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.