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1 results

  • 1 - Building the Nation and Modern Manhood

  • Sabine Frühstück, University of California, Santa Barbara
  • Book:
    Gender and Sexuality in Modern Japan
    Published online:
    24 March 2022
    Print publication:
    31 March 2022, pp 19-46

  • Summary

    Chapter 1, “Building the Nation and Modern Manhood,” examines the tense negotiations over different types of men, manhoods, and masculinities – spanning the early processes of nation-state formation and empire-building, through defeat and democratization, to the current challenges of a globalizing society and straining economy. Following the empire’s defeat in 1945, the soldier almost immediately lost his status as a hegemonic icon of masculinity. That role was taken on by a dramatically different kind of man: the white-collar, middle-class worker – who for decades was hailed not as the successor of the Imperial Army soldier but as the “modern samurai.” Two generations of men strove to embody that ideal manhood, but the heyday of the salaryman came to a crushing end in 1992. A new sense of vulnerability in the wake of the March 11, 2011 triple disaster – earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear meltdown – has fed into the processes of a rapid diversification of masculinity that continues to this day.