ordinary’. The logic of re-making oneself as ordinary or standard in order to confront potential marginalization is also at stake in Chap. 3. Andrew Barke and Momoyo Shimazu use questionnaires and self-narratives of younger adults going through shuushoku katsudoo ‘job-hunting activities’ and demonstrate the extent to which individuals may find it necessary to avoid speaking directly about international experiences such as study abroad, re-making their experiences so that they conform to dominant ideological expectations of what counts as a desirable job candidate. Their analysis shows that while study abroad experiences are sites generally understood as loci of privilege, within the specific context of Japanese job interviews, they can also become sources of marginalization as they suggest that the individual is not fully integrated within the Japanese cultural framework.

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In the context of marginalization, these two studies demonstrate the diverse ways in which younger adults may respond to expectations regarding standard or desirable life practice. They show that even as younger adults may indirectly resist dominant ideological schema, these resistances are frequently indirect or covert. At the same time, such schema continue to exert significant pressure on individuals who may face very real consequences and life-altering precarities, including marginalization, from economic practice. Chapters 4, 5, and 6 are focused on individuals negotiating structured marginalization in workplace contexts. Despite the introduction of legal structures designed to promote greater female participation in the workforce, Japan continues to lag in female representation in government and business management roles. Similarly, even as population decline and population aging have made the necessity of non-ethnic Japanese individuals for sustaining the Japanese work force evident, so-called gaikokujin ‘foreigners’ continue to suffer significant workplace and social marginalization. The navigation of multiple, at times competing, facets of self-identity creates environments in which the intersectionality of social personae are brought to the fore. As Kyoko Satoh shows in her analysis of the complex self-narrative of a female actress (Chap. 4), the practices associated with negotiation of these intersecting selves involve both agentive self-construction against dominant narratives and calculated self-regulation. Satoh pays particular attention to the actress’s narratives of gendered marginalization and shows how the actress constructs alternative selves and embodied voices. These selves correspond to past and present interpretations of self-identity, while embodied voices articulate the stances and orientations of the actress’s family and surrounding social network. Navigating these voices and selves, Satoh’s analysis sheds light on the ways in which the actress’s layered narratives of work, gender and family personae intersect and collide. In Chap. 5, Yuzuko Nagashima and Luke Lawrence use intersectionality more explicitly as a framework for thinking through how non-­ Japanese, non-native speaker English Language Teachers in Japan confront multiple levels of discrimination and marginalization in the workplace. Nagashima and Lawrence’s account emphasizes both the

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diversity of forms of marginalization between individuals and the ways in which these forms can be mapped onto common axes such as gender, class and racist/nationalist ideologies. That is to say, even as there are many particular forms of marginalization, there are common threads. Looking at the intersection of gendered and racialized discourses thus reveals how individuals’ experiences align with and concurrently exceed any broad social categorization and underscores the need to pay attention to the complexity of such individual experiences. Finally, Keiko Tsuchiya uses data from the highly specialized work environment of the Japanese parliament to show how female politicians navigate environments of near-constant marginalization (Chap. 6). Tsuchiya analyzes the linguistic strategies that female politicians employ in parliamentary debates and finds a mix of marginalization strategies: female politicians mitigate the marginalization of their peers through tactical self-marginalization; locate their epistemic state within a broader center of taken-for-granted knowledge (self-centering); and assert their epistemic state as a center with respect to others’ non-central epistemic states (other marginalization). Through a close, detailed analysis of these tactics, Tsuchiya’s study reveals the ways in which female politicians must regulate and modulate their speech styles in order to navigate spaces in which they are structurally marginalized. The final part of the book (Chaps. 7–10) changes focus from natural language data to mediatized data, not only considering how individuals navigate social personae performances and identity alignments in media settings but also looking at how certain kinds of personae are depicted in media products. Chapters 7 and 8 consider LGBTQIA+-marked identities as they are depicted in media materials and as they are performed by individuals in mediatized settings. While Japan has a history of non-heteronormative media personalities, these gendered performances are confined to specific media spaces, and frequently restricted to specific personae styles, offering a very limited and frequently othering perspective on non-­ heteronormative identities and practices. Junko Saito’s discussion of the presentation of a male gay character in a television drama (Chap. 7) highlights how non-heteronormative identities become implicated in membership categorization work that can

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uphold or reinforce standard or dominant gendered ideologies, contributing to continuing marginalization. At the same time, membership categorization also offers a way to combat marginalization, by locating identities, selves and practices within dominant ideological categories. Tracking the categorization of a gay male character across the length of a television drama, Saito shows how this character is gradually located as a member of the category ‘family’. Saito argues that mediatized representations that depict the acceptance of once marginalized identities into centrally positioned social categories can shape commonly held societal perceptions of those identities, not only rendering them visible but also marking them as non-deviant and ‘normal’. In other words, mediatized representations of trajectories of de-marginalization can have sociopolitical consequences in the real world. Gavin Furukawa’s analysis of LGBTQIA+ YouTube personalities (Chap. 8) offers a different perspective on how media, in this case social media, can function as a salient site for the creation of ibasho ‘social spaces’ that support otherwise marginalized identities. These ibasho can be laminated onto existing spatialities, like the street corners where the YouTube personalities discussed by Furukawa offer free hugs, or they can be completely virtual, a point which is discussed at greater length in Giancarla Unser-Schutz’s work on fujoshi ‘rotten girl’ chat rooms (Chap. 9). But in either case they are always contingent, negotiated sites and associated with shifting, diverse linguistic styles. The findings in these chapters emphasize the extent to which ibasho ‘social spaces’ and categories associated with the marginal and the marginalized force a reconsideration of what counts as a sociocultural context. If spaces and categories are understood as be contingent and open to negotiation and reinterpretation, then so too are the linguistically articulated pragmatics with which they are associated. Put another way, we cannot assume a socially inflected pragmatics linked to context or space when these concepts are themselves a locus of debate. Chapters 9 and 10 deal with interactionally performed identities in digital spaces, on messaging boards (Chap. 9) and Twitter (Chap. 10). While Chap. 9 explores the linguistically encoded performances of fujoshi ‘rotten girls’, Chapter 10 examines the ways in which haafuru ‘biracial’ Japanese individuals narrate negative, marginalizing experiences. Both of

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these social personae categories are deeply enmeshed in Japan-specific cultural frameworks and do not have readily available correlates outside of Japan. At the same time, the digitally mediated self-narratives and linguistic performances of individuals who claim membership in these categories point to broader tactics and strategies available to individuals whose alignments and selves do not conform to normative ideologies. In Chap. 9, Giancarla Unser-Schutz analyzes messaging boards associated with fujoshi ‘rotten girls’—that is girls who consume sexually explicit male-male comics called BL ‘boys love’ comics. These comics are primarily aimed at female audiences. Unser-Schutz focuses on linguistics tactics (De Certeau, 1984) used by fujoshi to construct community and to manage negative criticism. Analysis of instances of apparent self-denigration within fujoshi communities demonstrates how self-denigration has the potential (not always realized) to function as humor and to create solidarity between marginalized individuals. Unser-Schutz’s analysis emphasizes that not all attempts at humorous self-denigration are successful and that they contain risks for misinterpretation, further underscoring the ways in which marginalized communities are subject to additional interpretative burdens and precarities. Finally, in Chap. 10 Rika Yamashita discusses Twitter posts with the hashtag haafu aruaru ‘that happens to biracial [individuals]’. As Yamashita observes, aruaru ‘it happens’ is frequently attached to practices, issues, experiences and other forms of commonality within a given socially salient group, such as individuals who live in a particular area of Japan or who attend a certain university. She shows how individuals’ use of specific linguistic structures re-frames individual experiences as collective experience and, using a shared hashtag, as searchable talk. Probing the potential for these tweets to become loci of activism, Yamashita demonstrates the potential for biracial individuals to strategically construct agentive stances that challenge microaggressions and other forms of marginalization. Both these chapters demonstrate the political power of intersectionality in the Japanese context. They show how individuals can tactically re-­ construct strategies of marginalization, turning denigration into community-building humor or alternatively using commonality and collective experience to challenge personally painful experiences of othering or microaggression.

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References Agamben, G. (1998). Homo sacer: Sovereign power and bare life. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Ahearn, L. (2001). Language and agency. Annual Review of Anthropology, 30, 109–137. Berlant, L. (2011). Cruel Optimism. Durham: Duke University Press. Brinton, M. (2010). Lost in transition: Youth, work and instability in postindustrial Japan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bucholtz, M. (1999). “Why be normal?”: Language and identity practices in a community of nerd girls. Language and Society, 28(2), 203–223. Bucholtz, M. (2003). Sociolinguistic nostalgia and the authentication of identity. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 7(3), 398–416. Bucholtz, M. (2011). White kids: Language, race and styles of youth identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bucholtz, M., & Hall, K. (2004). Theorizing identity in language and sexuality research. Language in Society, 33(4), 469–515. Bucholtz, M., & Hall, K. (2005). Language and identity. In: Duranti A (ed) A companion to linguistic anthropology. Blackwell Reference Online. Retrieved from http://www.blackwellreference.com/subscriber/tocnode.html?id= g9781405144308_chunk_g978140514430819. Butler, J. (1990). Gender trouble. New York: Routledge. Butler, J. (1993). Bodies that matter. New York: Routledge. Crenshaw, K. W. (1994). Mapping the margins: Intersectionality, identity politics, and violence against women of color. In M. A. Fineman & R. Mykitiuk (Eds.), The public nature of violence (pp. 93–114). New York: Routledge. De Certeau, M. (1984). The practice of everyday life. Berkeley: University of California Press. Du Bois, J. W. (2007). The stance triangle. In R. Englebretson (Ed.), Stancetaking in discourse – Subjectivity, evaluation, interaction (pp. 139–182). Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company. Foucault, M. (1978). A history of sexuality: Vol. 1 An introduction. Trans. Hurley R. New York: Pantheon Books. Hanks, W. F., Ide, S., & Katagiri, Y. (2009). Towards an emancipatory pragmatics. Journal of Pragmatics, 41(1), 1–9. Hanks, W.  F., Ide, S., Katagiri, Y., Saft, S., Fujii, Y., & Ueno, K. (2019). Communicative interaction in terms of ba theory: Towards and innovative approach to language practice. Journal of Pragmatics, 145, 63–71.

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Harvey, D. (2005). A brief history of neoliberalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ide, S. (1989). Formal forms and discernment: two neglected aspects of universals of linguistic politeness. Multilingua, 8, 223–248. Ide, S. (2006). Wakimae no Goyooron [The Pragmatics of Discernment]. Tokyo: Taishukan. Inoue, M. (2006). Vicarious language: Gender and linguistic modernity in Japan. Berkeley: University of California Press. Irvine, J. T., & Gal, S. (2000). Language ideology and linguistic differentiation. In P. V. Kroskrity (Ed.), Regimes of language: Ideologies, polities and identities (pp. 35–84). Santa Fe: School of American Research Press. Kroo, J. (2018). Herbivore men’ and interlocutor constructed language. Journal of Asian Pacific Communication, 28(2), 253–282. Lefebvre, H. (1974). The production of space. Maldon: Blackwell Publishing. Lorde, A. (2015 [1981]). The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. In C.  Moraga & G.  Anzaldua (Eds.), The bridge called my back: Writings by radical women of color fourth edition (pp.  94–97). Albany: SUNY Press. Lorey, I. (2015). State of insecurity: Government of the precarious. Trans. Derieg A. Brooklyn: Verso. Matsumoto, Y. (2002). Gender identity and the presentation of self in Japanese. In S. Benor, M. Rose, D. Sharma, J. Sweetland, & Q. Zhang (Eds.), Gendered practices in language (pp. 339–354). Stanford: CSLI Publications. Matsumoto, Y. (2004). Alternative femininity: Personae of middle-aged mothers. In S. Okamoto & J. S. Shibamoto Smith (Eds.), Japanese language, ­gender, and ideology: Cultural models and real people (pp.  240–255). New  York: Oxford University Press. Ochs, E. (1991). Indexing gender. In A.  Duranti & C.  Goodwin (Eds.), Rethinking context: Language as an interactive phenomenon (pp.  335–358). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ochs, E. (1993). Constructing social identity: A language socialization perspective. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 26(3), 287–306. Okutsu, A., & Sugiura, E. (2018). Five things to know about Japan’s work reform law. Nikkei Asian Review, 29 June. Retrieved June 15, 2020, from https://asia.nikkei.com/Economy/Five-­t hings-­t o-­k now-­a bout-­Japan-­ s-­work-­reform-­law. Osaki, T. (2019). From bad to worse: Japan slides 11 places to 121st in global gender equality ranking. The Japan Times, 17 December. Retrieved June 15, 2020, from https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2019/12/17/national/social-­ issues/japan-­121st-­global-­gender-­equality-­ranking/#.Xoy5dC2ZMWo.

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Povinelli, E. (2011). Economies of abandonment. Durham: Duke University Press. Povinelli, E. (2016). Geontologies. Durham: Duke University Press. Ryall, J. (2019). Japan: Now open to foreign workers, but still just as racist? This Week in Asia, 11 May. Retrieved June 15, 2020, from https://www.scmp. com/week-­a sia/politics/article/3009800/japan-­n ow-­o pen-­f oreign-­ workers-­still-­just-­racist. Silverstein, M. (2003). Indexical order and the dialectics of social life. Language and Communication, 23, 193–229. Soja, E.  W. (1996). Thirdspace: Journeys to Los Angeles and other Real-and-­ Imagined places. Maldon: Blackwell Publishing. Tachibanaki, T. (2008). Jo Third space Kakusa [Female Female Inequality]. Tokyo: Tooyoo Keizai Shinhoosha. Tokieda, M. (1947). Kokugogaku Genron [Principles of Japanese Linguistics]. Tokyo: Iwatami Shoten. Yamada, M. (2015). Naze wakamono wa hoshuka shita no ka: kiboo o usui tuzukeru Nihon shakai no shinjitsu [Why have young people become conservative: The reality of Japanese society where dreams continue to become weak]. Tokyo: Asahi Bunko. Yoda, T. (2004). Gender and national literature: Heian texts in the constructions of Japanese modernity. Durham: Duke University Press.

Part I Marginalization and Natural Language Data

2 Strategies of Discourse (Re)-Framing as Micropolitics Among Contemporary Japanese University Students Judit Kroo

Contents

1  Introduction 2  Discourse (Re)-Framing 3  Forms of Mitai Na 4  Data 5  Analysis 6  Discussion and Conclusion References

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1 Introduction The discourse that surrounds contemporary Japanese younger adults at the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century seems highly bleak. Social facts such as continuing population super-aging, the fraying of

J. Kroo (*) Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 J. Kroo, K. Satoh (eds.), Linguistic Tactics and Strategies of Marginalization in Japanese, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-67825-8_2

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community and social ties (Allison, 2013), increasing lack of job security (Brinton, 2010), and the apparent failure of contemporary youth to participate in ‘core’ social practices such as romantic relationships (Semuels, 2017; Ushikubo, 2015) have created narratives of Japanese social precarity and national decline (Furuichi, 2011; Yamada, 2015). Central to these narratives is the idea that such ‘core’ social practices that were once taken for granted, including stable jobs, home ownership and marriage, are perceived to be falling out of reach for ‘non-elite’ younger adults. While recognizing the precarity and insecurity faced by contemporary younger adults, recent scholarship also depicts younger adults as increasingly aligned with conservative social discourses, where the shift toward conservatism is attributed to the precarities of contemporary life in Japan (Ushikubo, 2015; Yamada, 2015). For example, younger women are more likely than their parents to aspire for conservative family arrangements in which male partners are primary income earners and women take care of the home (Yamada, 2015). These analyses argue that as social practices that were once taken for granted become more and more difficult for younger adults to attain, they take on an aspirational cast. The increasing unavailability of practices linked to being futsuu ‘ordinary’, as in the phrase futsuu no ningen ‘ordinary person’, is noted in the decline in participation in what might be called normative social practices. While 90% of younger adults in their 20s describe themselves as wanting to get married, 60% of women and 76% of men in their 20s reported in 2014 that they were single, a stark change from statistics collected in 1987 when 35% of women and 43% of men reported that they were single (Ushikubo, 2015). Even research that considers possible responses or forms of resistance toward these social challenges consigns many individuals to passive acceptance of existing norms. For example, Furuichi (2011) suggests that younger adults’ reaction to large-scale social changes is to take refuge in small, contained communities bound by predominantly material consumption-­ based interests and argues that a  rejection of alternative practice is in fact desirable. Similarly, while Allison (2013) considers the potentialities of alternative social spaces, she emphasizes that resistance and change most frequently come from marginalized groups.

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In contrast, the current chapter argues that change and indirect resistance do not always emerge from the edges but can also be found in the practices of younger adults who are seen as futsuu ‘ordinary’. It uses data collected from extended ethnographic research with university-aged Japanese students and argues that discussion of and alignment with conservative-­seeming practices can be a site of indirect political resistance. That is to say, while the normative practice-linked discourse may not appear to change, individuals’ stance-takings and the resulting (re)-framings within an indexical field (Eckert, 2008) can undermine and ultimately shift those discourses. The subtle shifting of indexical characteristics associated with broader social discourses is described here as discourse (re)-framing and is achieved through a range of linguistic tactics of which lamination will be the most discussed in this chapter. While discourse (re)-framing can be associated with a range of linguistic elements it is considered here in the context of the linguistic element mitai na ‘be like’. This chapter is organized as follows. The next section describes the theoretical frameworks employed in this chapter, including discourse (re)framing and lamination, and then turns to a discussion of the mitai na construction. Examples from the everyday conversations of contemporary Japanese university students are analyzed and discussion and conclusions follow.

2 Discourse (Re)-Framing This chapter invokes discourse (re)-framing as a way to talk about the construction and reconstruction of social schema and social discourse. ‘Frame’ and ‘frame analysis’ are taken from Goffman (1974) and refer to individuals’ definitions of a situation, event or discourse. These definitions are never static but are continually negotiated sites of contention. Particular frames are achieved or expressed through (repeated) stance-­ takings or continually negotiated positionings with respect to an interaction salient discourse (Du Bois, 2007) where taking a stance is a linguistic or extra-linguistic act that can establish the frame(s) through which that discourse is made legible. While linguistic studies of stance generally

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emphasize the way in which items can convey complex, relational positionings of the speaker, interlocutor and stance object, the theoretical framework of stance also creates possibilities for individuals’ stance-­ takings to impact the stance object with respect to which the stance is taken. That is to say, through individuals’ stance-takings, discourse objects are not only framed but also re-framed. Discourses are available for continual (re)-framing or transformations of frames that can result in ‘laminations’ of multiple interpretations or definitions. In this chapter, I use lamination to refer to a speaker’s linguistically enacted layering of social meanings which may result in (re)-framing such that ‘definitions’ remain visible or leave traces as they are reworked into new ‘definitions’. Discourse (re)-framing is the result of (an) instance(s) of stance-taking(s), achieved through tactics (De Certeau, 1984) such as lamination through which the stance object itself is altered. Discourse (re)-framings can be considered the site of micropolitical practice (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987; Gilliam, 2017). For Deleuze and Guattari (1987) large-scale political discourses, or ‘segments’, are inextricably bound up with localized, seemingly unrelated individual practices. This point is important for the following discussion because across the examples discussed here individuals appear to be invoking and even aligning with normative discourses. However, as the discussion shows, when the speakers in the conversations analyzed here take up seemingly normative discourses, they are not necessarily rejecting or expressing direct resistance to these discourses but, as De Certeau writes of the ‘making do’ of colonized individuals, are ‘using’ (De Certeau, 1984: 32) them in ways that diverge from the normative ideologies with which they are associated. Discourse (re)-framing via lamination is a micropolitical practice, a ‘tactic’ of less powerful individuals against the ‘strategies’ of broad regulatory frameworks (De Certeau, 1984). This chapter takes utterance final mitai na as a case study for how discourse (re)-framing might work out in natural language. However, this is not meant to suggest that discourse (re)-framing is restricted to this element. Mitai na forms are one in a range of similar stance-conveying linguistic constructions—others include shi ‘and also’ (McGloin & Konishi, 2010) and to iu ‘what is called’, which might also have similar social meaning aspects. Rather, the discussion of this chapter emphasizes that

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younger adults, who seem to be conforming to normative expectations, in fact convey much more complex alignments. It further hypothesizes that the accretion of small, everyday discursive (re)-framings contains the potential to shift broad social ideologies.

3 Forms of Mitai Na Mitai na ‘be like’ is not a single construction but encompasses a range of related constructions. These related uses of mitai na are given below in (1). In (1a), the prenominal use, the mitai na construction modifies the noun hito ‘person’ such that a relationship of similarity obtains between chichi oya ‘father’ and hito ‘person’. In (1b), on the other hand, the relationship between the abstract nominal kanji ‘thing/feeling’ and the complex nominal sabaku no naka no oashisu ‘an oasis in the desert’ is not so clear. Here, kanji is an abstract nominal, a noun that indexes abstract sensations and emotions. Finally, in (1c), the utterance final use, which is the focus of this chapter, mitai na is ‘dangling’ (Matsumoto, 2018) in that there is no nominal to which it is attached. (1) Uses of mitai na ‘be like’ a. Prenominal mitai na chichi oya mitai na hito father MITAI NA person A person who is like my father b. Use with abstract nominals, for example kanji ‘feeling/thing’ sabaku no naka no oashisu mitai na kanji desert GEN inside GEN oasis MITAI NA feeling/thing It’s like a feeling/thing of an oasis in the desert c. Utterance final use—pragmatic-like element (Matsumoto, 2018: 80) nanka miru mono nai ne mitai na it’s like see object not isn’t it MITAI NA it’s like “there’s nothing to watch, is there”

In general, utterance final mitai na as well as mitai na as it is used with the abstract nominal kanji ‘feeling, thing’, that is mitai na kanji ‘something like that’, is identified with the speaking styles of younger Japanese

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adults and has been linked to speakers’ conveying their perspectives on an utterance (Fujii, 2006; Hoshino, 2008; Matsumoto, 2018; Maynard, 2005; Suzuki, 1995). Matsumoto (2018) treats utterance final mitai na (1c) as a grammatical construction, albeit one that is closely related to and developed from other mitai na constructions. This chapter adopts her analysis of the discourse functions of utterance final mitai na. In Matsumoto (2018), this is referred to as the Dangling Mitai na Construction (DMC), distinguishing it from other uses of mitai na. Following Matsumoto’s terminology this chapter refers to the utterance final mitai na construction as either DMC or DMC mitai na, to distinguish it from other related constructions (1a–b). Matsumoto argues that the DMC should be seen as a construction which ‘conveys the speaker’s stance […][and] invites addressee involvement’ (2018: 82). Her analysis underscores the interactional or relational aspects of the DMC, emphasizing the solicitation of addressee participation. At the same time, by locating the DMC as a construction that conveys stance,  this analysis of the DMC contains the possibility for incorporating it within broader theoretical frameworks that attempt to treat stance and framing more broadly within language, a topic that will be taken up in greater detail in the following section.

4 Data The data discussed here comes from individuals whose practices appear to be the unmarked norm (Bucholtz, 2011) against which the heterogeneous practices and styles of the periphery are defined. In particular, the speakers are all university students at a mid-high academic university, Ichi U., located in a suburb of Yokohama. While the university is considered by its students to be somewhat suburban, there are regular trains enabling students to reach central Yokohama within 30 minutes and central Tokyo within 1.25 hours. As a public university, Ichi U. has a relatively strong domestic reputation even though students frequently refer to it as a suberidome ‘backup school’, that is the school they ended up going to because they either did not get into or could not afford their first choice of university (usually a

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top-tier private university in Tokyo itself ). As Akira, a male second-year student noted, the perceived shuushokuritsu ‘percentage of students who get a job offer’ is very high—dakara futsuu ni yareba ukaru ‘therefore, as long as one does [things] in the usual way, they will be accepted [into a company]’. The students of Ichi U. are neither subaltern nor elite—they are privileged in that attending Ichi U. futsuu ni ‘in the usual way’ enables many of them to attain a middle-class life after graduation, but they are at the same time aware that they are not attending an elite educational institution. Research was conducted between 2014 and 2018: in particular, in June–August of 2014, October–December of 2015, August 2016, October 2017–August 2018 and June–July 2019. The data collected at Ichi U. encompasses both interactions where I was present and those which the participants recorded themselves; however, the interactions below are from recordings where I was not present. Participants were initially recruited via flyers and then introduced me to their friends and extended social networks. The larger data set comprises roughly 60 hours of both voice and video recordings, but this chapter considers a subset of three hours of voice recordings over two interactions. All participants consented to both video and audio recording and all of the names used here are pseudonyms chosen by the participants. The four individuals whose interactions are analyzed here are all members of the Ichi U. cheerleading club. Seina and Hana (2) were both second-­year students at the time of the recording; Yui was a second-year student and Tomoko was a third-year student at the time of the recording (3). The individuals were given a recording device and asked to record a casual conversation and no topic was provided. The speakers in this study used DMC mitai na as well as other mitai na constructions extensively—there seemed to be no relationship between the use of mitai na and gendered styles, age (first years versus more senior students) and whether or not I was present. In the following examples, DMC mitai na will be bolded and capitalized in the Japanese. To give a sense of how it is being used by speakers and also to clearly demarcate DMC mitai na from other similar linguistic items, including other forms of mitai na, it will also be marked in the English. Instances of overlap are marked with left brackets at the point of overlap, vowel lengthening is

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marked with two colon markers [::] and false starts in words are marked with a dash. No punctuation is given in the Japanese transcription but is noted in the English translation. Laughter is marked with {hhh}.

5 Analysis 5.1

Discourse (re)-framing and Female Strength

The examples in the following sections consider how lamination via the use of mitai na constructions (DMC) may be associated with discourse (re)-framing, or instances where (re)-framings are not consistent with dominant ideologies concerning standard or normative practices and gendered styles. Ichi U.’s cheerleading club, of which Seina and Hana are both members, is highly ranked at the national level and hopes to compete internationally. It is known on campus for its rigorous physical training regime as well as the close friendships of its members. In (2), Seina and Hana discuss how the physical strength that comes from participation in cheerleading has made it possible for them to perform physical practices that are otherwise the domain of their male peers. They contextualize these physical practices under the discourse jifu ‘self-confidant’ femininities. (2) Context: Seina and Hana discuss their physical strength in the context of their peers, who are unable to carry heavy weights. 1 Seina: kinoo mo zemi de ano, zemi shitsu ni metcha danberu toka ippai aru n desu yo omori toka kyuu kiro sore o kinoo jikken de tsukatta n desu kedo Yesterday, too, during seminar, ummm, so there’s like a lot of dumbbells and so on in the seminar classroom, the weight is like 9 kgs, and we were trying them out yesterday for experiments 2 Seina: otoko no hito wa sono jikken no toki ni motte yatteta n desu kedo owatta toki ni asobi de chotto kyuu kiro no omori onna no ko no tomodachi to motte miyoo ttsu tte And some guys were using them when we were trying them out, and when we finished, I said to my friend who’s a girl, “We should try lifting the 9 kilo weights.”

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3 Seina: tomodachi e omoi:: toka itte watashi futsuu ni motte yatte, nanka o::- onna no ko ni sore o motsu no wa sugoi desu ne mitai na iwarete And my friend was like “Wow, they’re heavy!” but I just picked them up like I would anything, and they were like [MITAI NA] “Wow! That’s amazing that a gi- girl can pick them up, isn’t it,” I was told. 4 Hana: {hhh} ya::ba:: {laugh} That’s crazy. 5 Seina: a::- arigatoo gozaimasu mitai na dateni kitaetenakatta n de mitai na kanji deshita macho hakki And it was like [MITAI NA] thank you very much. It was like [MITAI NA KANJI], I didn’t train just to look cool, performing macho. 6 Hana: watashi mo byooin de konna massuru aru onna no ko mita koto nai tte yappa soo nan da: tte omotte Me too, at the hospital they were like “I’ve never seen a girl with such muscles,” I thought I guess that’s to be expected. 7 Seina: jifu shitemasu yo ne. sokora hen no onna no ko to wa chigau mitai na You were proud of yourself right. It’s like [MITAI NA] “We’re different from the average girl.” Seina describes her carrying of the 9-kg weights, which she decided to try carrying ‘for fun’ asobi de (line 2), and notes that while her friend struggled, e omoi:: toka itte ‘she was like, “Wow, they’re heavy!”’, she herself was able to carry them futsuu ni ‘like I would anything’ (line 3). Her first use of the DMC occurs in line 3 where she recounts ‘being told’ iwarete that ‘they were like [MITAI NA], “Wow! That’s amazing that a gi- girl can pick them up, isn’t it,”’ o::- onna no ko ni sore o motsu no wa sugoi desu ne mitai na. In line 3, Seina uses the DMC to describe the indexical values of normative femininity, or more specifically femininity as it is understood by her female friend, for whom carrying such weight is impossible ‘for a girl’ onna no ko ni (line 3). However, Seina sees such practices differently—the acquisition of muscles makes it possible for her to perform such otherwise masculine-linked practices asobi de ‘for fun’. If the use of DMC mitai na in line 3 conveys Seina’s perspective on the normative indexical values associated with physical strength and femininity, her use of mitai na constructions in lines 5 and 7 first (re)-frames female

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strength, laminating practices into alternatively desirable and undesirable discourses of femininity. First, in line 5, Seina uses the DMC to modify the formal -MASU-verb form of ‘thank you’ arigatoo gozaimasu. She then uses the mitai na form attached to abstract nominals while emphasizing that her physical strength is not linked to the performance of masculinity: dateni kitaetenakatta n de mitai na kanji deshita, macho hakki ‘It’s like [MITAI NA KANJI] I didn’t train just to look cool, performing macho’ (line 5). Here, Seina conveys her understanding of the conventional indexical link between masculinity and physical strength but locates her own physicality as distinct from masculine-marked macho. The use of abstract nominal form of mitai na, that is mitai na kanji ‘an impression/feeling like’, further suggests an external object or kanji ‘feeling/impression’ that is being described, creating a distance between Seina’s physical practice and the kind of strength training that is done to emulate boys, which she denies taking part in. Laminating physical strength onto desirable femininity is further underscored by the use of futsuu ni ‘as I would normally’ (line 3). By attaching the phrase to a discussion of carrying heavy weights, it downplays the unusualness of the event, rendering it ordinary, standard or expected and also suggesting that not being able to carry weight is out of the ordinary or non-standard. In line 6, Hana supports Seina’s discussion of her physical strength with an anecdote of her own. At the time of the recording, Hana had recently undergone surgery to repair a torn ligament, which involved a long period of recovery in the hospital. In line 6 she describes her experience during hospitalization where unspecified individuals commented that konna massuru aru onna no ko mita koto nai ‘I’ve never seen a girl with such muscles’ (line 6). Her internal response at that time was that yappa soo nan da: ‘I guess that’s to be expected’. This response suggests that, like Seina, Hana also recognizes that there is a category of standard feminine-marked physicality from which her own embodiment departs. Finally, in line 7 Seina offers a reassessment of her and Hana’s physically embodied style. She first suggests that Hana must have been ‘proud’ jifu at hearing this: jifu shitemasu yo ne ‘you were proud of yourself right’. She then links this jifu ‘pride in oneself, self-confidence’ to an alternative femininity that is positioned as preferable to other forms of feminine practice: sokora hen no onna no ko to wa chigau mitai na ‘It was like

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[MITAI NA] “I’m different from the average girl”’ (line 6). Here the phrase sokora hen ‘the average’ literally means ‘over there’, but it can be used metaphorically as in this instance to indicate the average or standard for an interactionally defined group, place and so on. This difference, which is located in the physical practices and resulting embodiments of Seina and Hana, is not an alignment with masculine-­ marked practice. Rather, Seina (re)-frames the discourse surrounding desirable femininity by laminating her and Hana’s practices as central to desirable feminine gendered style, according to which the inability to carry weight becomes marked as undesirable. This discourse (re)-framing via lamination is summarized in Fig.  2.1. The circle at the left comprises Seina’s and Hana’s jifu ‘self-confident’ femininities, onto which the practice of carrying 9-kg weights is laminated. The circle at the right comprises the undesirable femininities of sokora hen no onna ‘the average girl’ who cannot carry 9-kg weights. Via lamination, Seina and Hana situate this experience with respect to the broader interactional discourse of desirable femininity. In line 7, sokora hen no onna no ko to wa chigau mitai na ‘it’s like [MITAI NA] different from the average girl’, the use of sokora hen ‘the average girl’ or

Fig. 2.1  Discourse (re)-framing of desirable gendered styles

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literally ‘the girl from over there’ situates women who cannot perform certain physical practices as peripheral to the group-defined femininity that includes a physical component, emphasizing that this characteristic of ‘being different’ chigau from other average girls is an indexical of desirable femininity. Through the discourse (re)-framing that occurs via tactics of lamination, female physical strength is not only explicitly separated from masculinity but is made futsuu ‘ordinary’ with respect to an alternative desirable feminine style, one which is expressed in terms of group-internally defined practices. Such an alternative scale of gender-linked desirable performance is located as separate from the gaze or evaluation of male peers. Seina did not perform feats of physical strength in front of her male classmates and explicitly located such strength as different from performing macho. In many ways the members of the cheerleading club occupy a central, highly visible space in university life. Their performances, which feature short skirts, careful makeup and the carefully controlled performances of high emotional affect, in particular smiling, are very popular with the male student population. But even as these cheerleaders appear to be futsuu ‘ordinary’ and to conform to gendered expectations, their physical practices create possibilities for marginalization from gendered standards and norms. Through tactics of lamination, these individuals are able to (re)-frame marginalization as a new, alternative center. Seina’s and Hana’s (re)-framing of strength is not directly resistant to ideologies according to which physical strength is restricted to masculine-marked domain. However, the establishment of an alternative standard can be described as a site of indirect resistance: the alternative female-group internally defined understanding of desirability is part of a unique cheerleading physical practice.

5.2

 iscourse (re)-framing and Locating D an Experience in the Everyday

As in the previous example, the interaction in (3) also starts from a discussion of specific practices, once again linking such practices to a broader discourse in a way that subtly shifts the indexicality of the discourse itself.

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In (3) Tomoko and Yui, who are also members of the cheerleading club, discuss their respective dating lives. At the time of the recording Tomoko was single, having recently broken up with her boyfriend, while Yui was dating a long-term boyfriend. Prior to the excerpt, Yui had noted that she was afraid of breaking up with her own boyfriend as Tomoko had done, since it might mean that she would never have a boyfriend again. Tomoko is senpai ‘senior’ to Yui and this senpai/koohai ‘senior/junior’ relationship is reflected in Yui’s use of the more formal -DESU copula form toward Tomoko, who responds with less formal ‘plain’ verb forms, including the less formal -DA copula form, although there are no copular forms among Tomoko’s utterances in the excerpt. Instances of the phrase futsuu ‘usual, ordinary’ have been bolded in the Japanese and noted in the translation alongside mitai na, since the subsequent discussion considers both elements. (3) Context: Tomoko and Yui discuss their current and former dating practices. Yui currently has a boyfriend, with whom she frequently goes on dates. She most recently went on a date to a local cafe and ate an elaborate shaved ice dessert. She showed pictures of the cafe date to Tomoko. Tomoko recently broke up with her boyfriend, with whom she had been living. In discussing her former dating practice, Tomoko noted that she rarely went on dates and that her dating practice was rather centered on activities such as cooking together. 1 Tomoko: a ja futsuu ni kaji yatteta kara Ah, well, because we were just doing household tasks like as usual [FUTSUU NI]. 2 Yui: a:: [seikatsu o suru mitai na] Ahh, it’s like [MITAI NA] you are living life. 3 Tomoko: [soo soo soo] nanka futsuu ni nanka gohan tsukutte tabetari Right right right we were like doing things as normal [FUTSUU NI] like making food and eating it. 4 Yui: a:: ii desu ne Ahh, that’s nice right. 5 Tomoko: soo soo ato ma:: sentakumono tatandari Right right, and then, well, we did things like things like folding the laundry. 6 Yui: fu::n

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Hmmm […] 7 Tomoko: maji de nanka roofuufu ya demo {hh} For real we were like an old married couple but {laugh}. 8 Yui: futsuu ni fuufu janai desu ka moo Isn’t that a normal [FUTSUU NI] kind of married couple? Anyway. 9 Tomoko: soo Janae sono jiki wa ne ma:: naka yokatta yo kekkoo. De asa okite Tomoko ga sentaku mawashite asa gohan junbi shite okoshite mitai na Right, right, at that time, right, well we were getting along well, pretty much. And it was like [MITAI NA] in the morning I got up and turned on the washing and made breakfast and woke him up. 10 Yui: e:: maji de fuufu janai desu ka Wow, isn’t that for real a married couple. The DMC is used twice in (3): first in line 2 seikatsu o suru mitai na ‘it’s like [MITAI NA] you’re living life’ and again in line 8 asa okite Tomoko ga sentaku mawashite, asa gohan junbi shite okoshite mitai na ‘it was like [MITAI NA] in the morning I got up and turned on the washing and made breakfast and woke him up’ where Tomoko uses her own name as a first person pronominal. Across the extract, Tomoko’s former dating life is described in terms of ‘everyday’ or quotidian (Matsumoto, 2011) practices, where doing the laundry, cooking and so on are all laminated into the discursive category of futsuu ni kaji yatteta ‘we were just doing household tasks like as usual’ (line 1), which is itself part of the larger category of seikatsu o suru ‘living life’ (line 2). In contrast to Yui’s cafe dating practice, doing household tasks together would not constitute a futsuu ‘normal’ form of dating practice. However, by laminating household tasks within the category of what is done futsuu ni ‘as usual’ they are explicitly (re)-framed as ordinary. Such (re)-framing via lamination is a joint achievement between Tomoko and Yui that is accomplished not only through the explicit use of futsuu ni but also through the use of the DMC. In line 1, Tomoko describes her dating practice, in non-specific terms, that is kaji yatteta ‘we were doing household tasks’. It is this non-specific description that is then (re)-framed in line 2 by Yui via the DMC which is attached to seikatsu o suru ‘living life’ and creates a discursive frame

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onto which kaji yatteta ‘we were doing household tasks’ is laminated. In line 3 and line 5 Tomoko takes up this evaluation soo soo soo ‘right, right, right’ and adds other practices that are laminated onto the futsuu ‘ordinary, usual’ category of seikatsu o suru ‘living life’. Then, in line 7, Tomoko introduces a new non-specific category, maji de nanka roofuufu ‘for real we were like an old married couple’, which is repeated by Yui in line 8, futsuu ni fuufu janai desu ka ‘isn’t that a normal [FUTSUU NI] kind of married couple?’, where Yui uses futsuu ni ‘as usual’ as part of an evaluation of the state of Tomoko’s relationship as a whole. In line 9, Tomoko agrees and then laminates additional practices onto this category of fuufu ‘married couple’, including asa okite Tomoko ga sentaku mawashite, asa gohan junbi shite okoshite, mitai na ‘it was like [MITAI NA] in the morning I got up and turned on the washing and made breakfast and woke him up’. At first glance, Tomoko’s dating life does not so easily fit into the category of roofuufu ‘old married couple’, since Tomoko is neither married nor, as a 20-year-old university student, ‘old’. But the use of futsuu ni ‘as usual’ and the lamination of practices such as doing laundry and eating breakfast onto the broader discourse of living life together as in seikatsu o suru mitai na ‘it’s like [MITAI NA] you are living life’ (line 2) and of being a married couple futsuu ni fuufu janai desu ka moo ‘isn’t that a normal kind of married couple?’ (line 8) do significant work. Through these laminations such practices become understood as non-marginal and legible within normative or standard practice—they are understood as futsuu ‘usual’ for a certain kind of person and thus also for Tomoko. It may appear that the practices described in (3), far from challenging dominant ideologies about the relationship between gender and certain forms of labor, are rather consistent with normative expectations of women. However, it is worth noting that for contemporary Japanese younger adults, especially for those who are still university aged, living together is in many ways not the normal pattern. Further, previous work (Kroo & Matsumoto, 2018) has shown how discourses of ordinariness in the context of adulthood have taken on an aspirational cast in Japan. Applying this reading of the ordinary to the use of futsuu above suggests that the lamination of these practices onto ordinariness (re)-frames them

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as desirable and points to how these speakers use discourse (re)-framing to mitigate marginalization. For example, just prior to the exchange in (3), Yui had been describing her own dating practices, which are in stark contrast to those of Tomoko. She talked at length about a special limited edition shaved iced dessert that she had recently eaten with her boyfriend at a cafe, suggesting that these practices are of the kind through which ai [...] takamarimashita ‘love increased’. After agreeing that ‘love increased’ through dates such as going to eat dessert at a cafe, Yui asked Tomoko about her own dating life. Tomoko noted that she did not have dating experiences comparable to those of Yui, upon which Yui tried to create a context in which Tomoko might have had a normal date by adding saikin janakute mo ‘even if it’s not recent’. However, even in this enlarged context, Tomoko stated that she had not ever really gone on dates ‘because we were only inside the house’ ie ni ita dake dakara. As noted above, the relationship between Tomoko and Yui is one of senpai ‘senior’ and koohai ‘junior’. However, Tomoko’s departure from normative dating practice threatens this relationship. It puts Tomoko in a marginalized relationship with respect to Yui, whose practices situate her closer to the perceived standard of desirable practice. ‘Normal’ dating would be more likely to resemble Yui’s going on dates to cafes with her boyfriend. Thus contextualized, Yui’s lamination of Tomoko’s practice onto the category of ‘like [MITAI NA] living life’ seikatsu o suru mitai na in (3) can be read as mitigating the potential for and risk of marginalization associated with Tomoko’s former dating practice. Laminating practices in (3) onto futsuu ‘ordinary, usual’, seikatsu suru mitai na ‘it’s like [MITAI NA] you are living life’, and being an ‘old married couple’ roofuufu discursively (re)-frames them as unmarked. In (3), the use of the DMC as well as linguistic elements such as futsuu ni ‘as usual’ becomes a strategy through which potentially marginalizing social practice, in particular living together during university, is (re)framed as ‘ordinary, usual’. As in the previous example, discourse (re)framing here is not directly resistant to dominant norms—after all, these practices would be considered consistent with normative marriage practices and are closely aligned with heteronormative relationship schema.

