Japanese Women Still Like Being Told What to do…

( “Ignite Your Beauty” by yangkuo)

Introduction

As requested (and no, that wasn’t really me), here is the second part of my examination of Keiko Tanaka’s chapter entitled ”Japanese Women’s Magazines: the language of aspiration” in the book The Worlds of Japanese Popular Culture: Gender, Shifting Boundaries and Global Cultures, edited by D.P. Martinez (1998).

I’ll take up pretty much where part one left off, again underlining examples Tanaka gives to distinguish them from her commentary, but before I do, let me second the photographer’s suggestion that the above photo is much better viewed large (just click on it). I’m not really interested in Misaki Ito (安斉 智子), but it really is a very aesthetically pleasing shot. I was especially thrilled to find this news article via the notes to the photo too, especially after I wrote this, but unfortunately it’s no longer available.

The Prescriptive Character of Contemporary Women’s Magazines (Continued)

( “Kawaii” by yangkuo)

I think that part one’s examples of the authoritative, teacher-like language used in Japanese women’s magazines speak for themselves, but in hindsight Tanaka’s next point about how unique they are is much more important than I first thought. This is because Japan is well known as an authoritarian, rank and status-conscious, patriarchal society….yada yada yada…and so it would be natural to attribute the examples to that, and to think that all Japanese magazines use similar styles of language too. But actually, and very significantly, it’s only women’s magazines that do so. Like Tanaka says:

In their attempt to nurture young women readers, these magazines use imperatives and other prescriptive expressions in a way which is unusual in Japanese society. Even in situations where imperatives are commonly used in English, Japanese equivalents are not:

Whip the cream until it just holds its shape, then fold into the cheese with the caster sugar.

One thinly slices two onions. One chops two rashers of bacon into pieces approximately 1 centimeter long.

Or, again, as in a bilingual computer manual, in which the instructions “Expand the phrase…Press Return” become:

One expands the phrase…One presses the return key (p. 122, emphasis added)

I can’t speak any Japanese at all, but I do know that what Tanaka says of the use of imperatives in Japanese, that they are usually confined to family, close friends or, indeed, teachers, is true of Korean, as is the contrast between this “authoritarian and intimate” language of women’s magazines and that normally used in advertisements too:

[Whereas] the use of imperatives is frequent in English advertisements, notably seen in verbs such as “buy”, “choose”, and “get”….Japanese equivalents are hardly ever in the imperative, though imperative expressions crop up here and there; however, they tend to be vague when it comes to what the audience is urged to do, as in:

Those who are walking, stop for a while.

Oh, come and play.

It is September. Please find something good. (pp. 122-123)

It’s still tempting not to read this much into the prescriptive language used; it’s hardly surprising that young Japanese women, after being treated like children for most of their lives (just like in Korea) would gravitate towards magazines that used the authoritative, reassuring language that they were used to. Hence, in a kind of demand and supply snowball effect:

Japanese women’s magazines…seem to have developed a style which their audience takes to, or at least accepts, just as [it has been argued] that the American tabloid press has. While the latter achieves this “largely through its departures from official (correct) language” and has “a tone of disrespect running through it”, Japanese women’s magazines manage it by appropriating the language of the classroom and a prescriptive tone. (p. 123)

Does This Mean That Japanese Women Are Merely Weak, Passive Consumers?

( “Photo Technic” by yangquo. Also best viewed large)

Tanaka admits that the common thread of all the examples she gives is the way in which the magazines seem to “stand in for authority figures vis-a-vis their readers.” They also, to judge from the language used:

…treat their readers as pupils who aspire to achieve standards defined by the editors. Considering the popularity of these magazines, there appears to be no shortage of pupils who have failed to outgrow their school days. (p. 127)

I’m not sure if that is intended to be sarcastic or not, but it’s certainly true that doing nothing but studying for their entire adolescence leaves suddenly ostensibly “adult” Koreans with little knowledge of how to meet the opposite sex and/or even how to dress, and with virtually the same education system then I can’t imagine that young Japanese adults would be any different. With still living at home thrown into the mix too, then “failing to outgrow their school days” is only natural behaviour, if immature by Western standards. But more serious is the charge that Tanaka is:

…going along with the tendency to treat women as the weak, passive, and subordinate party, as opposed to the powerful, manipulative, and dominant publishing industry.

In response, she quotes Dominic Strinati from page 217 of his book An Introduction to Theories of Popular Culture, who says:

…the view of women as passive consumers manipulated into desiring commodities and the luxuries of consumption by the culture industries has begun to be challenged by feminist theory and research. Within the context of the emergence of what has been termed “cultural populism”, it has been argued that this notion of the passive consumer undervalues the active role of they play, the way their appreciation and interpretation of cultural consumption may diverge from that intended by the culture industries, as well as the fact that consumption cannot simply be understood as a process of subordination.

( Photo by plynoi )

Strinati concludes that:

…consumption does not simply represent “the power of hegemonic forces in the definition of women’s role as consumer”, but rather “is the site of negotiated meanings, of resistance of appropriation as well as of subjection and exploitation”…(p. 218)

Strinati wrote that in 1995, and if anything, I imagine that the internet especially has made all consumers much savvier and more assertive since, which I give examples of here. Writing in 1998, Tanaka does say that it is important to keep in mind the strength the growing influence of young Japanese women as their disposable income rises, and with the benefit of ten years distance I can personally say that their spending habits did prove crucial to Japan’s ultimate economic recovery too. But ultimately Tanaka is still relatively dismissive of this:

While these caveats are all worthy of attention, it remains the case that these powerful consumers seem to be highly insecure in some respects. (p. 218)

And because of their lack of life-experience like I mentioned, then it is little wonder that young Japanese women:

…crave authority figures to instruct them as to how they should cope with this new unsettling new world of choice. Further research might concentrate both on the roots of this insecurity and on the multiple ways in which [magazine] writers attempt to maintain the loyalty of their target audience through the use of a tone of authority.

I too think that, so long as the practice of sending sleepy teenagers to study for long hours after school continues, then young Japanese and Korean women too will continue to prefer magazines like this. Like I said, it’s only natural that they would, and I want to re-emphasize that, lest I’ve ever inadvertently implied that I consider them stupid and/or immature for doing so. Moreover, as Michael Hurt says, not coincidentally the source of the photo underneath, there’s plenty of evidence that Korean women at least are beginning to reject the dictates of fashion magazines and be much more assertive and individualist in their fashion choices, and I wouldn’t be surprised to find the same of Japan too.

( Photo by feetmanseoul)

And the implications of this change? Hell, they make studying Korean society fascinating just by themselves!

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