Gender and the Koseki In Contemporary Japan

Gender and the Koseki In Contemporary Japan PDF Author: Linda White
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 131720106X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 120

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Book Description
The Japanese koseki system is the legal and social structure keeping record of all Japanese citizens. Determined by the Civil Code and the Koseki Law, for activists challenging it, the koseki is also an ideological structure, which has produced patriarchal control through single-surname households. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in Tokyo, this book engages with issues of gender hierarchy and structural inequality in Japanese society. Studying several decades of feminist activism and critique of the koseki system, it analyses the strategies of activists who have creatively circumvented koseki rules in order to maintain their natal names in marriage. It examines the case studies of members of the fūfubessei (separate surname movement) and the movement to end discrimination against children born out of wedlock, and in so doing this book illuminates the contradictions in current family law and koseki practice that have animated a generation of feminists in Japan. Demonstrating the effect of the koeski on family, gender, and national identity, this book will be useful for students and scholars of Cultural Anthropology, Gender Studies, and Japanese Studies in general.

Gender and the Koseki In Contemporary Japan

Gender and the Koseki In Contemporary Japan PDF Author: Linda White
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 131720106X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 120

Get Book

Book Description
The Japanese koseki system is the legal and social structure keeping record of all Japanese citizens. Determined by the Civil Code and the Koseki Law, for activists challenging it, the koseki is also an ideological structure, which has produced patriarchal control through single-surname households. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in Tokyo, this book engages with issues of gender hierarchy and structural inequality in Japanese society. Studying several decades of feminist activism and critique of the koseki system, it analyses the strategies of activists who have creatively circumvented koseki rules in order to maintain their natal names in marriage. It examines the case studies of members of the fūfubessei (separate surname movement) and the movement to end discrimination against children born out of wedlock, and in so doing this book illuminates the contradictions in current family law and koseki practice that have animated a generation of feminists in Japan. Demonstrating the effect of the koeski on family, gender, and national identity, this book will be useful for students and scholars of Cultural Anthropology, Gender Studies, and Japanese Studies in general.

Beyond Common Sense: Sexuality And Gender In Contemporary Japan

Beyond Common Sense: Sexuality And Gender In Contemporary Japan PDF Author: Lunsing
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317793048
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 420

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Book Description
First published in 2001. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Japan's Household Registration System and Citizenship

Japan's Household Registration System and Citizenship PDF Author: David Chapman
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134512910
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 279

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Book Description
Japan’s Household Registration System (koseki seido) is an extremely powerful state instrument, and is socially entrenched with a long history of population governance, social control and the maintenance of social order. It provides identity whilst at the same time imposing identity upon everyone registered, and in turn, the state receives validity and legitimacy from the registration of its inhabitants. The study of the procedures and mechanisms for identifying and documenting people provides an important window into understanding statecraft, and by examining the koseki system, this book provides a keen insight into social and political change in Japan. By looking through the lens of the koseki system, the book takes both an historical as well as a contemporary approach to understanding Japanese society. In doing so, it develops our understanding of contemporary Japan within the historical context of population management and social control; reveals the social effects and influence of the koseki system throughout its history; and presents new insights into citizenship, nationality and identity. Furthermore, this book develops our knowledge of state functions and indeed the nation state itself, through engaging critically with important issues relating to the koseki while at the same time providing a platform for further investigation. The contributors to this volume utilise a variety of disciplinary areas including history, gender studies, sociology, law and anthropology, and each chapter provides insights that bring us closer to a comprehensive grasp of the role, effects and historical background of what is a crucial and influential instrument of the Japanese state. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of Japanese history, Japanese culture and society, Japanese studies, Asian social policy and demography more generally.

The Routledge Companion to Gender and Japanese Culture

The Routledge Companion to Gender and Japanese Culture PDF Author: Jennifer Coates
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351716786
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 516

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Book Description
This Companion is a comprehensive examination of the varied ways in which gender issues manifest throughout culture in Japan, using a range of international perspectives to examine private and public constructions of identity, as well as gender- and sexuality-inflected cultural production. The Routledge Companion to Gender and Japanese Culture features both new work and updated accounts of classic scholarship, providing a go-to reference work for contemporary scholarship on gender in Japanese culture. The volume is interdisciplinary in scope, with chapters drawing from a range of perspectives, fields, and disciplines, including anthropology, art history, history, law, linguistics, literature, media and cultural studies, politics, and sociology. This reflects the fundamentally interdisciplinary nature of the dual focal points of this volume—gender and culture—and the ways in which these themes infuse a range of disciplines and subfields. In this volume, Jennifer Coates, Lucy Fraser, and Mark Pendleton have brought together an essential guide to experiences of gender in Japanese culture today—perfect for students, scholars, and anyone else interested in Japan, culture, gender studies, and beyond.

