The masculinization of deprivation: Transformations in industrial and labor patterns and the emergence of the Men’s Crisis in Japan

ABSTRACT

A movement for gender equality, begun in earnest in the 1970s, has prompted fundamental changes to work and family lives in Japan. Despite this, discussions about shifting gender structures have frequently focused on women, leaving men’s gender issues in the shadows. This article explores the last 50 years of labor and family changes from a gendered perspective, and the major historical and civilizational shifts behind those changing patterns. Focusing specifically on a crisis of masculinity, which I label the “Men’s Crisis,” this article examines the structural transformations in industry, labor, and society that we are currently confronting. Since the 1990s, the “Men’s Crisis” has become increasingly visible in Japanese society. Because the “Men’s Crisis” is spreading as an unidentified, invisible problem today, most men feel an unexplained, or unexplainable, deprivation. In other words, what I call the “masculinization of deprivation” has emerged. In order to advance gender equality and increase women’s participation in society, we must also contend with the vital policies surrounding men as gendered people, which have been ignored in the past. In particular, significant policy proposals are necessary, specifically those that acknowledge men’s needs for counseling and advice, as well as the links between men and care.

KEYWORDS:

• Masculinity
• Japan
• labor
• counseling
• gender policy

Introduction: The beginning of “Men’s Issues”

As a sociologist, I was observing changes in Japan’s postwar society when, late in 1989, I thought, “From this moment forward, ‘Men’s Issues’ will surely emerge”. After the fact, it became clear that year was the first moment when “Men’s Issues,” as a distinct category, began to emerge in Japanese society.¹

Why 1989? In the first place, 1989 was a year of major transformations in Japan but also internationally. In this year that began with the Showa Emperor’s death, men of different ages were arrested for committing heinous crimes that shocked the nation. Miyazaki Tsutomu was arrested for a series of abductions and brutal murders of very young girls in Tokyo and Saitama, whose bodies he reportedly mutilated.² In the same year, Junko Furuta, a female high school student, was abducted, raped, and tortured by teenage boys who ultimately murdered her and hid her body in concrete before dumping it. Also in 1989, after many women candidates won Tokyo parliamentary elections, some male critics and cultural figures voiced their displeasure through the media by saying, “Politics shouldn’t be run like a kitchen.” But perhaps more than anything else, 1989 was the year of the so-called “1.57 shock,” when the national birthrate fell below 1.57 average births per woman, implying that Japanese society was rapidly aging and would soon be literally unsustainable.³

In the international context, 1989 similarly brought major changes. In Tiananmen Square, the Chinese government suppressed young people demonstrating for democratization. The Berlin Wall suddenly fell, suggesting that more than four decades of Cold War confrontations might come to an end. Indeed, it became apparent that 1989 was the beginning of the end in many different ways (Itō 1993, 1996). I believe that the seismic changes that would come to shape the world after the end of the Cold War began in 1989.

I label this as the first year of “Men’s Issues” in Japan because of the series of violent and misogynistic crimes against women, as well as men who publicly ridiculed women’s participation in politics. Together these clearly suggest a crisis in and of masculinity. In fact, looking back on it, gender structures that had been considered normal and unremarkable in modern industrial society had suddenly begun to come apart at the seams.⁴ To me, we can see a clear distinction before and after this moment.

“Men’s Issues” become apparent

Considering these developments, I noted that the 1990s would be an era of “Men’s Issues.” There are several reasons I began to think in this way. For one, I suspected that the international movement to end discrimination against women would soon begin to gain traction in Japan as well. In fact, by the end of the 1980s, in response to the United Nations’ efforts to end discrimination against women, Japan had also tried to expand what were called “Women’s Policies.” (Until that moment, local governments used the more pejorative label “Ladies Policies.”)⁵ This movement was compelled to challenge Japan’s male-dominated society, which would necessarily require that men themselves also change. As a result, I expected that women would push important issues about how lifestyles and patterns of work shape men and their sense of themselves.

There is also another reason that I predicted the 1990s would become an era of “Men’s Issues.” Beyond a general sense of these problems, I perceived that there would also be a more specific crisis in men’s sense of themselves as men. While “Men’s Issues” were prompted by women’s increasing demands for their own social participation and opportunities – external motivations that originate outside of men – a crisis in masculinity instead arose internally from among the men themselves, as they began to question how they live and work.⁶

Men’s “crisis from within” actually began to appear in the 1980s. Above all, men’s long working hours, which intensified in the 1970s, began to hurt men’s everyday lives. Most prominently, attention came to focus on karōshi or death from overwork, which was almost entirely associated with men’s labor.⁷ According to a study by Morioka Koji (2005), from 1975 through the 1990s, the number of people working over 60 hours a week almost doubled from 3.8 million to 7.53 million. Nearly 90% of people working long hours are men.

Within this context, significant problems stem from the ways Japanese men work – sometimes broadly described as the Japanese way of laboring – which turn employees into so-called “company drones.”⁸ At the same time, in the background of this masculinity crisis, the problems of gender and gender norms connect to stereotypical Japanese masculinity. Those gender norms have defined static roles for men and women by asserting fundamental and natural differences between them. Many Japanese men cling to restrictive images of stereotypical masculinity that suggest men should not show weakness or emotion, and that they must solve all their problems on their own. Of course, society can benefit from these stereotypical images of being a man. But when they go too far, these norms and obligations will rebound onto men with serious consequences. Death from overwork is a symbolic and powerful example. Even if a man were sick, he would not use that as an excuse to stop working – because he is a man. Over and over, men force themselves to carry on, eventually breaking their bodies and pushing themselves toward death.⁹

From the early to mid-1990s, I wrote and talked about the rising suicide rate of middle-aged men and the expectation that later-life divorce would increase rapidly (Itō 1993, 1996).¹⁰ My predictions were accurate in some ways. Around the turn of the 21st century, later-life divorce became a hot topic, particularly on television dramas. The sudden rise in the suicide rate among middle-aged and elderly men, which began in 1998, has become a social phenomenon. In conjunction with the rising unemployment rate for middle-aged and older men, the rapid rise in suicide among middle-aged and older men also reflects a stereotypical masculinity.¹¹ These men are mute, unable to talk even with their own family members. In fact, the 2003 Cabinet Office’s Survey on “Gender Equality and Men,” of which I was the chair, clearly showed that men tended to avoid consulting with or asking advice from other people (Figure 1). Similarly, this survey reveals that long working hours reduce men’s willingness to work and their job satisfaction (Figure 2).

