- Convenors:
-
Yoko Demelius
(University of Turku)
Yutaka Yoshida (Cardiff University)
Send message to Convenors
- Discussant:
-
Yoko Demelius
(University of Turku)
- Format:
- Panel
- Section:
- Anthropology and Sociology
Short Abstract
This panel explores marginality as a catalyst for identifying strategies to cope with, question, and challenge social norms towards an alternative future by deconstructing the perceived inherent deficiency of marginality and contemplating potential freedom in contemporary Japan.
Long Abstract
This panel explores marginality and potential freedom in contemporary Japan and interrogates widely accepted societal norms. As the myth of Japan’s homogeneity became the subject of vigorous academic debate during the 1980s and 1990s, the notion of diversity in Japan was framed in terms of the embodied dichotomy between the Japanese majority and ethnic minorities. Both practical issues faced by municipalities and international pressure on the national government to accommodate diversity prompted the state to devise its master narrative on tayousei (diversity). However, diversity is continuously positioned vis-à-vis monolithic normative values and as ‘something to cope with’ while maintaining the existing structure. As Japanese society witnesses increasing diversity and fragmentation, the imposition of idealised norms causes many individuals to experience ikizurasa – a sense of alienation from the ‘ordinary’ without an apparent cause or ibasho ga nai – ‘a sense of being out of place, out of sorts, disconnected’ (Allison 2013, 14). Accordingly, research on the voices of situational marginalities among those who feel marginalised, including those conventionally categorised as the majority, remains scant. Thus, this panel approaches marginality as a catalytic driving force for identifying strategies to cope with, question, and challenge normative practices in Japan toward an alternative future by deconstructing the perceived inherent deficiency of marginality. To this end, the panel accommodates papers that address issues of marginality and access to actual cases that prompt an interrogation of existing normative practices.
| Abstract in Japanese (if needed) |
Accepted papers
Paper short abstract
This paper explores the homosocial world of male vigilante YouTubers whose offline lives and activities unfold in the Shinjuku realm, elucidating how the combination of online vigilante culture and offline Shinjuku culture equips them with aesthetic and practical tools to assert their way of life.
Paper long abstract
This paper explores the homosocial world of male vigilante YouTubers whose offline lives and activities unfold in the Tokyo Shinjuku realm to elucidate how the combination of online vigilante culture and offline Shinjuku culture equips them with aesthetic and practical tools to assert their way of life. Vigilante YouTubers typically film confrontations with those who are engaging with criminal and illicit acts, ranging from sexual assaults in public spaces and prostitution to fraudulent acts and infidelity. They earn revenues by uploading their footage via the content-sharing platform, which often becomes a popular channel for its exciting and tense contents. In the backdrop of crumbling prototypical ‘salaryman’ masculinity due to the changing economic landscapes and gender norms in neoliberal Japan, vigilante YouTubers who challenge hegemonic masculinity by often exposing salarymen’s wrongdoings behind their legitimate façade, weaponising surveillance gaze and exercising moral superiority negotiate an embedded concept of socially ‘proper’ role (Demelius & Yoshida, 2025). Often portrayed as an underworld filled with scandals, Red Light and criminal activities, Shinjuku has accommodated various neighbourhoods and phases over many years. Particularly in recent years, male vigilante-content creators capitalise on the underground and blasé image of Shinjuku while legitimising alternative forms of masculinities. These vigilantes cultivate social media culture to take advantage of the attention economy while engaging in and filming edgework in their Shinjuku turf. By doing so, they try to thrive and justify free lifestyles away from the so-called ‘respectable mainstream’. Based on the combined theoretical frameworks of Stuart Hall’s (1996) ‘floating signifier’ and Tursic’s (2019) ‘aesthetic space’, this study analyses ethnographic data, interview materials, and published materials offered by the vigilantes who strategically position themselves in the proximity of the underworld. In due course, the present study draws out phenomenological snapshots of proprietors’ Shinjuku aesthetics, thereby highlighting the significant role that physical space plays in shaping the aesthetics of the vigilante YouTubers.
Paper short abstract
Celebrities arrested for using illicit drugs may issue apologies through the media in Japan, but these acts have almost no legal impact on the criminal justice system. This paper examines the role of apologies by conducting interviews with celebrities within the framework of ‘seken’.
