Symposium on Gender Studies across Languages and Disciplines
September 21, 2009
Bernhard Center Rm 157, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, MI 49008

Abstracts
Geisha, Pop Star, Princess: Japan Miscast?
Jan Bardsley, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Who can represent Japan? Controversy arose in China and Japan when Chinese actress Zhang Ziyi
took the lead role in Memoirs of a Geisha in 2005. In the same year, heated debate raced over theinternet when American pop star Gwen Stefani dipped into Japanese youth fashion to create her own
version of “Harajuku Girls.” Even Crown Princess Masako, a bona fide Japanese royal, has ruffledfeathers over her representation of Japan. Each case—the geisha, pop star, and princess—point toquestions of authenticity and appropriation, revealing an uneasy politics of race and gender.
Ultimately, these debates push us to ask about the boundaries of difference and whether or not they
may be crossed in the imaginative worlds of film, music video, and royal pageantry.
No Womanly Women?: Blurring Gender Boundaries in Contemporary Japan
Yoichi Shimemura, Musashino University, Tokyo
Born and raised under the ideology of gender equality, today’s younger generation in Japan appear
to be paying little attention to gender stereotypes of masculinity and femininity. With the expansionof the job market for women and influenced by the women’s liberation movement in the United States,
young women have become more and more career-oriented and less and less family-oriented. The
first age at marriage for women has risen from 24.4 in 1960 to 28.3 in 2007, and the percentage ofunmarried women has drastically increased, from 24.0 in 1980 to 54.0 in 2000 among the 25-29 age
group, and from 9.1 to 26.6 among the 30-34 year old group
As far as the younger generations are concerned, traditional boundaries which used to be clearly
demarcated based on sex are now in the process of blurring or disappearing. Young women
increasingly tend to penetrate into traditional men’s domains and young men increasingly into
women’s domains, thus women’s and men’s spheres are now merging and overlapping, with various
social or cultural consequences.
Japanese language, for example, is generally a gender differentiated language but it is now becoming
more and more gender-neutral among the young. Masculinity and femininity of speech have been
diminishing and there is clear movement toward gender-free speech.
1Copyright © 2001 The Society for Gender Studies in Japanese All Rights Reserved.

Marriage of Cultures: An Online, Role-Playing Simulation for Japanese Anthropology
Laura Spielvogel, Department of Anthropology, Western Michigan University
In this presentation, I will discuss and demonstrate a web-based role-playing simulation createdaround the narrative framework of a cross-cultural wedding between an American man and a Japanesewoman. This simulation helps students experience learning as a goal-oriented process involving
experimentation, practice, play, and problem solving. Marriage of Cultures requires that each student
play a character in a 3-4 week, open-ended narrative that requires collaboration to achieve a particulargoal or resolve a cross-cultural dilemma. The learning process is accelerated and enhanced in webbased role-play simulations when students are required both to successfully role-play characters
whose profiles reflect the knowledge and expertise taught in the course, and when students
collaboratively apply theories and concepts learned in the classroom to real-life problems andprocesses. It is my hope that through using this simulation, students of anthropology, women’s studies,
Asian studies, sociology, and other disciplines can better experience how culture shapes everyday
human behavior by playing a character in a dynamic, intellectually rich learning environment that
unfolds through synchronous and asynchronous chat and discussion.
Japanese Women’s Language and Politeness: A Hidden Hegemony
Mayumi Usami, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies
In this talk, I will first analyze and explain several Japanese linguistic forms used differently by menand women from linguistic point of view. And then, I will discuss how gender ideology has beenrealized in women’s language in Japanese. Based on these observations and analyses, I will discussthat the true identity of the so-called “women’s language” in Japanese is actually not a women’slanguage but is no more than “the aggregate of Japanese language from which the use of assertiveand low-level politeness expressions were prohibited.” In other words, there had been no women’slanguage which had an independent rule as has been believed. The reason why women's language has
been claimed to exist,and be maintained is that it is one of the most effective and convenient devices
to maintain a hidden hegemony. The phenomenon of the use of so-called men’s language by young
women, however, can be considered as unconscious movement of women's gaining of the right tospeak unrestricted “basic Japanese”. It is necessary to understand, therefore, that the use of language
by modern young women is tearing down “restrictions of women’s language” as they want to “express
themselves, express their emotions in a straightforward manner.” The verbal behavior of these womenwhose post-war education taught the “equality of men and women” shows that there is no “validity”
and “inevitability” in the pragmatic rules that only women have to use linguistic forms that are “morepolite” and “avoid assertiveness.”
Why So Different?: Women and Men Expressed in Japanese Discourse
Mizue Sasaki, Musashino University, Tokyo2
Copyright © 2001 The Society for Gender Studies in Japanese All Rights Reserved.

