Working Out in Japan: Shaping the Female Body in Tokyo Fitness Clubs
264
Working Out in Japan: Shaping the Female Body in Tokyo Fitness Clubs
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Overview
Fitness clubs have proliferated in Japanese cities over the past decade. Yet, despite the pervasive influence of a beauty industry that values thinness above all else, they have met with only mixed success . Exploring this paradox, Spielvogel focuses on the tensions and contradictions within the world of Japanese fitness clubs and on the significance of differences between Japanese and North American philosophies of mind and body. Working Out in Japan explores the ways spaces and bodies are organized and regulated within the clubs, the frustrations of female instructors who face various gender inequities, and the difficult demands that the ideal of slimness places on Japanese women. Spielvogel’s vivid investigation illuminates not only the fitness clubs themselves, but also broader cultural developments including the growth of the service industry and the changing character of work and leisure in Japan.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780822384809 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Duke University Press |
| Publication date: | 01/31/2003 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 264 |
| File size: | 3 MB |
About the Author
Laura Spielvogel is Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Western Michigan University.
Read an Excerpt
Working out in Japan
Shaping the female body in Tokyo fitness clubsBy Laura Spielvogel
Duke University Press
ISBN: 0-8223-3049-0
Chapter One
The History of Aerobics in JapanThe Sexy American Import
Aerobics is American. Although Japan has trailed by a mere two to three years, the United States is, without a doubt, the original source of aerobic dance and fitness clubs and the continued inspiration for new trends and techniques. And it is this Americanness, which has been emphasized and exaggerated by Japanese and Westerners alike, that must be understood and deconstructed as "fitness" products and concepts are introduced, interpreted, and altered in the Japanese context. How has the fate of aerobics differed from or been similar to that of other Western sport imports in the twentieth century? How has the shift from the militarization of the body to the consumption of the body through sporting styles created a niche for Japanese fitness clubs in the late twentieth century? Finally, what does the import of aerobics and the definition of health and beauty tell us about Japan's identity as a nation vis-a-vis the United States?
To understand the role that aerobics plays in contemporary Japan, I begin by historicizing the myriad roles that sport-specifically, Western sport-has played in Japan since the early 1900s. Anthropological studies of sport in Japan are becoming increasingly popular, as evidenced by the several editedvolumes released in the past three to five years (e.g., Linhart and Fruhstuck, 1998; Treat, 1996: Wagner, 1989) and the recent comprehensive analysis of Japanese sport by Guttmann and Thompson (2001). The sociology of sport in Japan is fairly well developed (see, e.g., Kyozu 1967), although the studies produced tend to focus on quantitative and empirical analyses of sport participation and sports facilities, with a financial or business-minded audience in mind (e.g., Hata and Umezawa 1995; Oga 1998; Oga and Kimura 1993). Not surprisingly, those published ethnographic accounts of sport in Japan tend to revolve around male-dominated sports such as baseball and Sumo. It is not that women have not or do not compete in sports, as the women's volleyball team who took home the gold in the 1964 Tokyo Olympics indicates, but rather that, even today, there has been little written on female participation in sport in Japan.
In this chapter, I illustrate that the enthusiastic import of aerobics and fitness clubs in the 1980s was paved by cultural assumptions about sexualized femininity, conceptions of "American" popular culture, demands for leisure time and space, and consumption practices that uniquely characterize contemporary Japan. The liberated sexuality symbolized in the leotard and choreography, the Western flavor of the clubs, the layout of the club as a hygienic and enclosed space, the financial resources required not only to sustain a club membership but to keep up with the equipment and clothing required, and the emphasis on exercise for exercise's sake are only a few of the qualities that distinguish aerobics from earlier styles of sport popularized in Japan.
