Private Love in Public Space: Love Hotels and the Transformation of Intimacy in Contemporary Japan
2008; Routledge; Volume: 32; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/10357820701872094
ISSN1467-8403
Autores Tópico(s)Asian Culture and Media Studies
ResumoClick to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes 1. West (2005 West, Mark. 2005. Law in everyday Japan, Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press. [Google Scholar]) based his study on a global sex survey conducted in 2001 by the condom maker Durex on the frequency of sex in Japan. The company has yet to publish another report of a similar scale and detail. 2. According to the Statistical Bureau of Japan's Ministry of Information and Communication (2006), the proportion of one-person households had risen from approximately 20 per cent to 28 per cent of all households between 1985 and 2005, while the proportion of two-person households had also increased from approximately 18 per cent to 26 per cent over the same period. The National Institute of Population and Social Security Research (1998 National Institute of Population and Social Security Research. 1998. Overview of households projections for Japan. National Institute of Population and Social Security Research, October 1998. Accessed 30 June 2007 at http://www.ipss.go.jp/index-e.html [Google Scholar]) estimated a decade ago that the average household size in Japan will decline from 3.2 persons per household in 1980 to 2.5 in 2020. 3. A report published by Japan's National Institute of Population and Social Security Research (Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare) in March 2007 showed that the mean age at first marriage rose from 25.9 in 1985 to 29.8 in 2005 for men, and from 23.0 to 28.0 for women over the same period. 4. Japan's fertility rate had been languishing at an all-time low of 1.29 children per woman until 2006, when the figure rose slightly to 1.32, as reported by the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare in March 2006. 5. According to Japan's Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, the number of women in employment rose from 23 million in 1985 to 26.3 million in 2005. However, what is more important is the shift in the pattern of employment for women since 1995, from self-employment and running family businesses to becoming salaried workers. The number of women in paid employment accounted for 70.7 per cent of the total population of working women in all three categories. In 2005, that figure had risen to 83.8 per cent. 6. Ichikawa (2001 Ichikawa, Maki. 2001. Making Japan as a country of comfortable living: A proposal from single mothers 26 January 2001. Accessed 22 November 2007 at http://wom-jp.org/e/JWOMEN/singlemother.html [Google Scholar]) cited a report published by Japan's Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare in 2001 showing that the number of single mother households had increased by 20 per cent from 1993 to 954,900 in 1998, and that 68.4 per cent of single-parent households were headed by divorced women. 7. A survey conducted by Nomura Research Institute in 2005 indicated that Japanese people today are more concerned about pleasure, consumption, health care and job security than they are about their children's education and family relations. 8. Seigle (1991 Seigle, Cecilia Segawa. 1991. Yoshiwara: The glittering world of the Japanese courtesan, Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press. [Google Scholar]) suggested, citing poetry from the anthology Man'yoshu (Collection of 10,000 leaves, ca. 759), that during the Nara period (710 – 84) men and women enjoyed the free exchange of love and sex, especially at bi-annual song festivals [kagai or utagahi] in the eastern provinces. Japan was fundamentally an agrarian society and, as in many other similar societies, sex was encouraged as a shamanistic symbol of agricultural fertility and productivity (Seigle, p. 1). 9. The feudal periods in Japan generally refer to the rules of powerful shogunates – families and warlords – including the Kamakura period (1192 – 1333), the Muromachi period (1336 – 1573), Azuchi-Momoyama period (1568 – 1600) and the Tokugawa or Edo period (1600 – 1867). 10. Pflugfelder argued in Cartographies of Desire (1999 Pflugfelder, Gregory M. 1999. Cartographies of desire: Male-male sexuality in Japanese discourse, Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press. [Google Scholar]) that “Confucianism emphasized that the responsibility for promoting ethical conduct, including proper sexual behavior, fell not only upon individuals and households, but also upon a sage and virtuous rulership”, hence prompting the Edo authorities to act as “guardians of a pacified and stabilized social order” (Pflugfelder, 1999 Pflugfelder, Gregory M. 1999. Cartographies of desire: Male-male sexuality in Japanese discourse, Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press. [Google Scholar], p. 104). The legal regulation of sex, however, was driven by the warrior-bureaucrats for the purpose of “preserving the status quo in class and gender relations and harmony within [the] community at large” (Pflugfelder, 1999 Pflugfelder, Gregory M. 1999. Cartographies of desire: Male-male sexuality in Japanese discourse, Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press. [Google Scholar], p. 104). 