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However, through (re)-framing, there is a shift in the indexicality of a broad social discourse in a way that remakes what counts as standard or desirable practices. The shift is thus an instance of indirect resistance, a recognition of the norm that nonetheless shifts how that norm is understood. Before moving on, I would like to offer a few more thoughts on futsuu ni ‘as usual’. While the use of futsuu ni is common not only in this interaction but across the interactions of younger adults recorded at Ichi U., its translation poses challenges. While it was once an adverb formed from the noun futsuu ‘ordinary, usual’ plus the adverbial marker ni, use of the construction now extends beyond adverbial instances. For example, in line 8, Yui uses futsuu ni: futsuu ni fuufu janai desu ka moo ‘isn’t that a normal [FUTSUU NI] kind of married couple?’. Here futsuu ni modifies the phrase fuufu janai desu ka ‘isn’t that a married couple?’ where use of the adverbial form does not convey the role of futsuu ni in the utterance. Rather, futsuu ni here suggests that it is ‘just like’ a ‘normal, ordinary’ married couple. The excerpt in (3) suggests the extent to which futsuu ni is an important part of contemporary younger adults’ linguistic styles. Further analysis might focus on these uses of futsuu ni and consider how it is used to convey speakers’ understandings of what constitutes ‘ordinary’ or ‘usual’ social practice.

6 Discussion and Conclusion This study has analyzed how the utterance final form of the Japanese linguistic construction mitai na ‘be like’ can be used to convey speakers’ stances in such a way that speakers not only frame but re-frame the discourse objects with respect to which those stances were taken. In this chapter, this process is referred to as discourse (re)-framing. Using data from a long-term ethnographic study of contemporary Japanese younger adults, this chapter has shown how such (re)-framings, achieved through tactics such as lamination, can be a site of indirect resistance to dominant ideologies and narratives of standard social practice, including: how broad gendered categories of desirable femininity are understood, what counts as normative dating social practice, and the indexicality of

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seemingly normative practices such as marriage. Indirect resistance via discourse (re)-framing can thus be interpreted as a micropolitical act, with individuals ‘making do’ (De Certeau, 1984) with the resources, including linguistic resources and practices, that are available to them. ‘Making do’ in this way is closely linked to specific embodiments and social frameworks of individuals. While a discussion of differently gendered embodiments is beyond the scope of this chapter, the limitations and possibilities of gendered styles and embodiments are integral to the discussion here. In particular, the emphasis on indirect resistance as micropolitics recognizes that individuals’ understanding of the space of possible options is regulated by dominant social frameworks. For example, Tomoko and Yui do not conceive of radically alternative romantic arrangements beyond those associated with heteronormative practices of dating. They also locate being single as undesirable in comparison to having a boyfriend. Similarly, Hana and Seina may construct alternative categories of desirable and non-desirable femininities but they never question the gendered binaries upon which ‘femininity’ is constructed or push back against the idea that some femininities are ‘less desirable’ than others. The form and shape of resistance from the center is thus delimited and structured by the space of possible options, but this does not mean that it is non-existent. Recalling De Certeau’s distinction between tactics (of less powerful actors) with respect to the strategies that may restrict the space of possible practices, this chapter implicates discourse (re)-framing via lamination not only in individuals’ perceptions of broad social discourses but as forms of indirect resistance. Also striking is that individuals’ (re)-framings locate public practices within narratives of the personal. Hana and Seina, for example, (re)frame their desirable femininity according to their own bukatsu ‘school club’ experience. This (re)-framing foregrounds the ways in which the boundaries between the political and personal are rendered porous and emphasizes that concrete personal practices are closely implicated in politics. The personal can be understood as containing potentialities for covert, indirect resistance to broader structures that might otherwise marginalize individuals’ everyday selves and lived experiences. Considering everyday practices in this way offers new perspectives from which contemporary younger adults’ alignments may be considered.

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Finally, this study has also emphasized the importance of attending to the social aspects of pragmatic elements such as mitai na. In conveying speakers’ stances with respect to interaction salient discourses, these items are associated with the (re)-framing of those discourses. Crucially, such (re)-framings are strategies through which speakers can change the indexical characteristics of those categories and thus shift, every so subtly, the shape of the world around them.

References Allison, A. (2013). Precarious Japan. Durham: Duke University Press. Brinton, M. (2010). Lost in transition: Youth, work and instability in postindustrial Japan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bucholtz, M. (2011). White kids: Language, race and styles of youth identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. De Certeau, M. (1984). The practice of everyday life. Berkley: University of California Press. Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (1987). A thousand plateaus. Trans. Massumi B. St. Paul: University of Minnesota. Du Bois, J. W. (2007). The stance triangle. In R. Englebretson (Ed.), Stancetaking in discourse – Subjectivity, evaluation, interaction (pp. 139–182). Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company. Eckert, P. (2008). Variation and the indexical field. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 12, 453–476. Fujii, S. (2006). Quoted thought and speech using mitai na ‘be-like’ construction. In S.  Suzuki (Ed.), Emotive communication in Japanese (pp.  53–95). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Furuichi, N. (2011). Zetsuboo no kuni no koofuku na wakamonotachi [The happy young people of a hopeless country]. Tokyo: Koodansha. Gilliam, C. (2017). Immanence and micropolitics: Satres, Merleau-Ponty, Foucault and Deleuze. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Goffman, E. (1974). Frame analysis. New York: Harper and Row. Hoshino, Y. (2008). Direct quotations as a communication strategy: Expressive functions of the quotation-final mitai na. Ningen Bunka Soosei Kagakurongyoo [The Journal of the Study of Human Cultural Structures], 11, 133–142. Kroo, J., & Matsumoto, Y. (2018). The case of Japanese otona ‘adult’: Mediatized gender as a marketing device. Discourse and Communication, 12(4), 401–423.

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Matsumoto, Y. (2011). Painful to playful: Quotidian frames in the conversational discourse of older Japanese speakers. Language in Society, 40(5), 591–616. Matsumoto, Y. (2018). The form and meaning of the dangling mitaina construction in a network of constructions. In M. E. Hudson, Y. Matsumoto, & J.  Mori (Eds.), Pragmatics of Japanese: Perspectives on grammar and culture (pp. 75–98). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Maynard, S. (2005). Another conversation: Expressivity of mitai na and inserted speech in Japanese discourse. Journal of Pragmatics, 37, 837–869. McGloin, N. H., & Konishi, Y. (2010). From connective particle to sentence-­ final particle: A usage-based analysis of shi ‘and’ in Japanese. Language Science, 32, 563–578. Semuels, A. (2017). The mystery of why Japanese people are having so few babies. The Atlantic, 31 July. Retrieved June 15, 2020, from https://www. theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/07/japan-­m ystery-­l ow-­b irth-­ rate/534291/. Suzuki, S. (1995). A study of the sentence-final mitai na. The Journal of the Association of Teachers of Japanese, 29(2), 55–78. Ushikubo, M. (2015). Ren’ai shinai wakamono-tachi: Konbinika suru sei to kosupaka suru kekkon [Young people who don’t date: Convenience store-ized sex and cost performance-ized marriage]. Tokyo: Discover 21. Yamada, M. (2015). Naze wakamono wa hoshuka shita no ka: kiboo o usui tuzukeru Nihon shakai no shinjitsu [Why have young people become conservative: The reality of Japanese society where dreams continue to become weak]. Tokyo: Asahi Bunko.

3 When the Model Becomes the Marginalized: Identity Struggles of Japanese Job-Hunters Andrew Barke and Momoyo Shimazu

Contents

1  Introduction 2  Theoretical Framework 3  Methodology 4  Survey Results and Discussion 5  Identity Struggles 6  Conclusions References

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1 Introduction The job-hunting period, referred to in Japanese as shūshoku katsudō [job-­ hunting activities], or shūkatsu for short, is a key turning point in the lives of Japanese university students as it prepares them to step beyond the This study was funded in part with Kakenhi Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research: Grant numbers 18H00681 (type B), and 19K00751 (type C).

A. Barke (*) • M. Shimazu Kansai University, Suita, Japan e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 J. Kroo, K. Satoh (eds.), Linguistic Tactics and Strategies of Marginalization in Japanese, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-67825-8_3

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comfort of their local communities of family, friends, schools, and neighborhoods and become shakaijin [contributing members of society]. Shūkatsu usually takes place in students’ third and fourth years at university due to the limited time available between graduation and the start of the new financial year in April, which is when most new jobs begin. During the shūkatsu process, students rely on support from a variety of sources including their university career center where they can learn practical skills and techniques to assist them in their job-hunting, such as how to showcase oneself in a written entry sheet and what to keep in mind during an interview. They are also encouraged to engage in self-reflection exercises and to visualize their future selves by asking reflexive questions such as What kind of company do I want to work for? and What kind of work do I like to do? to assist them in deciding on an industry or career. Hearing the job-hunting experiences of sempai [seniors] and attending company information sessions further help students narrow down the companies they would like to apply for. However, to successfully receive a job offer from a company of their choice, students must first navigate their way through the multiple interviews and recruitment tests companies hold to find the most suitable candidates. This in turn requires an ability to determine the kind of model employee being sought by the company and to then mold oneself as closely as possible to that model. In sum, during the job-hunting process students must come to understand, adjust, and (re)construct their self-identities and social identities to that potential which future employers will find appealing (e.g., Kroger, 1996; O’Regan, 2010). From a neoliberal perspective, this may well be framed as a process of self-commodification (Takeyama, 2010) as it involves individuals presenting themselves, their abilities, and their linguistic skills as commodities with a market value (Sharma & Phyak, 2017). In this chapter, we explore the types of identities Japanese university students attempt to construct in the context of job-hunting in Japan’s neoliberal marketplace.1 More specifically, we attempt to answer the following questions: How do students conceptualize identities as they take part in the process of job-hunting?; How do they reconcile self-­identities with existent social identities?; and What do such identity struggles mean for students? The data for the study comes from a longitudinal survey

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designed to reveal the job-hunting experiences and opinions of students majoring in foreign language studies. The notion of gurōbaru jinzai [global personnel]2 is used as a focal point in the study as many of the qualities and characteristics associated with gurōbaru jinzai correspond to those that foreign language students are expected to acquire. It is also a notion that Japanese universities often refer to as a model to aim toward in the nurturing of workers for the twenty-first century. The analysis of the data will reveal that, despite participants possessing the very skills and qualities normally associated with gurōbaru jinzai, their experiences and observations during job-hunting led many to believe that the model gurōbaru jinzai they had conceptualized and worked toward emulating was not what most employers appeared to be actually seeking. As a consequence, those who attempted to highlight such skills and qualities directly were often marginalized by potential employers, which prompted the students to reassess the ways in which they constructed their identities as potential employees and to develop new, creative strategies to present those skills and qualities in a way that was more appealing to companies.

2 Theoretical Framework 2.1 S  ocial constructionist perspectives of self and identity In order to shed light on how job-hunting students conceptualize, recognize, and reconcile their own and others’ identities with pre-determined social identities, the present study adopts a social constructionist perspective in which reality is viewed as the emergent result of language being used in social interactions among individuals (Bucholtz, 1999; Cook, 2008; Ochs, 1993). Under this approach, interlocutors are considered discourse participants who actively employ various linguistic resources in creative and strategic ways to index a variety of stances or identities in order to fulfill their own self needs and interactional objectives3 (Ochs, 1993: 288).

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We understand the self as the constantly changing and evolving reflective consciousness of ourselves as individual people. It is a “multidimensional, multifaceted dynamic structure that is systematically implicated in all aspects of social information processing” (Markus & Wurf, 1987: 301) that changes as our individual goals, attitudes, and potentials for the future change and evolve (Greenwald & Pratkanis, 1984). As individuals, we conceptualize ourselves not only as we exist in the present but also in the memories we have of our past selves and the images we come up with of the selves we will become in the future—our future selves. Identity, on the other hand, is something that is actively performed in social contexts by individuals and not an innate attribute (e.g. Butler, 1990; Kondo, 1990; Marra & Angouri, 2011). It is dynamic, contestable, and continuously negotiated in interaction (Schnurr & Zayts, 2011) and, as a result, changes over time and space (Kondo, 1990; Ochs, 1993; Peirce, 1995). It also involves the expression of perceived similarities and differences with others (De Fina, 2011: 271) by individuals and groups as they attempt to socially position themselves and others (Bucholtz & Hall, 2005) through the construction or assignment of a wide range of social identities during an interaction (Ochs, 1993). Identity is “more than just a single trajectory; instead it should be viewed as a nexus of multimembership” (Wenger 1998: 159). In other words, it is possible for an individual to construct multiple overlapping identities at the same time such as male/salesperson or female/doctor.

2.2 Gurōbaru jinzai Gurōbaru jinzai are those jinzai [personnel] considered necessary for Japanese companies to respond to the recent globalization and internationalization of Japanese society. The term gurōbaru [global] has become a keyword employed among Japanese businesses engaged in international trade to reflect the [global] nature of their company in the neoliberal market. The apparel company UNIQLO, for example, expects its employees to be sekai ni tsūyō suru jitsuryoku o mi ni tsuke gurōbaru de katsuyaku shita hito [people who have acquired world-class abilities allowing them to perform in the global arena]4 (Fast Retailing (UNIQLO)

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website, 2020). Japanese airline company ANA also reports that it provides for employees a samazama na bunka, shūkan, kachikan nado o rikai shi, nōryoku o hakki dekiru jinzai o ikusei suru tame, gurōbaru jinzai kyōiku puroguramu [gurōbaru jinzai educational program to develop human resources who understand and can demonstrate their knowledge of various cultures, customs and values] (ANA website, 2020). As mentioned, Japanese universities also advocate for the development of gurōbaru jinzai, as reflected in the statement daigaku jidai kara gurōbaru na kankaku o mi ni tsukeru koto ni yori, gurōbaru shakai ni okeru shakaijin kisoryoku no ichibu o mi ni tsukeru koto wa, sotsugyōgo no shinro ni daiji na yakuwari o hatasu [gaining a global perspective during your time at university will allow you to acquire some of the basic skills required of a worker in a global society and will play an important role in determining your career path after graduation] found on the website of the authors’ place of employment (Kansai University website, 2020). While references to gurōbaru jinzai have been increasing over recent years, the qualities and abilities individual gurōbaru jinzai are expected to possess are still far from clear. Japan’s Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) held a conference to promote gurōbaru jinzai development through collaboration between industry and academia and offered the following definition in their report (Global Human Resource Development Promotion Conference, 2011): A person who, in today’s society of increasing global competition and coexistence, possesses a wide-ranging and cultivated knowledge and expertise, the ability to communicate and cooperate in order to build relationships across different languages, cultures, and values, the ability to create new values, and a developed sense of social contribution that extends down to the next generation, while at the same time continues to maintain their Japanese identity. (p.3)

Nishiyama and Hirahata (2014) in their attempt to provide a definition of gurōbaru jinzai raise the following three key focal points: 1. Should gurōbaru jinzai speak English? 2. Where does the Japanese language stand in relation to gurōbaru jinzai? 3. What kind of identity is a gurōbaru jinzai expected to have?

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Concerned parties have offered an array of opinions in relation to points 1 and 2, including “While English should be spoken, it is not the only foreign language” and “Japanese speakers should use accurate and appropriate language”; however, the prospect of a consensus on a definition being reached still appears remote. Theoretical definitions proffered among researchers and educators concerning point 3 also remain at the abstract level (Suzuki, 2014) and do not reflect voices of those on the front line. How, then, do university students about to attempt the transition from student to shakaijin through job-hunting understand the concept of gurōbaru jinzai? How do they relate that concept to their own identities? And how do they internalize the qualities that gurōbaru jinzai are supposed to possess? Answers to these questions will be explored in Sect. 4, but first we will explain the methodology employed in this study.

3 Methodology 3.1 Data collection Participants in the study consisted of 16 (7 males, 9 females) students in two zemi classes5 in a faculty of foreign language studies at a university in the Kansai region of Japan. All participants were third-year students and all had completed one year of study abroad when the collection of the data began. As the aim of the study was to consider changes in students’ identities in the context of the job-hunting process, three surveys were carried out over a ten-month period around the time of their job-hunting. Survey 1 (S1) was carried out in November 2017, prior to students commencing their job-hunting; Survey 2 (S2) was carried out in April 2018, part-way through job-hunting; and Survey 3 (S3) was carried out in September 2018, after job-hunting had been completed. In each survey, participants were asked to complete a written questionnaire consisting of open-ended questions regarding their individual thoughts and opinions. They were then divided into four groups with four participants in each group and

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given topics similar to those in the written questionnaire to discuss. Group discussions were recorded and transcribed, and the transcriptions, together with the written responses to the questionnaire, formed the data of the study. Consent was received from all participants prior to the collection of the data.

3.2 Research design The aim of this study, as we mentioned, was to consider changes in students’ identities during the process of their job-hunting. In our discussion of the data, we will first refer to students’ responses in S1 and S2 related to gurōbaru jinzai and then shift our attention to more general constructions of identity by students as we consider examples from the group discussions held in S2 and S3. Since S1 was conducted before job-hunting began, the written questionnaire asked questions concerning participants’ understandings of the notion of gurōbaru jinzai and whether they considered themselves to be gurōbaru jinzai. In the subsequent group discussions, they were asked to discuss their thoughts on the importance of presenting themselves as gurōbaru jinzai in their job-hunting. They were also asked to consider other strategies they could use to promote themselves. In S2, the written questionnaire was designed to elicit participants’ observations during the job-hunting process and the type of employees that companies were seeking. Questions related to gurōbaru jinzai asked if the participants’ understanding of this notion had changed since jobhunting began and whether they now considered themselves to be gurōbaru jinzai, having had some experience in job-hunting. Since the purpose of S2 was to explore changes in students’ thoughts and opinions, group discussion questions were similar to those in S1 but were framed in a way that encouraged participants to discuss them in relation to their own job-hunting experiences. By the time S3 was conducted, the students had already chosen their future workplace or pathway, so the questionnaire inquired about the results of their job-hunting, observations they had made along the way, and factors they believed had led to their receiving a job offer. Once

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again, participants were questioned on their understandings of gurōbaru jinzai and whether they thought their future employers had been seeking gurōbaru jinzai. Students were also asked to discuss things such as “Thinking back on your job-hunting experiences, what did you learn, come to understand, or discover about yourself?” and “What were the successes, failures, and areas you could have improved on in relation to your job-hunting activities?”

4 Survey Results and Discussion 4.1 U  nderstandings and perceptions of a model gurōbaru jinzai The main aim of S1 and S2 was to determine how participants conceptualized gurōbaru jinzai and to discover whether their understandings and perceptions changed during the course of their job-hunting. To fulfill this aim, we compared the language and expressions used in responses to questions in these two surveys. For example, in relation to the S1 question “What qualities and skills do you think gurōbaru jinzai should have?” “language ability” and “communicative ability” were both common responses (9 vs 6 respectively), yet in S2 they only occurred twice each. Interestingly, participants who mentioned these abilities in S2 also referred to them in S1, while those who only referred to them in S1 listed other qualities and skills in S2. This change in focus from language and communicative abilities to other types of abilities points to a shift in students’ understandings of gurōbaru jinzai identity. Further evidence of this shift was observed when we examined participants’ responses in more detail. In S1, emphasis was placed on describing the personal qualities and skills of individual gurōbaru jinzai themselves, whereas in S2, there was a marked increase in responses that described the types of qualities and skills needed to carry out relational work in interactions with others. Rina’s responses shown in Fig. 4.1 shifted from being “able to accept and understand” other cultures to being “able to interact flexibly” with people from other cultures. In other words, her descriptions of gurōbaru jinzai changed from a self-oriented perspective prior to job-­hunting to

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Fig. 4.1  Rina’s responses to the question “What qualities and skills do you think gurōbaru jinzai should have?”

one in which the locus of her understanding was interaction with others when part-way through her job-hunting. This suggests her job-hunting experiences may have influenced her conceptualization of gurōbaru jinzai. In a wider sense, it could also reflect the beginnings of a more fundamental shift of identity from student to shakaijin. However, such a prospect will need to be more fully explored at a future date due to present limitations on space. A distinct change was also observed in participants’ responses to the S1 and S2 question “Do you think you are a gurōbaru jinzai?” In S1, almost two thirds (12) of the participants replied they did NOT consider themselves to be gurōbaru jinzai, despite being English majors in a foreign language faculty and being fluent in English. In S2, however, half (8) of the participants indicated they believed they WERE gurōbaru jinzai.6 As Fig. 4.2 shows, Aoi explained in S1 that she did not think she could call herself a gurōbaru jinzai because, although she had tried to learn more about other countries, she was unable to view Japan in an objective light. In S2, however, Aoi indicated that she felt she was in the process of becoming a gurōbaru jinzai (although she felt she was not quite there yet). As we can see, the above examples offer evidence suggesting students’ conceptualizations of the model gurōbaru jinzai changed over time as they carried out their job-hunting, from having a focus on self-attributes to recognizing the importance of interactions with others. At the same time, the way in which the students reconciled their own identities with their ever-evolving conceptualizations of the model gurōbaru jinzai also

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Fig. 4.2  Aoi’s responses to the question “Do you think you are a gurōbaru jinzai?”

changed, with many concluding in the end that they could claim to be gurōbaru jinzai. We will now consider reasons for this change and the manner in which students related their self-identities to the notion of a model gurōbaru jinzai.

4.2 The myths and realities of gurōbaru jinzai Above we considered responses in the first two questionnaire surveys to understand students’ conceptualizations of gurōbaru jinzai as a model human resource and found evidence that suggested conceptualizations changed as students participated in job-hunting activities. This raises the question: What led to this change? We now turn our attention to the group discussions held in S2 and S3 to seek answers to this question, beginning with a discussion from S2 when students were mid-job-hunting. As we explained in the methodology, questions posed in each survey were similar for both the written questionnaires and group discussions. This was true of S2 in which the questions “How important do you think ‘being a gurōbaru jinzai’ is in the current job-hunting market? And now

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that you have experienced job-hunting, do you think you are a gurōbaru jinzai?” were asked. Example 1 is taken from a group discussion on this topic. Example 1 1. Misa: mae dono yō na hito ga gurōbaru jinzai desu ka mitai na shitsumon atta yan Before there was a question like “What kind of people are gurōbaru jinzai,” right? 2. Ryo: hito to hedatari naku kakawatte ikeru hito mitai nan o kaita I wrote something like “Someone who is able to involve themselves with others without changing (their attitude).” 3. Yuri: sonna kanji sonna kanji yatta kke It was something like that, something like that, wasn’t it? 4. Misa: gurōbaru jinzai tte yō wakarankatta kedo datte sonna mon hito toshite tōzen yan tte omou nen kedo sonna koto nai? I didn’t really know what gurōbaru jinzai was, because that kind of thing, as a person it’s just natural, don’t you think? 5. Taku: dakara betsu ni kaigai toka iku toka ja nakute honrai no ironna hito to sessereru nōryoku ja nai no gurōbaru jinzai tte (+) wakaru kedō So it’s not like overseas or like going (overseas). Isn’t gurōbaru jinzai essentially having the ability to interact with a variety of people? I understand what you’re saying though. 6. Yuri: eigo tsukaeru toka nani bokokugo igai hanaseru toka Like being able to use English or um like being able to speak a language other than your mother tongue… 7. Misa: demo sore demo anmari kikare hen yan nā tte omotten kedo? But I don’t really think I get asked that much. 8. Ryo: a sore metcha omou Oh, I really think that too! 9. Misa: sore koso ichibanme ya wa omotteta koto to chigau koto ya wa That should be at the top of the list of things that were different from what I had expected. 10. Ryo: tashika ni zenzen kikarehen gurōbaru jinzai ni matchi That’s true. You don’t get asked at all if you are gurōbaru jinzai

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11. Misa: kikareru? Do you get asked? 12. Taku: iya nanka eigo ni tsuite wa kikarehen nen kedo nande gaikokugogakubu yatta n ka toka nande ryūgaku shiyō to omottan ya toka sore wa kikareta kedo No, like, I don’t get asked about English, but I did get asked things like why did I choose a faculty of foreign languages, and why did I think of going on study abroad. Misa’s utterance in line 1—mae dono yō na hito ga gurōbaru jinzai desu ka mitai na shitsumon atta yan [Before there was a question like “What kind of people are gurōbaru jinzai,” right?]—refers back to a question in S1 that asked about the qualities and abilities of gurōbaru jinzai. In reply to Misa’s utterance, Ryo says, hito to hedatari naku, kakawatteikeru hito mitai nan o kaita [I wrote something like “Someone who is able to involve themselves with others without changing (their attitude)”] (line 2). At this point, Misa explains she did not understand much about gurōbaru jinzai in the past, but she thinks gurōbaru jinzai qualities are just normal and that everyone should have them (line 4). She then seeks the agreement of the others and Taku responds, saying he does not think gurōbaru jinzai are limited to people who go overseas but includes those who have “the ability to interact with a variety of people” (line 5). We can observe from the students’ interactions up to this point that before starting job-hunting, they believed gurōbaru jinzai involved factors such as “going abroad” (line 5), “being able to use English,” and “being able to speak languages other than one’s native tongue” (line 6). Misa believed even before she began job-hunting that in today’s world we should all have the qualities and skills associated with a gurōbaru jinzai and the others agreed, which suggests their own job-hunting experiences had led them to a similar conclusion. Then in line 7 Misa states, demo sore demo anmari kikare hen yan nā tte omotten kedo [But I don’t really think I get asked that much], to which Ryo agrees (line 8), indicating the topic of gurōbaru jinzai seldom came up in job interviews. Misa’s utterance sore koso ichibanme ya wa omotteta koto to chigau koto ya wa [That should be at the top of the list of things that were different from what I had expected] (line 9) refers back to the

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question shūshokukatsudō wa sōzō dōri/kitai dōri deshita ka? arui wa chigaimashita ka? dono yō ni chigaimashita ka? [Was your job-hunting what you had imagined/expected it to be? Or was it different? In what ways was it different?] that students had been asked to discuss in their groups. Her utterance indicates that contrary to her expectation the topic of gurōbaru jinzai was not brought up in interviews. In Example 2, evidence is found that offers a reason behind the change in participants’ conceptualizations of gurōbaru jinzai. Taku is relating something he heard at a company information session. Such incidents encountered during job-hunting offered students an opportunity to reassess the conceptualizations they had formed of a model gurōbaru jinzai and to develop a new model. Example 2 1. Taku: nanka mae dokka no setsumeikai de sō iu shitsumon shiteru hito ga otte […] eigo eigo tte itteru hito tte nakami ga nai Um, before, at an information event somewhere, there was a person who asked that kind of question […] people who go on about English-English have no substance. 2. Misa: tashika ni I agree. 3. Taku: watashi eigo shaberemasu tte itteru yatsu hodo zenzen nakami tomonatte nai kara sō iu yatsu koso kaigai itte atoato nani mo dekizu ni kaette kuru yō na hito yakara People who say they can speak English have the least substance. It’s that type who go overseas and end up returning without having achieved anything. 4. Ryo: hē Is that right? 5. Taku: sō iu no de nakami kiiteru tte itteta That’s why he said they were asking for substance. 6. Ryo: hē Is that right? 7. Taku: riyū ga arurashii It seems there is a reason 8. Misa: hē Really?

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9. Taku: datte watashi nihongo shaberemasu tte itteru yō na mon yan It’s like me saying I can speak Japanese. 10. Yuri: nani o tsutaerareru ka no mondai yatte koto ya nen na It’s what can be conveyed that matters, right? Taku explains that when a student at a company information session inquired about the level of English ability required by the company, the representative replied, eigo eigo tte itteru hito tte nakami ga nai [People who go on about English, English have no substance] (line 1) and watashi eigo shaberemasu tte itteru yatsu hodo zenzen nakami tomonatte nai kara sō iu yatsu koso kaigai itte atoato nani mo dekizu ni kaette kuru yō na hito yakara [People who say they can speak English have the least substance. It’s that type who go overseas and end up returning without having achieved anything] (line 3). The Japanese company holding the session had several overseas branches, so employees faced the possibility of having to spend time abroad. Taku’s utterance in line 3 reenacts the voice of the company representative and highlights the company’s philosophy that a person’s way of thinking and opinions were of far greater importance in determining their success overseas than their ability to speak English. Through his reenactment, Taku indirectly conveys the message that emphasizing one’s English abilities in a job interview does not always work to one’s advantage. Taku offers his reasoning in line 9, saying datte watashi nihongo shaberemasu tte itteru yō na mon yan [It’s like me saying I can speak Japanese]. In other words, he is metaphorically pointing out it is meaningless to emphasize one’s English abilities at a job interview when English fluency is presumed. In line 10, Yuri paraphrases Taku’s main point, indicating she has understood its intent, saying nani o tsutaerareru ka no mondai yatte koto ya nen na [It’s what can be conveyed that matters, right?]; in other words, just because a person speaks English does not mean they can do the job. We can see in this exchange that the interactants brought into focus and agreed upon the importance of being able to communicate one’s thoughts and opinions in a job interview. In this way, providing students with discussion questions in S2 regarding the notion of gurōbaru jinzai offered them an opportunity to share their job-hunting experiences with each other. It also enabled them to realize that their original

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understandings of the type of employee companies sought had changed during the job-hunting process. Moreover, the group discussions revealed that throughout the process students continually adjusted their conceptualizations of the model gurōbaru jinzai and subsequently the manner in which they attempted to present themselves as gurōbaru jinzai as they responded to experiences at information sessions, interviews, and with HR professionals. In the next section, we further explore this adjustment in self-presentation by considering aspects of students’ identities that were (re)constructed as a result of their job-hunting activities.

5 Identity Struggles As mentioned earlier, students engage in much self-reflection and self-­ analysis as part of their job-hunting activities, repeatedly asking themselves what kind of work interests them in order to have a clear image of their future selves and thus increase their chances of achieving a successful outcome. They also seek advice from those with more experience such as teachers and their seniors, thereby learning a variety of strategies and techniques to help them attain the best possible result from their job-hunting. The following two examples come from group discussions in S2. In Example 3, Yuto relays some advice he received from a career center advisor and describes attempting to apply that advice in his job-hunting activities. Example 3 1. Yuto: hitotsu iwareta no ga mitame kara mō kyōchōsei nai tte dete makutteru mō hitori de yarisugi mitai na dakara sore o kakuse tte iwarete saikin sō sore o saikin yakara mō kakushite kiba kō tojite tojite tojite mitai na One thing I was told was, “Just by your appearance, it’s obvious you’re not cooperative.” They were like, “You do things on your own too much,” so I was told recently to hide that. Yeah, so recently I’ve been trying hard to conceal my fangs.

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2. Miyu: gambatteru [laughter] gambatteru You’re trying [laughter] you’re trying 3. Yuto: gurūpu disukasshon mo rashiku naku kō + [said in a high-­pitched voice] a: sō yan ne mitai na sō mutcha ee kedo: zettai omottenai kedo In group discussions too, unlike my usual self, I’m like [said in a high-­pitched voice] “Oh! That’s right!” Yeah, I’m really good, but I’m not actually thinking that. Companies are increasingly using group discussions as a type of recruitment test for prospective employees to observe how they interact and communicate with others. Yuto explains he was told by a career advisor that he comes across as uncooperative and too self-reliant and it was suggested that he try to hide this trait when participating in recruitment-­ related discussions (line 1). He jokes that ever since he has tried to conceal his fangs, a part of his real self. He then changes his tone of voice in line 3 to mimic how he speaks to other job candidates in group discussions. What is important to note here is that Yuto has learnt, and has been putting into practice the knowledge, that in order to present himself as an attractive future employee and to avoid being marginalized in recruitment activities, he must demonstrate his capacity to interact in a cooperative manner with others rather than show his true self. Example 4 comes from the same group discussion as Example 3, in which participants are discussing how they should promote themselves in job interviews. Here they are discussing whether they should utilize the foreign language faculty student aspect of their identity. Example 4 1. Yuto: gaikokugo gakubusei toshite nani o apiiru shiteru In what way are you promoting yourself as a student of the foreign language department? 2. Miho: watashi wa nani mo shitenai I’m not doing anything. 3. Yuto: a: hito toshite sore dotchi ka to iu to Ah, you mean, more like as a person?

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4. Miho: atashi:: wa: For me 5. Yuto: nani- nani o apiiru suru In what- what way do you promote yourself? 6. Miho: do- nanka ryūgaku shimashita dake ja nakute: ryūgaku itta n desu kedo ryūgakuchū ni konna koto ga atte konna koto o- + ni nayanda no de + watashi wa kō doryoku shite kō iu koto tassei shimashita tte iu ka sono nanka koto iwan to tada ryūgaku shite eigo naraimashita gaikoku no bunka naraimashita tte yutte mo sore de? tte naru kara sore wa: jibun de iwan to ryūgaku itta n desu kedo mitai na Um, like not just “I went on study abroad”, but “I went on study abroad, and when I was there, this happened, and I was worried about this, and by trying hard, I was able to achieve this milestone.” I mean if you don’t say that, then it just becomes, “I did study abroad, I learnt English, I learnt about foreign culture” and they’ll be like, “So what?” So, if you don’t bring that up yourself, “I went on study abroad and…” One of the first things we might expect English major students would employ to promote themselves to prospective employers would be their linguistic skills and study abroad experience. Yet it was found that many participants deliberately avoided making direct reference to these aspects of their identities due to the potential for marginalization from prospective employers. When Miho spoke about her English skills and study abroad experiences to an interviewer, the reaction she received was not the positive one she had anticipated. She therefore recommended to the others in her group that they should only mention such aspects as background information when describing other qualities and accomplishments, saying something like, “This is what happened during my study abroad, and I struggled with this, and that’s why I worked hard and was able to accomplish this.” In this way, having encountered negative reactions to direct reference to their linguistic abilities and study abroad experiences, students learnt to refrain from direct mention of these important aspects of their identities. They also learnt to strategically reframe their abilities and

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experiences, indirectly referring to them as background information when talking about other strengths and characteristics. We can see then that for the participants the job-hunting process involved both learning self-­presentational strategies and creating new strategies in response to external stimuli in order to present themselves as having marketable value to potential employers. However, it was also a process in which the students adjusted and (re)constructed their self-identities, both as a gurōbaru jinzai and as a shakaijin in general. Our final example comes from S3 and serves to reaffirm this point: that the job-hunting process involves the adjustment and (re)construction of self-identities. Example 5 is an utterance made by Jun, a student who had successfully navigated his way through the job-hunting process but in the end decided to go on to graduate school instead. As his future pathway had already been decided, many of his remarks in both the questionnaire and group discussion were made looking back on his job-­ hunting experiences. Example 5 Jun:  jiko bunseki susumete sore o susumete ittara fukai fukai koto ga kō wakatte ittari suru yan ka: sore o nanka PR shitari toka de (jibun no koto ni tsuite) kotoba ga surasura detekuru yō ni nattara omoshirokatta (shūshoku no) saigo no hō When you continue to self-analyze, when you continue with that you come to understand some really deep stuff, right? You can use that in things like your PR. And when I got to the point where I was able to talk about myself really fluently toward the end (of my job-hunting), that was really fun. Jun observes that as he continued to self-analyze throughout his job-­ hunting he discovered a lot of new things about himself that he was able to use in his job interviews. He also enjoyed the satisfaction of reaching a point where he could speak fluently about himself in interviews. In this way, he came to be able to construct for himself a marketable identity as a future employee, not only by discovering new things about himself through his self-analyses but also by improving his ability to describe those aspects of himself through repeated practice.

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In order for the students to construct an image of their future working self by envisioning the kind of job and company they wanted to work in, it was important for them to take a careful look at themselves and self-­ analyze. Repeated self-analysis allowed them to become more aware of themselves as individuals, and as they had to present themselves during their job-hunting in a way that would appeal to others, they learnt how to present a ‘preferred self.’ We could therefore say that self-analysis was not only a key component in their success in job-hunting, it was also closely linked with their construction of new identities.

6 Conclusions In this chapter, we first considered the kinds of conceptualizations job-­ hunting university students had of gurōbaru jinzai, a construct promoted in the Japanese education sector as a model human resource for Japan’s increasingly global neoliberal marketplace, and how those conceptualizations changed over the course of the job-hunting process. As we saw in Sect. 4, students’ conceptualizations changed over time: before their job-­ hunting began they only had a vague idea of what a gurōbaru jinzai is, and when asked to explain it, they resorted to others’ definitions, offering stereotypical examples of qualities and abilities often associated with gurōbaru jinzai. However, as they began participating in job-hunting activities, they soon came to the realization that the conceptualizations they held of gurōbaru jinzai and had tried to draw on as a means of promoting themselves were in fact often viewed negatively and had the potential to lead to marginalization. As a result, they began thinking more carefully about the kinds of human resources companies were actually seeking and how they could relate that to themselves. They spent more time on self-­analysis and made their own decisions on how best to behave when they interacted with others in job interviews and the like as they realized that to secure a job offer they needed to adjust the way in which they presented themselves so that prospective employers would find them appealing and worthy of hiring.