Figure 1. Men’s responses: “If I have a problem I will readily talk with someone about it.” (Data from 2003 survey).

Figure 2. Men wanting to quit their jobs, by average weekly hours. (Data from 2003 survey.)

These men will face more problems in their old age. Because common labor practices result in male workers being disconnected from their families on an everyday basis, when men retire many face atrophied or non-existent relationships with their families. Later-life divorce demonstrates these risks clearly. Because men’s lives are centered on their work, they often do not have time to build strong bonds and lasting communication with their spouses and children. Nevertheless, and in contrast to how women feel, many men believe that a marriage is possible, or even strong, without communication. (See Figures 3a and 3b, which shows the difference between men’s and women’s responses concerning who they want to spend time with in later life.) These divergent beliefs set up major conflicts that appear as spouses approach middle-age: wives who imagine their marriages needing improvement and husbands who see nothing wrong with the status quo. As a result, most divorces between people in later-life are initiated by women and more than 70% of divorce mediations in Family Court are initiated by women. Behind all this, I see the typical patterns of work (and overwork) normalized for Japanese men, which rob them of the time, opportunity, and energy to build communicative bonds with their wives and children.

Figure 3a. When men reach old age, who would they want to be with? (by current age and marital status). (Data from 2003 survey.)

Figure 3b. When women reach old age, who would they want to be with? (by current age and marital status). (Data from 2003 survey)

In addition, statistics show that the average life expectancy of retired divorced men in Japan is about 10 years shorter than the average for men who remain married. This may be because men depend on their wives for care and fulfillment of their daily needs, such as clean clothing, food, and shelter. When a man gets divorced, he is less prepared or able to take care of himself, which can easily lead to mental health crises.

Gender equality in Japan has not improved

To some extent, the expectation that the 1990s would be the age of “Men’s Issues” has been realized. Indeed, the crisis in masculinity has emerged to some extent. However, the second expected change has not emerged, namely that men would be influenced by women’s increased social participation. In Japanese society, there has been almost no visible change since the 1990s, when there was a global shift in women’s social and political participation and men’s participation in housework and childcare.

According to the Global Gender Gap Index published by the World Economic Forum since 2006, Japan’s gender equality in 2017 remained low at 114th out of 144 countries worldwide. Of the four indicators – health, education, politics, and economy – Japan’s score in “health” is the best in the world, but the overall score is extremely low. According to the 2016 MasterCard calculation of women’s empowerment in the Asia-Pacific region, based on education, leadership, economic participation, and political participation among other measures, Japan ranks 13th out of 14 countries or regions. (India ranks last.) South Korea, which ranks slightly below Japan in the World Economic Forum’s calculation at 118th, has overtaken Japan in this survey if we exclude “health” from the calculation.

In terms of political representation, Japan ranks 123rd in the world, which reflects the incredibly small number of women in parliament or serving as ministers. In the mid-1990s, the proportion of Japanese parliamentary members who were women was “average” compared to other OECD nations. For example, in 1996 the percentage of female parliamentarians in France was 6.4%, while Japan was slightly higher at 6.8%. By comparison, now in France over 30% of parliamentarians are women, while Japan has little more than 10% in both Houses. Japanese society has very clearly been left behind in terms of the world standards for gender equality in the last 20 years.

In terms of economy, Japan also is in 114th place, and the percentage of women in senior management positions puts Japan in only 116th place, which is particularly bad. Needless to say, the World Economic Forum is not a human rights organization but instead focuses on economics. Despite that fact, the World Economic Forum has focused on the gender gap since 2006 because a variety of data indicate that women’s participation is related to the vitality of organizations and businesses. Current common sense within the international community suggests that stable economic growth and women’s participation are closely related. (The World Economic Forum has also published data showing that per capita GDP tends to improve as a society becomes more gender equal.)

The gender gap in education is also striking. In primary and secondary education, Japan has almost no gender gap in literacy and is ranked first in the world, but falls to 74th overall when including higher education. This discrepancy is caused by the large gender gap in the rates of higher education (at the university level), in which Japan routinely ranks around 100th in the world, or worse.¹²

Declining education levels are also one of the most important points regarding Japan’s future after the 1990s. After the end of the Cold War, OECD countries anticipated that, in order to compete with emerging countries, they would need to enhance higher education to maintain their relative economic advantage. In these wealthier countries, the labor force cannot compete with cheaper labor available in emerging nations, and therefore any possible advantages instead come through technological advancements. However, Japanese society has neglected policies for enhancing science, technology, and the education needed to support them. As a result, Japan, which had a relatively high rate of enrollment in higher education in the 1990s, is now below the OECD average. (This figure reflects enrollment only in four-year universities, as opposed to so-called “women’s junior colleges,” which remain common in Japan.)¹³

The efforts of OECD countries to enhance higher education have significantly impacted gender issues. There was a surge of women entering higher education. In the mid-1990s, in OECD countries, women outperformed men on average in university enrollment, and in recent years women have enrolled 10% more than men in most countries. (These figures also reflect that European men tend to go to vocational schools). As of the mid-2010s, Japan was the only OECD country in which the enrollment rate of men was about 10% higher than that of women (Itō 2017); this gap has since shrunk slightly to 6.2% in 2018 (Education Career 2019).

