Abstract
Taking past research on the phenomenon of the “salary man” as background, this chapter explores examples of the changing image of masculinity in Japanese cinema in response to the political, economic and social turbulence experienced by Japan since the beginning of the Heisei period. Among its conclusions are that the image of the hero in Japanese cinema has deteriorated since the bursting of the bubble economy in response to a perceived sense of masculine crisis in contemporary Japan. Traditional heroes with masculine appearance, character, and manners have become rare, and instead we see young heroes who lack maturity, but possess the will to rebel against authority and rules put in place by previous generations. Recent films also commonly portray a romanticized nostalgia for post-war Japan as well as a thirst for maternal love.
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Notes
- 1.
In post-Koizumi Japan, prime ministers Shinzo Abe, Yasuo Fukuda, Taro Aso, Yukio Hatoyama, Naoto Kan and Yoshihiko Noda have each stayed in power for only approximately one year. In December 2012, Shinzo Abe assumed office once again as prime minister and has broken the pattern by staying in power ever since.
- 2.
During the golden age of Japan, the prosperity enjoyed by the public was once described as ichioku soochuuryuu (all hundred millions belong to middle class) while most Japanese worked for large corporations with a decent and stable income. However, the bursting of the bubble economy led to the long period of shuushoku hyoogaki (ice age of employment), which affected the confidence of salary men and fresh university graduates. Under these circumstances, the gap between rich and poor has steadily increased, resulting in a serious problem of kakusa (social inequality). The term kakusa was selected as “Word of the Year” in 2006.
- 3.
In his Japan’s New Middle-Class: The salary man and his family in a Tokyo suburb (1963) and Japan as Number One: Lessons for America (1979), Vogel provided a detailed framework of description of the emerging “salary man” class under the rapid industrialization of Japan during the 1950s and 1980s.
- 4.
Doi, Takeo. The Anatomy of Dependence. Tokyo: Kodansha, [1971] 1981, 152.
- 5.
The movies of Sion Sono, a film director of Generation X whose career began in the 1980s have generated a virtual cult following in Japan. His works take as one of their major themes the dysfunctional nature of the modern Japanese family and are characterized by an excessively high level of violence, as exemplified by his Suicide Club, a story of 54 schoolgirls who for no obvious reason commit mass suicide by throwing themselves in front of an oncoming train. His subsequent films have focused on evil adult male figures, highlighting the extreme level of social alienation and wide generation gap between youth and adults in modern Japan.
- 6.
Adapted from Koji Suzuki’s novel by the same name, Ring is said to be the highest grossing Japanese horror film in history (Balmain, 2008, 2). So popular is the film that it was later remade by director Gore Verbinski into a Hollywood version in 2002. Ring tells the story of the investigation by a journalist named Reiko into the mysterious death of several teenagers including her niece. Central to the story is a video that, as urban legend has it, whoever watches will die seven days after viewing it. To find out the truth, Reiko watches the video and is now running out of time to solve the mystery. Together with her ex-husband Ryuji, they discover that the video comes from a vengeful spirit, Sadako, a girl thrown into a well by her father. After Ryuji’s death, Reiko realizes that the viewer must copy and pass the video to another person in order to break the curse. The years following the appearance of Ring saw the emergence of an abundance of J-horror movies, including Tomie (1999, Ataru Oikawa), Dark Water (2002, Hideo Nakata), Ju-on: The Grudge, One Missed Call (2003, Takashi Miike) and Reincarnation (2005, Takashi Shimizu).
- 7.
Tokyo Sonata portrays a family whose father loses his elite job to cheaper foreign labor but, unable to disclose the truth to his family, spends his days wandering aimlessly around Tokyo until he finally takes up work cleaning toilets. The film reflects vividly the lack of communication in modern Japanese families and numerous secrets that lie under a seemingly placid surface of quotidian family life.
- 8.
Having been drafted into the army during the Second World War, director Kinji Fukasaku became dissatisfied with the adult generation after realizing that he was not actually fighting for world peace. Battle Royale is one of his works depicting the huge gap between the older and younger generation. More importantly, it holds adults responsible for juvenile delinquency. Based on a novel by Koshun Takami, Battle Royale tells the story of a group of junior high school students taken to an island to engage in a fierce game of killing one another. In this film, young people are lost and confused because they have no role model to follow. The main character Shuya Nanahara lost his father, who hung himself, while the teacher Kitano (Takeshi Kitano) is a man bullied by his students and rejected by his daughter. Conflicts between the older and younger generation are depicted against an extremely violent and disturbing background that can be overwhelming for most audiences. In the sequel, Battle Royale II: Requiem (2003, Kenta Fukasaku and Kinji Fukasaku), such confrontation becomes more explicit as the surviving students fight directly against the military.