The Work of Gender

The Work of Gender PDF Author: Gitte Marianne Hansen
Publisher: Nordic Institute of Asian Studies
ISBN: 9788776943110
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Gender and sexuality in Japan has long been a field of academic study, with gender mainly being examined either as masculinities, femininities or as deviating sexualities. In recent years, however, widespread interest in manga, anime and cosplay among the world's youth has aroused popular interest in the Japanese approach to gender and sexuality. In a sense, this engaging volume brings these two worlds together. It builds on earlier scholarly work and discusses normative and non-normative gender and sexualities in one volume. The chapters deftly bring together and engage with theories of gender presentation, performance and performativity. However, they are also solid ethnographic studies, extensively researched and clearly argued. Through careful attention to lived realities, they allow readers to understand not only how gender is constructed and commodified in contemporary Japan but also how it is presented and performed in different contexts. At the same time, youth culture resonates through the volume, which is mainly written by early-career scholars with a largely undergraduate and postgraduate readership in mind. With compelling studies, evocatively presented, this volume may well go on to become an important resource on gender and sexuality in Japan. Moreover, with its many insights into how ethnographic methodologies might best be employed, the book has much to offer students and scholars working outside of Japanese studies as well.

Gender and Japanese Society: Pre-modern Japan

Gender and Japanese Society: Pre-modern Japan PDF Author: Dolores P. Martinez
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Group
ISBN: 9780415507059
Category : Japan
Languages : en
Pages : 438

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Book Description


Career Women in Contemporary Japan

Career Women in Contemporary Japan PDF Author: Anne Stefanie Aronsson
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317686977
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
Since Japan’s economic recession began in the 1990s, the female workforce has experienced revolutionary changes as greater numbers of women have sought to establish careers. Employment trends indicate that increasingly white-collar professional women are succeeding in breaking through the "glass ceiling", as digital technologies blur and redefine work in spatial, gendered, and ideological terms. This book examines what motivates Japanese women to pursue professional careers in the contemporary neoliberal economy, and how they reconfigure notions of selfhood while doing so. It analyses how professional women contest conventional notions of femininity in contemporary Japan and in turn, negotiate new gender roles and cultural assumptions about women, whilst reorganizing the Japanese workplace and wider socio-economic relationships. Further, the book explores how professional women create new social identities through the mutual conditioning of structure and self, and asks how women come to understand their experiences; how their actions change the gendering of the workforce; and how their lives shape the economic, political, social, and cultural landscapes of this post-industrial nation. Based on extensive fieldwork, Career Women in Contemporary Japan will have broad appeal across a range of disciplines including Japanese culture and society, gender and family studies, women’s studies, anthropology, ethnology and sociology.

Japanese Femininities

Japanese Femininities PDF Author: Justin Charlebois
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135098298
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 193

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Book Description
The corporate salaryman and professional housewife stand as hegemonic archetypes of masculinity and femininity in Japan. However, these rigid gender roles are being challenged by women who are seeking to move beyond the strictly defined confines of their traditional roles as caregivers and homemakers. Through interviews with a range of Japanese women, this book explores how women’s gender roles are both reified and undermined in Japan today, and uncovers the prevalent themes, or ‘discourses’, that are utilized to construct gendered identities. It shows that while dominant discourses formulate notions of femininity within the domestic sphere, these are simultaneously resisted and problematized by contemporary women. To this end, Justin Charlebois traces the construction of different ‘oppositional’ femininities, such as the single career woman and married working mother, which challenge, destabilize, and potentially reconfigure the traditional gender order. This book makes an important contribution to our understanding of gender roles and femininity in Japan, and as such will be of great interest to students and scholars of Japanese culture and society, gender studies and women's studies.

Gender and Sexuality in Modern Japan

Gender and Sexuality in Modern Japan PDF Author: Sabine Frühstück
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108356265
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 255

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Book Description
Gender and Sexuality in Modern Japan describes the ever-changing manifestations of sexes, genders, and sexualities in Japanese society from the 1860s to the present day. Analysing a wide range of texts, images and data, Sabine Frühstück considers the experiences of females, males and the evolving spectrum of boundary-crossing individuals and identities in Japan. These include the intersexed conscript in the 1880s, the first 'out' lesbian war reporter in the 1930s, and pregnancy-vest-wearing male governors in the present day. She interweaves macro views of history with stories about individual actors, highlighting how sexual and gender expression has been negotiated in both the private and the public spheres and continues to wield the power to critique and change society. This lively and accessible survey introduces Japanese ideas about modern manhood, modern womenhood, reproduction, violence and sex during war, the sex trade, LGBTQ identities and activism, women's liberation, feminisms and visual culture.

Beyond Common Sense: Sexuality And Gender In Contemporary Japan

Beyond Common Sense: Sexuality And Gender In Contemporary Japan PDF Author: Wim Lunsing
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 131779303X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 321

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Book Description
First published in 2001. This volume is based on the author's visit to Japan in Summer 1986 on his findings about some of the questions he was asked whilst there. He was 25 and these questions centred around asking if he was married or had a girlfriend, when in his homeland of the Netherlands he openly identified as gay. This research is an investigation of how gay and lesbian people, women's and men's liberationaists, singles and other people, such as transsexuals, transvestites and hermaphrodites, whose ideas, feelings or lifestyles are at variance with Japanese constructions of marriage and inherently the construction of life, live in Japan.