In 2018, a controversy erupted when the media learned that Tokyo Medical University had been manipulating entrance examinations so that female applicants were penalized.¹⁴ Data on gender differences in pass rates in each field were published, and the figures showed a clear advantage for men in departments of medicine. Many other medical departments nationwide are suspected of performing similar manipulations to penalize and decrease the enrollment of female students. Other than medical schools, physical science had acceptance rates equal between men and women, and all other fields have women accepted at higher rates than men. Even in Japan, if the same number of men and women candidates would take entrance exams in every field, which is not yet the case, I believe we would see trends similar to those in other OECD nations. In Europe, men’s decline in academic ability, as measured through standardized tests, has been a major problem for the past two decades. I believe a similar trend might emerge in Japanese society if gender-specific data, such as the National Achievement Test, are properly presented and analyzed.

The age of “Men’s Crisis”

Around the world, since the 1970s seismic shifts have prompted fundamental changes in various social structures, particularly labor and family norms. These changes are creating a variety of challenges, with major structural shifts in society. However, these problems have not yet fully manifested in Japanese society until now, for reasons I’ll describe later.

Considering the challenges brought by social transformations from a gendered vantage point, I can’t help but think about changes for men and to their positions in society forced by women’s increased social participation and the development of systems to support it. Simply put, the social changes experienced by men represent the destabilization of modern masculinity, or the “crisis of masculinity” in the earlier era, brought about by tremors in the modern gender structure, which emerged from the modern industrial society or the corporate-centered society. Whether or not this reality is fully recognized, I call this state of affairs a “Men’s Crisis.”

The term “Men’s Crisis” can be defined as “the cultural, social, and economic instabilities of and for men as a result of modern society, occurring in the latter half of the 20th century,” which necessarily demand changes in traditional masculinity. This “Men’s Crisis,” if neglected or ignored, can create instability in the lives of men, create mental instability, and sometimes even be linked to pathological social behavior. For instance, the rates of reported suicidal feelings in Figure 4 quoted from our Cabinet Office survey may be a symbol of the mental health toll of the “Men’s Crisis.”

Figure 4. Men who report wanting to die in the last three months, by annual income. (Data from 2003 survey.)

What is behind this “Men’s Crisis” phenomenon? It might seem a bit extreme, but I think there was a change in the history of human civilization. Recently, there has been much discussion about societies and industries entering what is described as the next version, as if it were a piece of software, such as the Japanese government’s “Society 5.0” and Germany’s “Industry 4.0.”¹⁵ What is probably meant by such terms is a transition in human civilization.

“Society 5.0” follows the emergence of previous stages of society, namely hunting society, agricultural society, industrial society, and then the information society that developed around 1970. In turn, we can imagine that “Society 5.0” will be followed by Artificial Intelligence and the Internet of Things, or social networks without human beings. In addition, “Industry 4.0” is the fourth industrial revolution, which follows the first industrial revolution due to the invention of the steam engine, the second industrial revolution caused by the emergence and dissemination of electric energy, and the third industrial revolution called the information revolution.

The structures of male-dominated society, which form the roots of the contemporary “Men’s Crisis,” started to fall apart around 1970, in the era of the third industrial revolution. The first and second industrial revolutions occurred within industries that emphasized productivity and efficiency based on male labor. In this period, which has been labeled Fordism, the industrial structures of mass production and mass consumption became mainstream.

A major transformation took place around 1970 in modern male-dominated industrial societies. New developments in human history following the agricultural and industrial revolutions, what Alvin Toffler has called “the Third Wave,” emerged in many capitalist societies (Toffler 1980). These developments have changed the shape of industry, from manufacturing-based industry to an information and service-based industry, as well as the form of labor, from work taking place at a fixed time and place to work becoming flexible in both time and place. These developments have also, in turn, affected family forms by precipitating a transformation from traditional, extended families to nuclearized, individualized families.

These changes, which economists and sociologists have analyzed as a shift from Fordism to post-Fordism, have led to major transformations in industrial structures, from a society primarily focused on manufacturing to information and service-based industry, with a simultaneous increase in the participation of women. In a post-Fordist society, the economically calculable manual workforce consisting of male workers, which has been essential to manufacturing in modern industrial society, is no longer as necessary. On the contrary, in this society where the flexibility and diversity of labor is given importance, women – who have been in charge of care work including emotional contact with others such as children and elderly – are considered to be “better” laborers for the industrial transformation that has information and service as its axis. These shifts, of course, undermine the position of men, who had previously been the central players in industrial society.

Under post-Fordism, forms of work have begun to change significantly. In a society centered on the manufacturing industry, working hours were shaped by restrictions on time and specific work shifts. However, in today’s society where information and service-based industries dominate, working hours have become more flexible. Sometimes people are required to think about work even during sleep hours, creating something like 24-hour work. On the other hand, as employers seek cheaper labor overseas, manufacturing workers’ wages are relatively restrained, and the corporate management system equates the company’s financial goals with what is good for shareholders. These same principles reduce or suppress the salary for conventional male workers.

Given such unforeseen changes in the industrial structure and working practices, Japanese society has addressed these new patterns of work poorly and in ways that create significant vulnerabilities. Despite women’s increased labor participation, we have not yet improved working conditions for men and women equally with new forms of work. Additionally, policies and regulations appropriate for the 21st century, enabling men and women to better balance work and family responsibilities, remain lacking.

Trends toward gender equality

As we consider the shift from Fordism to post-Fordism, we cannot overlook the simultaneous major shift in values. It is no coincidence that awareness of human rights for all and the protection of the natural environment have expanded during this period. With outmoded lifestyles and ways of making decisions, it became impossible for Japanese society to fully respond to these new challenges.