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We then analyzed the data further in relation to students’ self-­ presentation by considering aspects of their identities that were (re)constructed throughout the job-hunting process. Strong evidence was found to suggest the job-hunting process is in fact a process of self-identity (re) construction, and through participating in job-hunting activities, students attempt to realize the identities they themselves have conceptualized. In this way, through their participation in the job-hunting process students acquired the skills and resources necessary to becoming a shakaijin. By selectively displaying particular aspects of their self-identities according to the context, they were skillfully able to avoid the prospect of marginalization as they successfully constructed their new identities as future employees and contributors to Japanese society.

Notes 1. See, for example, Suzuki, Ito, Ishida, Nihei, and Maruyama (2010) for an overview of Japan’s neoliberal marketplace. 2. While jinzai is often translated into the English plural forms ‘personnel’ or ‘human resources’, in this chapter we also use the term to refer to individual (potential) workers or staff. 3. Displays of socially recognized attitudes or points of view. 4. English translations of Japanese unless stated otherwise are those of the authors. 5. Zemi are small classes held over a period of one and a half years that all students attend in the third and fourth years of study in which they work on a graduation project under the guidance of a professor. 6. No student answered ‘yes’ (I am gurōbaru jinzai) in the first survey then ‘no’ (I am not gurōbaru jinzai) in the second survey.

References ANA website. 2020. Retrieved June 5, 2020, from www.ana.co.jp/group/ recruit/employees/keyword/. Bucholtz, M. (1999). ‘Why be normal?’: Language and identity practices in a community of nerd girls. Language in Society, 28, 203–223.

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Bucholtz, M., & Hall, K. (2005). Identity and interaction: A sociocultural linguistic approach. Discourse Studies, 7(4-5), 585–614. Butler, J. (1990). Gender trouble: Feminism and the subversion of identity. New York: Routledge.​ Cook, H. M. (2008). Style shifts in Japanese academic consultations. In K. Jones & T.  Ono (Eds.), Style shifting in Japanese (pp.  9–38). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. De Fina, A. (2011). Discourse and identity. In T. A. Van Dijk (Ed.), Discourse studies: A multidisciplinary introduction (pp. 263–282). London: Sage. Fast Retailing (Uniqlo) website. 2020. Retrieved June 5, 2020, from www.fastretailing.com/employment/ja/fastretailing/jp/graduate/recruit/position-­info/. Greenwald, A., & Pratkanis, A. (1984). The self. In R. Wyer & T. Srull (Eds.), Handbook of social cognition (Vol. 3, pp. 129–178). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Gurōbaru jinzai ikusei suishin kaigi [The Council on Promotion of Human Resource for Globalization Development]. (2011). Retrieved March 11, 2018, from www.meti.go.jp/policy/economy/jinzai/san_gaku_kyodo/ sanko1-­1.pdf. Kansai University website. 2020. Retrieved August 21, 2020, from www.kansai­u.ac.jp/Kokusai/program/. Kondo, D. (1990). Crafting selves: Power, gender, and discourses of identity in a Japanese workplace. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Kroger, J. (1996). Identity, regression and development. Journal of Adolescence, 19, 203–222. Markus, H., & Wurf, E. (1987). The dynamic self-concept: A social psychological perspective. Annual Review of Psychology, 38, 299–337. Marra, M., & Angouri, J. (2011). Investigating the negotiation of identity: A view from the field of workplace discourse. In M. Marra & J. Angouri (Eds.), Constructing identities at work (pp. 1–14). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Nishiyama, N., & Hirahata, N. (Eds.). (2014). Gurōbaru jinzai saikō, gengo to kyōiku kara nihon no kokusaika o kangaeru [Rethinking global human resources, considering Japan’s internationalization from the standpoint of language and education]. Tokyo: Kuroshio. O’Regan, M. (2010). Graduate transitions to employment: career motivation, identity and employability. Report, Centre for Career Management Skills Reading: University of Reading. Ochs, E. (1993). Constructing social identity: A language socialization perspective. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 26(3), 287–306.

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Peirce, B. N. (1995). Social identity, investment, and language learning. TESOL Quarterly, 29, 9–31. Schnurr, S., & Zayts, O. (2011). Be(com)ing a leader: A case study of co-­ constructing professional identities at work. In J.  Angouri & M.  Marra (Eds.), Constructing identities at work (pp.  44–60). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Sharma, B. K., & Phyak, P. (2017). Neoliberalism, linguistic commodification, and ethnolinguistic identity in multilingual Nepal. Language in Society., 46, 231–256. Suzuki, M., Ito, M., Ishida, M., Nihei, N., & Maruyama, M. (2010). Individualizing Japan: Searching for its origin in first modernity. The British Journal of Sociology, 61(3), 513–538. Suzuki, T. (2014). Joshō: ima nihon ga hitsuyō to suru taigaigengosenryaku to wa nani ka [Introduction: What is the foreign language strategy that Japan needs now?]. In N. Nishiyama & N. Hirahata (Eds.), Gurōbaru jinzai saikō, gengo to kyōiku kara nihon no kokusaika o kangaeru [Rethinking global human resources, considering Japan’s internationalization from the standpoint of language and education] (pp. 10–17). Tokyo: Kuroshio. Takeyama, A. (2010). Intimacy for sale: Masculinity, entrepreneurship, and commodity self in Japan's neoliberal situation. Japanese Studies, 30(2), 231–246. Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of practice: Learning, meaning, and identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

4 The Struggle Against Hegemonic Femininity: The Narrative of a Japanese Actress Kyoko Satoh

Contents

1  Introduction 2  Background 3  Data 4  The Stories and Analysis 5  Discussion 6  Conclusion 7  Transcription Conventions References

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1 Introduction The dominant gendered discourse of mainstream Japanese society has persistently mandated that the husband work outside the home as the main breadwinner and the wife stay at home as the primary caregiver.

K. Satoh (*) Yokohama City University, Yokohama, Japan e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 J. Kroo, K. Satoh (eds.), Linguistic Tactics and Strategies of Marginalization in Japanese, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-67825-8_4

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Even under such circumstances, women pursue professional careers. The situation has gradually changed; more women are engaged in work outside of the home (Aramaki, 2019; Ehara, 2001; Gender Equality Bureau Cabinet Office in Japan, 2019). However, they are repeatedly criticized for deviating from hegemonic femininity, that is, “the characteristics defined as womanly that establish and legitimate a hierarchical and complementary relationship to hegemonic masculinity and that, by doing so, guarantee the dominant position of men and the subordination of women” (Schippers, 2007: 94). Women who deviate from hegemonic femininity “risk marginalization and social sanction” (Charlebois, 2014: 127). They embrace the contradictions and inconsistencies between their lifestyle choices and the dominant gendered discourse and cope with a sense of guilt caused by others’ criticism (Charlebois, 2014; Holloway, 2010; Okuda, 2018). How have they coped with criticism? How have they understood themselves as implicitly or explicitly responding to hegemonic femininity to pursue both professional careers and personal fulfillment as wives and mothers? To explore these questions, we must examine how working women position their identities in relation to dominant discourses of femininity. Identity is “the social positioning of self and other” (Bucholtz & Hall, 2005: 586). It is “best viewed as the emergent product rather than the pre-existing source of linguistic and other semiotic practices and therefore as fundamentally a social and cultural phenomenon” (Bucholtz & Hall, 2005: 588). Building on this definition, this chapter draws on the interview narrative of a Japanese actress who began her career at a time when following the lifestyle imposed by the dominant gendered discourse was strongly expected. Her narrative includes the autobiographical characteristic that speakers “discover new orders of coherence between actions and events, reappraise biographical causalities, and reinterpret both past and present in light of other biographical phases” (Deppermann, 2015: 377). Thus, adopting Deppermann’s (2013, 2015) outlook and navigated by the narrator’s articulated voices in the interview, this chapter demonstrates how her layered narratives of work and family life unveil her negotiation of self-construction against and obedience to hegemonic femininities while guarding against the danger of being marginalized from her community.

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2 Background To contextualize the overarching hegemonic discourse that frames the interviewee’s life course, let us first turn to current data on the status of women in Japan, before analyzing the interview data.

2.1 Status of Japanese women The Global Gender Gap Report (World Economic Forum 2019) ranks Japan 121st out of 153 countries in terms of progress toward gender parity. The country lags behind in the fields of “economic participation and opportunity” (115th) and “political empowerment” (144th). Moreover, the low ratio of female senior officials and managers is notable (131st). According to a survey by the Gender Equality Bureau Cabinet Office in Japan (2019), females comprise only 14.9% of administrative or managerial workers, which is extremely low compared to other developed countries. The Japanese government and private companies have introduced various schemes and measures to assist women in playing an active role in the workplace. However, dramatic changes in this aspect of Japanese society are yet to be seen. Complex factors contribute to this slow progress. One such factor is the internalized normative consciousness pertaining to women’s lifestyles. Aramaki (2019) summarizes the results of an awareness survey conducted by Nippon Hōsō Kyōkai (NHK, Japan Broadcasting Corporation) every five years from 1973 to 2018. The results show that Japanese society has slowly transitioned to parity in terms of family life. The percentage of people who support a family style of “fushō fuzui” (a wife should follow her husband’s lead) has decreased from 20% in 1973 to 8% in 2018, while those who support a family style in which the wife and husband cooperate has increased from 21% to 48%. Furthermore, the proportion of people who support a lifestyle in which women continue to work after marriage has increased from 24% in 1973 to 60% in 2018. The Gender Equality Bureau Cabinet Office in Japan (2019) also reports that the percentage of people who support the idea that a family should consist of a husband who is the main breadwinner and a wife who

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stays at home for home chores and childrearing has gradually decreased. Nevertheless, 30% of women and 45% of men still supported this idea in 2016, according to the survey results.

2.2 W  omen’s lifestyles, between choice and forced choice Hakim (2006) emphasizes that “women’s preferences [have] become a central determinant of life choices” (p. 286) and stresses contemporary women’s agency over their lifestyle choices. However, she cautions that their decisions waver between “choice and approval” and “personal goals and public beliefs” (p.  290). This is reflected in interview studies of women in a variety of geospatial locations, which consistently demonstrate that women’s choices are complicated by multifarious factors and that they do not always enjoy the lifestyles they choose (e.g., women in the UK, Broadbridge, 2010; women in South Korea, Oh, 2018; trailing spouses in Hong Kong, Schnurr, Zayts, & Hopkins, 2016; women in Japan, Charlebois, 2014; Holloway, 2010; and Okuda, 2018). Although desirable lifestyles for women change over time, these interview results reveal that women are coerced into “desirable” lifestyle choices. Citing Becker’s (1963) concept of “outsiders,” Okuda (2018) explains that some women who lead non-normative lifestyles are trapped in a vicious circle: judged as outsiders, they feel excluded by people leading what are referred to as normative lives; consequently, they consider themselves failures in life and lose their sense of self-identity. Childrearing is a major factor in women’s life choices (Nishimura, 2016). Sangu (2007) analyzed the interview data of Japanese couples concerning the process of decision making with respect to whether a wife continues working after giving birth. The results revealed the difficulty of continuing full-time paid work after childbirth in Japanese society. She found that most husbands left the decision about work-life balance after childbirth up to their wives. None of the interviewed husbands imagined or planned to change their patterns of work. Instead, their wives were forced to withdraw from paid work without discussing their life plans with their spouses, considering practical considerations such as who is

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suited for childrearing and domestic chores and who earns more. Thus, Sangu cautions against the “invisible power”: choices are made at an individual level; however, these choices are not free from preexisting concepts people hold. One way we can explore the effect of such “invisible power” is through close examination of the autobiographical narratives that women tell about their lifestyle choices and how these have impacted them and their relationships.

3 Data This chapter focuses on an interview narrative of a Japanese actress (pseudonym, Emi) in her 60s. Emi owns a theatrical company. She is famous for her performances as a prostitute on stage and has a husband and two children. Emi is chosen as an interviewee because she engages in multifaceted activities through pursuing both a professional career and personal fulfillment through her marriage life. Emi was presented with the following three interview themes: 1) her work as an owner of a theatrical company; 2) the impact of acting as a prostitute; and 3) her private life as a wife and mother. The interview was conducted in 2019 at a coffee shop in a hotel designated by Emi. It was audio recorded and lasted approximately an hour and a half. Since the three questions had been presented prior to the interview, she seemed prepared to answer them. Shortly after signing the consent form, she began to talk about how hard it was for her to manage her theatrical company. Therefore, what she spoke about was not the embodiment of a genuinely spontaneous talk-in-interaction. According to the dimensions of narrative by Ochs and Capps (2001), this study had one active speaker, Emi, speaking with an interviewer who gave minimal feedback during the interview and was detached from an ordinary conversational situation. However, as Bamberg (2011: 17) explains, “the actual theme or content of what is being told is dependent on the interactive situation in which narrating takes place.” Thus, Emi chose what was worth discussing and how it was expressed in the interview. Therefore, this chapter analyzes the interview narrative as is, given

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that it was “also part of social reality” (Wortham, Mortimer, Lee, Allard, & White, 2011: 49).

4 The Stories and Analysis Emi has two children and a husband who works in the same field. When she got married, she received advice from several people around her that she should remain behind her husband, with respect to their jobs and earnings. At first, she followed their advice. However, with time, she was unable to suppress her desire to act. She then set up her theater company that has been operating for over 20 years. Her two roles, owner of a theatrical company and an actress performing the role of a prostitute, complicate her situation. For example, Emi recounts that she had to endure insulting comments related to her performances when she met people for business purposes. As far as her family life is concerned, two contradictory approaches are observed. She questions gender hegemony that a woman’s place is in the home, and she explains how hard she tried to persuade her husband to allow her to work outside the home. However, she is willing to accept the gendered role of motherhood. She emphasizes how well she took care of her children when they were younger. She also regrets that she could not do as much as stay-at-home mothers could. Her narrative embraces plenty of wavering between “choice and approval” and “personal goals and public beliefs” (Hakim, 2006). This chapter selects two parts to demonstrate how Emi designs herself as a professional actress and theater owner as well as a wife and mother, through contradictory and inconsistent narratives.

4.1 C  an you sell your body? Women cry and men work Emi has taken an interest in women’s everyday life histories and performed them onstage. Among these performances is a play based on the life of a prostitute during the World War II era in Japan, when

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prostitution was illegal. The following is a narrative concerning her performance of a prostitute. Prior to Excerpt 1, Emi (E) talked about the difficulty of managing everything besides her onstage performance. Then, she began to recount the following incident to the interviewer (I):1 Excerpt 1 01 E: 何年か前に, 私の前で,「あんたは体を売れるのかね?」 って, 聞いたんですね. 02 I: え:: 03 E: 私は, その, 地位も名誉もある方だったんです. 04 もう, 宴席だったんで, びっくりして, びっくりして, 05 私, 普通だったら, なんとかできるんですけど, 06 真正面で受け止めたから, 07 その人見てるわけでしょ?, 舞台を. 08 びっくりして, 言葉がなくなったあとに, 09 涙がぶわ::っとあふれてきたんですよ. 10 で,「見てくれましたよね」って言って. 11 ぶわ::ってあふれたら, 12 「なぜ泣く」って言ったんですよ. 13 そしてこう言ったんですよ. 14 「俺は仕事で泣いたことはない.」 15 つまり女だから, っていうことですよ. 16 「 俺は仕事で泣いたことはない.」って言ったんです よ,その男の人が. 17 私はもうめちゃくちゃに傷つけられて. 18 で,なんで言い返せなかったのか, 19 で あ の お ,ま ,そ の 近 く に 私 の 知 り 合 い の 偉 い 人 が いたんですけど, 20 ち っ ち ゃ く , 「 言 っ て や れ 言 っ て や れ 」 っ て 言うんですけど, 21 私には,言ってよ,って思ったけど, 22 言わなかった,その人.

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English translation 01 E:

S everal years ago, in front of me, (he) asked, “Can you sell (your) body?” 02 I: Oh 03 E: (I) was, well, (he was) a person of both position and honor. 04 It was at a party, so (I) was astonished, astonished, 05 In such situations, I can usually manage, but 06 (I) received (his question) directly, so, 07 The man watched the play, did (he) not? 08 (I was) astonished and lost for words, then, 09 Tears fell from (my) eyes. 10 Then, (I) said, “(You) watched the play.” 11 (The tears) fell, then, 12 (he) said, “Why are you crying?” 13 Then, (he) said, 14 “I have never cried in a work situation.” 15 (He) meant because (I) am a woman. 16 “I have never cried in a work situation,” the man said. 17 I was deeply hurt. 18 Then, why did (I) not argue back? 19 Well, there was an acquaintance of mine, who was in a high-­ ranking social position, 20 (He) said to (me) in a small voice, “Talk back to (him), talk back to (him).” 21 I thought, tell (him yourself ), but, 22 the man did not. Here, Emi is introducing an incident at a party. A man at the party asked her whether she could sell her body (line 1). She was astonished by his question and felt tears in her eyes (lines 4, 8, and 9). In response, she could only confirm whether he had watched the play (line 10), with tears falling from her eyes (line 11). In reaction to her tears, the man asked why she cried (line 12) and said that he had never cried in a work situation (lines 14 and 16). She was deeply hurt by his words (line 17) and regretted not being able to argue back (line 18). Then, she mentioned another man who was sitting nearby and heard what the first man had said (line 19). This man whispered into her ear, “Talk back to him, talk

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back to him” (line 20). Although she wanted him to argue back (line 21) on behalf of her, he did not (line 22). Emi narrates what the man said in the form of direct reported speeches (1, 12, 14, and 16), uttered in a lower voice, as if she were mimicking his way of saying it. Moreover, his expressions highlight his maleness. His use of the following expressions together present him as a person with an insolent attitude: the first person pronoun ore (lines 14 and 16) is a masculine form mainly used in informal situations;2 the sentence-final form kane (line 1) is a sentence-final question particle that is stereotypically masculine;3 the second person address term anta (line 1) is usually directed to a person of inferior position;4 and the sentence-final form nai is used without the addition of a polite expression (lines 14 and 16).5 Furthermore, the contrast in the type of speech used by this man and Emi is notable. Unlike his casual and vulgar way of speaking, her way of speaking is polite. She added a polite sentence-final particle to every speech: masu in line 10. Their speech styles are non-reciprocal.6 As Tannen (1989: 105) notes, reported speech is “creatively constructed by a current speaker in a current situation.” What Emi mentions in the interview situation is no exception. As in the data analyzed by Holt (2000), Emi’s objective description of her experience through reported speeches represent the implicit reconstruction of her offensive attitude toward these two men. By designing their interactions as linguistically non-reciprocal, she highlights her interlocutor’s insolent maleness. Along with the vocabulary of her male interlocutor’s reported speeches, the social categories Emi assigns to these two men are also noteworthy. She emphasizes that they are both socially established. The man who asked the question is described as a man who has both position and honor (line 3), while the other man who whispered to her occupies a high-­ ranking social position (line 19). Emi can choose any non-recognitional reference forms such as people, someone, or man when she mentions people whom the interviewer does not know (Schegloff, 1996). Her use of non-recognitional referring expressions do something more than just referring, just like Stivers’s (2007) data of alternative recognitional reference expressions. That is, by mentioning their social status, she highlights that the sexually harassing comment that does not respect Emi’s performance is shamelessly uttered by “respectable” people.

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She continues her story by recounting telling her theatre members about her experience at the party. Hearing her story, the members advise her that she should fend such people off, which she has never been able to do. After receiving such a reaction from the members, she reflects on her past self as follows: Excerpt 2 29 E: 私 に は か わ す っ て こ と が , 今 ま で 自 分 の 人 生 の 中 でなかったから, 30 考えたら, 能天気で. 31 I: いえいえ= 32 E: =もう高校生からかわさない. 33 ぶつかっていく. 34 それを, ごまかさないってしちゃったから, 35 いい歳になってかわすことを知らなかった. 36 真正面で受けちゃったから, 37 こう涙がぼろぼろ出てきて, English translation 29 E: 30 31 I: 32 E: 33 34 35 36 37

I have no experience of fending people off in (my) life. Reflecting (on myself ), (I’m) brainlessly optimistic. no, no= =since (my) high school days, (I) don’t fend people off. (I chose) a straightforward approach, that, (I) do not cover up (my feelings) so, (I) didn’t know how to fend people off, even though (I) am mature. Since (I) straightforwardly received (his words), Tears fell, one after another.

Reflecting on her past behavior, Emi explains why she cried upon receiving the nasty question. She had no experience of fending people off (line 29), as she is an optimistic person (line 30). Since her high school days, she has not fended people off (line 32). Rather, she chose a

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straightforward approach (line 33) and did not cover up her feelings (line 34). Therefore, she does not know how to fend people off, even though she is a mature person now (line 35). She straightforwardly received the man’s words (line 36), which is the reason for her tears (line 37). After her reflection on the past, her story returns to the party scene, as shown in Excerpt 3 below: Excerpt 3 38 E: でもひとこと言えたのは,「これは舞台ですよ」. 39 I: うんそう. 40 E: で ,「 殺 人 者 は 殺 さ な き ゃ い け な い ん で す か ?」 し か言えなかった. 41 でも涙が溢れたら, 42 「泣くな.」 43 そうやって, ね, それ以上言わない. 44 「俺は泣いたことはない.」って言ったの. ((Both E and I laugh.)) 45 あ, そういうことですよね. 46 「 俺は仕事で. おまえ仕事じゃないと思ってるんだろ う.」て言われて, 47 I: そうそうそう, 48 E: それもあるんです. 49 もう, 怒りと苦しさで, なんていうか, 50 でもそれはすごく悔しかったこと. 51 でもその時に言い返せなかった自分, もっと悔しい. 52 I: あ::. 53 E: なんでぱしって言い返さなかったか. 54 今ならばしっと言い返せる. 55 I & E: ((laughter)) 56 E: そういうこともあったし, 57: 私 ,   ま さ に そ の お ,   男 性 の 意 識 っ て い う の は 感 じたりしながら, 58: それは最近ですね.

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English translation 38 E: But one thing (I) could say was, “This is a performance.” 39 I: Yeah, it is. 40 E: Then, “Does an actor who plays a murderer have to kill (people) in the real world? (I) could only say (this). 41 but the tears fell, then, 42 “Don’t cry.” 43 As always, (he) didn’t say any more. 44 (He) said, “I have never cried.” ((Both E and I laugh)) 45 Well, that kind of thing, isn’t it. 46 (I) was told, “What I do is a job, and you think that what you do is not one.” 47 I: Yeah, yeah. 48 E: That is a point, too. 49 Because of grievance and oppression, what to say, 50 That is the thing (I) really felt deep regret about. 51 But, (I) regret that I could not argue back with (him) on the spot. 52 I: (I) see. 53 E: Why couldn’t (I) argue with (him) back flatly. 54 (I) can argue back now. 55 I & E: (Laughter)) 56 E: This is what (I) experienced. 57: (I), well, sort of, men’s awareness, 58: That is my recent (experience). Emi narrates the interactions between the man and herself in a non-­ reciprocal style, too. She told the man that this was a performance (line 38) and politely asked whether an actor who plays a murderer could kill people in the real world (line 40). In response, he told her that she should not cry (line 42) in a plain imperative form and added that he had no experience of crying (line 44) in a plain form. She further introduced his words, concerning the fact that she thought what he did was a job and that what she did was not a job (line 46), using ore and omae, informal use of the first- and second-person pronouns, respectively. However, it is not clear whether this is her reproduction of his speech or her guess of what he might have thought.

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In her story, the man’s question is justified by way of a complicated conjunction of crying and work and the stereotypical gender norms assigned to these behaviors. In the story, crying is associated with women and tears are disassociated from work. The man declares that he has never cried in a work situation. In her story, his logic is constructed as follows: since he works, he does not cry; and since she is a woman, she cries, and since she cries, what she does is not work. With this logic, the focus shifts from his sexually harassing question to her crying. The question that triggered her crying is not censored. Furthermore, the lack of protest by another man also helps illuminate that the prevailing, assumed discourse of women as sexual objects is still alive in contemporary society and that her ephemeral protest is in vain. As pointed out by Deppermann (2015), past events are usually narrated from the perspective of two selves: the past self and the present self. In Emi’s interview narrative, from line 49 on, the past event is also retold from two different angles: Emi in the story world (past Emi) and Emi at the time of the interview (present Emi). She narrates her deep regret of this experience, from both the past and present points of view. The conversations with the men incur her grievances, oppression (line 49), and deep regret (line 50). Furthermore, she regretted that she could not argue back on the spot (line 51). She wonders why she could not argue back then (line 53); she knows she can now (line 54). On line 56, the story moves to the coda (Labov, 1972; Labov & Waletzky, 1967), and after line 58, she starts to narrate another regrettable experience.

4.2 A  s if I do something very wrong: Apology for being a absent mother In her narrative, the word yume (dream) appears 23 times. It is mainly used in positive contexts such as “I have a dream,” “in order to make my dream come true,” and “I am happy now, since I can weave my dream.” However, when she narrates her family life, yume is described in a different way. The difference in opinion between Emi and her husband, concerning her dream, tortured her. She and her husband got married because she thought that they could share their dreams (yume-o

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wakariaeru). However, after she started working again, she found that their dreams are different. It is her belief that each family member should have their own dream that is appreciated by others (otagai-no yume-o sonchō shiaeru); on the other hand, her husband believed that the family should pursue the same family dream (kazoku-no yume) and further stated that Emi’s own dream was a selfish dream (kattena yume). Thus, she had a hard time persuading her husband to allow her to work outside the home. Her struggle is described as follows: Excerpt 4 01 E: なぜ家庭を持ったら, 02 男性が中心で, しかも, いつも謝りながら行くわけですよ. 03 「ごめんなさい.」って. 04 I: ね, それね. 05 E: 「ごめんなさい,」「すみません,」って言いながら. 06 すごい悪いことをしているようにして. 07 夜, とくに出かけるときは. 08 例えば子供のお迎えを実家に頼むにしても, 09 そうすると, 10 こ う 申 し 訳 な い , 私 は 悪 者 な ん だ , っ て い う の が ずっとあったの. 11 だ か ら 子 供 た ち も ,  子 供 た ち も お 母 さ ん は 悪 者 なんだっていう. 12 I: あ:: 13 E: 親から見ればそうでしょ,「何してるんだ.」って. 14: 私がそれ口答えしない,「はいはい.」とか言ったら, 15 なんか, 子供から見たら, 16 なんて悪いことをこの母親はしてるんだろうって, 17 ケーキもつくらずにって. ((with laughing voice)) 18 思ってしまったんだって思うんですね. English translation 01 E: Why is it, if (we) have a family, 02 (it) is male-centered, and, (I) always apologetically go out. 03 “(I)’m sorry.”

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Yeah, that is it. Saying “(I)’m sorry,” “(I) apologize” As if (I) was doing something very wrong. Especially when (I) go out at night. For example, when (I) asked (my parents) to pick up (my) children, If (I) did so, (I) always felt apologetic and thought I was a bad person. That is why (my) children, (my) children (thought) that (their) mother was a bad person. (I) see. From (my) parents’ perspective, (it) is plausible, what (their daughter) is doing. I did not argue with (them) and said “yes, yes,” so something, from (my) children’s perspective, (they thought) something, this was a bad thing (their) mother was doing, not baking a cake ((with laughing voice)). (I) think that (they) thought so.

Emi’s family episode in Excerpt 4 comprises a reflexive talk about past Emi by present Emi. Her story from lines 1 to 17 is embedded in her thinking, as shown in line 18. Here, Emi is described as a person who swings between “choice and approval” and “personal goals and public beliefs” (Hakim, 2006) and as a person who cannot evade forced norms (Sangu, 2007). She wonders why families are male-centered and why she must apologetically return to work (lines 1 and 2). She repeats her own reported speech of apology to her family (lines 3 and 5), which made her feel as if she was doing something wrong (line 6), especially when she went out at nights (line 7). As an example, she mentions a time when she asked her parents to pick up her children (line 8). She always thought that she felt apologetic and had done something wrong on these occasions (line 10). That is why her children might think that their mother was a bad person (line 11) and her parents might cast doubt on what their daughter was doing (line 13). Since she accepted her parents’ comments without

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arguing back (line 14), she thought that her children might consider it a bad thing that their mother is not baking a cake for them (lines 15–18).

5 Discussion Life is full of contradictions and inconsistencies. The same goes for narratives. Emi’s story is constructed as neither a straightforward acceptance nor rejection of gender norms. She tries hard to make sense of her life in the interview narrative. Emi’s linguistic choices in her reported speeches and the social categories she assigns to the two men highlight the insolent attitudes of socially established men. Simultaneously, her story describing the man’s logic with her reported speeches demonstrates how the sexually harassing comment is justified as reasonable and how such logic prevails uncensored. Employing such linguistic expressions, she tactfully and tacitly expresses her ephemeral struggle against being perceived as a sexual object. Although her protest against the assumed discourse of women as sexual objects ends in vain, she constructs her identity not as a total victim of such discourse by justifying her crying. Past Emi in Excerpts 1 and 3 is described as a victim facing an unexpected situation. Triggered by the man’s comment concerning whether she could sell her body, past Emi is too astonished to react for three reasons. The first is the place; the conversation occurred at a party. The second is that she directly received his comment. The last is that he had watched her performance, implying that a person who appreciated her performance would not be expected to come up with such a question. Thus, she designs her story about a woman who was asked an unexpected question from the least expected person in an unexpected situation. Furthermore, shifting the timeline back and forth between past Emi and present Emi, she regrettably explains the reason why she cried without arguing back. Her self-reflexive narrative helps avoid conveying an image of a meek woman who is subject to the discourse that women are debauched as sexual objects and excluded from society as they are not considered “full-fledged” members. When she narrates her family life, she protests hegemonic femininity, the system that maintains the dominant position of men and the

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subordination of women. She describes her family as androcentric. This androcentric family style requires her to put in extra effort to pursue her own dreams. Here, her husband and her parents cast doubt on her choices. In these circumstances, she does not protest or claim her stance. Instead, she expresses apologies for her absence when she goes out to work. Her story embraces the inconsistency between her straightforward claim of her family style as androcentric and her apology to her family. Furthermore, her story unconsciously describes her as a person who is deeply affected by androcentric ideas. She feels sorry for her children and believes that she has done something wrong. Elsewhere, in the interview, she also mentioned that she had tried very hard to cook for their family. Her establishing her own theater and continuing her career as an actress do not conform to the dominant gendered discourse; however, she does not seem to question the ideology that a woman is positioned as a caregiver in the home. Through her family narrative, the figure that emerges simultaneously pursues contradictory discourses: her personal fulfillment as a theater owner and an actress, which is against hegemonic femininity, and the “woman as natural caregivers” discourse (Charlebois, 2014), which follows hegemonic femininity.

6 Conclusion In this chapter, the analysis of Emi’s layered narrative of her work and family life has unveiled her negotiation of self-construction against and obedience to hegemonic femininity. The invisible power that motivates her is her guarding against the danger of being marginalized from her community (the social sphere and her family). The “Can you sell your body?” episode demonstrates how deeply the discourse of women as sexual objects penetrates society and how hard it is for her performances and her business to be appreciated without gender-based prejudices. On the other hand, the “As if I do something wrong” episode demonstrates that Emi herself embraces a part of hegemonic femininity. Her narrative reveals that she does not question the discourse of “women as natural caregivers,” and she struggles as she simultaneously pursues her work and

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her role as a wife and a mother. Since she belongs to both a working community and a family community, and since each requires a different discourse, her struggle to avoid being marginalized from where she belongs is a double burden. Women who cry risk being marginalized from the working community, while women who work outside and leave their children behind at home risk being marginalized from a society that shares the assumption that a family should have a stay-at-home mother. Her story also reveals how people criticize those who deviate from the dominant gendered order. The interview focuses on the experiences of an actress whose position seems to be quite unique. However, a similar picture emerges, even today, when considering how women pursuing both their careers and personal fulfillment, especially motherhood, are treated and how they struggle to manage both in Japanese society. This data analysis hopefully contributes to a deeper understanding of how women are marginalized from social, economic, and family spheres and how they struggle not to be marginalized in each domain.

7 Transcription Conventions . falling intonation , continuing intonation with a slight pause ? rising intonation : lengthening of the preceding vowel in the original Japanese version = latched utterance 「」 Direct reported speech in Japanese “” direct reported speech in English (( )) transcriber’s comment ( ) words omitted in the original Japanese version but added to maintain a clear meaning in English translation

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Notes 1. Excerpts 1 to 3 comprise consecutive speeches uttered by Emi, with minimal feedback from the interviewer and six lines omitted between Excerpts 1 and 2, given the space limitation. Minimal feedback from the ­interviewer, such as “hai” (yes) and “un” (yeah), are omitted to prioritize content clarity. 2. In Japanese, the use of the first-person pronoun is optional. When one is chosen, the gender of the speakers, the relationship between the interlocutors, and situational factors are involved. Refer to Kobayashi (2016a) for the variation and preference of first-person pronouns used in Japanese. 3. According to Nakajima (2011), “kane,” question sentence-final particles in Japanese, are mainly used by middle and older male speakers, although rarely. 4. Like the first-person pronoun, the second-person pronoun is also optional in Japanese. If used, complicated factors are involved in choosing one among various choices, such as status difference, closeness, and gender awareness (Takenoya, 2003). Anta, a second-person pronoun, is not often chosen. A common finding among various studies on the use of anta is that it is rarely addressed to a person of superior position in terms of age and/or status (Kato, 2019; Kobayashi, 2016b). 5. In Japanese conversation, an utterance ending without any sentence-final elements is very rare (cf. Maynard, 1993), and, in particular, it is directly addressed to an interlocutor. 6. Maynard (1997) describes the relationship between the use/non-use of plain/polite expressions and the relationship between interlocutors.

References Aramaki, H. (2019). 45-nen de nihonjin wa dou kawattaka (1) [How the Japanese have changed over 45 years (1): From the 10th Survey on Japanese Value Orientations]. Hōsō Kenkyū to Chōsa (Studies on Broadcasting and Survey), 69(5), 2–37. Bamberg, M. (2011). Who am I? Narration and its contribution to self and identity. Theory & Psychology, 21(1), 3–24. Becker, H. W. (1963). Outsiders: Studies in the sociology of deviance. New York: The Free Press.

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Broadbridge, A. (2010). Choice or constraint? Tensions in female retail executives career narratives. Gender in Management: An International Journal, 25(3), 244–260. Bucholtz, M., & Hall, K. (2005). Identity and interaction: A sociocultural linguistic approach. Discourse Studies, 7(4–5), 585–614. Charlebois, J. (2014). Japanese femininities. New York: Routledge. Deppermann, A. (2013). Positioning in narrative interaction. Narrative Inquiry, 23(1), 1–15. Deppermann, A. (2015). Positioning. In A.  De Fina & A.  Georgakopoulou (Eds.), The handbook of narrative analysis (pp. 369–387). Boston, MA: Wiley Blackwell. Ehara, Y. (2001). Gender Chistujo [Gender Order]. Tokyo: Keiso Shobo. Gender Equality Bureau Cabinet Office. (2019). The white paper on gender equality 2019. Cabinet Office. http://www.gender.go.jp/about_danjo/whitepaper/r01/zentai/index.html. Hakim, C. (2006). Women, careers, and work-life preferences. British Journal of Guidance & Counselling, 34(3), 279–294. Holloway, S. (2010). Women and family in contemporary Japan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Holt, E. (2000). Reporting and reacting: Concurrent responses to reported speech. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 33(4), 425–454. Kato, E. (2019). Nininshō daimeishi “anata” “anta” “omae” “kimi” nitsuite [On the second person address terms “anata” “anta” “omae” and “kimi”]. Kotoba (Language), 40, 124–141. Kobayashi, E. (2016a). Nichijō seikatsu ni okeru jishōshi: Tokuchōto tsukaiwake (First person address terms in daily interactions: its characteristics and choice). In O. Endo et al. (Eds.), Danwa Shiryō Nichijyō Seikatu no Kotoba [Japanese Daily Interaction: Transcripts and Analysis] (pp.  41–72). Tokyo: Hituzi shobo. Kobayashi, E. (2016b). Nichijō seikatsu no koshō [Address terms in daily interactions]. Kotoba [Language], 37, 14–32. Labov, W. (1972). The transformation of experience in narrative syntax. In W. Labov (Ed.), Language in the inner city: Studies in the black English vernacular (pp. 354–396). Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Labov, W., & Waletzky, J. (1967). Narrative analysis: Oral versions of personal experience. In J. Helm (Ed.), Essays on the verbal and visual arts (pp. 12–44). London: University of Washington Press. Maynard, S. K. (1993). Kaiwa Bunseki [Conversation Analysis]. Tokyo: Kurosio.

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5 Intersectional Identities: Voices from the Margins of ELT in Japan Yuzuko Nagashima and Luke Lawrence

Contents

1  Introduction 2  Literature Review 3  Methodology 4  Data Collection and Analysis 5  Participants’ Biography 6  Findings and Discussions 7  Concluding Remark References

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Y. Nagashima (*) Yokohama City University, Yokohama, Japan e-mail: [email protected] L. Lawrence Toyo University, Tokyo, Japan © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 J. Kroo, K. Satoh (eds.), Linguistic Tactics and Strategies of Marginalization in Japanese, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-67825-8_5

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Introduction

In contrast to global trends within education, the English Language Teaching (ELT) industry in Japan is male-dominated, with Western “native speaker” men representing the ideal English teacher (Appleby, 2014) and Japanese males occupying the positions of power. In this chapter we use a qualitative 3-stage data collection framework to investigate the challenges faced by non-Japanese, “non-native speaker”, female teachers attempting to establish their careers in Japan. Situating this study firmly in the feminist tradition and using intersectionality as an analytical lens we found that despite a large variance in backgrounds the participants suffered from similar trajectories of discrimination and marginalization stemming from native-speakerist ideals of language use and pronunciation, national and racial stereotypes, as well as fetishized notions of foreign women in Japan and gendered ideologies based on traditional concepts of female roles in society.

