Paper short abstract:

The paper will discuss female fan culture surrounding male porn actors in female-friendly pornography, and face-to-face interaction that they have with them. In order to shed light on how addiction to simulated intimacy affects female fans' gendered understanding of love, intimacy, and marriage

Paper long abstract:

The paper will discuss female fan culture surrounding male porn actors in female-friendly pornography, Jōsei-muke (literally means "for women" in Japanese) adult videos. Since the decline of Adult Video industry, due to free online streaming sites, one of the biggest AV companies in Japan, Soft on Demand (SOD), decided to launch a new production line for female consumers in 2009, called SILK LABO. The crucial innovation of SILK LABO is the cult-like fandom that has evolved around its male actors, Eromen, which is a combination of erotic and men. Their main job is to act in SILK LABO's films and to interact with fans at fan events. Sometimes fans that belong to official fan clubs set up by SILK LABO can apply for dates with Eromen, so that they can enjoy a pseudo-relationship. Alexandra Hambleton (2016) has argued that the discourse which SILK LABO produces was submissive because it was 'reinforcing ideas of normative female desires and sexual behavior' (2016, p439) in Japanese society. However, the underlying problem is not just gender clichés, but also fans' understanding of love, intimacy, and marriage due to their ability to buy intimacy from Eromen.

Female fans, seeking to express their hidden sexual desire, enter the fandom, which is a liminal space where they can have pseudo-intimacy without any risk of rejection. According to Victor Turner's theory of ritual (1969), after a certain problem is to be resolved in a liminal space people go back to reality with mental or physical development so that they can have a better way of living. However, in this specific situation of the fandom, female fans are temporarily trapped in this pseudo-intimacy with an exchange of money. The fandom set by SOD itself provides a sex-positive space as a mode of production for women to enjoy their sexuality. Paradoxically, it also provides potentials of addiction for simulated or commodified intimacy. The paper will discuss the cognitive problems of those female fans who are addicted to such consumption of intimacy based on fieldwork which has been conducted from September 2018 to August 2019.

Paper short abstract:

This paper illustrates the transcendental experiences of women who engage in hegemonic masculine spaces such as kendo in Japan. In spite of certain inequalities, women experience unprecedented autonomy and profound personal satisfaction in the dynamic self-expression of their identities in the dojo.

Paper long abstract:

This paper illustrates the transcendental experiences of women who engage in typically hegemonic masculine spaces such as martial arts in Japan. Evidentiary in the 2020 Global Gender Gap Index Report, Japan is considered to be a gender inequitable society ranking 121st. Stultified by entrenched cultural practices, Japan's rank has fallen from 98th when the '30% by 2020' target for women in leadership was proposed by the Abe Government in 2011. In spite of the projection of Japan as a power imbalanced society, women can challenge and transcend socially constructed limitations of their gender through martial arts like kendo in Japan. It is relatively straightforward to research gender in Japan if one is seeking confirmation of its inequality. Researchers need not deeply immerse themselves in Japanese society to investigate gender as the divide is conspicuous and media, policy and legislation provide comprehensive examples of discriminative practices. Problematically however, scholarship tends to omit the empowering aspects of women's lived experiences, which respectively diminishes the occurrences and personal significance. Applying the ethnographic method to examine a cultural field can nevertheless provide an insightful perspective and poignantly illustrate how women do positively experience traditional male realms framing kendo as an example. The empirical data discussed in this paper was collected intensively over an 18-month period as a participant-observer in an elite Japanese university kendo club. Multifaceted and nuanced, it was observed that women experienced unprecedented autonomy and profound personal satisfaction in the dynamic self-expression of their identities during kendo training. In this sense, the kendo dojo is a gender-neutral space as women too are expected to cultivate archetypal masculine characteristics impertinent to kendo such as physical assertiveness, brash vocal expression and mentorship skills. Conversely, less symbolic capital is afforded to women's kendo, which adamantly limits their employment opportunities, yet can enable greater intrinsic reward without the pressure of converting their participation into economic capital. Although the autonomy to express identity freely is temporal during university, viscerally and cognitively women recognise that transcending entrenched societal confines of gender is possible when provided with the opportunity.