Two newly prominent international issues, the environment and human rights, have spread since the late 1960s, linked with seismic shifts surrounding industrial forms and human cultures in countries with well-developed economies during the 1970s. In fact, it was during this time that humans became fully aware of the global climate crisis and the destruction of the natural environment. Modern industrial society has reached a dead end, led here by men who emphasize productivity, efficiency, and profits.

I think that the understanding that “all people deserve human rights,” an idea that spread from the United States, is also linked to this historical and civilizational change. New attention has been drawn to racial discrimination against people of African descent, the rights of social minorities, such as persons with disabilities, foreigners, and Indigenous people.¹⁶ Similarly in Japan, it was around the 1970s that awareness about problems caused by discrimination against Burakumin, and other ostracized communities such as Korean Japanese people and Chinese living in Japan, spread in earnest.¹⁷

In particular, after World War II, the United Nations declared that “the world’s largest human rights issue” was “elimination of discrimination against women.” This created a huge wave across the world, including in both economically developed countries and developing countries. This movement was accelerated by the UN International Year of Women (1975), the ensuing focus on women for the next decade, and the establishment of the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women in 1979.

Northern Europe, which had already begun to eliminate sex discrimination in the 1960s, was followed by the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and Germany with movements to eliminate sex discrimination in the 1970s to the 1990s. Until the 1970s, the world, including Western societies, was under the structure of gender discrimination. Especially in European countries, which had been under the influence of the patriarchal Napoleonic Code and male-earning models, there were quite a few cases where the employment of women was regulated by law. In France, it only became legally possible for married women to work without the permission of their husbands starting in 1965, and in Switzerland women were first allowed to participate in national elections in 1971. Moreover, in the 1980s, many countries abandoned legal patriarchy and began to move to eliminate sex discrimination.

The previously unquestioned gendered order of things, born from adaptation to modern industrial society, had begun to fundamentally fluctuate. For instance, men’s authority from workplaces to families and local communities was no longer prioritized as it once was. Naturally, this fluctuation confused some men. This is because the relationships between men and women, and the roles of men and women, which used to be taken for granted, had fundamentally changed. Moreover, this change was linked to the fluctuation of “masculinity” itself, of which most of the men were not consciously aware.

Masculinity in modern industrial society

As I mentioned earlier, modern society is male dominated. I will elaborate more on this matter here. Industrialization created different roles for men and women. At the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, men were not the only labor force; unmarried women and children labored for pay (e.g., in textile production) more than men in the primary industry, agriculture. However, this structure of labor changed over time. First, men became the dominant wage laborers under the capitalist system, and children who had often been harmed by overwork were sent to school for training as the next generation’s workforce. The work of maintaining the lives and health of men, the “care work” needed to support and protect the predominant paid labor force, was allocated to women.

In this way, the gendered division of labor was established, with a firm line drawn between men who carry out paid production work in the public sphere and women who carry out the unpaid labor of workforce reproduction in the private sphere. Indeed, women’s responsibilities included care for three generations: men working in the public sphere, children as the next generation of laborers, and elderly people who had completed their paid labor.

Let me add that such structures were directly linked to the formation of the so-called “modern family” (kindai kazoku). In contrast with familial forms common in the late Tokugawa period (1603-1867) and earlier, these families were recreated as nuclear families through excluding anyone who wasn’t a blood relative, a gendered division of labor, and popular rhetoric that family members should be bonded through deep love and affection.

In modern society, men are required to constantly prove their masculinity, demonstrating at once that they are neither a “woman” nor “gay.” In this way, modern society is a stressful and unstable society for men. The illusion created by holding leadership positions in society demands men to constantly seek competitions that reinforce their own fragile superiority. Of course, in any competition, there is always the possibility for loss. However, many men have tried to make up for defeat in one area by confirming their dominance in another context, for instance taking structural insecurities out on family members. In some cases, domestic violence will surface in such a situation.

The postwar movement for gender equality, especially since the 1970s, has seriously fractured this modern gender structure. However, many men continue to seek confirmation of their masculinity, for themselves and other people, in various situations. I have analyzed masculinity in modern society using three indicators: “dominance-oriented,” a psychological tendency to compete with others in order to win; “ownership-oriented,” a psychological tendency to own and manage many things; and “power-oriented,” a psychological tendency to impose one’s will on others (Itō 1993, 1996).

Even between men, fierce competition continues across these three vectors. However, in the game of men, not all men can be winners. Therefore, between men, “losing” might be acceptable. But what if this game is played against a woman? That turns it into a game that many men may feel they cannot afford to lose, thinking: “Men must be intellectually, mentally, and physically superior to women.” “A mature man must be able to manage a woman as his property.” “A man must be able to impose his will on a woman.” I think that one of the causes of these unconscious or unquestioned beliefs is an assumption among men that men must dominate women.

Nonetheless, simply emphasizing the dominance of one gender is not the cause of sexual violence. Rather, there is also an element of excessive “dependence” of men on women. For instance, in American cases of domestic violence, men abuse their wives while yelling, “I love you.” I assume it means “please love me back!” In this, we can clearly see the worst side of men’s “intimate dependence,” amae in Japanese, toward women.¹⁸ This type of abusive man still expects women to take care of him even if he threatens their lives.

As I mentioned earlier, starting in the 1970’s, men’s unquestioned domination of and dependence on women began to collapse. Women’s economic and social independence has lessened the need for male breadwinners, which had been an important source of male dominance in the home. Once, popular discourse suggested that women needed to marry men because of the “three F’s” – finances, fathering duties, and fertility. But in the present moment, these three F’s are no longer necessary. Women no longer depend on men for their financial independence. Moreover, fathering duties are irrelevant when men refuse to be responsible for raising their children. And, at least in theory, fertility can easily be facilitated through a sperm bank.