2

Literature Review

2.1

Native-speakerism in ELT in Japan

English Language Teaching (ELT) in Japan covers a wide range of learners and contexts, from primary to tertiary public schools and universities to private international and conversation schools. One common factor that unites these disparate elements is a native-speakerist, gendered discourse that runs through the ELT field, privileging a select few and marginalizing many more. The term native-speakerism was coined by Holliday (2006) to refer to “a pervasive ideology within ELT, characterized by the belief that ‘native-­ speaker’ teachers represent a ‘Western culture’ from which spring the ideals both of the English language and of English language teaching methodology” (p. 385). The consequences of this ideology are manifold and extend from negative perceptions (as well as negative self-­perceptions) of “non-native speaker” teachers in terms of their ability to teach the

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English language, to outright discrimination in terms of employment, training course placement, publication in international journals (Jenkins, 2000) and countless other day-to-day teaching situations. It also elevates teaching practices and qualifications that emanate from Western scholars and institutions and undermines teaching practices and pedagogies as well as learner strategies from non-Western countries. In terms of race, a number of studies have found an Anglo-centric view of ELT in the Japanese context (Kubota, 1998; Matsuda, 2003) in which teaching English “is a raced practice with preference for white native speakers as teachers” (Kubota & McKay, 2009, p. 612), which, it is speculated, may be a legacy of the post–World War II US occupation of Japan that associates English with America and whiteness. In a study carried out in a tertiary institution in Japan, Rivers and Ross (2013) found that when all other attributes were standardized, students rated white teachers as the most desirable and when the attributes were manipulated, those who were seen as “native speakers” came out on top. Similar findings have been noted in attitudes towards any teacher perceived to have an accent that differs from what they perceive as a “native speaker” standard, regardless of the actual identity of the speaker. For example, in an early study carried out with Japanese learners, a preference was found for “native speaker” accent, especially American English. This was thought to change with degree of familiarity with various accents (Chiba, Matsuura, & Yamamoto, 1995). Similarly, a more recent study by Pinner (2016) found that the preference of Japanese learners was again for “native speaker” accents. However, this was heavily dependent on those whom they perceived to be “native speakers”, with Arnold Schwarzenegger’s nonstandard accent rated favorably as many students assumed him to be American. In recent years, the definition of native-speakerism has also been expanded to include discrimination against all teachers of English “on the basis of either being or not being perceived and categorized as a native speaker of a particular language” (Houghton & Rivers, 2013, p. 14). It is argued that in Japan, although “native speaker” teachers often have initial privileged access to jobs over their Japanese counterparts, there is a glass ceiling that prevents all “foreign”, “native speaker” and non-Japanese

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“non-native speaker” teachers from reaching higher-level, decision-­ making positions of influence in Japanese educational institutions.

2.2

ELT in Japan as Gendered Practice

Although teaching has conventionally been considered to be a women’s domain, ELT in Japan, especially in higher education has had a unique history of being predominantly occupied by (foreign) male teachers (Kobayashi, 2014). Although the exact data for the number of ELT teachers in Japan is not available, according to official figures, only 4% (7885) of full-time teachers of all subjects (184,273) in universities are foreign teachers and only 28% (2199) of these foreign teachers are female (MEXT, 2016). It is not just the predominance in number by male teachers in ELT that has a significant impact on the career trajectory of female teachers in Japan. Appleby (2014) claims that in the ELT field, the notions of masculinity and heterosexuality have historically been unmarked, or invisible, and this “invisibility of men has served to perpetuate an unbalanced gender regime that continues to shape the professional experiences of both women and men” (p. 2). For example, Hicks (2013) focuses on the narratives of foreign, female English teachers in higher education who struggle with the patriarchal, discriminatory structures and ideologies which are prevalent in the Japanese workplace, including in the field of ELT. She also points out how homosocial networks at work often exclude female language teachers from having access to opportunities that involve decision-making and leadership, which has in turn perpetuated the status quo of the predominance of male teachers in ELT in Japan. Furthermore, Nagatomo (2015) reports similar findings that foreign female language teachers tend to face limited employment opportunities and lower employment status and also have to deal with extensive male-dominated networks often filled with ageism, sexism, and misogyny in order to advance in academia in the long term. One example of this sexism is a traditional attitude toward gender roles and child-rearing. The well-known shortage of childcare, along with low participation of fathers in child-rearing in Japan can result in harassment

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from employers who often presume that female employees will not be able to balance childcare and work responsibilities (Landsberry & Kanai, 2019). There is often the expectation that they will quit their job entirely. This expectation is backed up by reality with 70% of women in Japan leaving paid employment after childbirth (Wingfield-Hayes, 2013).

2.3

Marginalization in ELT

It is no secret that the marginalization of certain teachers in ELT has been geographically and politically perpetuated through the history of colonialism and imperialism of the West. This created the essentialized yet hierarchical binary between native English speakers (NES) and non-­ native English speakers (NNES), and therefore native English-speaking teachers (NESTs) and non-native English-speaking teachers (NNESTs) (e.g. Canagarajah, 1999; Pennycook, 1998). There has been a relatively wide body of research that focuses on systematic oppression, including discriminatory ideologies and practices that mainly target and thus marginalize NNESTs in ELT (e.g. Holliday, 2005; Medgyes, 1994). However, some critical scholars in ELT have also warned that most of the existing research tends to treat NNESTs as a homogeneous group and thus ignores the diversity and hybridity within the socially constructed group of individuals. In turn, it inadvertently sustains the underlying ideologies that maintain the superiority of NESTs (Lee & Canagarajah, 2019). Such problematization of the binary and essentialization of NES and NNES has been promoted by scholars of postmodernism and poststructuralism where oppressions are considered to be discursively constructed and socially negotiated. Kumashiro (2000) takes advantage of such a poststructuralist approach to the notion of marginalization and defines it as “a social dynamic in which certain ways of being in this world, including certain ways of identifying or being identified, are normalized or privileged while other ways are disadvantaged or marginalized”  (p. 26–27). Taking such a fluid and contextual approach to marginalization, the current study aims to build on the argument that promotes the critical importance of deconstruction of the binary within groups of NNESTs, namely local NNESTs and non-local NNESTs (e.g. Yazan & Rudolph,

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2018). In the current study, our purpose is to explore the diversity within NNESTs and shed new light on the intersectionalized marginalization that they go through in their career trajectories. Specifically, we focus on an underrepresented and marginalized group of NNESTs: non-Japanese, female, language teachers who are not conventionally considered to be NES.

3

Methodology

3.1

Stage 1: Written Autobiographical Narrative

In this study, we use multilevel data collection, utilizing written autobiographical narrative as a starting point in order to help the participants navigate their own life stories as ELT professionals. It contains dimensions of narrative knowledging, which is defined by Barkhuizen (2011) as “the meaning making, learning, or knowledge construction that takes place during the narrative research activities of (co)constructing narratives, analyzing narratives, reporting the findings, and reading/watching/ listening to research reports” (p. 395). In this way, narrative knowledging can be seen as not only a cognitive but also a social activity to produce knowledge in order to make sense of ourselves through storytelling. On a related note, Barkhuizen, Benson and Chik (2014) emphasize the power of narrative inquiry, an umbrella term that covers a wide range of studies involving storytelling, including the one that we employ for this study. They claim that narrative inquiry, which centers on storytelling as a tool to analyze data and to present findings, “expands the range of voices that are heard in research reports, often highlighting the experiences of marginalized groups outside of the academy” (p. 3). However, it is important to take into account the power that researchers always hold when it comes to reconstructing and interpreting the storytellers’ narratives in their published work, which can contribute to the ethical implications of power imbalance in knowledge production (Bell, 2011). We were aware of this at every stage and attempted to allow the participants’ own narratives and words to speak for themselves, although we recognize that as researchers the final document is our own interpretation.

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Stage 2: Reflexive Interviews

Originating in feminist research which sought to make the voice of the researcher clear and subvert the fallacy of academic objectivity, reflexivity is now seen as a key concept in social science research. In its broadest sense, reflexivity is an approach to qualitative research that not only acknowledges the personal history and positionality of the researcher(s), but puts this front and center when conducting research and analyzing data (Davies, 2008). In contrast to the traditional approach that views the research interview as simply a “research instrument”, in this study we view the interview as an active, socially situated “speech event” that is co-­ constructed by the interviewer and the interviewee, seeing the interview as ‘social practice (Talmy, 2010). Additionally, Mann (2016) urges a focus on the “how” as well as the “what” of the interview process with greater transparency by showing both sides of the conversation in transcript excerpts.

3.3

 tage 3: Focus Group Interview as Space S for Sharing and Empowerment

As well as using a reflexive approach to shorten the distance between researchers and participants, a key element of feminist research is to give voice to those who are usually silenced and for the research project itself to be of equal benefit to the participants and researchers. This marks a shift from “research on women” to “research for women”. In this theoretical model, empowerment in research involves the individual participant coming to an understanding of their own power (and potential power) and acting with others to develop this power (Lather, 1991). However, as privileged researchers we were aware of our own potential to come across as using “our” power to “give” power to “others”, thus upholding the unequal power dynamic of researcher/participant (Gore, 1992). Along with reflexive interviews, feminist-focused research has utilized the focus group as an additional method of encouraging solidarity, consciousness-­raising and empowerment of research participants through shared storying (Montell, 1999). By bringing together participants from

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different backgrounds at different stages in their careers in ELT, our aim was to honor the feminist methodological tradition by providing an open and inclusive space for participants to discuss their thoughts freely and openly, to share their stories, to offer insights and to develop solidarity.

3.4

Intersectionality

In order to analyze dynamic, fluid, and contextual phenomena such as marginalization through exploring teacher identities, we find intersectionality essential as an analytical lens. It is defined as “a way of understanding and analyzing the complexity in the world, in people, and in human experiences” in which “people’s lives and the organization of power in a given society are better understood as being shaped not by a single axis of social division, be it race or gender or class, but by many axes that work together and influence each other” (Collins & Bilge, 2016, p. 2). It is important to keep in mind that intersectionality does not just observe the mere intersections of different social and identity categories, but examines the way in which systematic power dynamics play out and critically affect such intersections. Although the term intersectionality was originally coined to be utilized in the field of legal studies in order to include the voice of African American women whose experience of oppression cannot be summarized as a simple combination of racism and sexism, this methodology has been applied in other fields of research including applied linguistics and education in order to shed light on more nuanced and context-dependent pictures of identities (e.g. Lawrence & Nagashima, 2020; Shelton, Flynn, & Grosland, 2018).

4

Data Collection and Analysis

As outlined earlier, the data collection process was carried out in three stages.

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Stage 1: Written Narratives

In the first stage we requested that the participants submit a written reflection. After explaining the nature of the present study, we gave suggested guidelines for what could be included in the reflection, which included background, experience and identity as an English user and teacher, and any difficulties or marginalizing incidents they may have faced. It was made clear that these were only guidelines and that they were free to deviate from them in any way they wished. The length of submissions ranged from 349 to 490 words.

4.2

Stage 2: Reflexive Interviews

The narratives produced in Stage 1 were used to generate questions for Stage 2 interviews in order to explore identified themes in depth. This resulted in semi-structured interviews with questions individually tailored to each participant. Interviews were conducted remotely by videochat, transcribed and searched for themes, which were again used to generate questions for Stage 3.

4.3

Stage 3: Focus Group Interview

In the group interview stage, the participants were brought together for a group discussion. Due to scheduling difficulties, one participant (Christina) was not able to join the focus group. Despite this setback we felt that we had sufficient data from Stages 1 and 2 to still include Christina in the dataset. This stage was also conducted via videochat. The prompts and questions for the focus group were mainly generated by analyzing overlapping topics and themes that had emerged in Stages 1 and 2. Finally, all three datasets were checked and coded for themes independently by both Yuzuko and Luke. When we later compared notes, we had both identified the exact same four themes which we use to present the following data.

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A Note on Researcher Roles

With the aforementioned reflexivity in mind, due to the fact that this study is focusing on issues of marginalization experienced by female, “non-native speaker” English teachers in Japan expressing their frank opinions and discussing their sometimes personal experiences, we felt that it would not be appropriate for Luke (as a representative of white, male, “native speaker” power) to carry out the interviews and focus groups. Therefore, all interviews and the focus group were conducted and recorded by Yuzuko. These recordings were then transcribed by Luke and shared with Yuzuko.

5

Participants’ Biography

Three participants were recruited through mutual friends that we both have. They were chosen specifically because they fit the intersectional social categories including being a woman for gender, non-Japanese for nationality and NNES for language status, which we believed may have led them to experience certain forms of marginalization in their career development. However, we were not acquainted with them in person before we started to collect data, and thus we did not have any previous knowledge or assumptions beforehand about what kind of stories they would share with us. Angela (all names are pseudonyms) is an international kindergarten teacher from the Philippines. After teaching online part-time in the Philippines and obtaining a TESOL certificate, she moved to Japan and started working for an international kindergarten in 2019. Nina is from Russia and a full-time university faculty member in Japan. After juggling various part-time teaching positions in different levels of education for approximately 20 years in Japan, she obtained her current position three years ago. Christina is from Trinidad and Tobago and started her teaching career as an ALT through the JET program in the mid-2000s. After completing her M.A. in TESOL in her home country, she moved back to Japan in 2019 and currently holds several ELT-­ related positions including eikaiwa teacher, English language examiner

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and part-time teacher in a university. All participants may be regarded as belonging to the dominant racial and ethnic groups in their home countries.

6

Findings and Discussions

6.1

 heme 1: Intersectionalized Discrimination T in the Workplace

The first theme that immediately emerged in Stage 1 for all participants was direct experiences of being marginalized or discriminated against in the workplace. This discrimination manifested itself in a wide range of experiences from the hiring process to promotion opportunities to native-­ speakerist attitudes toward nonstandard accents, and was based on many factors including visa concerns related to nationality, appearance based on race, linguistic status as a “non-native speaker” and motherhood. In her Stage 1 narrative Christina drew attention to the challenges of coming from a country with a less-recognized passport: Majority of the times, my employment challenges in the ESL context are due to my nationality rather than my qualifications; as many times I often see job ads which require native speakers from the ‘BIG 7’ or after being successful at an interview I often hear the employer say that my application can’t go any further because it is difficult to get a work visa sponsored for persons who come from my home country/ nationality. (Christina, Narrative)

For Nina, the problems were more nuanced with her European looks allowing her to obtain jobs, but only at what she considered the lower level and not for higher-level positions which she believed were intended for Japanese teachers. She also faced direct discrimination for being a working mother: I am not a native speaker, but since I look European and have blonde hair I’ve been treated [as] so, I guess, on many occasions. I’ve been hired to some lower

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level positions because of this, I believe. And I’ve been denied many university positions too, because of this. (Nina, Narrative) The college also had this advertisement in Japanese for a full time position and I applied and I was called and you know I was so happy, I’m going to you know maybe maybe I’m going to get this job, but after talking to two interviewers I understood that it was again like a part-time position, which was never advertised. So, they saw that oh we got this resume why don’t we just hire her part time? (Nina, Interview) I used to work for XYZ School and was denied a promotion once because, as my boss said, I was a mother. Being a mother didn’t stop me from taking only one day off while giving birth to my fourth child, I went back to work the very next week I was out of the hospital, but still a British guy who just joined us was promoted, and he was a father too, but nobody knew it or cared about it. (Nina, Narrative)

All three participants reported being asked to change their accent or to pretend to be a different nationality: Yes, and they … the Principal … the first day I remembered the Principal told me I have to be careful with my intonation and my … she doesn’t like to hear Filipino English because … the principal warned me that some parents they don’t want to hear the Filipino English intonation and pronunciation. (Angela, Interview) Yeah yeah yeah um I was one … once I … just for one month I worked in one International School here in Japan. It was just one month and I remember um when … I remember our like … who’s she? … that director, she said “if mothers talk to you say you are from the US, don’t say you’re from Russia”. (Nina, Interview) I was replacing an American JET and so when I first got there the teachers asked me if I could speak with an American accent just because they thought, you know, the students were exposed to the American accent for how many other years, she was there and they’ve gotten used to hearing an American accent, so they kind of asked if I could speak with one. I was just like “what?!”, it kind of took me aback. (Christina, Interview)

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Despite recognizing the injustice of this discrimination, there was also evidence that the participants may have unconsciously internalized some of these biases, while at the same time being ideologically opposed to them: Oops it was Filipino English. (Angela, Focus group interview) She had an accent even worse than me. (Nina, Focus group interview)

As these extracts illustrate, all three participants experienced marginalization in the workplace as a direct result of their intersectional identities. The fact that the three participants were all asked to disguise their accents or nationality suggests that this is a prominent identity marker in the minds of Japanese schools and can be identified as a key aspect of marginalization in the Japanese context (McKenzie, 2008; Shibata, 2010). Despite the participants’ awareness of this as discriminatory practice, the unconsciously negative appraisals of their own English (“oops”, “worse than me”) suggest that this native-speakerist mindset may be so heavily embedded that the participants themselves subscribed to the negative narrative that it promotes. For Nina this discrimination was mitigated somewhat by her “European looks” that allowed her to “pass” for a “native speaker”, which can be seen as discrimination similar to that experienced by “native speaker” teachers in Japan of being denied opportunities in higher levels of teaching (Houghton & Rivers, 2013; Rivers, 2017). However, the direct denial of promotion due to being a mother is a clear case of gendered marginalization that may have been compounded by the participant’s foreigner status of lacking power in Japanese companies. The fact that the employer in this situation felt able to directly cite motherhood as the reason for denial suggests that this may be seen as an acceptable reason in the Japanese context (Landsberry & Kanai, 2019). It also highlights the potential powerlessness engendered by the intersectionality of gender and nationality in the Japanese context.

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 heme 2: Networks and Mentorship T for Personal and Professional Support and Solidarity

Since all teachers shared their experiences of difficulties in their transnational and transcultural career advancement in individual interviews, we were interested in exploring how they handled their struggles and how they sought help and support in the group discussion (Stage 3). While both Angela and Nina shared similar values on the support from other female teachers in their professional context, neither felt that they were actually connected to more official and powerful networks such as professional teachers’ associations as well as unofficial networks with people who hold positions of decision-making power. They recognized their career progress has been rather personal and private. Angela conceded that she prefers privacy and independence with a small circle of friends and mentors: Wherever I am right now, the circle of friends I have, the few teachers I get in touch with, it’s enough for me. I don’t need, I don’t think I need a community because especially there is this bad thing about Filipinos which I try to avoid, it’s a shame, *laugh* but it’s true, so, less friends you have, the better, that’s mine. And I want to succeed on my own with a help of close friends, that’s it. (Angela, Focus group interview)

Angela’s preference for small-scale, close-knit groups of family and friends, which was revealed multiple times over a course of the focus group interview, is also implied in the introduction of the written autobiographical narrative when she stated that “I really do not talk about myself but I will try my very best to share my journey with you” as her acknowledgment that she tends to keep private matters to herself. On the other hand, Nina admitted that her limited peripheral participation of such official and unofficial networks has stalled her career development: Nina: *sigh* *laugh* I think it’s very important to belong to a community, but unfortunately, I don’t belong to that community. … Belonging to that commu-

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nity would be much easier, you know, to get what I wanted … ambitious goals I have. Yuzuko: When you mention “that community” that you don’t belong to, like what kind of communities are you talking about? Nina: Well, graduating from a Japanese university, having advisor who would recommend you to someone, and having all these senpais*, kohais**, who work for some places where you know everyone, you know … academia is quite small. … So, if you are here like from the very beginning, you are Japanese, born in Japan, going to Japanese universities, you kind of know many people in academia. And I’m not a type of person who makes friends easily and who likes socializing and all these conferences, I didn’t make enough friends in the foreign academia, too, and ah, being a non-native speaker probably was another reason why I was reluctant to make connections in a native-speakers’ foreign academia. (Nina, Focus group interview) *members of the higher hierarchical positions in an organization **members of the lower hierarchical positions in an organization

When Yuzuko further brought up the literature on male homosocial network that has strong influence on the hiring practice in higher education in Japan (e.g. Appleby, 2014; Hicks, 2013; Nagatomo, 2015), she pointed out that in her experience, such practice might be prevalent not among foreign scholars in Japan, but possibly among Japanese scholars. Maybe it’s true in Japanese academia … because I think it’s like really strong in Japan, it’s a Japanese male academia, their connections, cuz look at every ­faculty member if you go to [names a well-known, highly prestigious university], they are all men. Maybe you can just find one woman from Harvard or like the same universities and you wonder how did she get there, you know? (Nina, Focus group interview)

Summarizing the previous extracts, Nina seems to consider that academia in Japan is divided into two major groups—one with Japanese scholars and the other with foreign scholars—and she belongs to neither fully. She elaborated further that she lacks networking opportunities with people who have strong connections with Japanese academia, which seems to be closed regarding foreign researchers and even Japanese female scholars. At the same time, she acknowledged her initial hesitation in participating in

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a network for foreign teachers and researchers because of her introverted personality and her language status as a NNEST. Since networking and mentorship are rather conventional methods for one’s career advancement, it comes as no surprise that these opportunities tend to be more available to men than to women (Sullivan & Kimura, 2020). That is why scholars including Sullivan and Kimura (2020) suggest that it might be helpful for female teachers to look for such connections outside of their workplace, which tends to be dominated by male colleagues. However, it is also indispensable to keep in mind that even networks catered to (foreign) women could inadvertently involve excluding practices against certain marginalized groups of teachers whose intersectionality has often been ignored as the extracts suggest. Therefore, although there may be more resources available than before for female teachers and scholars in ELT, without true diversity and inclusivity, such practices of solidarity and empowerment only further exclude intersectionally marginalized teachers and researchers.

6.3

Theme 3: Self-sacrifice

The third theme to emerge was that of self-sacrifice. This came in the form of commitments to career set against commitments to family, which was different for each participant and strongly highlighted the restrictions put on many women as a result of extended family and motherhood commitments. In the case of Angela, traditional gender roles and patriarchal relations in her home country required her to follow her father’s wishes both in educational and workplace choices. This forced her to abandon her dream of becoming a teacher for 23 years, only finally realizing her ambition through covert methods. In her reflective narrative she talked about her passion for teaching English: But all these had to take the backseat when I suddenly got married and raised two kids on my own. I had to help out manage our family business for 23 years. During the 23 years in the business, I did not stop teaching on the side. I was teaching English Online, I had foreign students and all these I juggled between

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raising my children and teaching part time. They say teaching has to be a passion. It was not only a passion for me, it was my first love. (Angela, Narrative)

This matter-of-fact sketch, which Angela did not herself explicitly frame as a sacrifice, was explored in more detail in the interview as Angela revealed that she had been teaching secretly from her family: Yuzuko: and then you mentioned that suddenly you got married and you raised two children and you helped manage your family business for 23 years and then at the time can you tell me how you felt about this sudden change in your life? Angela: ‘cos when my kids are graduated from college I was thinking my work is done because um the family business was the one who … who was the one who sent them to school and I was there in … at work and I wanted to be … I wanted to do more so I felt that I could do more than just sit there in a desk job. Yuzuko: right, so during the 23 years you kind of like wish you could have worked more? Angela: yes and I … I didn’t tell them that I was teaching online after work. So I would rush home … yeah I would rush home after 3:00 PM I would rush home and I would go online for my Chinese students. Yuzuko: so you … so nobody knew that you were teaching on the side? Angela: no no nobody knew because it was after work so it’s my time. Yuzuko: Right, but it … but that was your family business as well? Angela: yes it is my father … father’s business with his brothers and sister. Yuzuko: okay can you tell me why you didn’t tell them that you had a teaching job on the side? Angela: because they were scared that I would leave right away and they told me that you … no no in the Philippines they could, before before when I was young, they could tell the kids what course they want the kids [to] take. That was before, so that during my time okay I said yes even if I didn’t want to take a business course I wanted to be in a hotel and restaurant management course and but because of my dad okay I said yes so I gave way and everything my personal things, everything my passion I put it aside because of this business. (Angela, Interview)

As a counterpoint to this, Nina felt that she had sacrificed not only her mental health, but also time with her children at the expense of her own career ambitions:

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Yuzuko: Do you feel like you’ve sacrificed anything in your life to get to where you are now? And if yes, how so? Nina: Oh yeah, a lot a lot. My mental health first. The family … family. If I wasn’t so ambitious, I probably would have a better relationship with my fam … with my kids (inaudible) was a better mother. It hurts, it hurts. You can’t just sit on two chairs even if you try really hard. (Nina, Focus group interview)

These stark examples show the difficulty that many women face when attempting to have a family as well as pursuing the career of their choice. These difficulties can result from being kept in a position of financial reliance and a sense of duty to accept extended family demands at the expense of personal ambitions (Angela) or from a social system that denies women flexibility and agency in work/life choices (Nina). In the case of Angela it can be seen that a sense of duty to the family business stemmed not only from patriarchal family affiliations, but also from the fact that her family bore the financial burden of her children’s education (“because um the family business was the one who … who was the one who sent them to school”). This represents a form of sacrifice that lasted almost 25 years. Taking on the extra workload of online teaching in secret on top of her existing work and family commitments shows self-determination to achieve her personal and professional goals. In finally following her ambitions she could also be seen to have sacrificed not only her secure employment, but also as leaving behind her country of birth at the risk of severing the close family ties that she had built up over many years of working in the family business. In Nina’s story, duty is replaced by guilt and a certain amount of self-­ admonishment. In a recent study of the difficulties faced by foreign working women raising children in Japan, Landsberry and Kanai (2019) found that stress, having no personal time and clashing of school events with working hours were the top three challenges. This was echoed by Nina’s assertion that it had impacted on her mental health and the statement that “[y]ou can’t just sit on two chairs even if you try really hard”. Additionally, her statement “If I wasn’t so ambitious…” implies a sense of guilt for her sacrifice, as if to imply that as a woman she has no right to expect both a career and a family.

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 heme 4: Sexualized, Heteropatriarchal T Stereotypes of Foreign Women in Japan

One of the most spontaneous, vibrant interactions occurred when Yuzuko asked the participants about their experiences of being stereotyped based on their gender, race and/or country of origin. It was one of the questions that was asked in the focus group discussion as we thought it would be an interesting comparison since they were from countries with very distinctive ethnicities and cultural backgrounds. Angela: When they know that I am Filipino, and the next question would be “What’s your job?” And when I tell them, “I’m an English teacher”, only one reaction. Nina: Bar or something. Angela: Yeah, only one reaction from them. “Wow, sugoi*”. Because they think always that I work in a bar, right? Nina: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know what you mean. Angela: And what I do is I look at them straight in the eye, “I’m an English teacher.” And they would stop. *laugh* Yuzuko: So, when you are talking about this, “they” means Japanese people? Angela: Everybody. Even Filipinos. First time I meet them, they would even ask me, “What bar are you working at?” “Hmm? What? I’ve never been to a bar!”, I’d tell them. *laugh* It’s funny! Nina: Or like “Why did you come to Japan?” Angela: Yes! Nina: You came to Japan to work, that’s kind of like nonsense because they automatically think whether… Angela: They think you work at a bar! Nina: …you work at a bar, or you got married to a Japanese male, like a mail-­ order bride, so like… Angela: Yes! Always! *laugh* That’s true! That’s true. Nina: So they imagine like some old guy, you know, like 20 year or 30 years older than you. Angela: Very true, *laugh* it’s crazy. Yuzuko: And they are not just men who ask you these questions? Nina: Women, too. Angela: Everybody I meet.

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Nina: Everybody. Yuzuko: That’s very interesting. Angela: And I always wanna see their shocked faces. *smile*. (Focus group interview) *impressive

Both Angela and Nina held strong desire and ambition for upward social mobility and moved to Japan to establish their professional careers— Angela to teach in an international kindergarten and Nina to teach and research in higher education. However, striking similarities of their experiences of being stereotyped based on people’s degrading assumptions about their intentions or purposes to live in Japan as foreign women indicate otherwise; both Angela and Nina were presumed to work as bar hostesses or to be engaged in contract-based marriages once people learned about their countries of origin. Such stereotypes signal “heteronormative femininity and marriageability” (Lazar, 2017, p. 579) against a backdrop of historical perpetuation of associating foreign women with sexualized and commodified labor (Coleman & Sandfort, 2004; Stewart, 2020). Nonetheless, they both actively distanced themselves from such stereotypical assumptions, rather than being passive recipients of such stereotypes. Angela, especially, discursively situated herself in a more professional, socially prestigious position by saying rather animatedly that “what I do is I look at them straight in the eye, ‘I’m an English teacher’” and “I always wanna see their shocked faces”. These defiant remarks suggest that she takes pride in the job she does and challenges such demeaning stereotypes discursively by proving them wrong. Furthermore, the earlier dynamic interaction also illustrates how historically enduring, intersecting discourse of nationality-specific, gendered stereotypes still holds significant currency in their daily interaction not only with the Japanese but also with people from their countries of origin. It could be argued that such sexist ideology and stereotypes asymmetrically affect foreign women like these teachers because of the intersectionally imbalanced power dynamics at play. Although these examples experienced by Angela and Nina might seem anecdotal, such gendered and racialized stereotypes of foreign women may be permeated on the institutional level (Mills, 2008). Future research should be

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conducted to take into account how these stereotypes of foreign women could explicitly or implicitly give material consequences to their careers in ELT including their employment opportunities and status.

7

Concluding Remark

This study illustrates the way in which structural marginalization can be manifested in myriad ways to affect individuals differently based on the intersectionality of their social identities including but not limited to their gender, race, nationality and languages. In this study, three teacher participants co-constructed with each other along with Yuzuko their life stories through written and oral narratives for multilevel data collection, which led to four emerging themes: intersectionalized discrimination in the workplace, lack of networking and mentorship, self-sacrifice against career advancement, and sexualized and racialized stereotypes of foreign women in Japan. All these themes suggest the way in which marginalization is multidimensional and relational to the power dynamics at play. For example, in Christina’s case, having the “wrong” passport automatically precluded her from a number of employment opportunities. When she did find employment, the native-speakerist outlook that dominates in Japan led to discrimination based on her “non-standard” accent. Additionally, even with higher qualifications and university teaching experience in her home country, she has struggled to find equivalent employment in Japan. Coming from a patriarchal society that values obedience to family led to Angela putting aside her personal wishes for many years. When she did finally forge her own path in a new country, she came up against obstacles in the form of discrimination against her accent and pronunciation in what was supposed to be an “international” school setting. She also had her professionalism and very reason for being in Japan questioned by sexist and misogynistic eroticized and fetishized stereotypes of Filipino women in Japan. For Nina, the combination of her being a mother and a foreign resident in Japan made it extra challenging for her to gain access to a higher

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position in teaching. It was also revealed that the combined positionality of her being a woman, non-Japanese, and non-native English speaker status made her hesitant to join academic communities and professional networks, especially in the initial stage of her career. Along with Angela, she also encountered racialized and gendered stereotypes of Russian women in Japan who undermined her consistent hard work and sacrifice to achieve her career advancement. With the issues that this study has highlighted in mind, we believe that it is crucial for researchers to take intersectionality into account, which is often overlooked when it comes not only to research, but also when advocating for marginalized individuals in ELT, especially focusing on NNESTs and/or female language teachers. Lack of intersectionality in research and/or advocacy inadvertently treats experiences of the marginalized as unidimensional and ignores the voices of the intersectionally marginalized within such groups. In addition, we would like to emphasize the power of narratives that have allowed the participants to claim their own voice and agency to pick and choose the stories that they wanted to tell us. This powerfulness resonates with the concept of “sisterhood” (hooks, 2000), especially with those with similar marginalizing backgrounds and experiences with political and emancipatory goals in mind. We believe it has a great potential to shed more critical light on social justice and equity in ELT in Japan.

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6 Epistemic Primacy and Self/Other-­ Marginalisation in a Parliamentary Debate: A Case Study of Female Japanese Politicians Keiko Tsuchiya

Contents

1  Introduction 2  Describing Epistemic Status 3  Female Politicians in Japan 4  Research Data and Method 5  Findings 6  Concluding Remarks 7  Appendix: The Original Transcriptions in Japanese References

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Introduction

Parliamentary debates are adversarial in nature where the government and the opposition engage in legislation as a global action, and in asking or criticising as local actions (van Dijk, 2004). Politicians are engaged in a

K. Tsuchiya (*) Yokohama City University, Yokohama, Japan © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 J. Kroo, K. Satoh (eds.), Linguistic Tactics and Strategies of Marginalization in Japanese, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-67825-8_6

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multifaceted practice which involves various aspects from the institutional order in a parliament, their role as a member of a party and as an individual, the management of the rapport with audiences and the adversarial nature of their argumentation since, in the contexts of political debates, politicians whose stances differ assert, negotiate and co-construct “reality”, which is often controversial. In such circumstances, parliamentary rhetoric politicians employ large influences for decision-making in the debates (Ilie, 2015). Atkinson (1984) conducted a conversation analysis on Margaret Thatcher’s address at an annual conference in 1980, identifying a technique of “three part list” to invite applause from the audience. Focusing on knowledge in political discourse, van Dijk (2003) examined Tony Blair’s strategies to express knowledge of the September 11 attack, introducing the concept of the K− device, which “regulates the way their knowledge is brought to bear in their discourse” (van Dijk, 2003: 94). Reyes (2011) analysed speeches of George W. Bush and Barack Obama in 2007 and 2009 on the conflicts of Iraq and Afghanistan, highlighting the strategies to legitimate their stances, such as causing fear, making future promises and quoting experts’ voices. In Cabrejas-Penuelas and Diez-Prados’s (2014) study, the use of appraisals was identified in the pre-election debates between Mariano Rajoy and Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba in 2011, which are positive and negative evaluations of others’ or their own statements in the debates. Fetzer and Bull (2012) also investigated speeches of 15 leading male British politicians, identifying the use of verb forms to display their competence and responsiveness as leaders. In terms of conventions of questioning in political debates, Harris (2001) highlighted three strategies to be impolite and adversarial, analysing the data of Prime Minister’s Question Time in the British Parliament: (1) seeking action, (2) seeking information, and (3) seeking opinion (Harris, 2001: 457–458). Although the data are not from a parliamentary debate, Clayman (2001) examined more than 100 broadcast political interviews in the US and the UK and identified the interviewees’ techniques to answer or evade questions, classifying their responses as follows: (1) answer with a roundabout talk (beginning with talk which is not directly addressing the question), (2) minimal answer with elaboration, (3) overt evasion with justification, and (4) covert evasion with reformulation (adjusting the original question to fit the interviewee’s

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intention) (Clayman, 2001: 407–432). How politicians or members of parliament (MPs) behave in their public speeches and debates has been studied from different perspectives as summarised in Ilie (2010): 1 . Parliamentary dialogue conventions and strategies 2. Local and global contexts of parliamentary practice 3. Multiple role shifts between the public roles of debating MPs and their private roles 4. Institutional and power relations among MPs 5. MP’s interaction with multilevel parliamentary audiences. (Ilie, 2010: 2) These factors are interrelated and embodied in discursive practices in political speeches and debates. In other words, interdiscursivity (Fairclough, 2003) is observed in their practices in political speeches and debates, which are “organized together in interdiscursive relations, relations in which different genres, discourses and styles may be ‘mixed’, articulated and textured together in particular ways” (Fairclough, 2003: 37). Most of the aforementioned studies are closely related to the first and third dimensions of Ilie’s (2010) classification. This chapter addresses these studies, especially the third one—representations of complex and multiple roles of MPs in debates—thus shedding light on female politicians in an East Asian context. The studies in political speeches and debates have been mainly conducted in European or American contexts, and male politicians are more likely to be subjects of the studies although there are a few articles which focus on female and/or East Asian politicians: Margaret Thatcher’s speeches have been investigated in several studies, for example by Atkinson (1984, mentioned earlier), as well as debates on her being interrupted frequently in political interviews (Beattie, 1982; Bull & Mayer, 1988). Analysing the testimony given by a non-Western politician, Takeshita Noboru,1 who was the former Prime Minister of Japan, Maynard (1994) provides a description of his speech style as “clear-in-­ language, unknown-in-meaning” since he often juxtaposed different semiotic contexts within a single speech. More recently, Cheng (2016) examined two presidential debates in Taiwan in 2011 among Ma

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Ying-Jeou, Tsai Ing-Wen and James Soong, highlighting the distinct use of modality and framing in the strategies of persuasion. Still, the behaviours of female politicians in a parliamentary debate in East Asian contexts, that is, in Japan, discussed in this chapter, have not yet been explored in political discourse studies. To fill the gap, this chapter investigates how female politicians in Japan talk and behave in a parliamentary debate in relation to the notion of marginalisation. Drawing on the concept of the “real world” of the male-dominant workplace in Lakoff (1973), Hall (2004) highlights the positionality of women as a marginalised group in society together with male hippies, male academics and male homosexuals, who and whose languages are dissociated from the “real world” power (Hall, 2004: 82). In the context of political discourse, how female MPs, who are assumed to have power as politicians and are at the same time marginalised as women, behave is my central interest. A corpus-assisted discourse study is applied here to examine Japanese female politicians’ strategies of self/other-­marginalisation by asserting and mitigating epistemic right and authority in a parliamentary debate (cf. Ilie, 2000 for the discursive study of MPs’ use of cliché using a corpus of British parliamentary debates). Epistemics in interaction concerns “knowledge claims that interactants assert, contest and defend in and through turns-at-talk” (Heritage, 2013b: 370), and how interlocutors assert their epistemic primacy or downgrade their own or others’ epistemic status in interaction is the focus of this study. A video recording of a Japanese parliamentary debate is chosen as a data set in this case study, which involves three female politicians. They discuss the so-called Women Empowerment Law, which was passed in 2015 to encourage companies to disclose their policies and field surveys of female employees. Three research questions are addressed: (1) How do participants allocate their speaking time among themselves and what words are uttered frequently in the parliamentary debates? (2) What are the discursive patterns observed in the sequence of questioning and answering? (3) How do they assert their own epistemic status and downgrade others, centring/marginalising themselves or others? The existing studies in epistemics in interaction are reviewed in the next section.

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Describing Epistemic Status

A good body of research on knowledge status in interaction has been conducted (Heritage, 1984; Heritage, 2013b; Kamio, 1990; Katagiri, 2007; Kinsui, 1993; Labov & Fanshel, 1977; Pomerantz, 1980; Raymond & Heritage, 2006). In the seminal study of Labov and Fanshel (1977), knowledge status was categorised into five groups through the observation of confirmation sequences in dyad therapeutic interactions: A-events: Known to A, but not to B B-events: Known to B, but not to A AB-events: Known to both A and B O-events: Known to everyone present D-events: Known to be disputable (Labov & Fanshel, 1977: 100)

Pomerantz (1980), on the other hand, distinguished two types of knowledge status: Type 1 knowables are knowledge of a speaker’s own experience (cf. identity-bound knowledge in Raymond & Heritage, 2006), while Type 2 knowables are knowledge a speaker gains through hearing from others. Similarly, Heritage and Raymond (2005) focus on the first-­order and second-order access to knowledge and examine forms to express the relativity of epistemics between interlocutors in everyday conversation, for example, the use of the evidential form “she said”, to show the speaker’s second-order access to the knowledge (Heritage & Raymond, 2005:17), using footing shift (Goffman, 1981). Interactants also involve the activity of assessing a shared event; for example, A said “well it was fun”, which is upgraded by the second position assessment by a recipient as “I enjoyed every minute of it” (Heritage & Raymond, 2005: 23). To analyse epistemics in interaction, Heritage (2013a) proposed two concepts: epistemic status and epistemic stance. The former involves “the parties’ joint recognition of their comparative access, knowledgeability and rights relative to some domain of knowledge as a matter of more or less established fact”, while the latter concerns “the moment-by-moment expression” of the social relationships with an epistemic domain which are “managed through design of turns at talk” (Heritage, 2013a: 558).