Paper short abstract:

Based on immersive fieldwork in Takarazuka city and in-depth interviews with Takarazuka fans, this paper argues that the Takarazuka Revue phenomenon offers an example of a distinctive fan culture fundamentally tied to the regional urban development and a unique geographic city landscape.

Paper long abstract:

In 2014 the Takarazuka Revue's centennial anniversary received a widespread attention across various types of Japanese mass media. Much of the coverage focused on the cross-gendered performance of the otokoyaku (male role players), defining it as the distinguishing feature of this all-female Japanese theatre company. This has also been the case with scholarly research about Takarazuka, with many studies addressing the otokoyaku's onstage and offstage performance, as well as the actresses' zealous fans. So far, there has been little attempt made at understanding Takarazuka's phenomenon beyond the prism of "a theatre popular with Japanese women" and little efforts made at further characterizing Takarazuka's fan culture, especially when it comes to issues such as locality, tourism, consumption, or fan practices not limited to the activities of fan clubs. In this paper I focus on the Takarazuka fans' perceptions of Takarazuka Revue's birthplace, the Takarazuka city, to explore their personal relations with the spatial location of the Takarazuka Grand Theatre (Takarazuka's main "home theatre") and analyse how their everyday lived experiences as fans are influenced by their interactions with the core of the Takarazuka city. Reminiscent of Walter Benjamin's study of Parisian arcades, much attention will be given to the formation of geographic space as observed through the strolling movement of individual and collective fans and their characteristic practices.

Using ethnographic research methods this paper is informed by three months of immersive fieldwork conducted in the Takarazuka city in 2017, with additional short-term fieldwork sessions conducted in 2017-2018, and draws on data derived from participant observation and in-depth interviews with long-term fans of the Takarazuka Revue localised in the Kansai region.

This paper argues that, as a theatre company owned by a private railway enterprise which performs its plays in exclusive and location-bound "home theatres", Takarazuka offers a unique example of how the establishment of a theatre building can not only shape its immediate surroundings along with the urban development of an emerging city, but also lead to the creation of a distinctive fan culture fundamentally tied to a geographic city landscape.

Paper short abstract:

Violence can be a vehicle for ethics and aesthetics. Kendo’s kakari-geiko sets behaviours and can both make kendo beautiful and traumatizing: differences between the Japanese and Chilean context will be explored, showing how the limits between beauty and aggression can be rather thin.

Paper long abstract:

Seemingly, some degree of physical aggression or “violence” is a fundamental part of contact-based martial arts: it helps their practitioners to act according to ethical boundaries, it provides a kinaesthetic framework from where movements and techniques can be performed and better understood, and it also establishes limits with the everyday-world. Nevertheless, violence, while it can be certainly rough, it can also be considered beautiful, but in what way and in what situations? Kendo or “the Way of the Sword”, a Japanese martial art intended to improve physically, mentally and socially its practitioners, is well known for the practice of Kakari-geiko: indications by the instructor for his or her student where to hit, while being able to hit him or her back with full intention if he or she is not striking properly. Such an act comprehends a methodology for teaching not only basic psycho-corporeal concepts, but also enables the student to embody deeper somaesthetic meanings (chance/kikai, pressure/seme, unconditional compromise/sutemi, etc.) and the limits of acceptable behaviour. This however, may be traumatic for some. Hence, drawing from in-depth interviews and auto-ethnography, the limits between beauty and trauma in kakari-geiko will be explored, by contrasting the meanings of this practice in its original context and in the Chilean scene. Hence, it will be shown that violence can be considered as a helpful tool for teaching aesthetics and ethics only if the aggression is set in and recognized within specific boundaries, so it manages to be framed as a measured and encouraging practice, and not mere destruction of the student’s spirit and motivation.