Forum - View topicChicks on Anime [2008-09-23]
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errantrogue
Posts: 45 |
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oh c'mon... this isn't a 'you had to be there' thing. this is serious lack of social interaction in a situation THEY initiated in order to get product. there are certain expectations of communication expected when you venture out into the world... it doesn't take a psych degree to recognize these patterns of (mis)behaviour nor much of a leap in what to attribute them to. |
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konkonsn
 Posts: 172 Location: Illinois |
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I'm a little dizzy due to illness/cough medicine right now (but I have to stay awake for various reasons), so excuse me if I repeat anything.
I would like to say that it never seemed to me that any of the girls in the column were putting themselves in positions of authority on Japanese culture. They were discussing what they had read and playing off of one another's ideas to formulate theories about their ideas. Seemed like the sort of dicussion, or pre-discussion (to those of us in the forums) that you'd have with a group of thoughtful friends or in a college classroom. Frankly, I'd rather read a discussion and argue with theories than have nobody say anything because they didn't feel authoritative enough to lay down facts. I hated that about high school and college; nobody wanted to answer a question because they didn't want to be "wrong" on the facts. Well the teacher couldn't go into a discussion if he or she didn't know what you thought about the topic in the first place. If this was being published in a magazine, I could see where we'd have problems, but it's a website with a link to the forums where you can debate the issue right below the text. Concerning the issues, when I studied in Japan, I didn't get to know any of men too well because I am a girl, and I'd usually get handed off to the girls whenever we hung out. The Japanese women that I did get to know I had a hard time with because I have what would be considered a psychologically androgynous outlook. Some of them were sooooooo smart when we'd discuss school or their careers (most were graduating next year), but whenever they were talking to guys or running across the quad or in public, they acted so...girly, I guess. For example, the way they walked, they took tiny bouncing steps, almost like they were shuffling, towards you. And they would dress in clothing that I would identify more with a thirteen-year-old than with a college age student. And their voices would go to outrageous heights, and they were always perky, perky, perky! And it seemed like an act because they all did it, and all in the same way, like it was scripted or something. And these actions, I noticed, were practiced by a lot of the girls on our quad. So, yes, there is something in society in Japan that's telling the women they have to act this way to be accepted. Concerning the birthing statistics and whatnot, I was in a group that did a report on this. When I get on my personal computer, I'll try and find the info we did on that. -_- |
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Tofusensei
Posts: 365 |
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Society conditions us to be who we are... Gee, what a novel concept
But adding to the discussion, it's just gender roles. We used to have the same things in the US before the whole feminism movement. -Tofu |
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Chesis
Posts: 27 |
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Low birthrate and "replacement" rate issues definitely aren't limited to Japan. There was an article about it in the NYTimes a few months ago that makes all the same causal arguments that the Chicks did, except focusing on populations in Europe. Patriarchal society? Check. Different gender expectations? Check. Workforce re-entry problems for women? Check.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/29/magazine/29Birth-t.html?incamp=article_popular_4 (Yes, you have to register. No, I won't post the article here.) |
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abunai
Old Regular
 Posts: 5463 Location: 露命 |
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What you are describing is a common phenomenon in Japanese culture, "doing burikko" (鰤子をする), the act of deliberately childish behaviour by adult females in a perceived effort to attract the attention of men. It's very common in Japan, and has been the subject of much debate in feminist circles there. It is, however, so pervasive a mode of behaviour that it is highly visible to Westerners, who are used to a more assertive behavioral pattern in women. For an excellent introductory article on the subject, I refer you to Laura Miller's article "You Are Doing Burikko! Censoring/Scrutinizing Artificers of Cute Femininity in Japanese" in Japanese Language, Gender, and Ideology: Cultural Models and Real People (Shigeko Okamoto and Janet S. Shibamoto Smith, eds.), Oxford University Press 2004 (ISBN-13: 978-0195166170). In general, I recommend this book as an excellent collection of gender studies dealing with Japan. On the slightly separate subject of the "Japanese walk", variously described as "pigeon-toed", "mincing" or "tip-toeing", I should mention that this common feature of Japanese culture is sometimes considered a cultural remnant of the formerly more common custom of wearing kimono, which tend to restrict the wearer to short steps (in the female version of the kimono, at least). As well, it seems likely that taking short steps functions as a sort of social signifier that one is trying very hard to avoid pushing or inconveniencing the surroundings. You may have noticed only the short-stepping walks of the females, but I can assure you that Japanese men take extremely short steps, too. It looks.... well... silly, to a Westerner. Conversely, I am told that the Western way of walking seems brusque and pushy to Japanese. - abunai |
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enurtsol
 Posts: 14773 |
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Japanese have lots of sex - they just don't have a lot of babies (and have lots of abortions). They have much sex --with love hotels and the only developed country with a rising STDs trend to prove it-- until they get married (well, at least not with their spouses).