Absent these previous benefits, we can make the argument that women no longer need to marry. Indeed, the spread of women’s social participation and economic independence scares men who have relied (izon) on women in the normative marriage system to prop up their sense of themselves. I suspect that conservative men’s hostility to feminism reflects their awareness of this truth (Smith 1996). This fear and hostility stems from the truth that men can do almost nothing without the support of women, as is most visible in childcare and domestic responsibilities, but also in their paid labor at their workplace. For men who can’t live without being arrogant and dominant, women’s independence and increasing social participation are very likely to create a serious crisis.

International movements and social organizations toward gender equality

As mentioned earlier, major shifts have occurred around the world since the 1970s in terms of women’s participation in paid labor. In the background, we see not only a new focus on women’s human rights, but also the recession that occurred in economically developed countries in the early 1970s. In Western countries where most women were full-time housewives, it became difficult to manage households conforming to the male-breadwinner model. It became impossible to survive if both men and women did not work for wages. I believe that as societies entered the early period of post-Fordism, occupational opportunities for women expanded.

At the same time, especially in Western Europe where labor unions were still strong and active, welfare systems were expanded in order to enable women to participate in paid labor at higher rates. These included policies designed to protect family responsibilities of both men and women by, for instance, reducing working hours, creating tax relief, expanding childcare services, and creating child allowances paid directly to parents. Unlike patterns in Japan, countries that promoted gender equality and policies supporting families earlier have managed to stop or slow the declining birthrate.

Women’s labor participation is generally said to lead to a low birthrate. However, looking at OECD data, birth rates are rising in countries that have gender equality policies and family policies. Conversely, Japan and South Korea have delayed women’s social participation through insufficient family policies. Like southern European countries such as Italy, Greece, and Spain, these nations are suffering from declining birthrates.

Importantly, I should point out that countries which promoted the expansion of women’s participation in labor and stopped the declining birthrate also more quickly moved from economies centered on manufacturing (Fordism) to those instead focused on services, information, and finance (post-Fordism). At the same time, we should note that countries that have not promoted women’s labor force participation as actively, such as Italy, Spain, and Greece, are facing economic difficulties in the 21st century.

In Japan, the system of legal patriarchy, kafuchōsei, was abolished in the immediate postwar period. For instance, unlike laws in Western Christian nations, in Japan laws made “no fault” divorce a possibility. Abortion was also legalized and permitted for “economic reasons.”¹⁹ Considering that divorce law and abortion law were two major themes of the feminist movement in Western societies since the 1970s, it could even be said that Japan’s legal gender equality was more advanced than Western societies at that time.

Even in terms of women’s employment, until 1970 Japan had the highest employment rate among women in OECD countries. In the 1970s, it was slightly higher than Sweden and second only to Finland. Of course, during that time many women were laboring in agriculture or were self-employed, and the wage gap between men and women in Japan was as wide as it was in other countries. In comparison, 30 years later in 2000, the rate of Japanese women’s labor force participation dropped to about 20th among OECD countries. Of course, the labor force participation rate of Japanese women has increased during the last 30 years. But women’s labor participation in Europe and the U.S. has been increasing at a level of 30% to 40%, while Japan has risen only by about 5%. In many Western countries, the gender wage gap has also gradually narrowed during this period.

Japanese society seems to have overcome the international recession of the 1970s by taking a different path. It strictly divided labor responsibilities by gender. Men’s long working hours were increased which, in turn, increased overall household income, including overtime pay, while women bore responsibility for unpaid housework, childcare, and underpaid irregular labor. This normative model, which we might think of as “the 1970s-1980s gendered division of labor,” shaped the social lives of much of the baby boom generation and resulted in exceptionally stable growth in developed economies (Itō 2011).

The masculinization of deprivation – how to face the “Men’s Crisis”

As mentioned above, Japanese society has largely ignored fundamental changes in gender structures occurring in other OECD countries. However, conversely, it can be said that the “Men’s Crisis” situation has become more complicated and potentially deepened. Especially in Japan, where social movements have been formed in a manner that is insensitive to gender problems, this issue has remained an invisible problem.

Of course, things may not have changed much in many countries. This is because the civilizational transformations of gender structures that are occurring often emphasize only women’s social participation, while men’s gender issues have been almost overlooked. Thinking about it from men’s perspective, conventional understandings of masculinity combined with common labor practices and organizational standards have created an impossible situation, resulting in the “Men’s Crisis.”

Except for a tiny fraction of societies that have given attention to it, the “Men’s Crisis” has not come fully to light. Given that this problem is largely hidden in plain view, there are few political responses taken to address it. Although not recognized as an issue worthy of attention, in fact, many points of stress and strain occur in workplaces and homes. As such crises deepen without real social recognition, men feel a nebulous sense of discontent and insecurity that only registers on an unconscious level. Men are feeling the loss of what they had long believed was theirs; what they had assumed to be their fundamental, vested rights. In this, men have a kind of general anxiety that is not fully recognized, a sense that someone is stealing something from them.²⁰

In this sense, we see that what I call “the masculinization of deprivation” attacking Japanese men, and quite possibly men throughout the world. As I hope is obvious, I conceived of this term building from the phrase, “the feminization of poverty.” In developing nations, economic growth has increased poverty and inequality. This term, “the feminization of poverty,” indicates circumstances in which the negative impacts fall primarily on women. Such patterns still continue and, given the increase of women working in non-regular jobs in Japan, this situation is expanding in Japan as well.²¹

However, aren’t men also unconsciously haunted by what they have been deprived of – the economic power in their homes, workplaces, and communities that they used to have? Many men have become plagued by indescribable dissatisfaction and anxiety as they are unable to cope with social changes in these times. In fact, in Japanese society, the average annual salary of male office workers continues to decline from the 1997 peak of 5.7 million yen (about US$57,000). Behind such reductions in salary, as Japan has begun to enter post-Fordism, we also find weakening of the seniority system and reductions in overtime pay. While women’s participation in society and decision-making is expanding, the other gender’s problem – namely, the “Men’s Crisis” – also requires political responses.

