Paper short abstract:

This paper examines new types of soft masculinity that emerged within the 1970s-1980s singer-songwriter genre new music. Using performances of cross-gendered songs as a discursive space between artists, music critics & fans, I explore changes in male self-representation and ruptures they caused.

Paper long abstract:

During the mid-1970s, the success of the singer-songwriter genre nyū myūjikku (new music) has led to the manifestation of new types of masculinities within Japanese popular music. It was the ideal of a genteel, pensive kind of man - often, but not exclusively, associated with the buzzword "city boy" - a young, mostly college educated male enjoying life in the country's most vivid metropoles - that caught the hearts of fans in rural and urban areas alike.

Although music critics of the time had been fast to condemn this new archetype as soft (nanjaku) or effeminate (memeshii), it eventually became a widely accepted mode of cis-het male self-representation within parts of the Japanese music industry. However, the manifestation of this new kind of masculinity did cause ruptures that would only deepen over the next two decades.

In my presentation I will examine the strategies various popular musicians adopted in order to deal with this crisis of male self-representation. Using the examples of male artists such as Nagabuchi Tsuyoshi (*1956), Matsuyama Chiharu (*1955) and others, I will focus on three aspects in particular. Firstly, on how from the 1970s onwards, a considerable number songs using a cross-gendered performative technique - in which the male musicians would assume the role of female protagonists - became hits. Secondly on how these songs were received by music critics and fans. Thirdly, on how artists who performed such songs continued to represent themselves as cis-het males, oftentimes by either adopting hyper masculine behaviors rooted in working-class aesthetics or by taking distinctively conservative social positions.

While in recent years, some publications have shed a light on the gender construction of female artists associated with the influential nyū myūjikku movement, the role of male artists has remained widely unaddressed.

Through an intertextual analysis of lyrics, interviews and visual self-representation, this presentation aims to shed a light on how a playful disruption of gender roles within a highly commercialized category of popular music was negotiated by various actors.