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daxomni
 Posts: 2650 Location: Somewhere else. |
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Hmm. There doesn't seem to be as much staff participation this time around?
The "girly" act and look is highly appealing to me and a lot of other Western guys I know, especially compared to what I'm used to where I live. Also, I honestly can't figure out where the thirteen year old reference comes from. Girls where I live don't dress like Japanese women. Not even close. Japanese women dress conservatively and with style. American girls dress far too casually and show far too much skin. It's really night and day in my view.
Yeah, that part I could live without as well. In fact it can get really annoying.
Attraction for some, true, but also a method of avoiding competition and confrontation as well. Hence the "-ko" at the end of the female names. As the "-ko" has lessened in popularity so has the constant childish subservience, though still far behind Western cultures.
Japan has actual feminist circles?
Looks interesting, though probably only as a library checkout.
I might have to disagree here. If you're walking around on a crowded Tokyo sidewalk it would most certainly be the wide-walking foreigner who looks silly. In the boonies you're free to walk however you please but in crowded cities the choice is one of utility and function more than culture or expression. |
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abunai
Old Regular
Posts: 5463 Location: 露命 |
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Zzz... zzZZzzz... *snort, blink*... pardon?
Hmm. I'm not so sure about that "avoiding competition". In the cases where I have heard burikko commented on by Japanese women, it has been in terms of "she's only doing it to get the guys' attention" (indisputably true, since Japanese women almost never use "burikko voice" in all-female company). In other words, a sense of competition/jealousy/irritation is evidently present. Here's a little indirect reference for you -- I assume you're familar with the Morning Musume phenomenon? Have a look at their music video Story of Rowdy Girls (女子かしまし物語) which is a sort of "catalogue" of the members of the group at the time when it was made. Notice the presentation of Fujimoto Miki (which takes place at the 00:37 - 00:55 time marks). That's burikko and a clearly evinced jealousy/irritation reaction to it (as a manipulation of men) in a competitive female environment. Of course, it's a comedic take, and the entire crowd of MM girls are variants on this theme, but it serves as an illustration.
I'm not sure the -ko usage (子) is quite so directly related, but to a certain extent, I agree. The Western equivalent is the feminine diminutive forms used in some languages to transform a male name into a female form (the "-ine" in Francine, for instance).
Of course it does, don't be silly. Why, there must be all of a hundred feminists in Japan, at least. 
You can sample some of it online, in excerpt (through Google). The whole book is very interesting, dealing with many different aspects of gender studies in Japan -- everything from LGBT issues, to the Takarazuka theater phenomenon, to the alienation of migrant family men who work far away from their wives and children.
Absolutely -- what appears silly in a Western context (the short Japanese steps) is sensible in a Japanese context, where the long Western steps are out of place. If you would care to go back and read my previous post, I did, in fact, make exactly this point, in the text surrounding the excerpt you quoted:
See? Right there. - abunai |
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daxomni
Posts: 2650 Location: Somewhere else. |
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Yeah, it's like "Dudes on Chicks on Anime..." Although that doesn't really sound so great. I just mean "Where are the chicks?" Wait, that doesn't sound good either. Oh, to heck with it. 
Oh, I actually meant in the sense of avoiding competition and confrontation with the males, not with each other. That's a genuinely interesting viewpoint though, about females competing with each other as a driving force for keeping cultural phenomenon like the girlish shuffle and squeaky voices in vogue. |
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Moomintroll
 Posts: 1600 Location: Nottingham (UK) |
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Not really. Durex did a survey three years ago that measured average frequency of sexual intercourse in over 40 countries and Japan came in last by a considerable margin. The highest frequency was in Greece where the average adult had sex 138 times in the preceding year and the global average was 103 times. Japan managed a mere 45 times per year. The same survey put the Japanese second to last (two percentage points ahead of the Chinese) in terms of how satisfied they were with their sex lives with only 24% of the Japanese adults surveyed being happy with their sex lives.
Sounds painful.
According to a recent study by the World Health Organisation / Nihon University, married couples in Japan have even less sex than the Japanese in general do (with 25% of married Japanese having had no sex whatsoever in the past 12 months). And going back to that Durex survey, Japanese people are, on average, less likely to engage in extra-marital sex than people in most Western nations. |
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konkonsn
Posts: 172 Location: Illinois |
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Ah, thank you! It helps to know the name of the phenomenon when you're trying to look it up. I'll check out that book too. Because of the e-mail system the Japanese college I went to has set up, I'm having a hard time contacting my Japanese Culture professor for his sources (most of which were, as is common, photocopies from textbooks). I'm not sure that it was so jarring because the women weren't assertive. It was more how deliberate it was than anything else.