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Heritage (2012) describes action interpretations of various morphosyntactic forms in reference to different knowledge status (K+ epistemic status and K− epistemic status). For example, the morphosyntax form of a declarative with the final rising intonation is interpreted as a question, while that of one without a rising tone is regarded as informing, in which the information is within the speaker’s epistemic domain. In epistemics in interaction in Japanese, Kamio (1990) developed the theory of territory of information, which concerns whether information belongs to the speaker or the listener. On the basis of Kamio’s theory, Katagiri (2007) describes semantic meanings of Japanese final sentence particles よ(yo) andね (ne), with which people signal whether information is shared with a listener or not. (1) Kaigi-shitsu ha 6 go-shitsu desu yo.   [The meeting room is room 6.] (2) Kaigi-shitsu ha 6 go-shitsu desu ne.   [The meeting room is room 6, isn’t it?] (Katagiri, 2007: 38, originally in Japanese, English translations added by me)

The speaker informs the number of the meeting room to the listener with the particle yo in (1), indexing the speaker’s primary epistemic status, while in (2), the speaker confirms the information with a listener with the particle ne, presuming the listener also knows the information (also see Kinsui, 1993). As described in van Dijk (2003: 100), epistemics in political discourse is exercised in several layers in the context: “knowledge about politics in general, more special knowledge about the issues at hand, knowledge about parliamentary procedures, knowledge about other MPs and their parties, and knowledge about the current parliamentary session”. On the basis of those theories of epistemics in interaction, this study focuses on how Japanese female MPs assert or mitigate their own or others’ epistemic status in a parliamentary debate. Before moving onto the research method, the following section provides an overview of the status quo of women and female politicians in Japan, briefly reviewing a history of the suffrage and the establishment of the equal employment law in Japan.

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Female Politicians in Japan

About a hundred years after the suffrage during the first wave of the feminism movement in the UK in the late nineteenth century (Baxter, 2003), Women’s Voting Rights in Japan was enacted in 1945 under the American military occupation after the Second World War. The National Pension Act and the Manpower Dispatching Business Act were issued at the same time in 1985, which assume a typical family structure comprising a husband, who works outside, and a wife, who stays at home as a dependent family member and works as a part-timer (Ueno, 1990). In 1986, the Equal Employment Opportunity Law was established, which prohibits gender inequality in the workplace and in recruitment. In 2015, the Act on Promotion of Women’s Participation in the Workplace was passed in the parliament, which aimed to increase the share of women in leadership positions to 30% by 20202 although in the same year, the Worker Dispatch Law was amended, or worsened, according to the claims the opposition party made. The status of Japanese women has been reported as one of the worst in developed countries. The Global Gender Gap Report 2020 (WEF, 2020), for example, rates Japan as the 121st out of 153 countries (cf. UK 21st, US 53rd). The report uses four major indexes to assess the gender (in) equality of each country: (1) economic participation and opportunity, (2) educational attainment, (3) health and survival, and (4) political empowerment. The scores of Japan in the first three categories are similar to the averages. However, the last index, women’s contribution to its politics in Japan, is rated significantly low (0.049, cf. 0.229 on average) (WEF, 2020: 201). There are three sub-indices in the fourth index: women in parliament, women in ministerial positions and years with female head of state. Japan cannot earn any points in the third sub-index since it has not had any female prime minister. In terms of the first sub-index, the percentage of female politicians in the House of Councillors had been less than 10% until the late 1980s (GEB, 2019b). The percentage has gradually improved and reached 22.9% in 2019. The contribution of female politicians to the House of Representatives has been even scarcer. The number was limited to a very

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few until the early 1990s. The figure slightly increased in the 2000s and once reached over 10% in 2009 (11.3%), but later decreased again, and was at 10.1% in 2019. Similarly, the percentage of female ministers in Japan had once reached 21.1% in 2014, but then decreased to 15% in 2019 (GEB, 2019b). Thus, the community of Japanese politics is still dominantly populated with male members and female politicians are marginalised and remain as a minority. This study aims to capture how Japanese female politicians behave in such an environment by analysing parliamentary debates which involve Japanese female politicians.

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Research Data and Method

For the data collection of this study, 51 video recordings of Japanese parliamentary debates in November 2014 were observed. Since 2014 was the year when the percentage of female ministers was above 20% (see previous section, Female Politicians in Japan), there seemed to be more possibilities to find data sets of interactions between female politicians. The video recordings of parliamentary debates were available at the online archive of the meetings in the House of Representatives (Shugiin, 1999–2018). Only 4 videos out of 51 included interactions between female politicians. Among them, an OP’s question session in a recording of the Cabinet Committee in the House of Representatives was chosen for the analysis since the interaction lasted for a sufficient length (about 50 minutes) and it involves three female politicians: Arimura Haruko, then Minister of State and Minister of Women Empowerment (MS, hereafter); Yamamoto Sanae, then Vice Minister of Health, Labour and Welfare (VM); and Tsujimoto Kiyomi, a member of the opposition (OP), in addition to a male chair (Chair) and a male government officer. MS and VM became MPs in 2001, while the OP was first elected in 1996 and once served for the then cabinet. As described briefly in the introduction, it is an interpellation session where they discussed the legislation of the Act on Promotion of Women’s Participation in the Workplace (the Women’s Participation Act, hereafter) in the recorded parliamentary debate. The original Japanese transcription of the debate was also provided in the online archive, which was used for the analysis.

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Transcription conventions in Adolphs (2006) were applied to the transcription.3 Extracts in this chapter were translated into English by me, and the original transcriptions in Japanese are attached in the Appendix. A corpus-assisted discourse analysis was conducted on the data using an annotation system ELAN (2001–2015) and a corpus analysis software package for Japanese language KH Coder (Higuchi, 2016). For the quantitative corpus analysis, the speaking time lengths, turns and word count of each participant were calculated. The frequent word lists of the utterances of MS and OP were also extracted. For the qualitative discourse analysis, the MPs’ self/other-marginalisation strategies in questioning and answering were analysed in relation to asserting or mitigating epistemic authority.

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Findings

5.1

Speaking Time and Word Count

To have an overview of the interaction in the debate data, the numbers of words, turns and speaking time of each participant were summarised in Table 6.1. Table 6.1  Speaking time, turns and word count Total

OP MS VM Gov. Officer Chair Pause

Average

Speaking time (MM:SS.0)

Word count

Speaker turn

Speaking time/ turn (MM:SS.0)

Word/ turn

33:03.6 12:57.4 03:04.2 00:30.0

6597 2891 724 99

26 19 6 1

01:16.3 00:40.9 00:30.7 00:15.0

254 152 121 99

01:08.8 02:01.9 52:46.0

162 – 10,473

47 – 99

00:01.5 – –

3 – –

The total number of words uttered is about 10,500 and they took almost100 turns in total. The OP spoke about 6600 words in 26 turns, which is about 30 minutes in total in the 50-minute-long debate. The

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MS took 19 turns, but her turns are shorter than the OP’s. The total number of words the MS spoke is less than 3000. The VM spoke about 700 words in six turns and there was only one occasion where a government officer was summoned to provide the figures of the average payments of part-time workers. The chair took 47 turns to address next speakers. The list of words which were frequently used by the OP and MS was also extracted from the corpus (see Tables 6.2 and 6.3). Table 6.2  The list of top 20 frequent words by OP

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Table 6.3  The list of top 20 frequent words by MS

The term 女性 (women) appears first in the OP’s list, which is shown at the third occurrence in the MS’s list. The verb 思う (think) is ranked second in both lists. The address terms were also frequently used by both, such as 大臣 (minister) at the third position in the OP’s list and 委員 (committee member) at the first in the MS’s list. Several words which were

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related to the theme of the debate appear in both lists: 賃金 (salary at fourth in the OP’s list) and 雇用 (employment at fifth in the MS’s list). It is worth noting that the OP used the verb 言う (say), which is a casual form, while the MS chose the humble form 申し上げる (say) and the formal form お答え (answer), which comprises two morphemes, the prefix お(o) for beatification honorifics and 答え (answer), and makes the phrasal verb お答えする (do answer) with the verb する (do). The OP often asked questions with the term いかが (how/what), which is used as a question form ‘how or what do you think?’, for instance. The MS uses the term 理解 (understand) to show her understanding of the OP’s statements. In the MS’s list, there are some words which refer to departments of the government, such as 厚生 (welfare, which is used as the ministry of welfare) and 所管 (administrative jurisdiction). These words are examined further in a qualitative analysis in the following sections.

5.2

Question–Answer Sequences

In reference to Harris (2001) and Clayman (2001), question–answer sequences in the parliamentary debate were examined, and a sequence pattern was identified: (1) the OP’s accounting and seeking opinion in her question; (2) the government’s (MS or VM) answering with round-about talks or evading with justification; and (3) the OP’s seeking action or asking specific information, and the process is repeated until the OP changes the theme to interrogate. Extracts 1 and 2 are examples of the sequence pattern in the exchanges between the OP and the MS at the beginning of the debate session, which are preceded by the Chair’s nominations. It is a convention in a Japanese parliamentary debate that the Chair calls MPs by their titles, such as their surnames with 大臣 (daijin, minister), or 君 (kun, Mr/Mrs, conventional honorifics in the particular context). I quote a slightly longer extract to inform the contexts. In Extract 1, the OP first provides an account for her asserting the changes of the statements in the article in lines 2 to 19, and offers suggestions in lines 20 and 21, seeking the MS’s opinion with an interrogative form, ‘what do you think?’, in line 22. In MS’s response in Extract 2, the evading with a round-about story and justification with footing shift are observed.

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Extract 1:  OP’s Seeking Opinion (at 00:00:00)

1 Chair:      The next speaker name of OP with kun . 2 OP:       I am name of OP of the Democratic Party. 3          I think the debates on the Act on Promotion of Women’s 4       Participation in the Workplace have just started today, 5        which is said to be one of the main issues the 6        Prime Minister’s name cabinet has addressed. […] 7       First, I looked at the purpose of the act in the first article, 8        and I felt slightly strange. The article starts with ‘to cope 9       with the social economic changes, due to the low birth rate 10        and longevity and diversified public demand’, and then it 11        says ‘based on the Basic Act for Gender-equal Society’, 12        but normally we should do this based on the gender 13        equality act, then as a consequence, our society will be 14        able to cope with the social economic changes and the low 15        birth rate and longevity. […] So, by adding the phrase 16        ‘with respect human rights’, we can say if we have 17        such a society [with respects of human rights], eventually, 18        we can solve the problem with the low birth rate and 19        longevity and also our economy will grow, 20   →    so I would like to suggest that the act should include the 21   →    term ‘human rights’ and change the orders [of the 22   →    statements]. What do you think? ((Seeking Opinion))

The MS first expresses her understanding of the OP’s opinion in lines 2 to 8, repeating what the OP said in the previous turn to attend the question. Then from line 8, the MS inserts an anecdote of her meeting with the then  Prime Minister, introducing his idea that men should

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Extract 2:  MS’s Round-About and Footing Shift (at 00:07:20)

1 Chair:    Minister name of MS with daijin (minister) . 2 MS:     I will answer to name of OP committee 3       member. As name of OP committee member 4       said, since we focus on individuals, especially women, 5       individuals’ happiness in a safe and healthy environment 6       will lead to a safe and healthy community, which as a 7       consequence stimulates Japanese society. I understand the 8      process very much. […] 9       After I became a minister, I visited the prime minister’s office 10  →  and I noticed one thing from what Prime Minister said to me and 11  →   I realised ‘that’s what it meant’. quoting an anecdote 12      of her meeting then Prime Minister who said that women’s 13      active participation is beneficial to the economy and men 14      should recognise the benefit. […]  ((Round About)) 15     If we consider this, now the order [of the article] was pointed out, 16      but I can clearly say that the order itself expresses what 17      name of OP committee member suggested, 18  →   and also I was reported that the order, Justification ((Footing shift)) 19      starts with the current situation such as the low birth rate 20  →   and longevity, follows the order of the original statements 21  →   in the gender equality act in 1999. ((Justification, Third Party))

realise the benefit to the economy when women participate at work more actively. The MS then implies that the order of the statements reflects the then  Prime Minister’s thoughts, shifting the credit to the then  Prime Minister. The MS then claims in line 16 the order of the statements was chosen to realise the equality between men and women as the OP aims to achieve. The MS then refers to the original statement issued in 1999 in line 20, which is another justification strategy by referring to a third party.

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These evading strategies were marked by the OP, who then asked further questions to seek specific information in the subsequent turn in Extract 3. The request, ‘I would like you to continue the discussion’, and the interrogative, ‘would you, Minister?’, in lines 8 and 9 highlight the point of the question, forcing the MS to either provide an ambivalent opinion of her assertion or to evade again. Extract 3:  OP’s Seeking Action and MS’s Evasion (at 00:09:40)

1 Chair:    name of OP with kun . 2 OP:      Now you have mentioned Prime Minister’s opinion, but 3       this is a law, so we should first have ‘based on the Gender 4       Equality Law’ and this part the part of ‘to cope with 5       the social economic changes’ should come later, 6       and also we need to include the term ‘human rights’, just in 7       case, although we take it for granted. I think this change 8  →    will improve the act, so I would like you to continue 9  →    the discussion, would you, Minister?  ((Seeking Action)) 10 Chair    Minister name of MS with daijin (minister) . 11 MS:    This was submitted as a Cabinet law, but it is now in the 11      Diet proceedings in the House of Representatives. I think 12  →   there are discussions among those involved, especially 13  →   leaders of parties,  ((Justification)), General Procedure 14      so I will see the process carefully, and also we would like 15     to assert our opinions.

In lines 1 to 7, the OP repeats the changes to be made in the article and seeks the MS’s action in lines 8 and 9. The MS in response evades again with justification by describing a general procedure of the legislation process in lines 12 and 13. Thus, a sequence pattern is observed: the OP seeks the government’s opinion in her question with account, which was followed by the MS or VM answering with round-about talks or evading with justification, referring a third-party or general procedures. Then in the following turn, the OP requests the government’s action or asks specific information. The following section further investigates how the MPs claimed or mitigated their epistemic authority to marginalise others or themselves.

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Self/other-Marginalisation Strategies

In the data, there are four occasions where the MS self-marginalised herself, while the OP self-centred herself and other-marginalised the MS once each. Extract 2 in the previous section includes an instance of the MS’s self-marginalisation. In lines 9 to 11, the MS indicates herself as a novice in the community of Japanese politics by uttering ‘after I became a minister’, quoting the anecdote of the Prime Minister telling his thoughts to her, and at the same time strategically mitigating her epistemic authority about the policy and the article. By so doing, the MS self-marginalises herself in the community as visualised in Fig. 6.1.

Fig. 6.1  MS’s self-marginalisation

The case of the OP’s self-centring is observed in Extract 4. This is part of the debate between the OP and the MS, where the OP seeks for specific information about public opinions. The OP suggests that the MS should collect public comments about the Women’s Participation Act and consider them properly, referring to the OP’s own experience of administering the public comment collection after the Great East Japan Earthquake as Special Adviser to the then Prime Minister (lines 6 and 7). This is an A-event (Labov & Fanshel, 1977) of the OP and she has primacy of the knowledge. Although she is an opposition party member, the OP strategically self-­ centres herself with the anecdote of her own experience as a cabinet member in the past (Fig.  6.2), simultaneously asserting that the MS should disclose the process of the public comment collection.

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Extract 4:  OP’s Self-Centring (at 00:12:25)

1 OP1:   I sometimes heard the case that public comments are just collected 2      [and not used], but public comments and also how you reflect them in 3     the law, involving appropriate organisations, should be disclosed. When 4     we [collected public comments] after the accident of the nuclear plant 5     [in Fukushima], it was not just the government [who did the job], but 6  →  I had an experience to administer [the public comment collection] 7  →   together with NPOs [who have networks] to listen to broader opinions. 8     So I think it is very important to make sure the process, from what 9     organisation and individuals [you are going to collect public opinions] 10      and how you take in their opinion. What do you think?

Fig. 6.2  The OP’s self-centring

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The OP’s other-marginalisation strategy was also identified in the sequence of her seeing the MS’s knowledge about “women”. In Extract 5.1, for example, the OP raises the problem of disparity in wages between male and female workers in line 2, questioning the MS’s knowledge about the issue in line 8. Extract 5.1:  OP’s Other-Marginalisation (at 00:28:30)

1 OP:     […] I ask Minister name of MS with daijin 2       (minister) Now you mentioned the disparity in 3       wages between male and female workers and the problem 4       with part-time workers. Seven tenths of the part-time 5       workers are women. How does Minister name of 6      MS with daijin (minister) recognise the disparity 7       in wages between men and women? The disparity in wages, 8       how much is the women’s wage if we assume that of men 9      as ten? 10 Chair    Minister name of MS with daijin (minister) . 11 MS     I do not have [the information of ] the precise figure since 12       it was not noticed in advance, but if we assume the men’s 13       wage as ten, I understand [women’s wage] should be about 14       seven. 15 Chair    name of OP with kun 16 OP     I think everyone knows even though it was not noticed. 17  →    […] This has been discussed many times in the parliament. 18  →    Minutes, when you become a minister, 19  →    I think you would better read all the minutes. […] 20       It is seventy percent.

The MS, in her response in line 11, first criticises the OP for not notifying the question in advance, and marks the question as deviant, simultaneously justifying her not knowing the exact figure since ‘it was not

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noted in advance’, which is flouting of the parliamentary convention. Then the MS answers the figure with mitigation in lines 12 to 14. The OP in line 16 replies to the MS with the phrase ‘everyone knows’ to indicate the figure of women’s wage as a ‘fact’ shared with everyone in the community of the parliament, providing an account in lines 17 and 18, ‘the issue has been discussed so many times in the parliament’, and then suggests the MS should read all the minutes when she becomes a minister, marginalising the MS as a newcomer and a novice in the community (Fig. 6.3). Then finally the OP gives the answer, ‘it is seventy percent’, in line 20, which evidences that the OP’s question in line 8 is a K+ interrogative (Heritage, 2012); in other words, a ‘known answer question’.

Fig. 6.3  OP’s other-marginalisation

The OP also indicates the primacy of knowledge by using the sentence final particle yo when she answers in line 20. As reviewed in the earlier section, the sentence final particle yo indicates a speaker’s information territory (Kamio, 1990; Katagiri, 2007). Extract 5.2 is the last part of Extract 5.1 with original Japanese utterances, where the OP uses a declarative with the sentence final particle yo in line 20. The OP informs the figure in the declarative form, ‘七割です (It is seventy percent)’, adding the sentence final particle yo to indicate the information is in her territory of knowledge rather than MS’s, asserting her epistemic primacy.

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Extract 5.2:  The OP’s Use of the Sentence Final Particle yo

16 OP     I think everyone knows even though it was not noticed.       これは通告しなくても誰でも知っていると思います.       kore ha tukoku shinaku temo daredemo shitteru to omoi masu. 17      […] This has been discussed many times in the parliament.       何回もこれは国会で議論してきた話です.       nandomo kore ha kokkai de giron shitekita hanashi desu. 18      Minutes, when you become a minister,       議事録 大臣になったら       gijiroku, daijin ni nattara, 19      I think you would better read all [the minutes]. […]       全部お読みになった方がいいと思います.       zenbu oyomi ni nattahou ga ii to omoi masu 20  →   It is seventy percent.  ((The use of ‘yo’))       七割ですよ.       nanawari desu yo.

6

Concluding Remarks

A case study of the parliamentary debates between female Japanese MPs was reported in this chapter, employing the corpus-based discourse analysis. The results show that the OP talked for more than half of the one-­ hour-­ long discussion in total. In most cases, the OP sought the government’s action or opinion in her question, which was followed by the MS or VM answering with round-about talks or evading with justification, referring general procedures or a third-party. These time-earning and evading strategies were marked by the OP, who then asked another question to seek specific information in the subsequent turn, to highlight the point of the question, simultaneously forcing the answerers either to provide an ambivalent opinion to their assertion or to evade again. In those question–answer sequences, three types of marginalisation practices in the MPs’ utterances were recognised in the current analysis: (1) self-marginalisation, (2) self-centring, and (3) other-marginalisation. As a strategy of evasion, the MS strategically self-marginalised herself as a new minister and a non-member of the ministry of health, labour and

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welfare, centring the prime minister and the ministry to justify her evasion. While in the process of giving an account for her proposals, the OP self-centred as an experienced MP, who was once a cabinet member. The OP also other-marginalised the MS, describing the MS as a novice minister, simultaneously claiming the OP’s epistemic authority as a knower in the community of the parliament. This is a small-scale case study and further research with a larger data set would provide finer descriptions of Japanese female MPs’ behaviours in debates. However, this study sheds light on interdiscursivity (Fairclough, 2003) in the discursive practice of marginalisation in political debates: addressing local issues in the debate and at the same time positioning themselves/others at the periphery or at the centre of the multilayered places and times. In terms of an outcome from the debates, the article in the law discussed in the debate was mended as the OP suggested when it was issued. However, the original target of the law, which aimed at women taking up 30% of leadership positions by 2020, was modified down to 7% in ministries and 15% in companies (GEB, 2015), and the figure in ministries in 2018 was only 4.1% (GEB, 2019a) and that in companies 6% (Nakamura & Sunayama, 2020). This indicates the debate itself appears to be still marginalised in a broader social political discourse. Acknowledgements  I thank Professor Kumiko Murata for first providing me with the opportunity to take part in her gender studies project ten years ago, without which this chapter would not be written. My gratitude also goes to Professor Cornelia Ilie for her insightful work in political discourse analysis.

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 ppendix: The Original Transcriptions A in Japanese Extract 1

Chair: 次に name of OP 君. OP: 民主党の name of OP です. この Prime Minister’s name 政権肝いりの法案と言われております女性の職業生 活における活躍の推進に関する法律案の実質審議がきょうから 始まったということになるかと思います. […] そこで まず この 法案の第一条の「目的」のところなんですけれども 私はちょっ と違和感があったんですね. というのは 冒頭に 「この法律は 急 速な少子高齢化の進展 国民の需要の多様化その他の社会経済情 勢の変化に対応していくためには」そして男女共同参画社会基 本法にのっとりと来ているんですが 普通でいえば 男女共同参 画社会基本法にのっとって こうこうこういうことをやっていき ましょう その結果 少子高齢化の進展やそれから経済社会情勢 の変化に対応できる社会になるんじゃないかと思うんです ね.[…] ですから 人権を尊重するということも入れた上で そう いう社会をつくれば 最終的に 少子高齢化の解決 それから経済 状況も好転していくだろうということで 人権を入れて そして これは順番を逆にする提案をしたいと思いますが 大 臣 いかがですか.

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Extract 2

Chair: name of MS 国務大臣. MS: name of OP 委員にお答えをいたします. name of OP 委員がおっしゃったように やはり一人一人の 男女 とりわけ今 女性にフォーカスを当てているわけですが 一 人一人の幸せや 安全で健全な 心穏やかになれる環境というこ とをつくって そして 安全で健やかな地域 そして結果として日 本社会の活性化が成っていくという その順番は私も大変共感を いたします. […] 大臣になって官邸にお伺いして あっ そういう ことだったのかというふうに 総理のお言葉で気づいたことがあ ります. […] そういう意味では 順番ということを御指摘いただ きましたけれども そもそもこの順番自体が name of OP 委員の御提案に共感するところがございますということ を明確に申し上げた上で この急速な少子高齢化の進展など、こ ういうことがありますねということを前提に書いたこの順番は そもそもの平成十一年の男女共同参画基本法の書きぶりを踏襲 したものというふうに報告を受けております.

Extract 3

Chair: name of OP 君. OP:今 総理の御発言がありましたけれども これは法律ですので 最初に 男女共同参画社会基本法にのっとりということになって いますので これはぜひ順番を後ろに回す そして人権という言 葉も最初に入れておいた方が 念のためですよ いや人権は当た り前なんだというような話もありましたけれども よりよくなる と私は思いますので 引き続き御検討をいただきたいと思います が 大臣 いかがですか. Chair: name of MS 国務大臣. MS: 閣法で出させていただいておりますけれども もとより 今 国会で 衆議院で御審議をいただいておりますので それぞれの 関係各位の 特に与野党の筆頭間でのお話もあるかというふうに 思いますので そこの推移をしっかりとお見守りした上で 私ど もの主張もしていきたいというふうに考えております.

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Extract 4

OP: よく パブリックコメントの中には もう聞きおくだけという か いっぱい来ていますけれどもということもあるというような 話も伝わる場合もありますので そうではなくて パブリックコ メントをしっかりオープンにして どういう形で反映していった かという プロセスにもそういうさまざまな団体も関与しながら 私たちは 原発のときにやったときには もう政府でやるという よりも そういういろいろなことを パブリックコメントの取り まとめやさまざまな意見を網羅的に聞くというようなことを主 にやっているNPOなどもございまして そういう人たちも一緒 につくり上げていくということをやった経験があるんですが そ のヒアリング、各種団体や当事者 そしてパブリックコメントを しっかりと反映していく そのプロセスを保障していくというこ とが非常に重要だと思うんですが いかがでしょうか.

Extract 5

OP: name of MS 大臣にお聞きしますが 今 賃金格差 非 正規の問題をおっしゃいましたよね. 全非正規労働者の中の七 割は女性ですよね. 男女の賃金格差というのはどれぐらいある か name of MS 大臣はどういう認識をされていますか. 男女の賃金格差 男性を十としたら女性はどれぐらいですか. Chair: name of MS 国務大臣. MS; 御通告いただかなかったので正確な数値はありませんけれ ども 男性を十としたら おおむね七前後かというふうに理 解をいたします. Chair: name of OP 君. OP:これは通告しなくても誰でも知っていると思います. […] 何 回もこれは国会で議論してきた話です. 議事録 大臣になったら 全部お読みになった方がいいと思いますけれども もう何回も何 回もこの女性の賃金の問題はやってきているんで す. 七割ですよ.

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Notes 1. Japanese names are written in the order of surname and first name, following the Japanese convention. 2. The target was later reduced to 7% in ministries and 15% in companies (GEB, 2015). 3. The symbols … indicate extralinguistic information, which includes laughter, coughs and transcribers’ comments (Adolphs, 2008). When several sentences are omitted from an extract, it is marked as […]. The omitted words in the original Japanese transcripts are added in English translations within square brackets as [WORDS].

References Adolphs, S. (2006). Introducing electronic text analysis: A practical guide for language and literary studies. London: Routledge. Adolphs, S. (2008). Corpus and context: Investigating pragmatic functions in spoken discourse. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company. Atkinson, M.  J. (1984). Public speaking and audience responses: Some techniques for inviting applause. In M. J. Atkinson & J. Heritage (Eds.), Structures of social action (pp. 370–409). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Baxter, J. (2003). Positioning gender in discourse: A feminist methodology. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Beattie, G. W. (1982). Turn-taking and interruption in political interviews— Margaret Thatcher and Jim Callaghan compared and contrasted. Semiotica, 39, 93–114. Bull, P., & Mayer, K. (1988). Interruptions in political interviews: A study of Margaret Thatcher and Neil Kinnock. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 7(1), 35–45. Cabrejas-Penuelas, A.  B., & Diez-Prados, M. (2014). Positive self-evaluation versus negative other-evaluation in the political genre of pre-election debates. Discourse & Society, 25(2), 159–185. Cheng, M. (2016). The power of persuasion: Modality and issue framing in the 2012 Taiwan presidential debates. Discourse & Society, 27(2), 172–194. Clayman, S. E. (2001). Answers and evasions. Language in Society, 30(3), 403–442. ELAN. (2001–2015). ELAN Linguistic Annotator. Version 4.8.1. Nijmegen: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics.

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Fairclough, N. (2003). Analysing discourse: Textual analysis for social research. London: Routledge. Fetzer, A., & Bull, P. (2012). Doing leadership in political speech: Semantic process and pragmatic inferences. Discourse & Society, 23(2), 127–144. GEB. (2015). Women and men in Japan 2016. Report, Gender Equality Bureau, Cabinet Office, Government of Japan, Japan. GEB. (2019a). 共同参画 (in Japanese, Gender equality). Report, Gender Equality Bureau, Cabinet Office, Government of Japan, Japan, June. GEB. (2019b). 令和元年度 女性の政策 方針決定参画状況調べ (in Japanese, report on Women’s participation in policy and decision-making processes 2019). Report, Gender Equality Bureau, Cabinet Office, Government of Japan, Japan, December. Goffman, E. (1981). Forms of talk. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania. Hall, K. (2004). Language and marginalized places. In R.  T. Lakoff & M.  Bucholtz (Eds.), Language and women’s place: Text and commentaries (pp. 171–178). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Harris, S. (2001). Being politically impolite: Extending politeness theory to adversarial political discourse. Discourse & Society, 12(4), 451–472. Heritage, J. (1984). A change-of-state token and aspects of its sequential placement. In M.  J. Atkinson & J.  Heritage (Eds.), Structures of social actions: Studies in conversation analysis (pp.  299–345). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Heritage, J. (2012). Epistemics in action: Action formation, sequence organization and territories of knowledge. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 45, 1–29. Heritage, J. (2013a). Action formation and its epistemic (and other) backgrounds. Discourse Studies, 15(5), 551–578. Heritage, J. (2013b). Epistemics in conversation. In J.  Sidnell & T.  Stivers (Eds.), The handbook of conversation analysis (pp.  370–394). Chichester: Blackwell Publishing Ltd. Heritage, J., & Raymond, G. (2005). The terms of agreement: Indexing epistemic authority and subordination in talk-in-interaction. Social Psychology Quarterly, 68(1), 15–38. Higuchi, K. (2016). A two-step approach to quantitative content analysis: KH Coder tutorial using Anne of Green Gables (Part I). Ritsumeikan Social Science Review, 52(3), 77–91. Ilie, C. (2000). Cliché-based metadiscursive argumentation in the House of Parliament. International Journal of Applied Linguistics, 10(1), 65–84.

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Part II Marginalization and Mediatized Data

7 “We’re family”: Japanese Characters’ Categorizations of a Gay Man in a TV Drama Junko Saito

Contents

1  Introduction 2  Analytical Approaches 3  Data 4  Analysis 5  Discussion and Concluding Remarks 6  Transcription Conventions References

1

 143  146  148  149  159  162  163

Introduction

“Many people assume that Japan is ‘gay friendly’ and open minded about homosexuality” (Tamagawa, 2016: 161), in part because Japanese cultural traditions encompass many types of sexual relationships and cross-gender performance genres. Examples include the premodern J. Saito (*) Temple University, Japan Campus, Tokyo, Japan e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 J. Kroo, K. Satoh (eds.), Linguistic Tactics and Strategies of Marginalization in Japanese, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-67825-8_7

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tradition of nanshoku (male-to-male sexual relationships), the traditional performing art of Kabuki, and the contemporary all-female Takarazuka Revue, as well as the recent popularity of yaoi manga (boys’ love comics) among young girls (Tamagawa, 2016, 2018). Nevertheless, conservative perspectives on LGBTQ individuals still depict them as ijō or hentai (abnormal), characterizations associated with sexual perversion; such perspectives are often reinforced and perpetuated through mainstream media (Maree, 2013; Tamagawa, 2016, 2018). In addition, portrayals of gay characters in Japanese media are stereotyped. Generally, gay men are represented in entertainment media as effeminate, cross-dressing okama (similar to “queen”) who are “objects of humor (warai mono),” or, if they do not look okama but appear “normal,” as sexual predators (McLelland, 2000: 49; Tamagawa, 2018; see also Koba, 2019). A language style known as onē kotoba (queer/queen’s language),1 which parodies stereotypical “women’s language,” is often associated with cross-dressers or effeminatelooking men (Maree, 2013; Maynard, 2016). As Koba (2019) has described, there are two major lines of research on LGBTQ individuals in Japanese media: that on “two-dimensional” entertainment such as manga, novels, and anime (e.g., Abe, 2010; McLelland, 2000; Redmond, 2015) and that on “three-dimensional” entertainment such as TV talk shows where actual LGBTQ individuals appear (e.g., Koba, 2019; Maree, 2013; Maynard, 2016, 2017). Both lines have focused on LGBTQ individuals’ discursive construction of their own identities. For example, Redmond (2015) analyzed how Japanese boys’ love comics employ gendered language to index the gay characters’ identities. Contra previous research, he found a dominant assignment of stereotypically masculine linguistic resources to the gay characters, which he interpreted as evidence of the comics’ conformity to heteronormative gender ideologies. Maynard (2016) examined how a transvestite entertainer, Matsuko Derakkusu (“Matsuko Deluxe”), mixes onē kotoba and masculine speech styles in various talk shows to convey different gender identities. Meanwhile, the ways in which the media portray non-LGBTQ people’s construction and perception of LGBTQ identities are understudied. Moreover, compared to research on language and gender in Japanese popular media (e.g., Hiramoto, 2013; Nakamura, 2004; Occhi, SturtzSreetharan, & Shibamoto-Smith, 2010; Shibamoto-Smith, 2018; SturtzSreetharan, 2017a; Unser-Schutz, 2015), the research on language

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and sexuality in this domain is rather limited. To fill some of these gaps in the literature, this study illustrates how a recent Japanese TV drama depicts the treatment of a gay male character by non-LGBTQ characters. The ultimate purpose of this study is to show, utilizing the drama as an illustration, how society’s (non-)marginalization of people in certain categories stems from categorization work. This study is not concerned with the authenticity of the TV drama as a reflection of “real life.” Rather, taking the view that mainstream media contribute to shaping a society’s ideologies (Stamou, 2014), this study is interested in the drama’s scripted depictions as categorization practices in themselves. Mediatized messages “can be especially powerful forces, precisely because of their implicitness, in shaping audiences’ ideas about appropriate and inappropriate ways of speaking” as well as about societal values (Shibamoto-Smith, 2018: 66; SturtzSreetharan, 2017b). I argue that the 2018 TV drama considered here can be understood as an implicit mediatized message calling for the reconsideration of taken-for-granted ideas about the social institutions of marriage and family in contemporary Japan. The data come from all three episodes of the TV drama Otōto no Otto (‘My Brother’s Husband’), aired by NHK (Japan Broadcasting Corporation) in 2018. I selected this drama because it clearly illustrates how non-LGBTQ characters’ perceptions of LGBTQ people derive from categorization practices. Furthermore, the gay character in My Brother’s Husband is depicted as “ordinary,” in the sense of not appearing okama. While it has been 20 years since McLelland’s (2000: 53) observation that “[r]epresentations of ‘ordinary looking’ homosexual men doing ordinary things and living ordinary lives are conspicuously absent in Japanese media,” such representations are still rare. By focusing on the portrayal of a non-stereotypical character in a mainstream media production, this analysis contributes to research on LGBTQ individuals in Japanese popular media. The chapter also touches on the idea of family, as a taken-for-granted social institution in heteronormative society, normatively comprising “a co-residential married heterosexual couple and their biological children” (Kitzinger, 2005: 495). Through the analysis of characters’ categorization practices in My Brother’s Husband, this study illuminates how membership in the category of family is constructed in interaction. It also argues that heteronormative social institutions such as marriage and family may be in need of modification in Japanese society.

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Analytical Approaches

The study’s primary analysis is based on membership categorization analysis (MCA), which was established by Harvey Sacks (1992). MCA is particularly suitable for this study’s purpose of demonstrating how a person’s categorization practices relate to his or her marginalization and non-­ marginalization of others in certain categories. MCA has been utilized as an analytical framework by many researchers on language, gender, and sexuality (e.g., Kitzinger, 2005; Shrikant, 2014; Sokalska-Bennett, 2017; Stokoe, 2010, 2012), as well as on Japanese popular media (e.g., Fukuda, 2017, 2020). Kitzinger (2005) and Sokalska-Bennett (2017) dealt specifically with the interplay between heteronormativity and the idea of family. Through the analysis of family reference terms in interactions between physicians and after-hour callers, Kitzinger demonstrated how participants’ use of these terms revealed their assumptions of heteronormativity, specifically the normality of a nuclear family construed as a heterosexual married couple with their co-residing biological children. Sokalska-Bennett, who examined online comments on news articles about adoption by same-gender couples in the UK, revealed how constructs of parenting and the family are based on gender binarism and heteronormativity. Her analysis exemplifies MCA as a “useful tool in investigating common sense assumptions about categories within … ‘family’” (83). MCA deals with how people use categories to make sense of and for each other in interactions. According to Day (2012: 1050), “it is one means of explicating the practically oriented, commonsensical, and cultural reasoning of people.” In other words, thinking about categories allows us to understand people’s sensemaking practices in relation to cultural knowledge and societal norms (Fukuda, 2014; Sokalska-Bennett, 2017). In particular, MCA focuses on how individuals recognize themselves and others as “certain sorts of members of society” (Day, 2012: 1050). There are two important MCA concepts for this study. First, collections of categories that are understood to go together are called membership categorization devices (MCDs). The categories “mother” and “baby,” for instance, commonsensically belong to the MCD “family.” Categories and a categorization device are matched by a set of rules of application

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(Hester & Eglin, 1997; Housley & Fitzgerald, 2015), one of which is the consistency rule: “[I]f a category from an MCD is used to categorize a member of a particular population, then all other members may be categorized with categories from that device” (Day, 2012: 1050). For instance, when a mother and a baby are referred to together, they are heard to be members of the same family due to the consistency rule (Stokoe, 2012). Furthermore, categories may belong to multiple MCDs. For example, a category “baby” can be part of the MCDs “family,” “stage of life,” or “terms of endearment” (Hester & Eglin, 1997; Stokoe, 2012). In the current study, who are construed as members of the same family is an important point for understanding the characters’ categorization work. The other important concept is category-bound predicates (CBPs). CBPs encompass certain activities, actions, properties, or characteristics conventionally associated with a particular category (Day, 2012; Hester & Eglin, 1997); they therefore allow us to characterize someone as an incumbent of that category. For instance, in Sacks’s classic example “the baby cried, the mommy picked it up,” crying is a CBP for the baby (Butler & Fitzgerald, 2010; Day, 2012); in this case, the category “baby” is understood as belonging to the MCD “stage of life” because crying is associated with the category in that device (Hester & Eglin, 1997). That is, categories and predicates correlate with each other. In addition, Hester and Eglin articulated the idea that membership categories, MCDs, and category predicates are all examples of indexical expressions. In this sense, they are “locally and temporally contingent” (18); in other words, they are constructed on a moment-by-moment basis. This study also employs the notion of stance, which is also related to indexicality (Ochs, 1992). Building on Du Bois’s (2007) idea of stance, Kiesling, Pavalanathan, Fitzpatrick, Han, and Eisenstein (2018) suggested the definition I find most relevant to this study: “the discursive creation of a relationship between a language user and some discursive figure, and to other language users in relation to that figure,” which “can be an interlocutor, a figure represented in the discourse, the animator, ideas represented in the discourse, or other texts” (687). In this study, the gay character is a discursive figure toward whom, although he is not always present in their interactions, the other characters display shifting stances through their categorization practices.

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Data

The TV drama My Brother’s Husband is the story of a Canadian gay man, Mike, staying with a Japanese family for a week or so. Yaichi is the divorced single father, living with his third-grade daughter, Kana. Yaichi had never accepted that his brother, Ryōji, was gay. Ryōji eventually had moved to Canada, where he married Mike. Yaichi and Kana are thus Mike’s relatives. The story begins when Mike, after Ryōji’s death, comes to Japan to meet Yaichi, who is reluctant to face him (Fig. 7.1). The drama depicts how Japanese heterosexual adult and child characters perceive Mike and how Yaichi in particular changes his perception of Mike over time. The character of Mike is not a stereotypical effeminate okama.2 Being a foreigner and gay means double marginalization in Japan; however, the Japanese adult characters are portrayed as having negative attitudes only toward Mike’s sexuality. The fact that the problem his sexuality poses to the other characters overshadows his nationality resonates with McLelland’s (2000) claim that Japanese media present gay men who go beyond the constraints of okama as threats and objects of fear to heterosexual characters. In contrast, child characters such as Kana and Kana’s friend Yuki accept the fact that Mike is Ryōji’s husband and therefore Kana’s uncle-in-law. I have discussed elsewhere how the categorization practices in these child characters’ scripted utterances suggest a new perspective toward heterosexual marriage in Japanese society (Saito, 2019). The drama also depicts other family relationships that are unconventional vis-à-vis the normative heterosexual family, particularly the relationship of Yaichi and his ex-wife, who keeps in touch and occasionally visits Yaichi and Kana (Kitzinger, 2005). In short, this drama provides an arena to rethink traditional social institutions such as marriage and family in Japanese society. The study’s data comprise all three episodes (approximately 150 minutes in length). The analysis focuses on four Japanese adult characters, including Yaichi.