I will present my examinations of gendered expressions which are included in Japanese novels,
magazines, journals, newspapers, commercial advertisements, books, classics and other materials, aswell as n everyday language by both men and women. In the past, studies of language and gender
have, for the most part, only looked at the topic from the point of view of discrimination against
women. In this study I intend to show the importance of analyzing forms regarding both women andmen. The following are my suggested categories of gendered expressions:① Expressions which differ in meaning depending on whether they refer to men or women.
② Women and children and their expected personality traits.
③ Men and their expected personality traits.
④ Expressions peculiar to a patriarchal society and the vestiges of the ‘ie’ system2.
⑤ The division of labor by sex and its terminology.
⑥ The sexual division of roles and the implications of this division for the employment of women.
⑦ Naming and forms of address for women and men⑧ Expressions used by men to evaluate women on physical attributes.
⑨ Terms used to imply a masculine connotation when attached to certain words, e.g. ~ kan.
⑩ The figurative use of male or female images when referring to animals.
⑪ Expressions which have arisen from cultural differences.
⑫ Expressions which show changes in women's status and roles.
⑬ Words which have become obsolete as a result of changes in the way society views men andwomen.
Until now, research tended to be conducted from a feminist standpoint and concentrated on the search
for terms indicating discrimination against women. As seen in the classifications above, the gendered
terms are still clearly in use today. Therefore gendered expressions should be examined from wider
perspectives of cultural and historical studies.
Bite Your Tongue!: Language, Power, and the Negation of Female Desire.
Adrienne Redding, Department of English, Western Michigan University
The license to openly and effectively communicate desire has long been the prerogative of men.
Society valorizes male expressions of desire, whether through discourse or through action, andstigmatizes female attempts to usurp this patriarchal privilege, allowing agency only in the selectionof alternative forms of non-existence. Cultural reinforcement of these gendered roles, sometimes
strident and sometimes subtle, appearing across the literary timeline of western civilization as early
as ancient Greece and Rome, extends even to contemporary society whose supposedly liberated
citizenry might not immediately recognize or openly acknowledge such a paradigm. Especiallyevident in the arena of romantic or sexual relations, whether investigating the ancient Greek medical
theories of Galen and Plutarch, the classical Roman poetry of Virgil, Juan Luis Vives’ Renaissanceconduct manuals, or modern day pop-psychology best sellers such as Greg Behrendt and Liz
Trucillo’s He’s Just Not That Into You, male narratives rigorously seek to predominate, strive tosubjugate and objectify women, paralyze the female enactment of desire and ultimately demand the3Copyright © 2001 The Society for Gender Studies in Japanese All Rights Reserved.

sacrifice of that most powerful facilitator of agency, the voice.
Reversing Dictatorship: Power of Transgender/Transnational Visuality for Latin American
Women
Mayra Bonet, Spanish, University of Illinois at Springfield
Literature, film, and art unfold the intricate correlation between political regimes and gender roles inLatin America. Since the end of the XIX century, these artistic expressions display the process inwhich notions of femininity-masculinity and patriarchy-matriarchy are deconstructed to enact
multiple forms of authoritarianism. Caciques, caudillos, and dictators misconstrue their public image,redefine social spaces, and trigger transitory gender reversals. In this political context, ceremonies ofviolence, sacred/profane practices surrounding the leaders and his followers, and secretive
performances reached the category of political rituals.
A gradual metamorphosis of this ritualistic society reveals two dimensions, on one hand, women
become visible in the society and, on the other hand, the regime acquires an in crescendo visibility.
By the same token, an (in)visible force creates a reign of terror, control, and power. Supernaturalentities dominate this society generating a new identity for the dissident voices that do not conformto the decrees of the regime.
In this presentation, I explore how these changes create a dialectic process between the visibility andinvisibility of women of certain social classes and the rulers. The works of the Argentinean filmmakerMaria Luisa Bemberg, the Mexican and Brazilian soldaderas, the literary works of Julia Alvarez andGabriel García Márquez, and the tapestry tradition of the Chilean arpilleras, encompass distinctive
examples of the power of transgender and transnational visibility of Latin American and Caribbeanwomen.

4Copyright © 2001 The Society for Gender Studies in Japanese All Rights Reserved.