- 9.
Lesson of the Evil tells the story of a well-respected teacher who suffers from antisocial personality disorder. A psychopath, he handles monster parents and rebellious students by murdering them.
- 10.
Based on Motoro Mase’s manga series (2005–2012), the story of Ikigami: The Ultimate Limit takes place in a country very similar to Japan. In order to increase the level of prosperity and productivity, the nation implants a capsule in all new born children. A small percentage of them will be killed before they turn 25, and they are to be informed of their imminent death 24 hours in advance.
- 11.
Born in Saitama prefecture, Tatsuya Fujiwara (1982–) is a Japanese actor who started his career in theatre. His stage performance in Shintoku-maru (1995, Yukio Ninagawa) won him a reputation as a talented young actor. On screen, he is best known for his roles as Shuya Nanahara in Battle Royale, Light Yagami in Death Note and Kaiji in Kaiji: The Ultimate Gambler.
- 12.
In 1945, GHQ, the headquarters of American occupation forces in Japan, banned the production of swordfight and yakuza films depicting vengeance and revenge, a ban that was eventually lifted in August 1951 (Burakku, 1999, 16). Yakuza films such as the Nippon Chivalry series (1964–71), starring the icon of Nippon danshi (Japanese tough guy) Ken Takakura, present groups of gangsters who join forces to restore jingi (benevolence and justice). Since the early 1950s, economic development had become the most pressing issue in Japan, resulting in a neglect of traditional moral virtues such as righteousness and chivalry as earning money became a top priority. Cinema productions such as these represented a call to return to such traditional virtues. An exception to this is seen in Kinji Fukasaku’s Battles without Honor or Humanity series (1973–9), which portrays the cruel reality of gangsters ignoring the ideals of giri (duty) and ninjoo (humanity), and relying instead on duplicity as a tool for survival. Although the series can be viewed as departure from traditional Japanese gangster films, heroes appearing in them such as Bunta Sugawara maintain the macho character of the past, unlike the physically weak, baby-face main characters appearing in recent mainstream crime films.
- 13.
In Shield of Straw (2013, Takashi Miike), Fujiwara plays an anti-social but to outward appearances harmless criminal Kunihide Kiyomaru who rapes and kills young girls. After he murders the granddaughter of a billionaire, different groups of people attempt to capture and kill him in pursuit of a billion-yen bounty on his head. A team of police officers is therefore asked to protect and bring Kiyomaru to court. Although he is sentenced to death in the end, Kiyomaru shows no regret, confessing only that he feels sorry because he would have raped and killed more girls if he had known that he would die so soon.
- 14.
Death Note, a film series adapted from the popular manga series, centers on a talented university student from Law School, Light Yagami (Tatsuya Fujiwara), who discovers a notebook called “Death Note” dropped by the God of Death. The notebook gives Light the power to kill anyone of his choice. Dissatisfied with the inadequacy of the legal system, Light starts killing criminals who he thinks deserve to die. A young and intelligent FBI detective L (Kenichi Matsuyama) is later hired by the Japanese police force to conduct an investigation to track down Light. Both Light and L are childish and self-centered youngsters who challenge authority with both distrust and disrespect.
- 15.
Kaiji: The Ultimate Gambler and its sequel Kaiji II are based on Nobuyuki Fukumoto’s manga series (1996–1999). The story centers on Kaiji Ito (Tatsuya Fujiwara) who leads a life without hope. Approaching his 30s but still struggling to make ends meet, Kaiji’s life reflects the situation faced by many young Japanese men today. One day, Kaiji boards a ship named Espoir (French for “hope”), which gives him a chance to change his life. On board are two groups of people, one living at the bottom of society (literally because they work underground to build an empire for the “King”), and another that exploits them. People in the former group, where Kaiji belongs, are described as kuzu (trash) and considered worthless. In a sense, this resembles contemporary Japan where inequality has become a growing social problem.
- 16.
Hero is a TV series launched in 2001 starring Takuya Kimura as a young public prosecutor who refuses to conform to conventional social norms but dares to challenge the corrupt system in Japan. Galileo is a TV series based on Keigo Higashino’s novel Detective Galileo launched in 2007 starring Masaharu Fukuyama as a university professor who shows interest in nothing but physics and helps the police to investigate mysterious cases with his unique sense of deduction. Both sequels gained such high popularity in Japan and other parts in East Asia that they spawned feature film versions, namely Hero: The Movie (2007, Masayuki Suzuki), Hero (2015, Masayuki Suzuki), The Devotion of Suspect X (2008, Hiroshi Nishitani) and Midsummer’s Equation (2013, Hiroshi Nishitani).