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Fig. 7.1  Main characters of My Brother’s Husband (NHK BS premium drama: https://www.nhk.or.jp/pd/otto/)

4

Analysis

In My Brother’s Husband, Mike’s memberships and identities are constructed through Japanese adult characters’ categorization practices in interactions. First, instances in which adult characters perform the role of parents are presented.

4.1

 erforming Incumbency in the Categories P of Father and Mother

Example 1 takes place early in the first episode. Mike is meeting Yaichi for the first time. Kana has just come home from school and is surprised to see a foreigner in the house.

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Example 1

1   Yaichi:  musume no kana da.         ‘My daughter, Kana.’ 2  Kana:   Kana desu.       ‘I am Kana.’ 3  Mike:   hajimemashite. watashi, Maiku Furanagan desu. Kanadajin 4      desu.        ‘Hello. I am Mike Flanagan. I am Canadian.’ 5  Kana:  papa: kono hito dare↑        ‘Dad, who is this person?’ 6   Yaichi:  un↑ kono hito wa::       ‘Huh? This person is::.’ 7  Mike:   watashi:: Kana-chan no: ojisan desu.       ‘I am your uncle.’ 8  Kana:  dōyū koto↑ wake wakannai.        ‘What does that mean? Makes no sense.’ 9  Mike:   watashi: : Kana-chan no: papa no: otōto Ryōji to kekkon 10        shimashita. dakara, Kana-chan ni totte wa giri no ojisan.       ‘I got married to your father’s brother, Ryōji. Therefore, I’m your uncle-in-law.’ 11 Kana:   e: : otoko dōshi de kekkon↑ sonna koto dekiru no↑=        ‘What:: Two men get married? Can you do that?’

Yaichi introduces Kana as his daughter (musume) in line 1, which makes their parent–child relationship relevant; Kana reinforces this relationship by calling Yaichi papa (dad) in line 5. In lines 3 and 4, however, Mike self-identifies as Canadian, which demonstrates his orientation to the MCD nationality and highlights their differences in that device. Then, in response to Kana’s question in line 5, Mike identifies himself as Kana’s uncle-in-law (line 7) and further provides a CBP of his identity (lines 9 and 10). Now Mike’s utterances invoke the category of uncle-in-law in the MCD family. Nothing said by Yaichi or Kana in this example directly categorizes Mike in any way, although Yaichi’s hesitation through the elongation of a sound in line 6 suggests an unwillingness to tell Kana

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about their relationship to Mike. Nonetheless, in this example, Yaichi also categorizes (perhaps, superficially) Mike as his relative by not saying anything about Mike’s self-categorization, thus covertly constructing him as a family member. Example 2, which is from the last episode, depicts Yaichi’s talk with Kana’s homeroom teacher at school. What is remarkable about this segment is that Yaichi explicitly identifies Mike as a member of his family through same-sex marriage. Example 2

1   Teacher:  Kana-chan ga tabitabi: sono: gaikoku no kata no 2       hanashi o shite orimashite:. dōsēkon tte yū n desu 3       kane: Kanada de wa otoko dōshi de kekkon dekiru to.        ‘Kana often talks about a foreigner. Is it called same-sex marriage? In Canada, two men can get married.’ ((Four omitted turns, in which the teacher explains his concern that Kana’s talk may lead to her being bullied)) 4   Yaichi:    saki hodo kara sensē ga osshatteiru gaikokujin to yū no wa: 5       (1.0) watashi no otōto no otto de, Kana no oji desu.         ‘Teacher, the foreigner you have been talking about is my brother’s husband [and thus] Kana’s uncle.’ 6   Teacher:   ((Nodding)) 7  Yaichi:    ano ko ga daisuki na oji no hanashi o tomeru kenri nado 8       watashi ni wa arimasen.         ‘I have no right to stop Kana talking about her favorite uncle.’ 9   Teacher:  otōsan, watashi wa desu ne.=        ‘Father, I.’ 10 Yaichi:   =moshi, moshi ano ko ga ijimerareru yō na koto ga attara, 11       sensē ni wa ijimeru ko no hō o chūi shite hoshī to (.) watashi 12       wa omoimasu.        ‘If, if Kana is bullied [for talking about Mike], I would like you to reprimand the bully.’

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Kana’s teacher initiates the conversation by explaining Kana’s recent acts at school (lines 1–3), and Yaichi recognizes the other party as sensē (teacher) in line 4. The teacher’s description of Kana talking about same-­ sex marriage in Canada makes Yaichi’s membership as Kana’s guardian relevant (Butler & Fitzgerald, 2010). In response to the teacher’s problematization of Kana’s acts, Yaichi asserts that the foreigner in question is his brother’s husband and Kana’s uncle (lines 4 and 5). His assertion is a CBP of same-sex marriage, which is accordingly bound to three categories: the categories of husband, uncle, and gay man. What is remarkable here is that Yaichi invokes a CBP of the category of gay man rather than the category itself. A one-minute pause and the elongation of a sound expresses Yaichi’s hesitation and possibly determination to publicize the relationship between Kana and the foreigner; by doing so, he overtly assigns Mike incumbencies in these categories. Yaichi further maintains that he has no right to stop Kana talking about her “favorite” uncle (lines 7 and 8), indicating his respect for Kana’s feelings toward Mike, as well as the strong bond among members in the MCD family. Latching on to the teacher’s construction of Yaichi as a father (line 9), Yaichi further legitimizes Kana’s acts by contending that if any bullying occurs, the teacher should reprimand the bullies (lines 10–12). In Examples 1 and 2, Yaichi constructs Mike’s membership in the category of uncle while he himself is being an incumbent in the category of father. However, in Example 1, he does not explicitly formulate Mike as Kana’s uncle. The explicit categorization in Example 2 seems to indicate a change in Yaichi’s stance, a point we will return to. Example 3 occurs during a family conversation at Yuki’s house. Example 3

1 Mother:  nē, Yuki, ashita Kana-chan no ojisan ni ai ni iku tte 2        hontō na no↑       ‘Listen, Yuki. Are you serious that you are going to meet Kana’s uncle tomorrow?’ 3 Yuki:   un. ī desho↑       ‘Yeah. It’s okay, isn’t it?’ (continued)

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Example 3  (continued)

4 Mother:   yamenasai =       ‘Don’t.’ 5 Yuki:    = e↑ dōshite↑       ‘What? Why?’ 6 Mother:   ī kara. ne: ↑       ‘Just don’t. Okay?’ 7 Father:  oi, betsu ni ī ja nai ka.        ‘Hey, it’s okay [nothing’s wrong with it]. 8 Mother:   datte, anata, moshi kodomo ni akuēkyō ga attara dō 9       suru no↑otoko dōshi de kekkon shite hentai na no yo:.       ‘But, honey, what if he (Mike) is a bad influence on your child? He’s a pervert, getting married to another man.’

Through CBPs of asking Yuki her plans, directing her to change those plans, and using the imperative form -nasai (often employed by mothers speaking to their children; Smith, 1992), Yuki’s mother invokes the category of mother and identifies herself as belonging to that category (lines 1–6). While doing so, she assigns Mike an identity as Kana’s uncle. Tamagawa (2018: 515) claimed that “Japanese mothers are socioculturally configured as the solo overseers of heteronormative norms at home.” The depiction of Yuki’s mother here seems to reflect Tamagawa’s point: as a mother, her role is to protect her child, which includes a CBP of preventing her from being exposed to non-heteronormativity. It should be noted that when Yuki’s father enters the conversation in line 7, Yuki’s mother addresses her husband in line 8 as anata,3 which invokes one part of a standardized relational pair (Hester & Eglin, 1997; Stokoe, 2012). She thus shifts her membership to the category of wife and provides a justification for not allowing Yuki to visit Mike, describing Mike as a pervert who could be a bad influence on children because he married another man (lines 8 and 9). Here, she constructs the category of gay man invoked by the description of same-sex marriage and places it in a

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subcategory of pervert. Yuki’s mother is drawing on a stereotype associating perversion with LGBTQ individuals (Tamagawa, 2018) to reinforce the categories she has constructed. Moreover, she contrastively illustrates her orientation to heteronormativity, where the category of heterosexuals as non-perverts is morally superior to that of homosexuals as perverts. In this example, we observe how a change in a character’s categorization practices affects her construction of a gay character. As Yaichi does in Examples 1 and 2, Yuki’s mother identifies Mike as Kana’s uncle when she is a member of the category mother. However, when she is projecting her incumbency in the category of wife, she classifies him into the category of gay man.

4.2

Performing Incumbency in Other Categories

When Yaichi is not performing the role of father, he treats Mike as a gay man, just as Yuki’s mother does in Example 3. Example 4, from episode 1, occurs the night Mike arrives. Prior to this example, Yaichi accidentally saw Mike naked. The example is part of Yaichi’s soliloquy while taking a bath. Example 4

1  Yaichi:   omowazu zotto shita. otōto ga ano karada ni dakareteita 2       to omou to. ore mo mata Maiku ni totte sēyoku no taishō na 3      no ka↑@ masaka na.         ‘I was involuntarily horrified [seeing his naked body], when I thought about the fact that my brother had made love with that body. Am I also a target of Mike’s sexual desire? It can’t be.’

In this example, Yaichi invokes the category of gay man through the description of the CBP of two men engaging in sexual activities (Sokalska-­ Bennett, 2017), and he treats his brother and Mike as incumbents of that category. Note that his utterances, omowazu zotto shita (I was involuntarily horrified) in line 1 and ore mo mata Maiku ni totte sēyoku no taishō na no ka (am I also a target of Mike’s sexual desire?) in lines 2 and 3,

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express Yaichi’s homophobia. Throughout this segment, Yaichi employs the plain (non-honorific) form, which is often utilized in soliloquy (Geyer, 2013) and considered to index an innate mode of self in which a speaker is “acting in his or her natural, spontaneous way without” performing any societal persona (Cook, 2008: 15). In this example, Yaichi is not displaying an identity as a father. Thus far, it is clear from the examples that Mike’s membership in the category of uncle is relevant in the adult characters’ interactions when they are orienting to categories of father and mother in the MCD family. Otherwise, they treat Mike as a gay man who may be dangerous to their children and to Yaichi, that is, as a pervert. The following example, from the second episode, also involves Mike and his sexuality, yet Yaichi’s stance toward him is somewhat different from that in Example 4. Yaichi, his ex-wife Natsuki, Kana, and Mike are visiting a hot spring. In Example 5, Yaichi and Natsuki are talking at the hotel. Example 5

1 Yaichi:   Maiku to furo ni tsukattetara, okashikute sa.             ‘While I was soaking in the hot spring with Mike, I felt funny.’ 2 Natsuki:   nande↑        ‘Why?’ 3  Yaichi:      hon no sūjitsu mae made: issho ni furo ni hairu nante zettai 4            dekinakatta. (.) Maiku ga gei datte ishiki shisugiteta kara.             ‘I couldn’t have taken a bath with Mike up until a few days ago. Because I was highly conscious of and overreacting to the fact that Mike is gay.’ 5 Natsuki:   @ 6  Yaichi:    (h) fushigi na kankaku datta.             ‘Then, I realized that I was taking a bath [with him] so naturally. I felt very happy, but also felt that the way I was a little while ago was funny. It was an interesting feeling.’

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Yaichi reports that, just a few days before, he would not have taken a bath with Mike due to Mike’s sexuality, and that noticing this change in himself made him feel funny (lines 1, 3, and 4). Here, Yaichi invokes the category of gay man and assigns Mike an identity as such. However, he elaborates that his realization also made him happy (lines 6–8). Yaichi’s utterance, chotto mae no jibun ga kokkē na yō na↑ (feeling that the way I was a little while ago was funny, lines 7 and 8), displays his present detachment from himself in the past and his current ability to objectively observe his past overreaction. The sequence of utterances in this segment thus implies that Mike’s sexuality is no longer something that concerns Yaichi, and demonstrates a change in Yaichi’s stance toward Mike. In Example 6, which occurs immediately after Example 5, Yaichi further displays the change in his stance toward Mike. Example 6

1   Yaichi:       oretachi no koto donna fū ni mieru no kana↑         ‘I wonder what we look like.’ 2  Natsuki:   un↑         ‘huh?’ 3   Yaichi:   ryokan no nakai-san kara mitara, hitori musume ga 4       iru fūfu ga kaigai kara okyaku-san o 5       motenashiteiru. kitto sonna kanji da yo na↑        ‘From the perspective of a hotel employee, a married couple with a daughter is entertaining a guest from overseas. Something like that, right?’ 6  Natsuki:   un. sō da ne.         ‘Yeah. That’s right.’ 7   Yaichi:   demo jissai wa ore to kimi wa ima wa fūfu ja nai 8        shi, Maiku wa giri no otōto de fushigi na kankē da.        ‘But, in reality, you and I are no longer a married couple, and Mike is my brother-in-law. Weird relationships.’ 9             (2.0) (continued)

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Example 6  (continued)

10 Natsuki:  betsu ni ki ni suru koto nai deshō↑         ‘You don’t have to worry much about it, right?’ 11  Yaichi:    °un° (.) sō da kedo. konna kankē o ittai donna fū ni 12         yondara ī no kana tte.        ‘Yeah. You’re right, but I’m wondering what we should call such relationships.’ 13            (3.0) 14 Natsuki:  @ kazoku de ī to omou yo.         ‘I think family is fine.’ 15       (3.0) ((Yaichi is looking at Natsuki and smiling.)) 16  Natsuki:   @ kazoku de ī ja nai.         ‘Family should be good.’ 17       (3.0) ((Yaichi and Natsuki smile at each other.)) 18  Yaichi:    sokka. kazoku ka::         ‘Oh, family. I see.’

In lines 3–5, Yaichi answers his own question in line 1: nakai-san kara mitara, hitori musume ga iru fūfu ga kaigai kara okyaku-san o motenashiteiru (from the perspective of an employee, a married couple with a daughter is entertaining a guest from overseas). At this point, taking a third person’s viewpoint, Yaichi constructs memberships within family categories, which reproduce a normative idea of a nuclear heterosexual family: a married couple with their biological child (Kitzinger, 2005). Yet in lines 7 and 8, when Yaichi describes their real relationships, he produces a different set of categories: divorced people and brother-in-law. His utterance fushigi na kankē da (weird relationships) in line 8 may also refer to the “weirdness” of how Mike is his brother-in-law, that is, through same-sex marriage. These lines make it clear that the represented relationships do not coincide with the heteronormative idea of a family. This discrepancy leads to Yaichi’s concern in lines 11 and 12: konna kankē o ittai donna fū ni yondara ī no kana (I’m wondering what we should call such relationships). In response, Natsuki frames and reinforces “such relationships” as simply “family,” subverting the heteronormative idea (lines 14, 16). Natsuki’s utterance also shows that categories of family can be constructed

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in moment-by-moment interaction. Yaichi agrees with her, saying sokka. kazoku ka (oh, family. I see). The sequence of lines 14–18 and the characters’ smiles display Yaichi’s and Natsuki’s construction and full acceptance of a family structure that comprises non-normative members: a divorced couple with their biological child and a brother-in-law related through same-sex marriage. It is clear from the content of his utterances in this sequence that Yaichi is not performing his incumbency in the category of father. Nevertheless, he constructs Mike’s membership as a brother-in-law who belongs to the same MCD of family as himself. This change in Yaichi’s categorization of Mike reflects the change in his stance. With this in mind, let’s revisit Example 2, which occurs one episode after Examples 5 and 6. In Example 2, speaking to Kana’s teacher, Yaichi explicitly identifies Mike as Kana’s uncle-in-law (which entails that Mike is Yaichi’s brother-in-law). At the time of Examples 2, 5, and 6, Yaichi and Mike have already spent a few days together. The implication is that spending time with Mike has led Yaichi to shift his stance toward Mike in a positive way, to the extent that he is able to publicly acknowledge their family relationship. Example 7, which is the last scene in the last episode, comprises a monologue by Yaichi in which he addresses Mike, who has returned to Canada, as if he is writing him a letter. In this example, Yaichi utilizes plain forms; therefore, he is not performing a role in the category of father, but displaying an innate mode of self (Cook, 2008). Example 7

1  Yaichi:      Maiku, genki kai↑ kochira wa aikawarazu da. kimi 2      ga inakute totemo sabishī yo. demo, ī ka. koredake 3      wa wasurenaide hoshī. doko ni itatte wareware wa 4      kazoku da. Kanada de arō to tengoku de arō to kankē nai. 5      zutto zutto kazoku na no sa.       ‘Mike, how’re you? We’re the same as usual. We miss you so much. But, listen, don’t forget this. Wherever we are, we’re family. It doesn’t matter whether we’re in Canada or heaven. We will always be family.’

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Lines 1 and 2 display Yaichi’s affective stance toward Mike. Then, in lines 2–4 , he reminds Mike of their family relationship. This utterance, which includes wareware (we), constructs family and describes Yaichi and Mike as members of it. By saying zutto zutto kazoku na no sa (we will always be family, line 5), Yaichi further reinforces this family structure. This example shows not only Yaichi’s orientation to their membership in a family, but also that he is no longer oriented to Mike’s membership in the category of gay man.

5

Discussion and Concluding Remarks

Drawing on membership categorization analysis and the notion of stance, this chapter has demonstrated how the Japanese TV drama My Brother’s Husband depicts the characters’ perceptions of a gay male character. The other characters themselves orient to different memberships, which affect how they ascribe different categories and identities to the gay character through their interactions in context. While the issue of authenticity often arises in the analysis of fictional discourse, whether My Brother’s Husband depicts reality is not the focus of this analysis (Androutsopoulos, 2012; Lopez & Bucholtz, 2017; Stamou, 2014). The purpose of this study is to illustrate, through fictional characters’ categorization practices, how categorization can impact individuals’ perceptions of others, particularly of LGBTQ individuals in heteronormative societies. Focusing on the positive and negative constructions of categories and assignment of identities to Mike by the Japanese protagonist Yaichi, this study suggests that society’s (non-)marginalization of people in certain categories stems from individuals’ categorization practices. In Examples 2 and 3, Yaichi and Yuki’s mother explicitly make Mike’s membership in Yaichi’s extended family relevant, and in Example 1, Yaichi covertly constructs such membership. In these examples, Yaichi and Yuki’s mother are being incumbents of the categories father and mother, respectively. In contrast, later in Example 3 and in Example 4, Yuki’s mother and Yaichi characterize Mike as hentai (pervert) and gay, respectively. At these moments, they are not performing the role of parents. One may argue that children in the MCD stage of life would

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commonsensically be expected to not possess the concept of gayness, and that the drama’s creators therefore did not allow adult characters to depict Mike as gay in front of their children. Even so, the examples reveal that the construction of Mike’s memberships depends on the adult characters’ categorization practices. The conservative view of gay individuals as abnormal and the notion of heteronormativity are reconstructed and reinforced by some of the adult characters’ utterances in the drama. For instance, in Examples 2, 3, and 4, the portrayals of Kana’s homeroom teacher, Yuki’s mother, and Yaichi resonate with stereotypical representations in the mainstream media in which (gender-normative) gay men, who “have insinuated themselves into ‘ordinary’ domains such as the office or the school,” are described as threats or figures of fear for stereotypical heterosexuals (McLelland, 2000: 51). Although both Kana’s teacher and Yuki’s mother engage with Mike only indirectly, they perceive him as a threat and problematize his involvement in their “ordinary domains.” Furthermore, such discourses often construct non-normative individuals or relationships as damaging to bonds of family. These instances reflect Sokalska-Bennett’s (2017: 69) argument that “categorisations can be used as powerful tools for the local accomplishment of normative formulations of judgment,” which consequently may give rise to prejudice. In other words, prejudice and discrimination are strongly associated with people’s categorization work. Yet the drama also displays a new perspective on gay individuals by focusing on changes in Yaichi’s stance. Yaichi, who begins by expressing homophobic attitudes (Example 4), eventually displays affection toward Mike and acknowledges him as a fellow family member (Example 7). The drama’s portrayal of Yaichi’s stance change over the three episodes indicates that Yaichi comes to perceive Mike as neither a threat nor a sexual predator, which is incompatible with the stereotypical depictions of LGBTQ individuals in the mainstream media (McLelland, 2000; Tamagawa, 2018). In addition, Examples 5, 6, and 7 demonstrate how categorization practices can change over time as people’s stances toward a discursive figure change. In these examples, even when he is not displaying his membership as a father, Yaichi constructs Mike’s membership as an in-­ law, whereas in earlier scenes, he had constructed Mike as an in-law when

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Yaichi

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Family

Kana (child)

Yaichi

Mike (uncle-in-law)

Mike (gay man) Natsuki (ex-wife)

Kana (child)

Fig. 7.2  Yaichi’s identification of Mike

orienting to his own parenthood, and as a gay man otherwise (Fig. 7.2). As the examples illustrate, on the one hand, Mike is marginalized as a gay man in Yaichi’s negative categorizations; on the other hand, he is identified as part of the family in Yaichi’s positive categorization. Finally, the chapter illustrates how family is constructed through the characters’ categorization practices. The definition of family that Yaichi and Natsuki establish toward the end of the drama does not conform to a heteronormative ideal, as it encompasses a divorced couple, their biological child, and a gay brother-in-law from overseas. In other words, they construct a “quasi-family which goes beyond nationality, gender, and kinship” (Morimoto, 2019: 38). To reiterate, this study’s analysis of a single TV drama’s scripted interactions does not claim to show the behaviors and attitudes of people in the real world. Rather, this study asserts that mediatized messages conveyed implicitly through characters’ scripted interactions in fictional discourse have power in shaping societal ideas and values; in other words, the semiotic processes of mediatization involve implicit socialization (e.g., Shibamoto-Smith, 2018; SturtzSreetharan, 2017b). Given the diversification of family structures (Yamada, 2004) and the current state of LGBTQ issues in Japanese society, including Tokyo’s anti-­ discrimination ordinance (Osumi, 2018), I argue that My Brother’s Husband can be understood as an implicit mediatized message in support of such diversification. The message is conveyed through a trajectory of change in the attitudes shown by the main character, Yaichi,

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regarding taken-for-­granted ideas about the social institutions of marriage and family. Media representations can provide an arena for people to realize when such ideas become irrelevant to their everyday lives, thus potentially contributing to building a society in which diversity itself is a taken-for-granted fact of life. Acknowledgments  My thanks go to Gavin Furukawa for invaluable comments and Laurie Durand for her thorough editorial work. Any errors and misinterpretations are entirely my own.

6

Transcription Conventions = Latching (0.0) Elapsed time in silence by tenths of seconds (.) Micropause Word Some form of stress (voice amplitude) : Prolongation of the immediately prior sound; multiple colons   indicate a more prolonged sound < >  Relatively faster than the preceding talk ↑ Rising intonation . Falling intonation , Continuing intonation ° Relatively quieter than the surrounding speech @ Laughter (h) Breathiness in laughter

Notes 1. Abe (2010) noted that many gay men reject and disparage onē kotoba as a speech style. 2. Gavin Furukawa (2020, personal communication) pointed out that Mike might be characterized as a bear in an English-speaking gay community. 3. Anata is an endearment often used by wives to address their husbands.

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8 Street Corners and Hugs: Queer Japanese Challenges to Heteronormativity Through Social Media Gavin Furukawa

Contents

1  Introduction 2  Data 3  Analytical Approach 4  Analysis 5  Discussion References

1

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Introduction

Many might say that currently within Japanese mass media the LGBT1 community is finding an unusual amount of representation in recent years. Indeed, at one point or another almost every television network has featured one or more of what the Japanese refer to as onee tarento in some

G. Furukawa (*) Department of English Studies, Sophia University, Tokyo, Japan © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 J. Kroo, K. Satoh (eds.), Linguistic Tactics and Strategies of Marginalization in Japanese, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-67825-8_8

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capacity or another. The term onee tarento refers to a specific type of LGBT tarento, usually a man or sometimes a transgender woman who speaks and acts in an extremely flamboyant manner. They are usually featured as fashion consultants, makeup and hair experts, actors, commentators, and sometimes the hosts of their own programs. While increased visibility in the media might seem at first to be a sign of acceptance, it has instead led to a limited understanding of queerness and the exploitation of the LGBT community for heteronormative corporate capitalism (Maree, 2013; Peters, 2011). This saturation of onee tarento and the lack of other forms of LGBT representation in Japan’s mass media have led to the identification of gayness with being a catty queen-type character. This stereotype is perhaps best embodied by the most popular current onee tarento, Matsuko Deluxe. Matsuko, a physically very large onee tarento, is almost never seen on TV wearing men’s clothing although she openly admits that she usually wears dresses and makeup only when appearing on television. A television personality, columnist, and author, Matsuko appeared regularly on eight different TV programs on various stations and can be seen in advertisements in both video and print medium all over Japan as of 2019. She is known for her sharp wit and straightforward way of speaking. In her analysis of Matsuko in her program Matsuko no Heya (‘Matsuko’s Room’) Suganuma (2018) shows how, despite discursively positioning herself as an average person in her show, Matsuko occupies a mediating space between the entertainment world and the world of the audience. Although Suganuma sees some hope for a more nuanced understanding of queer individuals in Japan through the public’s broad acceptance of Matsuko, the space shown is still a liminal one (Besnier, 1997) given that onee tarento fit into the heteronormative expectations and stereotypes of Japanese society. Such liminal spaces, while presenting opportunities to explore hybridity, are still often sites of exclusion, where queer people are trapped by the expectations of heteronormative society at large. Many such individuals found fame through TV shows that heavily featured onee tarento during one of the many periodic bursts of popularity for queer celebrities in the Japanese media (Maree, 2018: 201). Despite this fame there is still often a strong index between the LGBT

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community and sex work in Japan (McLelland, 2005: 248-250). The visibility and popularity of onee tarento in Japan’s mass media along with the lack of visibility for transgender men lend further evidence to support the mistaken assumption held by many Japanese that LGBT means men wearing dresses. Countering these stereotypes of queer men only as feminized queens, a recent drama airing on the conservative public broadcasting channel NHK called Otooto no Otto (‘My Brother’s Husband’) showed the widower husband of a Japanese man as a Western bear type, large-bodied with lots of visible facial hair. The bear-type of gay man, while a common stereotype in Western media, is often unknown to straight Japanese society. In this way, the drama and the comic it was based on represent a clear departure (see Saito, this volume). However, despite this groundbreaking drama, the image of LGBT in general and gay men in Japan specifically remains linked to the idea of wearing dresses and speaking in an extremely stereotypical feminine and nonnormative way. In part this is due to the fact that in Japanese mass media discourse, there is still such a powerful association between the LGBT community and the idea of sex work or entertaining men in bars that it prevents association with ordinariness (Suganuma, 2011: 346). Even in ‘My Brother’s Husband,’ the friendly title character Mike Flannagan is referred to as unfit for being around children (see also Saito in this volume; Tagame, 2015: 84). Countering this imbalance in network television has been the rise of social media. Indeed, the phenomenon of social media supplanting network television is not limited just to Japan. However, the internet has become quite a home to the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender communities. Social media spaces have been growing in importance as safe spaces that can then become queered spaces allowing the marginalized to find an ibasho, a place where they can fit in. Rather than being allowed to be seen or helping heteronormative corporate society profit from their gayness, many members of the LGBT community have begun to create their own places online (Alexander & Losh, 2010; Drushel, 2010), leading to a greater sense of being in direct control of their situation for the queer community in online settings. This new wave of perceived queer acceptance has also affected the online content from Japanese users. Blogs like Futari Papa (‘Two Papas’)

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or vlogs like Kazuechan, Erubian TV, or Sekando Sutoriito (‘Second Street’) continue to gain many viewers every day. As these influencers continue to rise in popularity, their prolific content helps to create a different sort of ibasho for the LGBTQ of Japan online. It is commonly believed in Japan that having an ibasho, a place where you truly belong and can freely express yourself, is essential for overall well-being and health (Bamba & Haight, 2011: 6; Unser-Schutz this volume). Given this, it would seem that the increasing presence of such content is of immense benefit to the queer Japanese community as a whole; however, the intersectional nature of these spaces in relation to what is often described as a largely homogeneous society has yet to be explored. This chapter examines data from two video channels created specifically by gay and trans content producers featuring the real voices of the queer Japanese community in their own constructed spaces online. By doing so, it addresses the following research questions: (1) What is the role of social media in the disruption of hegemonic power relations by marginalized people? (2) How do Japanese LGBTQ community members utilize social media to construct their own sense of ibasho? In this chapter I examine the specific speech acts and events that gay and trans video content producers in Japan use to form narratives of resistance which intertextually borrow from genres established by network television and draw upon strategic knowledge such as face-threatening acts and audience design to accomplish their goals.

2

Data

The data in this chapter are drawn from two specific YouTube channels: Moa and More, and Kitto Channel. Both channels are fairly well known in the Japanese LGBT community with a large number of videos on both channels. Moa, the creator behind Moa and More, was a finalist in the 2019 Mr. Gay Japan competition (Steen, 2019) and has both Japanese and international followers due to his high level of English proficiency and his work in creating English subtitles for his videos. Eito and Kanata, the two transgender men behind Kitto Channel, have enough followers that they often had ‘meet and greet’-style events where followers could

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come and see them live before the pair disbanded in January 2020. Both channels have over a million views and have steadily produced content for several years. One thing in particular that drew my attention to these two channels was their use of what I term street-corner activism. While the content on these two channels is quite varied, they both contain situations where the creators go out onto the streets, meeting with other people, queer and non-queer, with the hope of educating and spreading a positive message about the LGBT community. Both channels had Free Hugs Campaign-­ style videos where the content creators stand in public places with signs that proclaim their LGBT status and offer a free hug to anyone who wants one as a form of public activism to show acceptance. I found this particularly interesting since the Free Hugs Campaign itself also supposedly gained fame and popularity through YouTube with a video of an Australian man offering free hugs in his hometown as a way to spread happiness and cheer. In this sense, the free hugs videos on Moa and More and Kitto Channel have a strongly YouTube-based origin that presents an ideal opportunity to study sites of activism for marginalized Japanese individuals at a crossroads of the real world where the hugs are being given and the virtual world where the videos are transmitted and seen. Additionally, Kitto Channel had several videos where they conducted street interviews both in Japan and when traveling abroad asking people’s opinions regarding the LGBT community. These street-corner activism videos are the main basis for my analysis in this chapter.

3

Analytical Approach

My analysis in this chapter utilizes Sociocultural Linguistics, an approach which draws from a wide range of approaches such as ethnography, Interactional Sociolinguistics (Gumperz, 1982), and Conversation Analysis (Sacks, Schegloff, & Jefferson, 1974). Originally established by Bucholtz and Hall’s (2004) work on gender and identity, Sociocultural Linguistics is well suited to analyzing how LGBT individuals construct themselves in relation to others. By using an analytical approach with such a wide range of resources, this chapter attempts to make

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connections between larger societal ideological structures and genres and discursive interaction. In particular, this chapter draws heavily on the idea of categories (Hester & Eglin, 1997) and basic principles of the tactics of intersubjectivity (Bucholtz & Hall, 2005), especially the concepts of adequation and distinction which people use to align or other in the process of constructing identity. Understanding how categories work in discourse is extremely helpful in seeing how people construct identities and relationships. Developed originally by Sacks (1995: 246-249), close examination of categories allows us to see how our understanding of societal connections and relationships is displayed. By examining categories such as gay or lesbian, we can then see that categories like these which people can belong to also belong to collections, that is, groups of categories bound together by a specific societal device. In the previous example, that device might be called sexuality. Moreover, each category has certain predicates which are bound to the category that determines membership. Additionally, the analysis of categories as described by Sacks has two specific rules, the rule of economy and the rule of consistency (Hester & Eglin, 1997: 4-5). These rules account for the ways that categories are utilized in interaction. The rule of economy states that a single category is adequate for describing a member. The second rule, the rule of consistency, which could be very applicable in pro-drop languages like Japanese, states that when one category in a collection is used to describe a person within a certain population, the other categories in the same collection can be used to describe others within the same population.

4

Analysis

This first extract comes from a video originally called [furii hagu] hagu wo shite kuremasen ka? Gay Hug in Tokyo [LGBT] uploaded originally on March 17, 2018, which runs for approximately two and a half minutes (Moa and More, 2018). The use of English in the title of this video is quite typical for Moa’s videos as he often gives his channel introduction in English and subtitles his mostly Japanese videos in English as well. In this video, Moa is seen blindfolded in many different Tokyo locations

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with a sign by his side. His arms are outstretched waiting for people to hug him. Although there are background sounds and some unclear conversations in the video, the majority of the discourse analyzed here is in the video text. Extract 1 Gay Hug in Tokyo 01 text: 02 text:

03

04

05

06

07

08

09 10 11 12

video: music: video: text:

13 video:

Moa and More boku ha gei desu. I  TP gay CP “I am gay.” jibun no mawari ni ha sonna hito ga inai to self  N around  at TP that person S exist:NEG QT omotteiru kamoshiremasen. think maybe “You might think there aren’t any such people around.” dakedo, anata no chikaku ni mo  kitto  imasu. but you N near at also definitely exist “But they’re definitely there even near you.” sekusharu mainoritii no kata ga sexual minority N people:POL S sumiyasui sekai wo tsukuru tame ni liveable world O make for at “In order to create a world that’s easier to live in for people who are sexual minorities” boku ha koko de kaminguauto shimasu. I TP here at coming-out do “I am coming out here.” moshi henken ga nakere ba, if prejudice S exist:NEG if “If you don’t have any prejudice,” boku ni hagu shite kuremasen ka? I at hug do receive Q “Won’t you give me a hug?” ((shots of people looking and walking past)) ((music has treble counterpoint added)) ((shots of people coming up to hug Moa with one handshake)) sabetsu ya henken ga sukoshi demo discrimination and prejudice S bit but sukanaku naru koto wo negatte lessen become thing O wish “With the hope of reducing discrimination and prejudice even just a little” ((single hug scene)) (continued)

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Extract 1 (continued) 14 text:

boku ha kore kara mo iitsuzukemasu. I TP this from also continue-­to-­say “I will also continue to say it.” 15 video: ((two more hug scenes)) 16 text: jibun ga gei dearu koto wo. I S gay CP thing O “That I am gay.” 17 video: ((father and daughter hug)) 18 text: end sequence: thanks and subscription information

If we examine extract 1, right away in line 1 the intro segment creates a frame that establishes the Hallidayan mode starting to establish context for the viewer by presenting the name of the video channel. Animated video introductions like this are standard in many YouTube videos and are often used to establish a type of branding much the same way as when we think of older television programs, where we often have instant recognition when viewing the opening credits with the theme song. Then Moa goes off with a coming out statement in line 2, boku ha2 gei desu. This statement helps to construct the context of the video and intertextually references the well-established genre in queer social media of coming out videos (Wuest, 2014). It does so by giving us the tenor and field (Halliday, 1978), showing the viewer their relationship with Moa and the subject matter of the video itself. The relationship with the viewer is established by using the category gei which automatically indexes the collection of sexuality here. The viewer can then relate to Moa since sexuality is an expansive collection which the majority of people belong to in one way or another. In the video, Moa stands blindfolded, which serves to emphasize his own helplessness but also makes him a ‘safe’ person through that same vulnerability. In lines 3 and 4 Moa then gives a message which can be interpreted in two different ways depending on whether or not the viewer aligns with Moa’s ‘I am gay’ statement. For those who do not align with Moa this statement creates a hole in the heteronormative existence. Either way it is understood, it still creates an ibasho for Moa with the statement ‘You might think there aren’t any such people around but they’re definitely there even near you.’ For those who align with Moa it becomes a

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statement of support saying that the listener is not alone as is often the case with coming out statements (Cooper & Brownell, 2016). At the same time, he utilizes the adjective sonna to draw upon straight listeners’ sense of distinction (Bucholtz & Hall, 2005), their belief that gay people are different from themselves, to shift his footing and gain their understanding. He then explicitly gives the reason for the video in line 5 that he is trying to make the world easier to live in for sexual minority people and at the same time creating a space for himself. He then links this goal with the act of coming out in line 6 and then asks the viewer to give him a hug, constructing the viewer as one of the people around him and then giving two category-bound predicates, not having prejudice and giving a hug. These two predicates are then linked with an unspoken category, which could be seen as problematic for some category analyses due to the fact that it is not specifically invoked by participants, but I might argue in this case that since the predicates are there and the field and tenor have also been established and since Japanese is pro-drop, we could say that there is an unspoken LGBT ally category that relates to the initial I am gay statement in line 2 which is created by the consistency rule. It is clear that there can be no LGBT ally without invoking the four categories in the acronym LGBT itself. The video then goes on to show images of those who just observe but do not participate in the hug event. In line 10 the music shifts with higher treble notes and immediately after this the footage changes to those who come up to give him a hug. The shift in musical tone along with the shift in footage indexes a positive quality to the act of giving a hug, reinforcing the earlier connected predicates of hugging being equivalent to not being prejudiced and being an LGBT ally, thus blurring the line of distinction. Moa then begins to restate his purpose in line 12 which rephrases and connects the earlier purpose of making ‘a world that’s easier to live in’ from line 5 with ‘reducing discrimination and prejudice.’ In line 14 by leaving out the direct object these goals are then connected with his words in line 16, which is basically a repetition of his earlier coming out statement. In particular, the use of the word koto in line 16 reinstates the reference to the earlier statement. What is more interesting about this is that this final segment allows us to reframe the earlier statement of I am gay as an act that reduces discrimination and

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prejudice not just by looking at other examples of coming out narratives but by Moa directly constructing the speech act as such. Coming out here is not just a challenge to heteronormativity as is so often described within social science research. It is constructed by this young activist as a positive act, making the world better within his discourse, and as such is a vital part of his means for creating his ibasho. Another thing which is so interesting in these Japanese free hug videos is that there is a strong genre-like similarity among them. Extract 2 is taken from a video titled [LGBT] Shinjuku de Motojoshi (Onna → Otoko) to Furii Hagu! (‘[LGBT] Free Hugs with Former Girls (FTM) in Shinjuku’) which was originally uploaded on July 18, 2017, on Kitto Channel (2017b). The use of the arrow in the parenthetical between onna (‘woman’) and otoko (‘man’) is often used in Japanese text as a substitute for the word kara (‘from’) and might easily be understood when compared to the way the number ‘2’ is used textually as a substitute for to in the term F2M, meaning female to male transgender. If we look at the textual act sequences early on within this free hug video, we can see certain similarities emerging. Extract 2 Kitto Channel Shinjuku Free Hug Sign 01 sign 1:

02 sign 2:

03 sign 3:

bokutachi ha moto joshi gen danshi we TP former girl now boy toransujendaa desu transgender CP LGBT no hito ha me ni ha N person TP eye at TP mienai kedo takusan imasu see-can: NEG but many exist “We are transgenders – originally girls but now boys. You can’t tell if someone is LGBT just by looking but there are many of us.” YOUTUBE kitto channeru channel “Youtube Kitto Channel” furii hagu shimasen ka? free hug do:NEG Q “Won’t you take a free hug?”

