Men’s Unpaid Domestic Work: A Critique of (Re)Doing Gender in Contemporary Japan

Abstract

This chapter examines Japanese men’s involvement in unpaid domestic work in relation to paid (public) work, family and wellbeing, bringing gender into scope. It analyses the government-initiated fatherhood campaign ‘Ikumen Project’ and a relatively newly emerged gender figure of what is referred to as ‘iku-men’ (‘men who engage actively in child rearing’). The Ikumen Project, where the trope of the iku-men serves as the project’s grand concept, offers a useful site that allows us to examine the intersections between the ‘old’ and ‘new’ paradigms of work-family models in contemporary Japan. This chapter suggests that the government utilises the particular ‘family-friendly’ (‘famirī furendorī’) campaign as a public arena for meaning-making, through which to disseminate positive images of men’s child rearing, encourage men’s unpaid domestic work and women’s paid employment, increase the birth rate and ultimately improve the economy. Based on Candace West and Don Zimmerman’s theory of ‘doing gender’, this chapter argues that the Ikumen Project still relies on the ‘old’ paradigm of a work-family model predicated on the male breadwinning model and thus can ‘redo’ gender, while legitimising Japanese men’s active involvement in unpaid domestic work and family life as a ‘new’ norm.