Paper long abstract
This paper considers how persons once labelled in the media as ‘Drug Users’ or ‘Drug Addicts’ are trying to survive and re-integrate into society, focusing specifically on celebrities active in the entertainment and broadcasting industries. In Japan, celebrities are reported by their real names from the moment of arrest due to their perceived news value. They are selectively visualized as ‘non-ordinary’ individuals, effectively showing the boundary between deviance and social control for the audience. These reports function as a ‘status degradation ceremony’, potentially serving as a powerful form of social sanction. News coverage often begins with success stories of police or narcotics agents, and ‘public apologies’ after being released on bail are sometimes carried out as a ‘ritual’. In some cases, the ‘apology’ discourse at the trial stage is also reported. According to a survey of crime news audiences, while about 80% accept real-name reporting, only about 20% of those who accept the reporting believe apology coverage is necessary. The most common reason audiences felt an apology was necessary was because the act was a ‘crime’ or ‘evil’. Crucially, while these apologies have almost no legal impact on the criminal justice system, what essential role do they serve? Celebrities recognize that the seken is demanding apologies. Using the uniquely Japanese cultural framework of ‘seken’ and interviews with celebrities who have experienced such reporting, the role of public apologies is examined. The findings show that the public apology is not merely a performance of sincerity and remorse, but exists as a cultural norm. It fuctions as a survival strategy—a defensive strategies designed to stop obsessive media chasing and to shield the individual from the surveillant gaze of the public within seken. Such reports will remain on the internet as a ‘digital tattoo’ or ‘digital punishment’, and can become a factor causing obstacles to the social reintegration of those who have been reported under their names for drug use. Despite facing ‘ikizurasa’, celebrities are found to be taking initiative to find their ‘ibasho’ again. Furthermore, the need to reconsider existing normative practices in Japanese media coverage has been shown.
Paper short abstract
Revisiting prior findings from a Japanese welfare facility for people with co-occurring disorders (IARSA), this presentation frames repetition as maintenance-oriented reflexivity under ageing and long-term support, revising Giddens beyond future-oriented self-projects.
Paper long abstract
This presentation revisits the concept of reflexivity by drawing on findings from a Japanese welfare facility IARSA (Ibaraki Addiction Recovery Support Association) supporting men with co-occurring substance use and mental health disorders. Findings from this study showed that members often experience time not as linear progress toward recovery, but as a repetitive rhythm oriented toward getting through everyday life. This presentation returns to this account and reconsiders their theoretical implications through a dialogue with Anthony Giddens’ concept of reflexivity.
Everyday life at IARSA is structured through repetitive routines that generate a sense of stability and continuity, rather than being experienced simply as monotony. At the same time, repetition is ambivalent: it can accumulate into a tangible sense of continuity and competence, while also producing feelings of stagnation and constrained futures. Members’ narratives thus reveal how repetition simultaneously sustains life and exposes its limits.
Rather than interpreting such repetition as a lack or failure of reflexivity, this presentation conceptualizes it as maintenance-oriented reflexivity. This form of reflexivity operates through the ongoing adjustment of relationships, risks, and daily commitments, supported by institutional routines and peer-based care, and oriented toward sustaining life in the present rather than pursuing self-transformation or continual improvement.
Existing discussions of reflexivity and its critiques have pointed to its cognitive bias, its tendency to overestimate individual agency, and its difficulty in accounting for marginalized lives. While acknowledging these critiques, this paper shifts attention to the temporal assumptions embedded in reflexivity theory, particularly its reliance on future-oriented and project-based models of time. Focusing instead on repetitive and maintenance-oriented temporal arrangements, the paper highlights how reflexivity can take a different form under conditions of vulnerability.
This perspective becomes especially salient in contexts shaped by ageing, bodily decline, and long-term welfare support, where future-oriented self-projects may be neither realistic nor required. By positioning Japanese welfare practices as an empirical site for revising European social theory, this presentation contributes to debates in social theory, care studies, and Japanese studies, demonstrating how repetitive temporality enables the maintenance of life beyond dominant linear models of recovery and autonomy.