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This extract starts about 56 seconds into the video with a channel-­ specific introduction given in text form as a close-up of three handwritten signs. Typically, at the beginning of a Kitto Channel video, the two content creators Eito Hara and Kanata Kimoto introduce themselves individually by name while also ascribing themselves the category of motojoshi (‘former girl’). Despite the fact that both Eito and Kanata do their typical verbal introduction at the beginning of this video before the extract starts, the top sign also gives a similar introduction of them as motojoshi. This seeming repetition of the introduction can then be understood as a type of ongoing coming out statement in line 1 due to the fact that written text does not vanish the way spoken speech does. Moa also uses a sign in his earlier video; however, the sign is not shown to the camera in such a way that the viewer can easily read it entirely. In the case of Moa’s video, the text in the video supplants the words of the sign but for Kitto Channel they focus on the sign visually with close-ups. Still, looking at the sign in extract 2 the similarities to Moa’s video text become obvious. It starts with a coming out statement followed by a statement similar to Moa’s that there are other members of the LGBT community around you although you might not realize it. After giving their name in the second sign they then ask those who see the sign if they would like a free hug. The next extract is taken from the next part of the Kitto Channel free hug video at 1 minute and 16 seconds into the video. From this point until the end of the video it has a textual message added to the video during the editing and post-production process. The text used here also bears some interesting similarities to the text found in extract 1. Extract 3 Kitto Channel Shinjuku Free Hug End Text 01 text 1: takusan no kata to hagu sasete itadakimashita many N person:HON and hug do:CAU receive:HON “We were able to hug many people” 02 onaji nayami wo motsu hito same worry O hold person “people with the same concerns” 03 tachi domatte mite kureta hito stand stop look receive person “people just passing by” (continued)

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Extract 3 (continued) 04

05

06

07

08

09

10

11

ouen shite imasu to koe kakete kureta hito cheer do exist QT voice apply receive person “people who wanted to tell us that they support us” bokutachi jishin sugoku hagemasaremashita we self extremely encouraged “we ourselves were extremely encouraged” text 2: bokutachi ha moto joshi no toransujendaa we TP former girl N transgender “We are former girls-transgenders” LGBT toujisha related-parties “LGBT individuals” bokutachi ga mae ni deru koto ni yotte we S before at exit thing to depend hihanteki na iken mo aru criticize N opinion also exist “Sometimes when we stand before people we get negative comments” bokutachi wo tooshite mijika ni iru koto we O pass nearby at exist thing tokubetsu na sonzai demo nan demo naku special N existence but what but not atarimae no nichijou dearu koto obviously N daily CP thing “we’re around you, different but still leading normal lives” onaji ningen dearu koto same human CP thing “human beings same as you.” shitte moraeru kikkake ni know receive result at bokutachi ha naritai we TP want-to-become “we just want you to understand this through us.”

In extract 3, lines 1–5 are all shown in the video while people are being hugged. Similar to the first video, the use of hug footage combined with textual discourse helps to construct the actions of the people filmed as supportive of the LGBT community. From line 1 it is clear that the text is meant to describe what is being seen by specifically using the predicate hug which matches what is being shown in the video. Then in lines 2–4 we can see that they assign two categories to the visual predicate of hugging being shown. Huggers are constructed as being those who have

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people just passing by

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people with similar concerns

people who say they support us (allies)

Fig. 8.1  Categorizing people who hugged Eito and Kanata

similar concerns (line 2), possibly other LGBT people phrased as onaji nayami wo motsu hito (‘people with the same concerns’ in line 2), and people who just happened to be there (line 3). These two categories are then subsumed under a third category of people who support them in line 4 (see Fig.  8.1). People who give their support to Kitto Channel, which is always framed as being about transgenders given that Eito and Kanata always give the intro with a coming out statement, can then be seen as constructing the category of ally just as in extract 1. Lines 6–11, which occur at the end of the video, serve as a restatement of purpose and significantly resemble Moa’s repetition of his coming out segment. Lines 6 and 7 are a coming out statement but line 7 in particular with the use of the toujisha (‘related parties’) aligns Eito and Kanata with the collection of LGBT that exists within the larger collection of sexuality. This utilizes a tactic Bucholtz and Hall (2005) term adequation.

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In line 8 we have another predicate without a category, hihanteki na iken mo aru (‘having negative opinions’), that exists in opposition to the predicate of the ally category which gives support, making such opposing people distinct. Line 9 specifically focuses on the issue of environment through the phrase mijika (‘nearby’), similar to Moa’s use of mawari (‘around’) and the adverb chikaku (‘near’) in extract 1. As I mentioned earlier, one of the common descriptions of coming out in social science is as a challenge to heteronormativity. Moa’s words definitely do this but Kitto Channel uses the phrase mijika to serve a very similar purpose in this video as well as in other videos. Line 9 also serves as a predicate for the category of LGBT people. Later in this line they make use of the adverbial atarimae (‘obviously’) pointing out to the viewer that although they may belong to different subcategories there are still some that they share in common. The category of onaji ningen (‘human beings same as you’) is then specifically invoked in line 10 and this joint membership is highlighted through the use of the word onaji (‘same’). This then adequates both queer and non-queer to the same group. It ends with the explanation that this understanding is their purpose but very interestingly their use of bokutachi can also be seen here as reaffirming their gender status as male and as a coming out at the end. This last extract comes from another video clip from one of Kitto Channel’s (2017a) other segments and the term mijika (‘nearby’) is also used as in the earlier video to challenge heteronormativity. Titled [LGBT] Obaachan no machi de moto joshi desu to kamingu auto (‘[LGBT] Coming out by saying I used to be a girl in Old Ladies Town’), this video was originally uploaded on June 11, 2017. Part of a series of similar videos, in these segments the two Kitto Channel men go to different places and ask random people on the street if they know what LGBT stands for. At the end they tell them that they are LGBT and invite the interviewee to guess which type (lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender) they are with the goal of shocking or at least surprising the interviewee with the revelation that they are transgender men. This extract begins approximately 1 minute and 43 seconds into the video.

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Extract 4 Coming out 01 Eito:

02 L1: 03 L2: 04 Eito:

05 L1:

06 L2:

07 Eito: 08 L1/ L2: 09 Eito:

10 L1:

eru jii bii tii shittemasu ka L G B T know Q “Do you know what LGBT means?” ((shake head)) ((shake head)) ((flips page)) kochira desu. Hai. Here CP yes yaku desu. Translation CP kore toransujendaa tte iu no wa this transgender QT say N TP maa, josei kara dansei ni nattari (.) um lady from man to become dansei kara josei ni nattari man from lady to become “Here it is. Okay. Here’s the meaning. Transgender is well like if a woman becomes a man or if a man becomes a woman.”

gender-identity-(disorder) “Gender identity (disorder)” [seidouitsusei gender-identity-(disorder) “Gender identity (disorder)” a-! ((nods)) ((nods)) >sou desu sou desu sou desu.< true CP true CP true CP kou iu kata dou omowaremasu ka? This say person:HON how think:PAS Q “Right right right. What do you think about these kinds of people? kitto mukashi kara attan darou kedo sono kata ga certain long-ago from exist:N CP:VOL but that person:HON S jidai de(.) are de omote era at that with surface denakatta dake janai emerge:NEG:PST just CP:NEG “I’m certain they’ve been around from long before but those kinds of people, in those times, weren’t open about it were they.” (continued)

182 

G. Furukawa

Extract 4 (continued) 11 L2:

12 L1:

13 L2: 14 Eito:

15 L1: 16 L2:

17 L1:

18 Eito:

19 L2: 20 Eito:

21 L1: 22 L1/ L2: 23 Eito:

sore kakushiteta to ka:, demo sore igai that hidden and or but that except seken ni ukeirerarena[kat]ta(.) deshou. World at receive:VOL:NEG:PST CP:VOL “That was hidden or otherwise it wasn’t something the world accepted was it.” [>sou100 M 8 7 15

4 1 5

1 1 2

0 1 1

0 1 1

1 0 1

# posts

7.82 49 4.40 42 6.24 91

Here, I specifically analyze posts on Yahoo! Chiebukuro (Chiebukuro throughout), the Japanese version of Yahoo Questions. It is largely focused on advice and information sharing, and is largely anonymous, although users can register their information and use the same username over time. I intentionally avoided insider-oriented sites like the fan art site Pixiv, because there may be less need to self-denigrate in closed communities—although fujoshi often still do, as in Extract 2. Being mainstream and anonymous, Chiebukuro enjoys a mixed audience of both fujoshi and non-fujoshi, but is safe in that users’ interactions will not likely bleed into their offline lives. For this study, I specifically extracted all posts with the terms fujoshi and komyushō from 2010 to 2018. Komyushō was selected as it indicates that the users will likely conduct metalinguistic talk about language skills, and because it triggers negative evaluations which one might expect to find when people self-denigrate. This resulted in 91 posts: 49 where the original poster (OP throughout) does not self-identify as a fujoshi, and 42 where they do (Table 9.1). Most posts (67) had five or fewer unique reply threads, that is, new lines of replies from unique users; larger numbers of unique reply threads indicate a larger number of participants posting. I then conducted a close discourse analysis of two posts by self-identified fujoshi, which I selected from those posts with a reply from the OP, and then chose the posts which had the most unique reply threads (Table 9.2). Replies from other users and the OP indicate high levels of interaction, and thus more opportunities to see how strategies play out.

3

Post 1: Do you hate otaku girls?

The first post was made in 2016 by the user yozakirubi, registered as a female student (Extract 3). Her post centered on the inquiry as to whether people hate girl fans, and received replies from 16 users. Yozakirubi

195

9  Self-denigration Among Japanese Female Fans Online…  Table 9.2   Number of replies to target posts Post 1

Post 2

Gender

Mean replies # # Self-­identification users posts per user

Female

Total Fujoshi Manga fan Male Total Not stated Fudanshi Otaku Unidentified Total Not stated Otaku OP Fujoshi

1

1

1.00

1 11 5 1 5 4 3 1 1

1 15 6 1 8 4 3 1 18

1.00 1.36 1.20 1.00 1.60 1.00 1.00 1.00 18.00

Total

17

38

2.24

Mean replies per # # users posts user 5 5

11 11

2.20 2.20

1

11

11.00

1 3 3

11 4 4

11.00 1.33 1.33

1

23

23.00

10

49

4.9

Notes. Fudanshi refers to male fans of BL.

responded to most (17) of the responses she received (Table 9.2). Most of those replying were men (11), which may be due to the nature of the OP’s question, although she did not specifically call out to male users. Although no users indicated they were fujoshi, self-identification was common within the posts, with nine other users referring to themselves as otaku, and one as a fudanshi ‘rotten boy’—male fans of BL. The OP self-denigrates throughout her post and her replies, but overall the responses she received were generally positive, and it was uncommon for other users to outright criticize her. In addition, responders did not generally agree with the initial inquiry, and instead usually denied it or started other lines of conversation. Extract 3 Main post (yozakirubi, 2016) Watashi wa shōgakusei no toki wa mainichi danshi to onigokko shitari futsū ni asonde imashita. Ga, chūgaku ni natte, watashi wa otaku ni narimashita. Shikamo fujoshi desu. Watashi no tomodachi mo sō desu. Nijigen ni hairikomi sugite imamade issho ni asonde ita hitotachi tomo, hito to no hanashikata mo wasure hanbun komyushō no yō ni natte shimaimashita!! Nanode ima made wa futsū ni shaberu koto ga dekita no ni kandari shite yabai desu ww sasuga ni yabai to omotta node hanashikata wa shikkari kokufuku shimashita ga

196 

G. Unser-Schutz

madamada nijigen ai ga tomaranai node saki ga omoiyararemasu. Anime guzzu mo takusan aru shi hondana wa manga ga ippai desu. Daga watashi wa kore demo nani o kakusō otaku nanode hajiraimasen!! Ga yappari konna joshi wa kirai deshō ka? When I was an elementary school student, every day I played normally, doing hide and go seek and stuff with the boys. But, in junior high, I became an otaku. And a fujoshi at that. My friends are also like that. [I] got too deep into the 2nd dimension and [I] forgot how to talk with people, even with friends [I] played with normally, and became half-­komyushō!! So, although [I] could talk normally before [I] can’t speak properly now and [I]’m dangerous ww [I] thought this was really bad so [I] fully conquered how to speak, but my love for the 2nd dimension still, still won’t stop so [I]’m worried about the future. [I] have a lot of anime goods and my bookshelves are full with manga. But even so it’s a fact, I’m an otaku so I won’t feel embarrassed!! But, does [everyone] hate girls like this after all? Post 1 begins with the OP disclosing that she is an otaku and fujoshi (lines 2 and 3). This self-identification of herself as an otaku is repeated toward the end of the post in lines 9 to 10, and the main body of the post is composed of more self-disclosure about her condition as an otaku. Although self-identifying in this way, yozakirubi actively self-denigrates through negative self-evaluations. The OP describes herself as hanbun komyushō ‘half-komyushō’ (line 5), stating that she is yabai [dangerous/ really bad]. This negativity is emphasized by her suggesting that saki ga omoiyararemasu ‘[my] future is troubling’ (line 8). Yozakirubi emphasizes out-group differences, as in lines 1 and 5, and her statements that she does not talk futsū ni ‘normally’. It appears that the OP accepts normative evaluations, emphasized through the use of the conjunction shikamo ‘worse’ to disclose herself as fujoshi, and her use of yappari in line 10, which introduces information the speakers assume to be shared common knowledge (Maynard, 1993). However, yozakirubi maintains a playful tone throughout the post. In line 6, she uses ww—literally the letter ‘w’ repeated, read wara from the verb warau ‘laugh’, which is used similarly to ‘LOL’ (Bennett, 2012)— and is generous with exclamation marks in lines 5 and 10. She uses metaphors, such as in line 7, where she describes correcting how she speaks

9  Self-denigration Among Japanese Female Fans Online… 

197

with the verb kokufuku suru, meaning to conquer or win at something through great effort, rather than less marked options such as naosu ‘fix’, forming a metaphor of PROBLEMS AS WAR. She also uses exaggeration and slightly archaic speech (line 9: nani o kakusō ‘However I hide it’), and although she uses the polite desu/masu forms, she also uses colloquial, young spoken language, such as yabai and the conjunction nanode. These all help create an emotional and playful atmosphere, and suggest that the OP is participating in self-denigrating humor. Many of the responses often featured alignment through similar linguistic practices. Several included self-denigration, but were generally not critical of the OP.  Both the OP and other users show a high level of awareness of how they are perceived by outsiders and incorporate those evaluations as self-denigration, as in the self-directed use of kimoi ‘gross’ in Extract 4. However, both the OP and the other users often utilized forms indicating playful, humorous, and emotional reactions, such as common internet slang, including ww, which functions as a contextualization cue indicating playfulness and laughter and builds rapport in computer-mediated communication (CMC) (Bennett, 2012) (Table 9.3). Internet slang helps build community of practices in CMC (Nishimura, 2003), and the OP and other users utilized a variety of tools common within internet slang to indicate emotion, such as double exclamation marks. The OP herself used such cues 57 times (~3 per post). Extract 4 Response to Post 1 (Taipiero in yozakirubi, 2016) Boku wa otaku to iu dake de kimogararemasu ga, kimogararenai dake rakkii da to omoimasu w I get treated gross just for being an otaku, but [I] think [you’re] lucky that [they] just treat [you] gross w This is observable in the response selected as the best answer (Extract 5). Keep_it_real987 does not directly respond to Yozakirubi’s original question, but writes instead about her love of anime and manga. The best answer repeats stylistic characteristics of the original post, suggesting that Bucholtz and Hall’s (2005) adequation—foregrounding similar linguistic forms to emphasize membership in the same group—is occurring. Contextualization cues indicate a playful cue, specifically (wara) (line 3).

53

11

2

9 1 8 2

4

2

2 2

2

7

1 1

3

3 3

3

7

2

1 6 4

1

1

0

82

1

38

1

4 2 1

1 1

0 0

2 1 0

3 1 2

1 1 1

19 1 18 15 2 1

6 0 5

3 0 1

58 1 57 22 5 2

2998

162

289 21 106

41

153 73

101 69 56

102 76 54

1336 134 1202 1373 319 329

23.03 134.00 21.09 62.41 63.80 164.50

11.20

16.83

78.89

38.00

162.00 162.00

72.25 144.50 10.50 21.00 106.00

41.00

153.00 73.00

33.67 69.00 28.00

102.00 34.00 76.00 54.00 54.00

70.32 134.00 66.78 91.53 159.50 329.00

Other symbols: zz, ←, ー etc. Word play: Archaic speech, character language, etc. Bold text indicates the OP.

1

3

3

1

1

43 9 1

Total

43

1

User name

Total keep_it_real97 yozakirubi Male Total aniota_gin bravery_ default_ sequel_1225 delica_and_d5 icsca13579 mikoto0 611_0402 moco8134levin mr_dandy7 platinum_ super_tiger21 the_yare_yourself Utyusenkande tabisuruyuki zep1100k_ hisyakaku Unidentified Total Koskaks neet_bokumeto61 684154765165 Taipiero

Female

Gender

Sum length Mean Cues per # replies characters length characters

Word play Total

ww (w/ www/( !! (!/!!!/?!) 笑)) Emoticons Other symbols

Reply data

Contextual cues

Table 9.3   User of emotional and humorous contextualization cues in Post 1

198  G. Unser-Schutz

9  Self-denigration Among Japanese Female Fans Online… 

199

She uses metaphorical expressions such as kokoro no eiyō ‘nutrition for the heart’ (line 2) as well as exaggeration (toranai to shinjau ‘[I’ll] die if [I] don’t get any’ (lines 2 and 3), and indicates her involvement through the sentence final particles yone and yo (lines 2 and 5) (Ogi, 2017). All these contribute to the creation of community between users, making for a convivial and intimate atmosphere. Extract 5 Best answer to Post 1 (Keep_it_real987 in yozakirubi, 2016) Gohan wa 1-shoku gurai nuite mo heiki dakedo, anime to gēmu to manga wa nukenai n desu yone. Kokoro no gohan nan desu. Kokoro no eiyō nan de, toranai to shinjau n desu yo (wara). Ima mo manga o tsuki ni nan jūsatsu mo kaitamete, aita jikan ni chotto yondari. Neru mae no 15-fun toka demo yomanai to dame nan desu yo. [I’m] fine skipping a meal, but [you] can’t skip anime and games and manga, right? [They’re] food for the heart. Since [they’re] nutrition for the heart, [I’ll] die if [I] don’t get any (laugh). Even now I hoard tens of volumes of manga a month, and read them little by little when I have time. [I] have to read them for 15 minutes before going to sleep or else.

4

Post 2: Fujoshi, are you married now?

Are all self-denigrating posts as successful in creating positive rapport between users? Looking at Post 2, the answer to this appears to be no. Here, the OP, Loop_pino, asks fujoshi if they are married now, and if so, how they did it (Extract 6). As with Post 1, the OP self-identifies as a fujoshi. Post 2 received responses from 9 users, and the OP responded to a majority of them, with 22 follow-ups in total (Table 9.2). As opposed to Post 1, almost all of those responding were women (8), likely due to her topic of inquiry. Self-identification was common within the responses, with one user identifying as an otaku, and five as fujoshi. Note that in the following extracts […] indicates abridged text to differentiate from ellipses in the original text.

200 

G. Unser-Schutz

Extract 6 Main post (Loop_pino, 2018) Fujoshi no kata, mata wa moto fujoshi no kata ni shitsumon desu. Genzai kekkon shite imasu ka? […] Kekkon o sareta kata wa dōiu shudan o tsukaimashita ka? […] Aite no kata ni shumi wa hanashiteimasu ka? […] Watashi wa 20-dai kōhan no fujoshi de komyushō desu. Ima made koibito ga ita koto wa arimasen. Dansei to shokuji ni itta no mo kazoeru hodo de, ikkagetsu ijō tsuzuita koto mo arimasen. […] Koibito ga dekinai no wa fu no shumi dōkō dewa naku, watashi jishin no seikaku no mondai da to omoimasu. Desu ga, kono shumi wa isshō tsuzuki-sō nano de…. Hon o dashitari wa shiteinai desu. Tada manga shōsetsu tomo ni dōjinshi o yomu no ga shiawase de, chokochoko e o kaitari suru kurai desu. […] Netto-jō de sae komyushō nano de tsuittā wa yatteimasu ga dare nimo koe ga kakerezu, fujoshi no yūjin mo imasen. Watashi no dame na tokoro desu ga, hito no kōi ga kowai desu. Hito to deatte mo dame na riyū o sagashite kotowatte shimau no desu. […] Itsu made mo hito o kowagatte ippo mo mae ni susumemasen. Ageku ni watashi wa kitsuon ga arimasu. (Domori no koto desu) kore ga ichiban no riyū kamo shiremasen. Mukashi kara ijimeraretekite, shishunki ni suki na otoko no ko nante imasendeshita. […] Konkatsu o shite mo, aite mo watashi no jōken o mite sukoshi demo ii hito o sagashiteiru hazu desu. Wazawaza konna supekku no hito o erabu hito wa inai to omoimasu. […] [This] is a question for fujoshi or ex-fujoshi. Are you married now? […] Married women, what methods did you use? […] Have [you] told [your] partner about your interests? […] I’m a fujoshi in my late 20s and I have komyushō. [I] have never had a boyfriend. The number of time’s [I’ve] had dinner with a man is countable, and it’s never gone for longer than a month. […] I think the reason I can’t get a boyfriend isn’t my fu interests, but a problem within my own personality. But, it seems like these interests will continue [my] whole life, so … I haven’t published any books. I just feel happy reading manga novels and dōjinshi, and only buy them here and there. […] I have komyushō even online, so although I use Twitter, I haven’t been able to contact anyone, and I don’t have fujoshi friends. As for my bad points, people’s kindness scares me. Even if I meet someone, I look for reasons to say no to them. […] I can’t move a single step forward because I’m always afraid of people. On top of that, I have a stutter. I’ve been picked on since forever, and I didn’t like anyone when I was in puberty. […] Even if I tried konkatsu [marriage hunting

9  Self-denigration Among Japanese Female Fans Online… 

201

activities], people will surely look at my condition and look for someone even a little better. I don’t think there’s anybody who would choose someone with these specs. As with Post 1, the OP here self-identifies as a fujoshi (line 3), and self-­ discloses throughout the post, giving away many potentially damaging details about herself such as her interests in fu ‘rotten’ (BL) things to her having kitsuon ‘a stutter’. The OP self-denigrates through negative personal evaluations, as in line 9, where she denigrates her ability to communicate online, and lines 16 to 17, where she denigrates her supekku ‘specs’. In comparison to Post 1, however, the OP of Post 2 specifically draws attention and emphasizes these negative evaluations, as in lines 10 and 11, where she markedly shifts the topic to her own negative traits. Additionally, Post 2’s OP failed to shift to a playful tone, with no exclamation marks or emoji; the OP only uses standard periods to mark the end of sentences, which are usually unused in CMC (Miyake, 2005). Fragmentation and hesitancy, such as ellipses (line 7), are frequent throughout the post. Although not extremely formal, the OP often uses polite forms when referring to her readers (kata ‘people’ vs. the informal hito in lines 1 and 2; the polite sareta, from the passive of the informal shita ‘do’ in line 2). Users generally took the OP’s inquiry seriously, and usually replied directly. Some responses took list form to OP’s questions, such as in Extract 7; such direct responses were less common with Post 1. As with Post 1, self-denigration was observable, and some responses included the contextualizing cues ww and (wara). However, the OP failed to use such cues herself. Although the OP tended to make long replies—averaging 290.70 text characters per post—an average of just one emotional or humorous contextualization cue appeared per reply. The OP used overtly humorous forms rarely: Wara appeared three times, all toward one user with whom she interacted nine times, on the second and eighth interactions (Table 9.4). Extract 7 Response to Post 2 (Shuga_mitiko in Loop_pino, 2018) - Kokuhakusareta toki ni “makki na fujoshi dakedo mondai nai no?” tte kiita no de shitteimasu shi, nan nara danna mo sōtō kochira-gawa no ningen deshita wara

366.29

18

15

6

13,919

11

38

26

Total

76

Other symbols: ♪, ~, ー etc. Word play: Internet slang etc. Bold text indicates the OP.

257.18 257.18 305.50 365.00

290.70 528.00 239.50 266.67 264.50

290.24 317.00

248.00 304.50

22 22

6,686 528 479 800 1,058

9,868 317

248 609

6 6

23 1 2 3 4

34 1

1 2

4 4

4 4 17

29

54

Mean length

2,829 2,829 1,222 365

3 3

6 6

2 1 4

4

11

Sum length characters

11 11 4 1

1 1 10

1 1 3

1

3 3

3

3

19

15

8

20

Other Word # symbols play Total replies

Reply data

Female Total bu_chan_ cat_nya loop_pino niina_564 shuga_mitiko tihayahuruo0 usagitojame-­ leonn Male Total mesaiya Unclear Total aahpmdb-­ m0sl4oz japanda0007 shizuka_jully

Gender User name

ww (w/ www/ !! (!/!!!/?!) (笑)) Emoticons

Contextual cues

Table 9.4   User of emotional and humorous contextualization cues in Post 2

78.89

-

128.59 128.59 -

119.75 200.00 62.24

230.55

182.74

Cues per characters

202  G. Unser-Schutz

9  Self-denigration Among Japanese Female Fans Online… 

203

- When [he] confessed, I asked “[I]’m a terminal fujoshi, no problems with that?”, so [he] knows, and anyway [my] husband is deep in this side of the world [laughter]. These trends are clearly reflected in the best answer (Extract 8), which is largely experiential-based advice. As with the original post, it generally lacks a playful tone. Starting with self-disclosure, Mesaiya describes himself as a gachi-ota na otoko ‘hardcore otaku man’. Although there are switches to more informal forms, as in the copula da over the more formal desu in line 4, possibly indicating a switch to reported inner speech (Maynard, 1991), it is generally formal. Mesaiya only uses standard periods (lines 1, 4, and 5), as well as the formal first person pronoun watashi over casual forms such as the masculine boku or ore (lines 1 and 2). It is delivered with a firm manner, indicated by the sentence final particle wa in lines 1 and 4 (Ogi, 2017). Extract 8 Best answer to Post 2 (Mesaiya in Loop_pino, 2018) Gachi-ota na otoko desu. Watashi wa fujoshi na kanojo ga hoshii desu wa. […] Watashi no yūjin ni imasu Jōki no jōken ni subete gaitō suru fujoshi ga ite, 20-dai nakaba desu ga jinsei akirame mūdo ni haitte sumaho no gēmu ni tagaku no kakin o shiteikitemasu. Sō nattara hito toshite owari da wa. Anata wa sō natte wa dame desu. [I]’m a hardcore otaku man. I would want a fujoshi girlfriend. […] One my friend’s is like that A fujoshi who fits all of the above conditions, and she’s in her mid-20s, but she’s in a life-is-over mood, and has been spending an enormous amount of money on smartphone games. If [you] end up like that it’s over. You mustn’t become like her. In so far as many users gave Loop_pino helpful advice, it would seem she has successfully created a sense of community. Indeed, other users participated in self-disclosure and self-denigration, and linguistic adequation also occurs, such as the use of formal language in Extract 8. Many users were friendly and supportive of Loop_pino, sometimes indicated by ). However, a major difference was that some emoticons such as ( users called Loop_pino’s self-denigration out (Extract 9). Here,

204 

G. Unser-Schutz

Shizuka_jully avoids giving advice, shifting her focus to the OP’s negative points. The response is formal, indicated by the use of dewa nai for the negated copula over ja nai, which would be more aligned with tendencies to use colloquial forms in CMC (lines 1 and 3); it also lacks empathetic sentence final particles or adverbs, giving it a logical impression. Shizuka_ jully not only does not participate in the act of giving advice Loop_pino was seeking, but she also rejects a sense of community—without denigrating against fujoshi—indicating that the OP failed to draw support and alignment. Interestingly, the OP made a similar post three years prior (Loop_pino, 2015), and the response patterns are consistent. Extract 9 Response to Post 2 (Shizuka_jully in Loop_pino, 2018) Anata no mondai wa fujoshi na koto nano dewa nai to omoimasu. Hitei ga ōi […] hito no ii tokoro o miyō to shinai […] iiwake ga ōi […] hito o mikudashite iru fujoshi o baka ni shiteru no wa, kekkon suru dansei ya seken dewa naku 1-ban anata nano dewa? Your problem is not that [you] are a fujoshi. [You’re] negative […] [You] don’t try to look for people’s good points […] [You] make many excuses […] Is it not men who are getting married or the public but you who is most looking down on people, making fun of fujoshi?

5

Discussion

Reviewing how self-denigration functions as a strategy, it is clear that both fujoshi OPs held negative self-evaluations and were cognizant of how they are perceived. This is indicated in their posts, such as the OP’s use of yappari in Post 1. Their self-denigration shows self-awareness, and is consistent with analyses of self-denigrating humor. Theoretically, self-­ denigrating humor should have a negative effect, as it suggests speakers initially feel negatively about themselves, and encourages others to do the same; in this sense, such humor acts as a self-directed face-threatening act (FTA). However, the ‘payoff’ of self-denigrating humor lies within this, as it allows speakers to present a positive self-image by showing awareness of how they are seen (Zajdman, 1995), and allows them to control how such criticisms are used and played out. That is to say, it allows fujoshi to control their self-image, rather than be controlled by outside criticism.

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205

However, not all self-denigration is equally successful. Although both OPs were able to form a sense of community with others, the self-­ denigration of Post 1 was specifically successful in that others did not directly agree with her (see Speer, 2019 on defining successful self-­ denigration), unlike in the case of Post 2. Although Zajdman (1995) suggested that self-denigrating FTAs are interpreted as humorous to maintain cognitive consistency, this only occurs with contextualization cues indicating how self-denigration is intended. Without contextualization cues, it can be difficult to offer humor support (Hay, 2001). Self-­ denigration without sufficient cues may not be interpreted as humor (Schnurr & Chan, 2011). Non-playful self-denigration may be interpreted as FTAs to others, as self-denigration can generalize toward in-­ group members. By self-identifying as a fujoshi, and requesting other fujoshi to respond, Post 2’s OP tacitly implied that they are in the same group. Any self-denigration that the OP commits implicitly targets other fujoshi, thus threatening their faces. Users uncomfortable with the community that the OP constructs can deflect such FTAs by distancing themselves, avoiding empathetic contextualization cues, and criticizing the OP. This connects to the final research question: How does such self-­ denigration help form community? Self-denigration by its very nature requires the self-disclosure of potentially socially damaging information about one’s self. As could be observed in both posts, self-disclosing encourages reciprocity: Those who have been subject to others’ self-­disclosure tend to self-disclose more, and it contributes to people feeling a sense of intimacy together (Greene, Derlega, & Mathews, 2006). In addition to this, self-denigration contributes to a distinction between outside groups and adequation (Bucholtz & Hall, 2005), thus forming a sense of fujoshi identity and defining membership of that group. This can work for both humorous and non-humorous self-denigration, if other members are receptive to it. Active distinction can be protective, as it allows members to identify other members; supportive members of adjacent groups— fudanshi, otaku—are also able to show their allegiance in this way. This adequation is possible because self-denigration is not a one-shot instance within the conversation. Although some common forms of self-­ denigration are largely short and formulaic, such as fat talk (reviewed in

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Agostini, SturtzSreetharan, Wutich, Williams, & Brewis, 2019), fujoshi appear to enjoy it as sustainable conversation material, such as especially in Post 1 and the books from Extracts 1 and 2. As with the less successful Post 2, even earnest self-denigration can provide continuous material for interaction, if limited in purpose (here, giving and receiving advice). This is possible because fujoshi self-denigration is primarily conducted between in-group or adjacent in-group members, thereby involving them in the interaction. Consequently, it says something not only about the individual but the addressee as well. This is an additional difference between other forms of self-denigration such as fat talk, which specifically targets the self and is not necessarily directed at other people who identify as fat. This difference accounts for why it can become a potential FTA. In that regard, playful self-denigration reframes the purpose of posting. Chiebukuro is generally seen as a place to seek advice, and this appears to be how Post 2 was interpreted. However, users did not interpret Post 1 to be seriously seeking advice, and replied with a similar, playful tone. That is to say, the purpose of Post 1 appears to have shifted toward fostering intimacy among users. Of course, it is possible to be humorous and serious (c.f., Lockyer & Pickering, 2008), and Post 1’s OP may believe her self-evaluations are accurate. However, self-denigration with contextualization cues help others reinterpret the OP’s aim, and help foster intimacy between users as they enjoy their interactions. BL is generally a playful genre that actively engages readers, with mocking play particularly functioning to transgress rules (Stanley, 2008), and this receptiveness to play may be reflected in some interactions. The noncritical acceptance and reciprocal self-disclosure of Post 1 is typical of discourse surrounding the concept of ibasho, literally ‘one’s place’. Ibasho is “a place where one feels safe, at ease, accepted, and able to freely express oneself ” (Bamba & Haight, 2011, p. 6), and is said to be created by empathetic and mutually accepting relationships (Bamba & Haight, 2011). Traditionally, ibasho has been something people find in their local community, but it is now increasingly perceived as something people need to actively seek (Bamba & Haight, 2011). For marginalized groups, whose members find it difficult to speak about their identity, finding connections over the (largely anonymous) internet can be one

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way to seek community. Although it has been argued that BL functions as a safe space for girls to discuss sexuality (McLelland, 2015), being a fujoshi is not always safe, hence the need to seek community elsewhere. In the case of fujoshi specifically, digital communication and social media have helped them find their ibasho while maintaining anonymity (Oto, 2014). Yet although communities can be constructed without playful contextualization cues, without them it appears difficult to foster the intimacy necessary to empower themselves. In this sense, Post 1 may have been more successful at constructing not just a community, but also an ibasho than Post 2 was.

6

Conclusions

As a marginal group, fujoshi are often criticized and viewed negatively by outsiders. Fujoshi often participate in self-denigration, suggesting that they accept negative criticisms at face value. Yet self-denigration can function to create connections and contribute to a sense of community through the reciprocity of self-disclosure and processes of adequation. In particular, humorous self-denigration can be empowering, as it lets fujoshi reroute a discourse that was negatively set against them. This is because humorous self-denigration has the power to “question morals imposed by larger society” (Matwick & Matwick, 2017, p. 38) by drawing attention to negative criticisms and questioning how they are perceived through one’s own presentation of a positive self. These connections with others are more tenuous when self-denigration is earnest, and intimacy seems to be less well established when playful contextualization cues are omitted. Although being on the margins is often seen as being in a negative, socially weak position, this suggests that members can empower so-called marginal identities by actively negotiating how they are viewed. Looking toward the future, how fujoshi are viewed may be changing. In recent years there has been an emergence of fujoshi characters in mainstream media: See, for example, the successful Otaku ni wa koi wa muzukashii ‘Love is difficult for otaku’ series. If the fujoshi identity becomes more mainstream, and thus positioned less on the marginalized, it is

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possible that the use of self-denigration among fujoshi will become less visible or change in other ways. Will such humor continue to play an important part in the community if it is less marginal? People may continue to be drawn to the fujoshi identity precisely because of such humorous interactions and community. If so, self-denigrating humor may continue to be important even as the group’s position changes. Following such changes may give further insight into how strategies available to marginal groups change over time.

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[Media and language 2: The incorporated audience] (pp.  234–261). Tokyo: Hituzi-shobo. Nishimura, Y. (2003). Establishing a community of practice on the internet: Linguistic behavior in online Japanese communication. Annual Proceedings of the Berkeley Linguistics Society, 2003, 337–348. Ogi, N. (2017). Involvement and attitude in Japanese discourse: Interactive markers. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Okabe, D. (2008). Fujoshi no aidentiti gēmu: Aidentiti no kashi/fukashi o megutte [Making “fujoshi” identity visible/invisible]. Ninchi Kagaku [Cognitive studies], 15, 671–681. Oto, T. (2014). Dōitsushikō no joshi komyuniti ni okeru junsui na kankeisei: Fujoshi no media riyō to taimen komyunikēshon o jirei toshite [Pure relationship in the community of girls: A case study of media use and face-to-face communication in Fujyoshi community]. Nihon Bunkajinruigakkai Kenkyūtaikai Happyō Yōshishū [Japanese Cultural Anthropology Association Conference Presentation Abstracts], 2014, 110. Postmedia Editorials. (2018). Oshi ga tōtosugite shindoi no ni goiryoku ga nasasugite shindoi: Fujoshi no kanjō ruigo jiten [[My] #1 is too precious it hurts but [my] vocabulary is so small it hurts: A fujoshi emotional expressions thesaurus]. Tokyo: Ichijinsha. Schnurr, S., & Chan, A. (2011). When laughter is not enough: Responding to teasing and self-denigrating humour at work. Journal of Pragmatics, 43(1), 20–35. Shamoon, D. (2012). Passionate friendship: The aesthetics of girls’ culture in Japan. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press. Speer, S. A. (2019). Reconsidering self-deprecation as a communication practice. British Journal of Social Psychology, 58(4), 806–828. Stanley, M. (2008). 101 uses for boys: Communing with the reader in yaoi and slash. In A.  Levi, M.  McHarry, & D.  Pagliassotti (Eds.), Boys’ love manga: Essays on the sexual ambiguity and cross-cultural fandom of the genre (pp. 99–109). Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company. Sugiura, Y. (2006). Fujoshika suru sekai: Higashi Ikebukuro no otaku joshi-tachi [The fujoshified world: The otaku girls of East Ikebukuro]. Tokyo: Chuokoron-Shinsha. Tanaka, H., & Ishida, S. (2015). Enjoying manga as fujoshi: Exploring its innovation and potential for social change from a gender perspective. International Journal of Behavioral Science, 10(1), 77–95.

