Paper short abstract:

This paper presents an analysis of shifting spousal relations among Japanese couples who have elected to retire in Malaysia. The distinctiveness of the site provided a unique place from which my paper addresses larger debates over the politics of intimacy and productivity.

Paper long abstract:

This paper presents a study of Japanese couples who have elected to retire in Malaysia. Retired baby boomers had lived through Japan's high growth period in which family and firm were strictly demarcated into a normative division of labour between women and men. Men's retirement seemed to have unsettled many taken-for-granted categories including gender and intergenerational norms. I observed that their movement to Malaysia led retirees to reimagine and restructure relations between themselves and their spouses, with their children, and the wider Japanese state. At the same time, it was impossible to observe a single, unified idea of intimacy. On one hand, the discourse of romantic love and spousal equality seemed to play a fundamental role in the crafting of normative 'couple- hood' in retirement. On the other hand, some couples called their relation, sotsukon (graduation from marriage). This paper focuses on the sense of anxiety they felt around these transitions, and how that shaped the new relationships in retirement. I engage with a growing body of literature in feminist economic anthropology that looks at how economic transformations shape people's intimate lives and how their lives in turn shape wider economic practices. The distinctiveness of the Malaysian field site provided a unique place from which my paper addresses larger debates over the politics of intimacy and productivity.