The movement for men’s counseling

How should we respond to the masculinization of deprivation? Such a question is being asked by policymakers. And Japanese society, too, has begun to wrestle with this issue.

In fact, in the Basic Plan for Gender Equality (third edition), which was approved by the Cabinet in December 2010, new fields were added such as poverty, science and technology, community, and “men and children.” (I was the chairman of this drafting committee.) Even in the Second Basic Plan, the phrase “gender equality and men” was included throughout the document, but few policies specifically focused on men. In the Third Basic Plan, men’s needs were highlighted as an independent topic although they were presented only in combination with children.

The Third Basic Plan cites the development of public counseling services for men as a specific policy. Such emotional counseling services are necessary to address suicide, depression, overwork, and relationships from viewpoints that are sensitive to masculinity specifically. Of course, these counseling centers would also play an important role for men who are victims of domestic violence and sexual harassment by women and men. In addition, such counseling centers may be meaningful for men who are struggling with suicidal tendencies for various reasons, single fathers, and men with unstable lives. At the same time, we must include attention to the existence of elderly people who are living alone without stable income from pensions.

In addition, men who have perpetrated domestic violence and sexual harassment need these consultation facilities, too. Many of them have been named as perpetrators and punished without fully understanding why they are being blamed. In order to make these men aware of the problems caused by their actions, and to change their consciousness, we must create options for men’s counseling with perpetrators in mind. Without it, unrepentant abusers might repeat their behavior.

To be clear, I am not suggesting that we establish counseling centers exclusively for men. There are many people who are skeptical about providing counseling for men because the current system is already overwhelmed in responding to the needs of women, who comprise the vast majority of survivors in need of counseling, particularly in this moment of financial instability. However, in fact, we do not need to set up a new institution for men’s counseling. I expect that some of the existing counseling centers, such as those focused on suicide prevention and mental health counseling, could be temporarily presented as intended for “men’s counseling.” Many of these institutions are actually made for men, but again, Japanese society is often unaware of gender problems. Men are lacking awareness or sensitivity toward gender. Along with the importance of counseling itself, any announcement of the establishment of a public men’s counseling center would itself be an opportunity to change a common assumption: men who assume they should solve their own problems will instead realize that men, too, can benefit from counseling.

In addition to this, careful preparation is required to establish a gender-sensitive counseling service that can also focus on masculinity. It will be necessary to train counselors to have accurate views on masculinity. Training for counseling male subjects, corresponding to feminist counseling for female subjects, will become increasingly necessary in the future.

A Men’s Crisis center in Sweden

As we think about how to put male counseling into practice in Japanese society, it is helpful to observe examples from countries that have already started such movements. In September 2015, I visited the Crisis Center for Men in Gothenburg, Sweden, with members of a joint project on gender equality policies for men. The Crisis Center for Men is a consultation and rescue agency for men facing various crises. The Center, established under the Gothenburg City’s Social Resources Department, has been helping men with difficulties living in the city since 1986. It is probably the first counseling center for men in the world.²²

The Center’s director explained that recent subjects for counseling focused on worries about interpersonal relationships, including those with family members. Counseling continues to address emotional processing, childcare anxiety, and difficulties after divorce. There are also many consultations related to domestic violence with men concerned about their own aggression and violence. As for perpetrators of domestic violence, an organization under the direct control of the Center also conducts group work and other activities targeting men who want to control the urge to abuse their partners. The efficacy of group work lasting 30 weeks is apparently quite high.

In Japan, the Basic Plan for Gender Equality (third edition) recommended local governments start a full-fledged counseling service for men. A Men’s Counseling Manual, with a separate volume focused on domestic violence, has also been created, and counseling services for men are gradually increasing.²³ However, in the draft of the fourth edition of the Basic Plan for Gender Equality, which is currently underway, the entry for male counseling has disappeared. In terms of policy continuity, I am a little worried.

Working with men in distress has important significance for society as a whole. This is because some men without proper counseling have become self-destructive out of desperation. Also, there must be some men who try to transform their stress into violence against their wives and children. The problems that strike men sometimes diminish their vitality in the workplace and even corrode interpersonal and family relationships. In order to stabilize family life and society generally, we must take men’s concerns seriously, as is done in Swedish society, and respond swiftly to how men’s lives have changed with the participation of women in society. In the age of women’s empowerment, attention to men will be a significant and necessary subject.

Coda: Men and the power of care

When it comes to gender policy directed at and for men, I think it is necessary to pay attention to the term “Caring Masculinity,” which has been advocated for in the EU in recent years.²⁴ It is masculinity that cares, but the term has many implications. First, men are deeply involved in childcare. (In the EU, “care” often refers to childcare because nursing care is socialized.) At the same time, the word “care” seems to imply the ability to fully consider other people’s lives, bodies, and feelings. Some scholars and researchers in masculinity studies have argued that the construction of such ethics of care for men creates a feeling of anti-violence and leads to deterrence of war, and therefore peace building. (In fact, some studies show that men who are deeply involved in childcare have reduced testosterone and are therefore less prone to aggression.)

When promoting such discussions on “men’s power to care” (dansei no kea-ryoku) – my translation of “caring masculinity” – in Japanese society, we must take into account that “care” is often associated with “nursing the elderly” through medical care.²⁵ In addition, in Japan, it is necessary to consider not only the issue of “men who care” but also how the ability to be cared for and the ability to receive care relate to masculinity.

This is because many men do not accept care well, and instead imagine that being cared for is equivalent to being dependent on others and therefore erodes their masculinity. This is a kind of “illusion of independence” for men. Thus, some men cannot accept care without hesitation and are not willing to depend on others. Men’s illusions of independence may also result from their belief that men always must handle their own business.

