Intimate expectations and practices: freeter relationships and marriage in contemporary Japan

Abstract

Through an exploration of intimate expectations, ideals, and male freeters' romantic relationships, this article examines the ways in which expectations and practices of intimacy are shifting in gendered ways in contemporary Japan. Whilst women's expectations of intimacy and marital roles have changed and expanded, many male irregular workers continue to practice more conventional ideals of intimacy and gender roles, rooted in notions of responsibility, obligation, and duty. This article argues that there is consequently a significant miscommunication between male and female desires relating to the practice of intimacy that is contributing to both a perceived difficulty in getting married, and, after marriage, considerable stress about what is constitutive of intimacy.

The state of anthropology in and of Japan: a review essay

“…Other anthropological scholars have recently focused on very specific groups of Japanese individuals who have rejected or adapted in one way or another to the rather fixed ways of family life that had come to be expected by senior generations, such as the variety of people described as 'freeters' (Cook 2013(Cook , 2014; feminists (Dales 2009); women who have babies out of wedlock (Hertog 2009); men who have gradually become more involved in childcare (Nakatani 2006); and young people who reject marriage and child-bearing altogether (Jolivet 1997, Lunsing 2001. Much of Tom Gill's (2001Gill's ( , 2015 work brings a reader deeply into the lives of younger generations who find themselves without permanent homes in Japan, and Nakamura (2013) and Ozawa da Silva (2006) present careful and meticulous work on mental illness À or what Nakamura describes as 'disability of the soul' À and forms of psychotherapy in Japan.…”

Intimate Japan: ethnographies of closeness and conflict

“…Most recently, as described in greater detail by Miles (this volume), discursive anxiety has swirled around young men who are antisocial, unattractive, and potentially so feminized as to be unable to find dates or get Introduction married. Public worries about young men's masculinity, in parallel to earlier worries about young women's sexual activity, are found in the derogatory terminology labeling men "herbivores" (as opposed to "normal" carnivores) because they enact masculinity in ways that disrupt or refuse earlier models for masculine silence, emotional distance, and patriarchal control (Cook 2016;Fujimura 2006;Morioka 2008). This label could be an insult or a new badge of pride, and it's equally possible to find people who relish the distinction from older performances of masculinity or those who identify such a "loss" of masculinity as evidence of Japan's decline.…”

“…17. Brinton (2010), Cook (2016), Kosugi (2008), andRebick (2006) offer trenchant analyses of how changing employment patterns, and fewer full-time positions for younger men, are impacting family relationships.…”

“…For women who delay or reject marriage, a romantic relationship with unmarriageable partners enables intimacy without the odious possibility that family or care responsibilities might encroach on this intimacy (Cook 2014). 4 However, these "liquid" relationships do not necessarily meet even unconventional women's desires for intimacy and reveal the risks of romantic entanglement (Bauman 2003):…”

Postwork intimacy

“…The rise of companionate marriage ideals among Japanese seniors thus reflects broader global trends. As society experiences precarious economic conditions in which secure and permanent work is quickly becoming a thing of the past, the form and meaning of marriage ideals also shift (Cook , 37). Yet the rise of new gender and marriage ideologies needs to be approached cautiously.…”