As the latest import in a long history of popularized Western sports in Japan, such as baseball, golf, and professional wrestling, the Americanness of aerobics has been exaggerated and capitalized on. But I assert that in the fitness club, this exaggeration, in addition to reifying cross-cultural difference, serves to highlight local inconsistencies and discrepancies over definitions of body, health, and beauty. Whereas the consumption of foreign sport in Japan and elsewhere often has been used as a way to simultaneously imitate and best the competition, the Western flavor of the fitness club serves as a backdrop against which ideological debates between Japan and the West and within Japan play out. I also focus on the way the relatively brief history of aerobics in Japan was made possible by a national (indeed global) transformation in sporting metaphors, from an approach that connected athletic performance to militaristic tactics and patriotism to an emphasis that linked sport to conspicuous consumption, lifestyle choices, and beauty. Finally, I argue that the fitness craze, when considered historically against the reception of other women's sports in Japan, does indicate some strides toward the empowerment of female athletes and the demasculinization of sport in Japan, but that these advances are undercut by the continued sexualization and marginalization of women's sports.
Foreign Sport in Japan in the Twentieth Century
Scholarly and popular characterizations of sport in Japan typically divide individual sports into two opposing categories: traditional versus modern, Japanese versus foreign, and domestic versus international. Sumo, judo, karate, and the like are classified as homegrown Japanese sports, whereas baseball, soccer, and, most recently, aerobics are acknowledged to be foreign imports. In the case of Japan, to speak of a homegrown sport is to speak not only of origins but also of an ascribed national character. Sumo and judo did not simply originate in Japan: these sports are thought to embody an essence of Japan, in which stereotypes of "the Japanese"-as disciplined, passive, and cooperative-are associated with the sports themselves.
As Kelly synthesizes, "For reasons both domestic and international, the national stereotyping of 'sporting styles' is a pervasive and powerful rhetoric for reifying intersocietal differences (hence, the talk about U.S. baseball, Dominican baseball, Japanese baseball, etc.) while masking intrasocietal differences of gender, class, ethnicity, and region" (1998:108). Sport becomes a way to exaggerate domestic solidarity in the face of international antagonism and competition. At the same time, Guttmann and Thompson (2001) remind us that tradition is often reinvented as a means to reassert a threatened national identity in the face of Westernization. The fate of foreign sports in Japan offers a window onto the politics of globalization, tensions between patriotism and internationalism, and notions of the self vis-a-vis the other.
Although sport more generally has served as an arena in which international powers jockey for dominance, the reception of American sports in Japan, in particular, provides one of the most cogent examples for understanding the negotiation of international power and position. Professional wrestling, for example, illustrates how competition on the field or in the ring becomes symbolic of competition at the national level. Rikidouzan, the professional wrestler who popularized the sport in Japan in the 1950s and 1960s, was celebrated as a Japanese man who was able to hold his own against the mighty Americans. The years of humiliation in which Japan had been defeated, occupied, and finally democratized by the United States culminated in a triumphant series of battles in the wrestling ring. Rikidouzan, through his ingenious wrestling moves (most notably the deadly "Japanese karate chop") was able to level the playing field and restore national pride to the Japanese people (Igarashi 2000:122-129; A. Thompson 1986).
In much the same way, the avid consumption of baseball in Japan has led more than one sports commentator to remark that baseball "is more the national sport of Japan than it is of America" (quoted in Guttmann and Thompson 2001). Kelly (1998) has examined how baseball serves to level class, gender, and ethnic differences by uniting a potentially diversified team of players against a common opponent. There is no question that sports had served as a metaphor for enacting international tensions over land, power, and cultural domination. Does aerobics play into this debate, and where is the line drawn between imitation as the passive result of cultural imperialism and imitation as a form of agentive co-optation?
Domesticating the West?