It's not about being conservative or about how much skin you're showing (though you and I may pay attention to different things concerning clothing). For various reasons, I don't wear low-cut shirts or jeans, my skirts and shorts generally cut off just above the knee, and I enjoy layering for style purposes. This is what would be considered conservative dress, no? It is more about the type and style of clothing. Japanese women wear dark or pastel colors. Their t-shirts are cut very feminine and look similar to dresses (everything is loose and rather flowing). There are lots of frills, lace, and beading/pearl-type beads. Not to mention the hairstyles. Bows, cutsie hairclips, lots of curls, and pigtails. Plus the useless bangs. One of my guy friends from Canada said it best: "All those hairclips; you'd think they'd use one to keep their bangs out of their face." It's all extremely girly and reminds me of the clothing traditionally sold for girls in the Wal-Mart section. Of course, I was a "little girl" just over ten years ago, so I understand the styles have changed somewhat. |
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abunai
Old Regular
Posts: 5463 Location: 露命 |
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This is something that pretty much everyone who travels to Japan comments on -- the hyper-feminine and excessively frilly/lacy/doll-like style of Japanese women's wear, even for supposedly mature women. I find it hard to say for sure whether it is: A) An effect of the national obsession with cuteness; B) A byproduct of the deliberately infantile behaviour by women, which we referenced earlier in our discussion, C) Simply a quirk of fashion, without deeper meaning. Perhaps it is D) All of the above.
But then they would have to display their foreheads -- and one of the quirks of Japanese culture is that the forehead (and to a certain extent the mouth) are, commonly if not universally, considered unattractive body parts. To this end, a lot of Japanese women will keep their forehead covered with bangs, and you will often see them covering their mouth with their hand while laughing. While we're on this topic: No doubt, everyone reading this thread will have seen the "ojou-san laugh"? That is, a well-born woman (or someone pretending to such status, either seriously or in jest) holds her hand up in front of her mouth, the other hand often akimbo. Accompanying this gesture is often a high-pitched tittering laughter, usually rendered in Japanese onomatopoietic form as うふふふぅ (ufufufuu). It seems obvious that the gesture, theatrical as it is (anime is, after all, a largely melodrama-ridden medium), is meant to evoke the mannerisms of an upper-class woman, brought up to cover her mouth when laughing. But it all derives from the idea that visible teeth when laughing (or the act of eating, itself) are somehow 下品 (gehin, "vulgar"). - abuna |
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konkonsn
Posts: 172 Location: Illinois |
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Found that book you recommended and am ordering it through the Illinois library loan (being a textbook, it's rather hard to find outside of pretty university libraries). Thank you for clarifying that bit of cultural misunderstanding. Though, I would like to mention I wasn't very clear in my post. When we talked about the "useless bangs," we were mostly speaking of long bangs that would get in one's eyes and needed to be flipped out of the way every five seconds. It's becoming a trend in America (or is it one already? I don't keep up with these things...  ), though.
I actually picked up the mouth cover gesture and continue to use it unconsciously, though it's more something I do when I'm eating or when I have to talk while eating rather than laughing. |
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Top Gun
 Posts: 4586 |
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Wait...so is that why other characters on Naruto were constantly prattling on about Sakura's forehead being "huge," when it was really nothing of the sort? That explains a lot, then. I kept wanting to shove a picture of just about anybody from DBZ in Ino's face and yell, "You see this? This is a huge forehead! Eat your heart out!"
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abunai
Old Regular
Posts: 5463 Location: 露命 |
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Yes, that's right -- it's also why there are all those jokes about Miyako's shiny forehead in Pani Poni Dash!. As with all supposedly "ugly" body image situations, there are plenty of situations, comedic or otherwise, where a Japanese woman is shown as being insecure about her forehead, without it being actually prominent -- in a way, it's a Japanese version of the old "Do these pants make my butt look big?", only with the dialogue changed to: "I wish I hadn't cut my bangs, my forehead looks so huge, don't you think?" I've never really understood the whole "ugly body" self-image thing. It's fairly alien to my way of thinking -- I tend to focus on beauty instead of ugliness. - abunai Women know very well that there is no right answer to "Do these pants make my butt look big?" They're not looking for a straight answer, they're testing you to see if you're smart enough to avoid answering the question, by clever conversational evasion. "Hey, look, a UFO!" (The more direct solution of running away at top speed also works) |
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