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10 Connecting the Personal to the Collective: The haafu aruaru (things that happen to racially/ ethnically ‘mixed’ people) Narratives on Twitter Rika Yamashita

Contents

1  Introduction 2  Background Information 3  Aruaru as an Emphatic Response and Media Meme 4  Methodology 5  Data 6  Discussion and Conclusion References

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R. Yamashita (*) College of Economics, Kanto Gakuin University, Yokohama, Japan e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 J. Kroo, K. Satoh (eds.), Linguistic Tactics and Strategies of Marginalization in Japanese, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-67825-8_10

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Introduction

In February 2020,1 a group of undergraduate students organized and publicized an event initially entitled anata wa nihonjin nan paa sento? “Let’s kon-japa” Project: Hori jun san to issho ni 2030 nen no nihonjin o kangaeru (How many percent Japanese are you? “Let’s Mix-Japan” Project: Thinking about Japanese people of year 2030 with Mr. Jun Hori). They also circulated a link to an ethically misconducted online survey, which included questions of what the respondents thought of people who have a non-Japanese parent. The event’s title and the survey ‘flamed’2 on Twitter, shocking and infuriating many people. Even worse, the protest on SNS was subsequently met with the self-justification of the professor responsible for this seminar, who unapologetically tweeted that this flaming was planned to “wake people up”, as he believed that discussion on this ‘taboo’ issue in the Japanese society had been absent. The professor also justified his students’ motives to break the silence and to move things forward, and tweeted that the hurt caused to certain groups of people in the process as planned and inevitable for discussion. While the professor regarded that the issue was underdiscussed in society, the concerned people felt that discussions and discourses on this issue had been more visible and accessible than ever. According to Shimoji (2018: 247), the experiences of discrimination that were previously invisible are more visible on SNS as media content today. One evidence of this is the popularity of the hashtag or phrase ‘haafu aruaru’, which I loosely translate here as “things that happen to racially/ethnically ‘mixed’ people”. Shimoji describes the Japanese hashtag haafu aruaru as ‘media activism’ of haafu individuals (2018: 247). Many social activist movements take a form of hashtag activism, where narrative is considered central (Yang, 2016). The retweets and replies, which are translated as endorsement, support, and reactions from other users, create a momentum online. Known Twitter hashtag activisms and protests in Japan include the #Kutoo movement,3 which protested gendered ideology of workplaces that forces women to wear shoes with heels, collecting 18,800 online signatures to be submitted to the Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare. Meanwhile, the hashtag haafu aruaru appears

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to function differently from such popular social movements, even when they may involve experiences of marginalization. This chapter explores how tweets with haafu aruaru hashtags narrate experiences of microagression, and is organized as follows. Section 2 provides further information on discussions of narratives on Twitter and the haafu population. Section 3 provides how aruaru construction works in spoken discourse and on SNS as a meme or a genre. Section 4 provides methodology on Twitter data collection, followed by section 5, which provides examples and analyses of haafu aruaru tweets. The discussion and conclusions are provided in the last section, Section 6.

2

Background Information

2.1

The haafu Population in Japan

The term haafu, etymologically originating from the English word ‘half ’, generally refers to a person who has a Japanese and a non-Japanese parent. Various terms that refer to people of ‘mixed race’ category have been available for more than a century, such as konketsu (mixed blood), daburu (‘double’), and mikkusu (‘mix’) (Okamura, 2016). These terms were used for different sociohistorical purposes and with ideological commitments with respect to how individuals would like to call themselves (Okamura, 2013, 2016; Shimoji, 2018). As far as the term haafu is concerned, the emergence and popularity of online haafu groups seem to have further diluted the negative stereotype which contrasted ‘half ’ with ‘whole’ (Shimoji, 2018). The popularity of the term haafu is also evident on Twitter. While there are thousands of tweets with haafu aruaru, those with other related terms are almost nonexistent. Although common mediatized stereotypes of haafu are those of ‘mixed race’ with Euroamericans, who were more represented in earlier research (Kamada, 2005; Murphy-Shigematsu, 2002), haafu is used for and by people of mixed heritage of all ethnicities. These include those with Korean or Chinese heritage, who may not share the ‘mixed race’ issues in terms of their physical appearance and are in fact far larger in number

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than haafu of other ethnicities. Those who may identify themselves as haafu vary in terms of historical political situation, family situation, racial appearance, birthplace, nationality, linguistic competence, and educational, socioeconomic, and occupational background (Shimoji, 2018: 19). Reflecting the diversity and marginality of those who may call themselves haafu, many online haafu groups are more inclusive than the stereotyped representation of haafu. Before the popularity of Twitter, large online haafu groups emerged on mixi, previously the most popular SNS in Japan. Individuals joined these groups, interacted on discussion boards, and joined their offline events to meet. Many found joy and consolation in meeting other haafu individuals whom they would have not met otherwise (Evanoff, 2010). Many of these groups were inclusive in that they did not specify their ethnic or historical background (Evanoff, 2010). This inclusivity is also evident in the independently screened documentary film “Hafu: The Mixed-Race Experience in Japan” (2013), which filmed some of their activities and interviewed individuals with different backgrounds. Few haafu individuals experience issues in terms of citizenship or civil rights in Japanese society, since Japanese nationality is granted if either registered parent4 is a Japanese national. However, almost all studies on haafu report that many individuals feel marginalized through racialization and stereotypes both on media and in everyday interactions (Iwabuchi, 2014; Keane, 2019a). These everyday interactions increase the feeling of marginalization, invoking pain or anger of concerned individuals. Meanwhile, as a minority, it has been difficult for haafu individuals to speak up. Interactions may not sound racist, discriminatory, or offensive, and in some cases people claim they are being respectful of the differences. Such forms of marginalizing and disempowering interactions are technically called microagressions, which are defined as ‘derogatory slights or insults directed at a target person or persons who are members of an oppressed group’ (Torino, Rivera, Capodilupo, Nadal, & Sue, 2019: 3). They communicate bias, be it explicit or implicit, intentional or unintentional.

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Twitter and Narrative

Twitter is a social networking service (SNS) for microblogging which is mainly text-based. Due to its 140 character5 limit, narratives on tweets can be succinct. As in other countries, Twitter is a popular medium in Japan, where 70.4% of youth in their twenties use it (Watanabe, 2019). The participatory culture of SNS encourages users toward more self-­ disclosure and emotional, intimate talk than in offline communications (De Fina, 2015: 364). This is also true of the Japanese youth, including those who post the haafu aruaru tweets, who tend to tweet about themselves more than the older population does (Kitamura, Sasaki, & Kawai, 2016: 74). Hashtags make tweets more searchable, and connectable with other tweets that have the same hashtags. Hashtags on Twitter have intrigued scholars in terms of social action and communication among users, as well as how they form a community in its own sense (Page, 2018; Zappavigna, 2015, 2017). Hashtags encourage users to search for other posts that involve the same keywords, as well as join the talk on the topic without directing exchanging messages with others who they may not be acquainted with. In this sense, users are engaged in ‘searchable talk’ (Zappavigna, 2015) that connects SNS users in ways that wouldn’t have been possible offline. Using a hashtag forms an ‘ambient affiliation’ (Zappavigna, 2017). Those who use the hashtag may not necessarily directly exchange information with other users who posted the same hashtag; nor would they see all the posts with the hashtag. Whether the hashtags were seen by particular individuals or not is also not visible. While creating ambient affiliation with other users, hashtags can function referentially (by providing the topic), evaluatively (by highlighting the evaluation), or contextually (by providing the spatiotemporal context of the message) (Page, 2018). In addition, using the same hashtag may not necessarily mean the same evaluative stance toward the hashtag (Page, 2018). While previous studies of hashtags mentioned earlier looked at relatively shorter tweets, this chapter views narratives on Twitter as ‘small stories’ (Bamberg & Georgakopoulou, 2008; Georgakopoulou, 2015).

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Small stories are narratives that were seen as atypical in form or more fragmented and shorter than those that canonical studies took for granted (e.g. Labov & Waletzky, 1997). By analyzing how people use stories in everyday interactions to create and maintain their own identities, studies of small stories consider narratives in people’s everyday lives as social actions (Bamberg & Georgakopoulou, 2008). Informed by interactional sociolinguistics, studies of small stories take a postmodernist and constructionist view on social identities and treat narratives as “privileged forms/structures/systems for making sense of self by bringing the coordinates of time, space, and personhood into a unitary frame” (Bamberg & Georgakopoulou, 2008: 379). These findings would apply to the narratives of haafu aruaru that will be analyzed here—while shorter than the traditional narratives they are often longer than previously studied hashtag tweets.

2.3

Haafu aruaru Tweets

Haafu aruaru is a hashtag that has been used on Twitter for several years. As explained in the next section, aruaru is a colloquial word used to refer to something that occurs frequently. The following observation covers the various functions of haafu aruaru hashtags on SNS: The hashtag that ‘haafu’ themselves use in expressing their own identity politics, small everyday experiences and experiences of discrimination etc. is ‘haafu aruaru’. By using this hashtag, they share topics that are common and relatable among them, such as family, language, or their own appearance. Also, by using this hashtag, they publicly complain of annoyance, aversion, discomfort, stigmatization by others and so on. (Shimoji, 2018: 247, translated by Yamashita)

As shown earlier, haafu aruaru tweets can cover both positive and negative comments about being a haafu. Both are considered a part of the ‘media activism’ that Shimoji describes. While individuals may ‘publicly complain (kokuhatsu)’, not all haafu aruaru hashtags are straightforward protests. In fact, haafu aruaru is rarely used to directly address and discuss

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issues that haafu face (except Häfelin, 2018). For instance, haafu aruaru was not used in people’s discussions or reactions around the February 2020 incident. Browsing through haafu aruaru tweets, I found that the ‘complaints’ that individuals made were expressed in a form of narrated story of self-disclosure rather than through statements. Moreover, haafu aruaru hashtags do not collect significantly visible numbers of engagements or endorsements (‘likes’, responses, or ‘retweets’) despite being searchable. The timing of haafu aruaru posts are sporadic, suggesting that users are not likely intending to create a concerted protest in a short span of time. Most haafu aruaru tweets are not collected reactions to some widely covered event in the society, but are likely reactions to personal events offline, responses to what they see on their own Twitter timeline, or reflective musings. In this sense, haafu aruaru is a searchable talk that creates its own ambient affiliation where the hashtag provides a topic. Combined with the viewpoint of small stories, narratives in tweets with haafu aruaru provide an interesting point in exploring how users, who are likely haafu individuals, construct their own positioning and identity on this issue on a public space online.

3

 ruaru as an Emphatic Response A and Media Meme

3.1

‘Aruaru’ in Spoken Discourse

Aruaru can be translated as “That often happens” or “Typical”. It has likely derived from how a speaker would affectively align with what the other speaker narrates, in informal interaction. Aru literally means “there is”, but when duplicated in interactions, it would mean “that happens”. In the following example, Speaker B duplicates the “aru”. This shows their emotional involvement and the degree to which they agree with it, possibly accompanied with nods along with each aru. A: soto ni dete, a, saifu wasureta, tte omotte, isoide modoranakya naranakute saa… B: aru aru!

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A: I went out, and then I realized, oh I forgot my wallet, so I had to go back quickly, and… B: That happens! Speaker A narrates an unfortunate circumstance where she had to return home to pick her wallet up. In response, Speaker B takes an epistemic stance, saying that she considers Speaker A’s experience as common, suggesting that she has seen or experienced similar things a sufficient number of times. Meanwhile, this is also an affective stance which shows Speaker B’s empathy and understanding toward Speaker A. By referring to Speaker A’s experience as common, Speaker B shows her evaluation that Speaker A does not need to feel embarrassed for what Speaker A considers as her shortcomings. This labeling also indicates Speaker B’s evaluation that such an incident could have happened to Speaker B as well. Although Speaker B is labelling Speaker A’s experience as common, the intention is to show empathy rather than to minimize or to mock Speaker A’s narrative. Meanwhile, ‘aru aru’ has also become increasingly used in similar instances in a noun form. As a noun, aruaru can be followed by a particle or a copula, and the pitch also follows the noun form rather than aru duplicated (aruaru LHHH, instead of the above “aru aru HLHL”). The noun now semantically means ‘something that happens often enough’. Even in its noun form, aruaru retains its dialogicality and affective alignment. If we switch Speaker B’s utterance in the previous sequence to one that uses the noun aruaru, Speaker B could respond, for example, saying “getsuyoo aruaru da ne”, which would mean “Typical, on Monday” (literally “That is a Monday aruaru, isn’t it?”). Like with the previous example, Speaker B would be labeling Speaker A’s incident as something that occurs often enough, affectively aligning with Speaker A. Speaker B generalizes and labels what A is experiencing into something that everyone experiences, a common experience. In sum, aruaru indexes the experience of the speaker, invoking the empathy and solidarity of those who are familiar with the same experience.

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221

Aruaru on SNS Texts

Since, or perhaps along with, its nominalization, aruaru has come to be used online as a genre, a monologue that addresses frequently and commonly encountered experiences of a particular group of people. Unlike in spoken interaction, on SNS, the one who uses the word aruaru is the one who posts, rather than the receptive side. Rather than showing empathy toward the other, the monologic aruaru identifies and highlights differences between themselves and others. It became a genre that evokes curiosity within those outside the group of shared knowledge and experience. The aruaru genre frequently available on Twitter is in the form of ‘NOUN aruaru’, followed by or following a statement that describes the common occurrence. Often, it comes as a generalized statement in a short monologic form, without an evaluation. The subject of the sentence is usually omitted, because it is a generalized statement, and the subject is already identified in the aruaru part. An actual haafu aruaru hashtag is shown in the following example, where there are no personal pronouns or haafu mentioned as the subject. In terms of the content, aruaru often involve some sense of self-mockery. They tend to be stories to inform others of the different lives or feelings they experience, often in a way that could possibly be interpreted as a comic tweet. In the following example, the silliness of mistaking one’s own self as someone else is suggested: /ANONYMOUS/ Gaikokujin ga aruiteiru to omottara garasu ni utsutta jibun datta #haafu aruaru ( I/you/she/he) thought (I/you/she/he) saw a foreigner, when actually it was (my/your/her/his) own reflection on the glass window.

Aruaru of various groups, activities, or social categories can be found on the Internet, regardless of marginality. While we may find LGBT aruaru, the more widely circulated ones relate to a larger group or a more common activity, such as Kanagawaken aruaru (Kanagawa prefecture aruaru), ikuji aruaru (child-raising aruaru), nenmatsu aruaru (year-end

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aruaru), yakyuu bu aruaru (school baseball clubs aruaru), and so forth. The word has become popularized in the participatory culture, as it functions as a term to refer to the act of one’s disclosure and exposure of one’s own stories, associating it with a particular group or occasion. When aruaru referring to a group is used, the gist of the narrative is often how an individual of these categories would feel or act differently from what is considered the norm or what the ‘rest’ would do. Some Twitter accounts are even solely dedicated to tweeting aruaru incidents of a particular group, although there are far more one-off aruaru tweets by individuals.

4

Methodology

Although there were various ‘ways of talk’ for haafu aruaru tweets, this chapter focuses on tweets with direct-speech quotations of a microagressive interaction. Quotations in interaction are not always acts that provide factual, neutral, word-to-word information of the original speech, but rather utterances transformed by the reporter from the original speech, with interactional functions (Tannen, 1989). In addition, quotations are creative constructions by the ongoing speaker in the situation where the speech is about to be made, rather than neutral reports of incidents (Tannen, 1989). The quotations may differ in terms of linguistic forms, vocabulary, sentence structures, or the style/register. In terms of information, some may be discarded, transformed, or even created and added by the reporter. The choice of direct speech in reporting experiences provides a way to intensify certain narrative events, warding off indifferent stances to the reported talk (Labov, 1972: 396), and this may also hold true on Twitter. The restriction to microagressive interaction made it possible to collect tweets that could potentially be interpreted as protestive, rather than positive, comic, or more ambiguous tweets. The use of a particular hashtag or keyword on SNS, in this case the mentioning of haafu aruaru, does not occur frequently enough across users or even within one user. Haafu aruaru tweets occupy a very small space and time in users’ SNS synchronic and diachronic engagement. I have searched and saved all tweets between 2012 and 2019 that included the term haafu aruaru, with or without hashtag, that were publicly

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available in January 2020. These tweets amounted to thousands, including those that copy and paste the same text. I chose to examine tweets that use a dialogue in their narrative, since quotes of dialogues did not seem to occur as often in other aruaru tweets which were monologic, as shown in the previous section. The three examples I will provide are from different users and different years, therefore there is less chance that the users tweeted in response to each other. Although the tweets were publicly viewable, the users would not have intended these to be quoted on print and analyzed in scholarly research. To make the tweets less retrievable and recognizable, I have omitted the date and time of the tweet, and changed the users’ names6 to those that would evoke similar social identities to readers. In addition, the Romanized transliteration in this chapter causally encrypted some parts to make them less retrievable, as it did not indicate which parts were originally written in hiragana, kanji, or roman characters.

5

Data

Haafu aruaru tweets that had direct quotations of microagressions often shared the following similarities in ways of talk. Firstly, haafu aruaru tweets omitted their own ethnic background that would have been mentioned in the actual spoken dialogue. Secondly, many haafu aruaru tweets omitted who or any other detail about who the other speaker was talking, or when and where the incident happened. They did not even write ‘a friend of mine’ or ‘a friend’. Thirdly, the feelings or opinions they expressed were in their own words rather than summarizing into simple objective words such as ‘upset’ or ‘sad’, which would have sounded more generalized like something that could commonly occur to a particular group of people. The following is an example of such a tweet. Unakoowa uses the first-­ person pronoun in line 05, signaling that it is a story of an individual, yet Unakoowa’s ethnic origin is anonymized in the narrative. Example 1 Unakoowa(teifujoo7) [1 retweet, 2 likes] 01 #haafuaruaru

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02 “%% go shabereru?” 03 “muri ^_^” 04 “%% no ii sutairu toka kao tsuki shiteru yo ne” 05 “gomen, watashi, nihon gawa no kao dashi, sutairu wa warui shi, kankei nai” [“%%” was originally two black circles in Japanese font set] 01 #haafuaruaru 02 “Do you speak %% language?” 03 “Impossible ^_^” 04 “You’ve got that good figure and looks from your %% heritage” 05 “Sorry, I take after the Japanese side for my looks, and have bad figure, so it isn’t related” Unakoowa starts the tweet with haafu aruaru, which seems a heading given to this short exchange. In lines 02 and 04, Unakoowa uses %%8 instead of the name of a country/ethnicity. All quotations are without persons’ names, and the other interlocutor is not described or defined in any way. There is no reference to time, location, or frequency of this conversation. In the first question–answer pair (lines 02 and 03), the other person asks Unakoowa whether Unakoowa can speak the ‘other’ language. Unakoowa straightforwardly responds “impossible” but accompanies it with a smile emoji. This emoji is ambiguous. While the emoji may be mitigating the straightforward negative response by the juxtaposition to “impossible”, it may also be expressing awkwardness. Unakoowa could have used emojis or emoticons that look more exaggeratedly happy or thrilled than this one, just as most young people would do, if the intention was to express positive emotions. In lines 04 and 05, Unakooowa’s reaction is stronger. The other speaker comments on Unakoowa’s appearance, associating it with Unakoowa’s non-Japanese origin. Unakoowa negates this statement by “gomen (sorry)” in line 05, which is also a mitigation device to disagree with the other person. Unakoowa claims that Unakoowa does not take after the non-Japanese ‘side’, that Unakoowa does not have a good figure. By saying “kankei nai (not related)”, Unakoowa further claims that Unakoowa’s

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appearance and Unakoowa’s non-Japanese origin are not related. The amount of information provided—Unakoowa negates both the “face” and the “figure” one by one, and straightforwardly claims “not related”— is rather a bold statement, despite some mitigated effect in the first word “gomen”. There are no emoticons or emojis either. The following example, whose structure is very similar to the previous one, has a personal comment outside the dialogue that expresses anger and frustration. Like in example 1, the non-Japanese origin is indicated in %%, rather than written out. Example 2 Junnosuke 01 Nee! Dokotono haafu nano? 02 %%%%! 03 Eh!? Jaa , %%%% go hanashite mite!! 04 05 Koo iuno ga ichiban uzai. Dareshimo hanaseru wake nai jan. 06 #haafuaruaru 01 Hey! Which country are you ‘haafu’ of? 02 Of %%%% (country)! 03 What!? Then, could you say something in %%%% language? 04 05 Such kind is the most annoying. (You) should know that not everyone can speak it. 06 #haafuaruaru In response to a question asking Junnosuke’s origin in line 01, Junnosuke gives a straightforward answer (line 02) with an exclamation mark, which expresses a positive engagement toward the question. However, the quote ends after the other interlocutor asks Junnosuke to speak in the non-Japanese language (line 03), without supplying Junnosuke’s response. The blank line 04 may indicate his silence, reluctance to comply, or uneasiness toward this question in the actual interaction. It may also be a meta-textual signal which separates the quote and his evaluation.

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After this blank line, Junnosuke expresses his annoyance (line 05). Junnosuke calls such interaction (or someone who says such things, the referent can be either) annoying (uzai) with a superlative (ichiban, “the most” or “number one”). There are no epistemic verbs and the evaluation is not mitigated in any way. These show strong conviction and negative affect toward the question. The word kooiuno (such) suggests that it is not a one-off incident; that there have been similar incidents before. The second sentence in the same line states that “not everyone can speak the language”, and the other person should have known better, the evaluation (Labov & Waletzky, 1997) of the story. Haafu aruaru with a hashtag is found at the end of the tweet (line 06). Although the position of haafu aruaru is different from example 1, the function is very similar—it gives a title or a label to this small story. Rather than leaving it an individual tweet of a personal experience, Junnosuke hashtagged it with haafu aruaru, while withholding information on time, location, speaker, frequency, and ethnicity that is related to this particular experience. In Example 3, Dalya expresses her wish to do (could mean either “organize” or “join”) a haafu-kai (-kai can be used for any gathering, from casual to formal meetings, parties, talk over tea/coffee, meals, going out events, etc.). This is in direct speech with an excited tone, as indicated by the lengthened vowel at the end of the sentence, two exclamation marks, and a heart emoticon. Example 3 Dalya [1 retweet, 5 likes] 01 “haafu kai yaritaaai!! [heart]” 02 tte itta ra, 03 “uchi gunma to nagoya no haafu dayo!” 04 tte iwareta.. un.. nanka.. 05 arigato gozaimasu. warawara 06 #haafuaruaru 01 “I wanna do a haafu meeting!! [heart]” 02 I said that, then, 03 “I’m half Gunma and half Nagoya!”

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04 (she) said to me so.. Um.. well.. 05 Thank you very much. *laughs* 06 #haafuaruaru Dalya turns into the narrator mode in line 02, and in line 03, she gives a direct quotation of the other person, presumably her friend who was present in this interaction. The friend says that she is a haafu gunma (Gunma prefecture, Japan) and haafu nagoya (Nagoya city of Aichi prefecture, Japan), and thus eligible to be a haafu. Dalya’s discouragement and disengagement toward this utterance is seen in line 04. She uses double full stops after every word, as well as the fillers indicating hesitation such as “un” and “nanka”, which are fillers used when searching for what to say. As seen in example 2, these parts are not in quotation marks, which show that they are rather her feelings that were not voiced in the spoken interaction. Changing lines again, she suddenly shifts her style (line 05). Still without quotation marks, she writes “Thank you very much”. The hesitating double full stops disappear, and she ends the sentence with a clean full stop. The sudden shift to the desu/masu style also indicates she is showing a more ‘disciplined’ and ‘spontaneous’ mode of self (Cook, 1996), diverging from an intimate conversational style in the previous line. The “Thank you very much” also pragmatically indicates the end of discussion or conversation, and therefore an end to a story. Dalya does not indicate what was problematic about her friend’s utterance, but such an abrupt though formal way of ending this story shows she is emotionally disengaged from the interaction, and avoids confronting or further discussion.

6

Discussion and Conclusion

This study showed how haafu individuals narrated their individual experiences of microagression on Twitter, using the already established SNS meme of ‘NOUN aruaru’ as a hashtag. The examples showed that by using haafu aruaru, individuals were interpreting their own experiences as common to the haafu population, most of whom they may not have been in direct contact with before. The individuals connect their personal

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experience to that of the collective haafu population through a specialized form of talk, which was shared across the ambient affiliation created by the hashtag. In the dialogic quotes of microagression, haafu individuals deleted references to time and space in their narrative. In addition, the tweets decontextualized their experience by omitting the details of their own ethnicity and the interlocutor from their narratives. The omission of one’s own ethnicity from the narrative is worth noting in terms of haafu individuals’ self-identification. It can be interpreted as an attempt to connect to the larger haafu community rather than to specific ethnic groups or haafu groups of specific ethnic heritage. The elimination of ethnicity resonates with how haafu individuals in Japan have tried to self-identify and connect with each other previously on social media. I have mentioned that haafu individuals have tried to connect with each other regardless of specific ethnic origins on mixi (Evanoff, 2010). While aruaru hashtags generalize experiences, it is debatable whether they will eliminate and generalize individual opinions and emotions and create convergence into collective emotion. The three examples of tweets conveyed the individuals’ negative evaluation toward microagressive comments, although they maintained differences in how protestive they were as well as how they expressed their emotions. For instance, examples 1 and 2 were more protestive than example 3. This finding is reminiscent of Page’s (2018) findings that evaluations may differ even when using the same hashtag. Their subtle and nuanced evaluations expressed in narrated discourse are incongruent and contrastive with the impersonal omission of the contextual details of the story, including their ethnicity. The longer and sporadic time span of this hashtag and the shared ways of talk suggest that haafu individuals use haafu aruaru hashtag as a reference point that can be reached regardless of time, space, or the ethnicity of the user. While other SNS such as mixi involved moderator-approved membership for group members, individuals can connect and relate to the ambient affiliation that the hashtag and their narratives create. The findings provide further opportunities to investigate how individuals may claim a particular identity on SNS through small stories. Meanwhile, the hashtag haafu aruaru is used to highlight common experiences, but not necessarily to gather the attention of users to turn the tweets into a concerted action of protest. Despite the potential to

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express individual opinions, haafu aruaru is less commonly used to address the problem, to discuss, or to form a concerted protest, at least up to the time of writing. It is possible that the dialogic and empathic origins of aruaru, as explained in section 3, prevented such possibilities. The way aruaru in general is consumed as an entertaining meme on SNS may also contribute to this. This study provided a stepping stone to sociolinguistic investigation of narrative practices on SNS in Japanese, by using aruaru as an entry point in investigating the relation between individuals’ narratives and social groups. Because generalization is embedded in the word aruaru, similar ways of talk may be found in other aruaru tweets beyond haafu individuals. In addition, because the popularity of aruaru meme is based on the exploitation of differences between one’s self and others, investigation of aruaru uses on SNS can stretch beyond haafu individuals as well as beyond those who are disempowered and marginalized. These may challenge discourses that the Japanese society values similarity with others. Where issues with haafu individuals, representations, and social media are concerned, some sociological studies that investigated related practices beyond narrative texts are available. Keane investigated how haafu individuals have repertoires of performed narratives of their haafu experiences at hand to manage microagressive encounters offline (2019a), and how some haafu individuals create their own reference point on YouTube (Keane, 2019b). I anticipate that future investigations would collaborate with such studies, not only for scholarly explorations into how marginalized individuals construct and negotiate their identities through linguistic practices in Japan, but also for the elimination of microagressive encounters, making the voices of the marginalized heard and respected online and offline.

Notes 1. I have a firsthand account of this incident, as I participated in the discussions, SNS reactions, and actually writing to the University President, though I cannot explain it in full due to shortage of space. The University President publicly apologized for the misconducted survey in a press con-

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ference. As of February 2021, a year after the incident, the professor in question has not made a formal apology. Some web articles that cover parts of the incident are available. Keane, J (2020) Haafu, daburu, nihonjin… “jun/kon japa” ibento meishoo henkoo o ukete [Haafu, Daburu, Japanese… After the name change of the “Pure/Mix Japa” event]. Wezzy, 23 January. https://wezz-­y. com/archives/72228 Yamashita, T (2020) University sorry for ‘insensitive’ survey on who is deemed Japanese. The Asahi Shimbun, 18 February. http://www.asahi. com/ajw/articles/13138101 2. To ‘flame’ on SNS means that the tweet or the action became notorious, invoking a lot of users’ attention and criticisms. When a tweet ‘flames’, thousands of comments and retweets (sharing of the tweet or the action) follow, inciting more attention. Various other media (TV broadcasting services, newspapers, magazines, web articles) pick up issues that ‘flame’ on Twitter, resulting in the incident circulating wider. 3. #Kutoo movement was covered widely by Japanese and foreign media. Uematsu, K (2019) Haihiiru kyoosei yamete “#KuToo undo” Sekai ga kyokan [Stop forcing to wear high heel shoes: “#KuToo movement” gains empathy across the globe]. Asahi Shimbun Digital, 6 June. https://www. asahi.com/articles/ASM663D3LM66UHBI00G.html Rich, M (2019) The Japanese Rebel Who’s Fighting the Tyranny of High Heels. The New  York Times, 10 December. https://www.nytimes. com/2019/12/10/world/asia/japan-­kutoo-­high-­heels.html 4. Until 1984, Japanese nationality was only given to children whose father is a Japanese national, and was denied for children with a Japanese mother and a non-Japanese father. 5. In 2017, the character limit was extended to 280 characters for languages other than Japanese, Korean, and Chinese. 6. However, the names mentioned in this chapter are solely the names that each user had when I conducted the search in 2020. Names can be changed frequently, and the users may have had a different name when they tweeted those texts mentioned in this chapter. 7. Teifujoo is an Internet youth slang used to indicate the user’s status that they are currently less frequently online. 8. Originally, these two %% were two full-width circle characters that are commonly used in Japanese to anonymize (such as ‘X nationality’ or ‘Ms. A’), to encrypt offensive words by changing some characters in the word like asterisks in English (such as ‘f*ck’), or to avoid being found by word search. The % in example 2 was also a full-width circle character.

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References Bamberg, M., & Georgakopoulou, A. (2008). Small stories as a new perspective in narrative and identity analysis. Text & Talk, 28(3), 377–396. Cook, H. M. (1996). Japanese language socialization: Indexing the modes of self. Discourse Processes, 22(2), 171–197. De Fina, A. (2015). Narrative and identities. In A. De Fina & A. Georgakopoulou (Eds.), The handbook of narrative analysis (pp.  349–368). London: Wiley Blackwell. Evanoff, E. (2010). Online Hafu Japanese communities: The use of social networking services and their impact on identity formation (MPhil Thesis, London School of Economics, London, UK) http://etheses.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/2223. Georgakopoulou, A. (2015). Small stories research: Methods – analysis – outreach. In A. De Fina & A. Georgakopoulou (Eds.), The handbook of narrative analysis (pp. 255–271). London: Wiley Blackwell. Häfelin, S. (2018). Oosaka Naomi no hoodoo de anata ga kanjita moyamoya, sore wa “haafu aruaru” desu [What you felt uncomfortable in the broadcasting of Naomi Osaka: That is “haafu aruaru”]. Globe plus - Asahi Shimbun, 27 September. Retrieved February 11, 2020, from https://globe.asahi.com/ article/11842156 Iwabuchi, K. (2014). ‘haafu’ to wa dareka: Jinshu konkoo, media hyooshoo, kooshoo jissen [Who is “half?”: Mixed race, media representation, negotiation practice]. Tokyo: Seikyusha. Kamada, L. (2005). Hybrid identities and adolescent girls: Being 'half' in Japan. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Keane, J. (2019a). Haafu ni fureru. In J.  Keane & K.  Uehara (Eds.), Fureru Shakaigaku (pp. 95–102). Tokyo: Hokuju Shuppan. Keane, J. (2019b). The power of the media and “hafu” in the case of Japanese-­ Chinese heritage: The ambiguity of social media practices. Japan Sociologist, 4, 180–202. Kitamura, S., Sasaki, Y., & Kawai, D. (2016). Tsuittaa no shinrigaku [The Psychology of Twitter]. Tokyo: Seishin Shobo. Labov, W. (1972). The transformation of experience in narrative syntax. In W. Labov (Ed.), Language in the inner city: Studies in the Black English vernacular (pp. 354–396). Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Labov, W., & Waletzky, J. (1997 [1967]). Narrative analysis: Oral versions of personal experience. Journal of Narrative and Life History, 7, 3–38.

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Murphy-Shigematsu, S. (2002). Amerajian no kodomotachi: Shirarezaru mainoritii mondai. [Amerasian children: A less-known problem of a minority]. Trans. Sakai J. Tokyo: Shueisha. Okamura, H. (2013). “Konketsu” o meguru gensetsu – kindai nihon jisho ni arawareru sono d ō igo o chūshin ni [Discourses on “mixed blood”. with focus on synonyms in modern Japanese dictionaries]. Intercultural Studies Review (Kokusai bunkagaku), 26, 22–47. Okamura, H. (2016). “Hāfu” o meguru gensetsu – kenkyū sha ya shiensha no chojutsu o chū shin ni [Discourses of “hāfu”. with a focus on writings of its researchers and supporters]. In K. Kawashima & Y. Takezawa (Eds.), Jinshu shinwa o kaitai suru [Dismantling the Race Myth] (volume 3) (pp.  37–67). Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press. Page, R. (2018). Narratives online: Shared stories in social media. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Shimoji, Y.  L. (2018). ‘Konketsu’ to ‘Nihonjin’: Haafu, daburu, mikkusu no shakaishi. [‘Mixed blood’ and ‘Japanese’: The social history of haafu, daburu, and mikkusu]. Tokyo: Seidosha. Tannen, D. (1989). Talking voices: Repetition, dialogue, and imagery in conversational discourse. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Torino, G. C., Rivera, D. P., Capodilupo, C. M., Nadal, K. L., & Sue, D. W. (2019). Microagression theory: Influence and implications. London: Wiley. Watanabe, Y. (2019). ‘SNS o joohoo tsuuru to shite tsukau wakamono tachi: “joohoo to media riyoo” yoron choosa no kekka kara (2)’ [Youth using SNS as information tools: Analysis from “Information and media use”]. Hoosoo kenkyuu to choosa, May 2019, 38-56. Yang, G. (2016). Narrative agency in hashtag activism: The case of #BlackLivesMatter. Media and Communication, 4(4), 13–17. Zappavigna, M. (2015). Searchable talk: The linguistic functions of hashtags. Social Semiotics, 25(3), 274–291. Zappavigna, M. (2017). Twitter. In C.  R. Hoffmann & W.  Bublitz (Eds.), Pragmatics of social media (pp. 201–224). Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.

11 Afterward Judit Kroo and Kyoko Satoh

In this volume we have chosen to group chapters along axes that correspond to the modalities, contexts, and participants associated with the data. Among other distinctions, this organization locates naturally occurring interactions as distinct from mediatized language, workplace language as distinct from the language of university students, and the language of vlogs and social media sites as consequentially different to the language of television dramas. While this  organizational methodology illuminates important relationships and connections between these data it also necessarily obscures other connections. To give just one example, Barke and Shimazu’s discussion of younger adults’ active reformulation of their potentially marginalizing study abroad experience finds echoes in Unser-Schutz’s discussion of linguistic

J. Kroo (*) Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA e-mail: [email protected] K. Satoh Yokohama City University, Yokohama, Japan e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 J. Kroo, K. Satoh (eds.), Linguistic Tactics and Strategies of Marginalization in Japanese, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-67825-8_11

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strategies used by fujoshi ‘rotten girls’ to manage and negotiate practices and performances of self that have been the site of marginalization. Managing the threat of marginalization also informs Satoh’s discussion of the female actress’s management of her identity in the face of the marginalization she faces as a female engaged in economic practice. All of these chapters could be united under the theme of individuals managing perceptions of marginalization, where such an organization underscores the extent to which individuals’ negotiation of potential marginalization extends across contexts, data modalities, and life stages. Of course, this is not to imply that the organizational methodology employed here is lacking, but rather to emphasize the ways in which it represents only one in a range of meaningful possibilities. In reading through and reflecting on the chapters in this book, we therefore encourage the reader to actively engage in making alternative connections between and across these book chapters. Placing analytic approaches, data, and contexts into conversation with each other sheds light on and further deepens the insights afforded by the chapters of this book. Through engagement with the chapters in this book, we believe that readers will come to appreciate the multiplicity of marginalizations. Marginalization is not a theoretical monolith, a singular definable practice or framework. It is rather diffuse, multi-form, and frequently unextractable from other theoretical and analytic structures. For example, Nagashima and Lawrence’s chapter highlights the ways in which to talk about marginalization is also to talk about issues of racialization and perceptions of non-native linguistic styles. Parallel to this, our book has emphasized how marginalization is not always done to individuals and groups by outside others but can also be a  self-directed and crucially agentive practice. As Tsuchiya’s discussion of the linguistic styles of female politicians demonstrates, individuals can marginalize themselves (self-­marginalize) as a way to manage and navigate extreme forms of marginalization. This book has also emphasized and hopes to convey the extent to which the dimensions of marginalization are deeply implicated in socioculturally specific ideologies, as are the strategies through which marginalization is contested. Furukawa’s chapter on LGBTQIA+ vlogs and Saito’s chapter on the depiction of a gay character in a Japanese drama

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both highlight the ways in which marginalization cannot be decoupled from contextual specificity. This point is worth repeating because it emphasizes that theory cannot be limitlessly abstracted across contexts. As Yamashita’s analysis of social media data emphasizes, the structuring of language under sociocultural frames requires deep, specific cultural knowledge. Following on this, we hope that the readers of these chapters are inspired to delve deeply into the lived experiences, social structures, and spatialities of the worlds that they analyze and (more broadly) navigate. Working through marginalization, as the chapters in this book have done, demonstrates the ways in which it is imbricated into the daily lives and quotidian practices of contemporary Japanese. Marginalization pervades varieties of experience, complexities of identity performance, and diverse spatialities, it is an undercurrent that serves as a regulating force on individual identities and a locus of contention against which individuals push. Concurrently, a focus on marginalization in Japanese contexts, as distinct from others, and making reference to the specific social features of Japan offers a lens through which socioculturally specific aspects of Japanese sociality are thrown into high relief. Another way of putting this is that just as marginalization is woven into the fabric of everyday lives in Japan, so too does a focus on marginalization enable a better understanding of the spatialities, socialities and linguistic styles of Japan.

Index1

A

D

Actress, 65–82 Adulthood, 37

Discourse, 4, 7, 10, 12, 13, 15 Discourse (re)-framing, 23–41

B

E

Ba theory, 8–10

English Language Teaching (ELT), 88–108 Epistemic authority, 121, 127, 128, 133

C

Community, 189–208 Computer-mediated communication (CMC), 197, 201, 204 Corpus-assisted discourse analysis, 116, 121, 132

F

Family, 143–162 Framing, 28, 40 Fujoshi, 189–196, 199–208

 Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

1

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 J. Kroo, K. Satoh (eds.), Linguistic Tactics and Strategies of Marginalization in Japanese, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-67825-8

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238 Index G

Gender, 90, 94, 96, 99, 102, 105, 107 Gendered discourse, 65, 66, 77, 80, 81 H

Hegemonic femininity, 65–82 Humor, 192, 197, 204, 205, 208 I

Ibasho, 206, 207 Identity, 43–62 Indexicality, 34, 39 Intersectionality, 4, 7–8, 12, 14, 17, 88, 94, 99, 102, 107, 108 Interview narrative, 66, 69, 77, 80 Invisible power, 69, 81

Membership categorization, 145–147, 152, 153, 155, 157, 159, 160 Microagression, 215, 216, 223, 227, 228 Micropolitics, 23–41 Mixed race, 215 N

Narrative, 214–229 Native-speakerism, 88–90, 97, 99, 107 P

Parliamentary debates, 113–133 Political discourse, 114, 116, 118, 133 R

Reported speech, 73, 79, 80, 82 J

Japan, 168–171, 183–185, 186n1 Japanese, 23–41, 214–217, 224, 229, 230n1, 230n3, 230n4, 230n5, 230n8 Japanese job-hunters, 43–62 Japanese society, 11 L

LGBT, 167–171, 175–180, 183–186, 186n1 Lifestyle choice, 66, 68–69 M

Marginalization, 1–7, 11–17 Media, 144–146, 148, 160, 162 Media activism, 214, 218

S

Self-denigration, 189–208 Self/other-marginalisation, 113–133 Sexuality, 143, 145, 146, 148, 155, 156 Social category, 73, 80 Social identity, 4–8 Social media, 167–186 Social networking services (SNS), 214–218, 221–222, 227–229, 229n1, 230n2 Stance, 25, 26, 28, 39, 41, 147, 152, 155, 156, 158–160 Strategies, 45, 49, 57, 60 T

Teacher identity, 94