Misogyny, Homosociality and Homophobia; A historical analysis of Japanese modern masculinities

2016 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 24510369
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Section: 一般
• Research Field: Gender
• Research Institution: Iwate University
• Principal Investigator: Kaizuma Keiko 岩手大学, 人文社会科学部, 准教授 (10422065)
• Project Period (FY): 2012-04-01 – 2017-03-31
• Keywords: 男性史 / 日本史

Outline of Final Research Achievements

In modern Japan, the middle class office workers embodied their masculinity more misogynous than the highly skilled industrial experts’ masculinity. The male office workers were so threatened by the competition with female co-workers for the jobs, that they needed to reinforce their homosociality to defeat female.
Especially, misogyny was emphasized in the national socialist movement from the end of Taisho era. Many male socialist who had encouraged female activists was influenced by the nationalism and misogyny. They put the clock back and eliminated female activists. Such misogynous nationalism was also seen among youth movement including Youth-League of modern Germany or modern Italy. Although such Youth-Leagues were often blamed for their homo-erotic atmosphere, Japanese misogynous nationalists took more uncertain attitude toward homosexuality. So it is hard to find homophobia clearly in the Japanese discourses on homosociality.

Free Research Field

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