On the other hand, some men misunderstand and do not properly recognize that they actually depend on surrounding support to lead their lives. From home to work, many men rely on support from others, especially women. However, their illusions of independence mean that men are not properly aware of their dependence on women. Men believe that they are doing everything by themselves. Even in the position of being cared for, they cannot properly recognize their dependence on others. They do not show gratitude to those around them on whom they depend. Rather, they become arrogant and angry.

The fact that men are unable to properly recognize their actual situations due to their rigid understandings of what men are will become a serious problem as we try to deal with Japan’s rapidly aging society in the future. The ability to openly acknowledge their weaknesses while accepting care with gratitude will also be an essential task for men in an aging society.

Elsewhere, the world is finally turning its eyes to men’s gender issues. However, in Japanese society, these issues are still invisible problems. Despite increased research on masculinity and in masculinity studies, the efforts toward policies for, and the realization of, gender equality is progressing slowly and still has a long way to go.

Acknowledgments

My first thanks go to Prof. Itō for his important and compelling research. This project was generously supported by Glenda Roberts and Vincent Mizra, who have both been engaged and patient as it developed. For their help and consultations about how to improve this translation, I thank Reginald Jackson, Claire Maree, Glenda Roberts, and especially Masayo Sodeyama. My thanks also go to Jordan Cleland for her hard work creating the figures. This translation was improved by the thoughtful and detailed suggestions offered by Isaac Gagné and two anonymous reviewers; I thank them for their careful work.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Kimio Itō

Kimio Itō is a foundational scholar of men’s and masculinity studies in Japan. This article, based on an article originally published in Japanese in 2018, offers new analysis of postwar economic, social, and gendered structures that continue to impact men’s lives. It offers critical theorization of, and new terminology for, the interlocking crises men now face and how those problems impact society in general. In this translation, all references are from the original article unless otherwise designated with “translator's note,” shortened to “TN.” In those added notes, I explain the broader context, clarify terminological nuance, and cite relevant scholarship to further contextualize Itō’s points for readers less familiar with Japan.

Allison Alexy

Allison Alexy is an Associate Professor in the Department of Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of Michigan. She is a cultural anthropologist focused on contemporary Japan. Through the lens of family life, her ethnographic research investigates changing norms for romantic relationships and legal constructions of intimacy contextualized within the rapid societal changes in recent decades. Her first monograph, Intimate Disconnections: Divorce and the Romance of Independence in Contemporary Japan, was published through open access and has recently been released in Japanese and Chinese translations. She has co-edited Home and Family in Japan and Intimate Japan, and is the editor for the Asia Pop! series from the University of Hawaiʻi Press.

Notes

¹ Translator’s Note: The term I translate as “Men’s Issues” is dansei mondai in the original. Mondai also has the connotation of “problems” or “questions” in the broadest sense. Moreover, in the original Japanese, the author often uses the equivalent of “single” or “double” quote marks to emphasize certain ideas or terms. Although I maintain this for the term “Men’s Issues,” I have removed the quote marks in many other instances and worked to convey meaning and emphasis through other means because readers who are unfamiliar with Japanese might be confused by what appear to be unattributed quotes.

² TN: These murders prompted a moral panic about fan culture because photographs of Miyazaki’s room showed his heavy, if not obsessive, consumption of pornographic media. He became a poster boy for otaku, fans so involved with media (particularly video games, anime, and manga-related goods) as to become dangerously divorced from reality (M. Ito 2013, 53; Toivonen and Imoto 2013, 69).

³ TN: The “1.57 shock” refers to the public reaction when the Total Fertility Rate was announced as suddenly and shockingly low in 1989 (Ogawa and Retherford 1993, 73). The number 1.57 refers to the average number of children a woman was estimated to have over her lifetime at the current rates of recorded live births in Japan. Given that a rate of about 2.1 is required to keep the population figures steady, a rate of 1.57 suggests the population will decrease significantly.

⁴ TN: In Japan, as in other contexts, contemporary expectations about “traditional” family norms and forms vary substantially from historical realities. Broadly speaking, many people in the contemporary moment imagine families in earlier times to have been more patriarchal, more rigidly defined, and without any recognition of women’s authority. A tremendous body of scholarship makes clear how wrong those projections are (Aoyama, Dales, and Dasgupta 2015; Bernstein 2005; Berry and; Yonemoto 2019; Fuess 2004; Germer, Mackie, and Wöhr 2014; Ronald and Alexy 2011; Ueno 2009).

⁵ TN: In Japanese, this is the difference between fujin seisaku, which might best be glossed as “Ladies Policies” and sounds condescending, and josei seisaku, which describes “Women’s Policies” or “Policies for Women.”

⁶ TN: Women’s political participation in Japan has been analyzed by many scholars, for instance noticing the political power generated through “housewife” identities (LeBlanc 1999), the limited infrastructure available to support women’s organizing (Eto 2010; Hasunuma 2019), and women’s attempts to balance political engagement with neoliberalism and feminism (Kano 2018).

⁷ TN: Death from overwork (karōshi) or suicide prompted by overwork (karōjisatsu) reflect both Japan’s deeply gendered labor market and cultural norms surrounding work that can facilitate workplace abuse (Kanai 2009; North and Morioka 2016).

⁸ TN: The term Itō uses, shachiku, which literally means “corporate cattle,” suggests a corporate worker so demoralized by his employer that he becomes a drone or beast of burden – something less than human.

⁹ TN: In addition to death from overwork, Japanese labor patterns reflect deeply gendered expectations about the form, type, and style of work. Throughout the postwar period, masculinity has been closely tied with full-time, paid labor and normative models pushing men, and in particular fathers, to display care through labor (Cook 2016; Dasgupta 2012; Gagné 2021; Morioka 2014).

¹⁰ TN: These divorces end marriages between people in later life, near or after retirement age, and represent a significant possible shift in family relationships that were long imagined to be stable foundations of the nation (Alexy 2007, 2020, 4–6).