- 17.
The emergence of new religious groups is a topic of great concern in Japan nowadays. In addition to Aum Shinrikyo, Shinnyo-en (Borderless Garden of Truth), Oyamanezu no Mikoto Shinji Kyokai, GLA (God Light Association) and Ho no Hana Sanpogyo are examples of rising religious groups in Japan (Shimazono, 2001). Founded by Shoko Asahara in 1984, Aum Shinrikyo is best known for its Sarin gas attack in the Tokyo subway system on March 20, 1995. The incident resulted in thirteen deaths and approximately 1,000 injuries. Asahara was sentenced to death in 2004, but his execution has yet to be carried out.
- 18.
Based on a romantic story that had been circulating on the Internet, Train Man is a movie depicting how the socially awkward otaku Densha (Takayuki Yamada) melts the heart of the beautiful and elegant Hermès (Miki Nakatani). In the film, Densha has no friends and spends most of his time wandering alone in Akihabara in search of anime goods and talking to strangers about his life online. With the support of his Internet buddies, he takes steps to pursue Hermès, but ends up unable to show his true love and feelings for her. Facing the apologetic Densha, Hermès wipes away his tears and reassures him that he is good enough to win her heart.
- 19.
Yuko Takeuchi also played similar roles in Yomigaeri (2003, Akihiko Shiota), Night of the Shooting Stars (2003, Shin Togashi), Heaven’s Bookstore (2004, Tetsuo Shinohara), Spring Snow (2005, Isao Yukisada), Closed Note (2007, Isao Yukisada), Flowers (2010, Norihiro Koizumi) and Wife and My 1778 Stories (2011, Mamoru Hoshi). Takeuchi is regarded as one of the icons of iyashi kei (healing kind). The iyashi kei phenomenon originated in Naoko Iijima’s 1995 canned coffee commercial which was said to be a “spiritual retreat” to the audience. The term iyashi kei, however, first appeared in 1999 when musician Ryuichi Sakamoto’s EP Ura BTTB was described as “iyashi ongaku” (healing music). Since then, whoever (e.g., actresses Yuka and Haruka Igawa) or whatever (such as toys) is soft and carries “healing” power is labeled iyashi kei.
- 20.
Adapted from a fiction novel of the same title, Crying out Love in the Center of the World tells a bittersweet love story starting in the 1980s between Sakutaro (Mirai Moriyama) and Aki (Masami Nagasawa). Although Sakutaro considers Aki the love of his life, she dies from leukemia at a young age. When visiting his hometown on the island of Shikoku, the now grownup Sakutaro (Takao Osawa) becomes mesmerized by memories of Aki and collapses with tears. The thought of Aki almost costs him his fiancée Ritsuko (Ko Shibasaki), but after listening to the last words of Aki recorded on a tape, Sakutaro finally gains the courage to leave his past behind and start a new life.
- 21.
Ken Watanabe is one of Hollywood’s best-known Japanese actors nowadays. Some of his Hollywood movies include The Last Samurai (2003, Edward Zwick), Memoirs of a Geisha (2005, Rob Marshall), Letters from Iwo Jima (2006, Clint Eastwood) and Inception (2010, Christopher Nolan).
- 22.
The popular reception of the television drama Winter Sonata gave rise to a “Korean Wave” in Japan. This led to the stardom of a number of Korean actors, of which Bae Yong-joon is the most popular. In April 2004, when Bae visited Japan for the first time, 5,000 Japanese fans awaited him at Tokyo’s Haneda Airport. When he visited Japan again in November the same year, 3,500 fans gathered at Tokyo’s Narita Airport. Because of the stir caused when it was made public that he planned to visit Japan in 2005, Bae kept his arrival date secret. Apart from Bae, stars such as Lee Byung-hun and Kwon Sang-woo also gained high popularity in Japan. Their masculine images form a contrast to the declining masculinity of Japanese males nowadays. In the Japanese movie Hero for example, Lee Byung-hun makes a guest appearance as a cool detective helping Takuya Kimura fight against Korean gangsters.
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Yau, St.K. (2018). Bad Father and Good Mother: The Changing Image of Masculinity in Post-Bubble-Economy Japan. In: Hebert, D. (eds) International Perspectives on Translation, Education and Innovation in Japanese and Korean Societies. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-68434-5_16
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