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The positioning and practices of the ‘feminized fan’ in Japanese soccer culture through the experience of the FIFA World Cup Korea/Japan 2002

2004; Routledge; Volume: 5; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/1464937042000196815

1469-8447

Toko Tanaka Translated by Hiroki Ogasaw,

Central European Literary Studies

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes I choose ‘feminized’ or ‘feminine’ fan instead of ‘female’ fan. What is the strategic significance of using these idioms? Indeed, those wordings may objectify themselves as the targets of slight and despise. However, my choice is made under the influence of what Felix Guattari called the ‘devenir‐femme’. This is a metaphorical device to signify the metaphor, the work of an alternative imagination, the expression of possible resistance and the heterologies, all of which represents the others' point of view, which is excluded from the mainstream narrative of sports culture writing. mi‐ha is a derogatory calling of the fans who are regarded as improper, temporal and unreliable. They often become the target of exclusion because of their ‘not being serious enough’. It is a particular pattern of the kyara‐dachi (distinctive characterization). The ‘prince’ originates from the position of male heroes in Japanese girls' comics. The object to which this ‘title’ is applied is determined by the interrelation between his looks and his manner and behaviour in the whole story. Good examples can be drawn from the ‘prince on the hill’ in Igarashi Yumiko + Mizuki Kyoko's Candy Candy (Igarashi Yumiko+Mizuki Kyoko ), ‘Oscar ’ of Ikeda Riyoko's The Rose of Versailles (Ikeda Riyoko ), or those manners and behaviour of the ‘elder student adored by heroine’ typically appearing in the 1980's school comics. By the same token, kawai ko chan is deeply associated with girls' comics. However, it is more influenced by the yaoi culture. The yaoi culture is a distinctively sub‐cultural idiom predominantly used in the alternative comic market to the largely circulating commercial one. As ya stands for yama‐nashi (no climax), o for ochi‐nashi (no point) and i for imi‐nashi (no meaning), the yaoi culture may be interpreted as a parody of previous narratives. It often works as an allegory of sexualized relations among the male casts. Kawai‐ko‐chan, for instance, is given to the character which quietly indicates the ‘receiver’ character of the basic coupling of the yaoi culture of ‘receiver/attacker’. He is not necessarily good looking but can be objectified as a fancy treasure. For instance, Oliver Khan of Germany attracted the hearts of elder housewives when he conceded defeat by Brazil and lay on the goalpost for a while. Many examples are found in the readers' letters section in soccer journals and respective supporters' magazines such as: ‘I'm a 34 years old housewife with 14 year and 9 year old sons. So excited about J‐League but sometime I feel ashamed when I found myself so blindly excited like teenage girls’ (Soccer Ai : 71). What is detected from this wording is that even though despite her adulthood she feels ashamed of her ‘girly’ excitement, she still wants to communicate with others who might have the similar affect as hers. Elsewhere I have discussed the potential bashing of this kind of intervention. See Tanaka (). However, a few exceptions continue to emerge in the sub‐cultural sphere. For example, how is it explained from which subject‐position those who write the yaoi stories and comics produce their work? Is it actually possible to determine that a person writes as a gay man or a straight woman? I would say that the transition from the fixed subject‐position and genderization as ‘woman’ has already begun when we are attracted by soccer that is supposed to be a masculine genre. Kim's view is helpful in that she describes the relationship between race and nationalism in the Korean context. The similar problem is observed in Japan too during the World Cup, but the configuration of the fantasized love of white masculinity and nationalism seems slightly different from Korea. It would be interesting to carry out a comparative study about this point in terms of the geopolitical and historical relationship between the two countries. The particular mode of fans' activity implied in the idea of mi‐ha seems to be regarded as distinctively characteristic in girls in Asian regions. The nearly possessed love mingled with reality and fantasy, the shrilling voices of screaming, the tears of excitement, and eventually the faint, these mi‐ha activities apply not only to sports fans but also to the girl groupies of boy idol groups, as I have already pointed out. Referring to Butler, I would rather like to re‐appropriate the idea of mi‐ha and to carry out the practice of resistance against the mi‐ha bashing by actively and aggressively self‐acclaiming as such and strategically assigning the idea to the process of re‐signification. Yet I propose to think further about the emphasis on ‘infancy’ that the idea of mi‐ha implicitly indicates. Although my thought on the infantile element of the mi‐ha is still premature, the bodily practice of mi‐ha consists of the body technique oppressively enforced by the male‐centric society and the one that enforces Asian women to learn (obviously this ‘Asian’ is an ‘imagined’ Asian that similarly resembles what Edward Said argued in his Orientalism (1979). When the meaning of mi‐ha is considered as a delicate compound of infancy, prettiness and stupidity, I cannot help thinking of its similarity to the position of Asian women in Europe. Even if Asian women reach adulthood they are treated as if they are still teenagers who need the care and patronization by adults who are, in many cases, European men. I will discuss this point elsewhere. I cannot forget a scene in the NHK programme ‘Saturday Sports’, which is broadcast every Saturday evening. One day the female caster who has been in charge of the programme for years and must have experienced enough to know a variety of sporting genres said that ‘from today I take charge of soccer’. The male partner instantly asked her, half‐jokingly, whether she knew actually that soccer is a game of 11 players. It was too complex a feeling to describe in a word since I was convinced that this verbal exchange was too complicated a situation to dismiss as a silly joke. Although this male caster might have said that without any mal‐intention at all, it is in such a habitual enunciation beyond the speaker's intention and consciousness that it makes a tiny but important truth emerge. These are drawn from some major weekly women's magazines such as Josei Jishin (Koubunsha , Shuukan Josei (Shuhu to seikatsu sha ) published in June and July 2002. As is widely known, in the web chat‐pages such attributions of social research as ‘sex’, ‘age’, ‘social strata’, ‘position’ and ‘occupation’ no longer work to indicate a contributor's social life. They become ambiguous and meaningless. It is to say that ‘femininity’, ‘masculinity’, ‘youth’ and ‘intellectual’ are all masquerade and performance. Nonetheless, it is important that those categories maintain a kind of materiality in cyber space and remain to be used as the code when we contribute to and read the site.