¹¹ TN: Chen et al. (2009, 142) find that Japan’s suicide rate is “more sensitive to economic factors” as opposed to social categories such as the divorce rate or female labor force participation rate. Other scholars have found a link between men’s unemployment and suicide (Kuroki 2010).

¹² TN: Japan continues to have significant disparities in gendered rates of participation in higher education. According to national population statistics, while both men’s and women’s enrollment in four-year universities have increased, male students have always enrolled at higher rates. Compared to 1980, when 39.3% of male students and 12.3% of female students enrolled in universities, by 2016, those numbers had grown to 55.6% and 48.2%, respectively. But at a more granular level, statistics make clear that these women students are less likely to enroll in prestigious institutions, departments, or majors (Scantlebury et al. 2007). For instance, for the last two decades, only about 20% of students at The University of Tokyo were women (Rich 2019). In 2020, 80% of women at four-year universities were majoring in liberal arts, which tends to be less prestigious (Kakuchi 2020).

¹³ TN: Higher education in Japan includes four-year universities, vocational and technical colleges, and junior colleges that primarily serve women students and can act as community colleges or finishing schools, depending on the institution (McVeigh 1997; Walker 2007). Enrollment in junior colleges has been declining since its peak in 1994 at 13.2%, with 4.6% of students enrolled in junior colleges in 2018. The vast majority of junior college students have been women, and the decline in junior college enrollment is related to the increase in women’s matriculation to four-year universities, up from 21% in 1994 to over 50% in 2018 (Education Career 2019; see also Anzai and Matsuzawa Paik 2012; National Institute of Population and Social Security Research 2017).

¹⁴ TN: In this scandal, a bribery investigation uncovered evidence that for at least a decade, admissions policies penalized women applicants, explicitly requiring women to have higher scores to gain acceptance. Officials from the school suggested both that this policy was typical for peer institutions and also that it was created to mitigate the likelihood that women doctors might eventually leave their careers to have families (Rich 2019; Lovett and Ross 2018).

¹⁵ Japan’s Cabinet Office describes “Society 5.0” as: “a human-centered society that balances economic development and social issue resolutions, within a system that highly integrates cyberspace (virtual space) and physical space (real space)” (Naikakufu 2021).

¹⁶ TN: Extensive scholarship explores structures of discrimination in Japan and social movements built in response. Examples of this wide-ranging research examine constructions of race and racism (Kawai 2020; Morris-Suzuki 2015), anti-Black racism (Kalnay 2020; Russell 2009), ableism (Bookman 2020; Stevens 2013), xenophobia (Shibuichi 2016), discrimination against Indigenous people (lewallen 2016; Siddle 2003), and structural disparities faced by Okinawans (Shimabuku 2018; Tanji 2006).

¹⁷ TN: Burakumin are ethnic Japanese who have been constructed as an underclass based on lineage, location of residence, and the labor they perform (Amos 2007; Hankins 2014; Kobayakawa 2021). Korean Japanese are descendants of Koreans who remained in Japan after the end of World War II and are legally treated as non-citizen “special permanent residents” unless they naturalize as Japanese, even if their family has lived for generations in Japan. Thus, many continue to face discrimination in daily life, including in education, employment, housing, citizenship, and intimate relationships (Chapman 2007; Kim-Wachutka 2019; Shin 2011, 2017).

¹⁸ TN: I have glossed amae (甘え) as “intimate dependence.” The term was popularized as an analytic by psychologist Doi Takeo, who theorized amae as a loving dependence, like a child’s belief that a caring parent will take care of their needs. In his theory, as Japanese children grow up, amae remains a largely positive form of attachment cultivated and welcomed in relationships beyond that with an original caregiver (Borovoy 2012; Doi 1973). More recently, discourse about Japanese marriages includes questioning the possible risks and benefits caused by expectations for amae (Alexy 2020, 72; Borovoy 2005).

¹⁹ TN: Since 1949, abortion in Japan has been legal when 1) the pregnant person or other parent has a mental illness; 2) a relative to the fourth degree of either parent has an inheritable illness; 3) either parent has leprosy; 4) the pregnant person’s health is at risk or would be seriously affected in physical or economic terms; or 5) the pregnancy is the result of violence. The fourth category, namely “economic reasons” to seek an abortion, offers the largest potential loophole and is the reason cited for 99% of abortions in the postwar period (Kato 2009, 46; Norgren 2001, 36).

²⁰ TN: In parallel, white supremacist masculinist movements in the US express anxieties about what they have lost or fears of being replaced (Stern 2019).

²¹ TN: Gender and poverty in Japan link in several ways. First, the gendered labor market assumes hetero partnerships in which men are breadwinners and women are pushed into flexible, non-regular, and underpaid positions (Alexy 2020, 39). Second, over half of single-parent households, which tend to be headed by women, fall below the poverty line (Shirahase and Raymo 2014, 549). Third, in Japan’s rapidly aging population, women have a longer life expectancy, leaving more women single and with reduced income later in life (Kimoto and Hagiwara 2010). Fourth, as a result of legal changes, temporary workers face increasingly precarious positions with lower relative wages (Robinson et al. 2022; Weathers 2004).

²² TN: At the editor’s suggestion, a paragraph in the original article was removed here. More information about this center can be found at: https://rikskriscentrum.se/english/

²³ In 2014, the committee I chaired released the Chihōjichitaitō ni okeru dansei ni taisuru sōdan taisei seibi manyuaru [Manual to Improve Local Governments’ Counseling Systems for Men].

²⁴ Since the beginning of the 2000s, policies focused on men and gender equality have been increasing in the EU. In particular, “Caring Masculinity” has become a keyword for changing the roles men hold (Scambor et al. 2014).

²⁵ TN: This sentence contains a few layers of translation in it. In the original article, the author translates “caring masculinity” in English as dansei no kea-ryoku in Japanese, literally “men’s power to care” or “the care power of men.” Rather than merely using “caring masculinity” here, I have maintained both to make the nuance clearer.