11. The Meiji Restoration, which began in 1868, marked the beginning of modern Japanese nationalism, through various rigorous programs, particularly the implementation of compulsory education, rapid industrialisation, military modernisation and constitutional changes to strengthen the nation against the threat of Western imperialism. The ideology of kazoku-kokka[the family-state] used the family as the foundation of the state with the Meiji Emperor as the head of the nation. In the decades after 1890, as part of their efforts to introduce state-approved moral virtues for men and women to groom them as dutiful, patriotic subjects, policymakers and bureaucrats started promulgating the ideal of ryôsai kenbo as the proper roles for women, and institutionalised this ideal in the educational system (Uno, 1993 Uno, Kathleen S. 1993. “Death of ‘good wife, wise mother’?”. In Postwar Japan as history, Edited by: Gordon, Andrew. Berkeley: University of California. [Google Scholar], p. 296). 12. West (2005 West, Mark. 2005. Law in everyday Japan, Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press. [Google Scholar]) explained that an increase in criminal acts such as prostitution, violence and organised crime that were associated with love hotels led Japanese authorities in 1984 to revise the Entertainment Law 1948 to begin regulating these establishments. Before the Entertainment Law 1985 came into effect, love hotels were not systematically regulated by the authorities or the industry, but were self-regulated by the proprietors. Although most love hotels were family-run businesses, many large, commercially-run love hotels began to emerge to tap into the profitable business. The new legislation requires all love hotels to register with the local government, which regulates advertising, hours, location and approval of new establishments. However, the revised law hardly distinguishes love hotels from ordinary business hotels – defining love hotels simply as establishments designed specifically for staying all night or for rest by customers of opposite sexes, the structure, facilities, and equipment of which are to be decided “by [government enforcement] order” (West, 2005 West, Mark. 2005. Law in everyday Japan, Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press. [Google Scholar], pp. 162 – 73). 13. Instead of limiting and regulating the operations of love hotels, the new legislation called for a restructuring which many small operators could not afford, while those that did restructure became more profitable, although some only made minimal refurbishments in order to fall within categories unrelated to statutory love hotels (West, 2005 West, Mark. 2005. Law in everyday Japan, Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press. [Google Scholar], pp. 162 – 89). 14. In her doctoral thesis entitled ‘Motherhood, Family, and Inequality in Contemporary Japan', Aya Elise Ezawa (2002 Ezawa, Aya Elise. 2002. Motherhood, family, and inequality in contemporary Japan, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Doctoral thesis [Google Scholar]) stated that births outside marriage have hovered around 1 per cent of all childbirths in Japan for nearly a decade. 15. An Internet-based consultancy group known as analytica1st reported on 19 April 2007 that more Japanese are accessing the internet via their mobile telephones. Approximately 54 per cent of users accessed the Internet from a mobile phone at least once a week in 2007, an increase from 40 per cent the previous year. The most active mobile Internet users were reported to be schoolgirls of 12 – 19 years of age. The report can be found at http://analytica1st.com/analytica1st/2007/04/latest-survey-mobile-internet-usage-in.html. 16. Japanese sociologist Yamada Masahiro (1999 Yamada, Masahiro. 1999. Parasaito singuru no jidai, Tokyo: Chikumashobo. [Google Scholar]) coined the term “parasite singles” to refer to unmarried people living with their parents, and preferring to be with indulgent mothers to getting married and becoming stressed parents. The media quickly latched onto Yamada's idea and portrayed an image of young Japanese women enjoying an independent, albeit selfish, lavish and self-indulgent, lifestyle of foreign travel, shopping and dining out. Such partial reporting on unmarried women (in contrast to unmarried men), as Jeff Kingston (2004 Kingston, Jeff. 2004. Japan's quiet transformation, London and New York: RoutledgeCurzon. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]) explains, was due to social expectations of women to marry and move out of their parents' homes, while this is not expected of men (Kingston, 2004 Kingston, Jeff. 2004. Japan's quiet transformation, London and New York: RoutledgeCurzon. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar], p. 274). 17. The word makeinu was first coined by freelance Japanese writer Sakai Junko in 2004 to refer to single women in their 30s without children. Her original intention was to call for social acceptance of the diversity of lifestyles women are now adopting, but the meaning of the expression has rapidly expanded since then to become part of the common parlance for deriding single women in their 30s for their failure to find marriage partners (Yamaguchi, 2006 Yamaguchi, Tomomi. 2006. ‘Loser dogs’ and ‘demon hags’: Single women in Japan and the declining birth rate. Social Science Japan Journal, 9(1): 109–114. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]). Sakai's work sparked huge public debates in the media that still continue, and women are invariably divided into two categories: kachiinu[winner dogs], to refer to women who are married and reproduce, and are therefore socially valuable; unlike the makeinu's selfish tendencies in engaging only in monetary production. 18. The reference by Chizuru (2005 Misago, Chizuru. 2005. Onibaba-ka suru onna-tachi, Tokyo: Kobunshashinsho. [Google Scholar]) to the problems of women who are unmarried and childless adds further to the debate about women not marrying or giving birth. Although the old folk tale she refers to is of a lonely demon hag attacking a lost boy at night, the main thrust of the tale is about unmarried, post-menopausal women who sexually assault young men because they have no proper role in society and are sexually repressed (Yamaguchi, 2006 Yamaguchi, Tomomi. 2006. ‘Loser dogs’ and ‘demon hags’: Single women in Japan and the declining birth rate. Social Science Japan Journal, 9(1): 109–114. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]). 19. Phrases such as jibun rashii seikatsu and jibun rashiku itehoshii that describe one's desire for the kind of life of one's choice have become increasingly popular in Japan among those who pursue alternative lifestyles, such as working part-time or on a freelance basis instead of keeping a regular full-time job. Atsushi Miura, for example, uses these phrases in his work Karyû Shakai[The Lower Society] (2005) to refer to people such as those who reject marriage and those who choose jobs they like even though they receive very low wages. 20. Despite the rising trend for renai kekkon[love marriage] since the 1980s (Edwards, 1989 Edwards, Walter. 1989. Modern Japan through its weddings, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar], p. 17), omiai[arranged marriages] or miai kekkon are still widely practised by concerned parents seeking the assistance of a nakôdo[go-between] to help find suitable marital partners for their unmarried children. Several of my informants said their parents had tried more than once to arrange miai for them before they were married. 21. The Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare reported in 2003 that around 68.4 per cent of single-parent households were headed by divorced women (see Ichikawa, 2001 Ichikawa, Maki. 2001. Making Japan as a country of comfortable living: A proposal from single mothers 26 January 2001. Accessed 22 November 2007 at http://wom-jp.org/e/JWOMEN/singlemother.html [Google Scholar]). 22. The abolition of the sexual double standard following the introduction of the New Civil Code in 1948 gave both men and women in Japan the ability to file for divorce on grounds of their spouse's adultery, malicious desertion, unknown whereabouts or marital breakdown (Fuess, 2004 Fuess, Harald. 2004. Divorce in Japan, California: Stanford University Press. [Google Scholar], p. 117). Still, despite changes in the legal sanctions on divorce and an increase in divorce rates in Japan, and despite some scholars' insistence that more married women in Japan may be willing to risk divorce and abandon marital security when their marriages become unsatisfactory (Iwao, 1993 Iwao, Sumiko. 1993. Japanese women: Traditional image and changing reality, New York: The Free Press. [Google Scholar], p. 107), the social stigma attached to women's marital infidelity in Japan has not waned. While the popular media may be suggesting that more married women are turning to relationships outside marriage for self-fulfilment, the reality remains harsh, given that the prevailing gender role expectations still impose moral sanctions on women who “misbehave”.
Referência(s)