The history of aerobics and fitness clubs in Japan and the United States is nearly parallel; the late 1970s and early 1980s roughly mark the starting point in both countries. Nonetheless, many have simply dismissed Japan's role as an equal participant and innovator in the fitness and aerobics boom. The characterization of Japanese popular culture as mere imitation of U.S. culture relies on a strict separation of the West and Japan, foreign and local, self and other. Imitation, or mimesis, suggests powerlessness and the dependency of the other on dominant discourse (see Taussig 1993). From this imperialist perspective, Japanese fitness clubs are evaluated on the basis of their success or failure in approximating the U.S. ideal. Is aerobics in Japan authentic? Scholars in cultural studies have criticized such questions, which rely on the strict dichotomization of Japan and the West, as essentialist, Orientalist, and increasingly inaccurate (Said 1993; Chow 1993; Rosaldo 1989).
In a postmodern and postcolonial context, where strict borders between countries are increasingly undefined and the flow of information traverses national boundaries, the original or self is no longer distinct from the imitation or other. Rather, self and other, or, in this case, the United States and Japan, are interdependent and defined in relation to one another. Benjamin illustrates how the modern, mechanical duplication of artwork has accelerated to such a degree that conceiving of the "original" is no longer relevant (1969:217-251). Rather than asking if aerobics in Japan is authentic, the question becomes: How can one give voice to cultural difference without dissolving into essentialist dichotomies or cultural relativism? Chow echoes this concern in her discussion of the inauthentic "native": "We are left with the question of how cultural difference can be imagined without being collapsed into the neutrality of a globalist technocracy (as the possibilities of mechanical reproduction imply) and without being frozen into the lifeless 'image' of the other" (1993:48).
The collection edited by Joseph Tobin entitled Re-made in Japan has been readily accepted as a useful way to conceptualize the interdependent process of cultural export and import in Japan. In his introduction, Tobin explains the analytical framework for the collection of essays: "I have chosen the word domestication as the central theme of this introduction to indicate a process that is active (unlike westernization, modernization, or postmodernism), morally neutral (unlike imitation or parasitism), and demystifying (there is nothing inherently strange, exotic, or uniquely Japanese going on here). Domesticate has a range of meanings including tame, civilize, naturalize, make familiar, bring into the home. This book argues that the Japanese are doing all of these things vis-a-vis the West" (1992a:4). In other words, the domestication of a foreign product, fashion, or phenomenon is the transformative process by which an import is made recognizably Japanese, while the lure of the foreign is still preserved (see, e.g., Creighton 1992). Is this notion of domestication useful for theorizing the way "American" fitness clubs and aerobics have been created and recreated in the Japanese context?
There is no doubt that the Americanness of fitness clubs and aerobics has been exploited, exaggerated, and even invented by management and members alike. Fitness club managers and aerobics instructors in Japan play up the "American" quality of aerobics and capitalize on the perceived delay of imported styles and products. The Americanness of aerobics and fitness in Japan is useful in luring curious new members into the club or lending credibility to a previously unknown form of exercise. Club managers play up the mystique surrounding American products and programs and purposely choose to stock their clubs with more expensive American-brand exercise bicycles, despite cheaper versions made in Taiwan. A well-known American name brand, such as Schwinn, is seen as important in marketing a certain image of fitness to the public as up-to-date, high-tech, and "cool." One manager chuckled over the fact that some clubs call Step Reebok classes furidai, the literal Japanese translation of "stepping bench." He claimed that "using Japanese in this context is ridiculous and outdated."
In addition, many Japanese claim that the United States serves as a test market for new products, machines, and techniques, enabling Japan to pick and choose from a variety of options. The aerobics director of Downtown Fitness explained, "As we are years behind America, we have the chance to look at the good things and the bad things.... After all, once you progress, you can't go backwards, right?" And, as I explained in the introduction, the fact that I was American was integral to my receiving permission to research in the fitness club. In fact, the very first clubs that opened in Japan played up the American flavor of aerobics and fitness by featuring instructors from Los Angeles and New York.
If we accept the theoretical model of domestication, a process that ultimately transforms an object, experience, or phenomenon into something that is more recognizably Japanese, the question becomes: What is Japanese? As I researched the Japanese fitness club in more detail, trying to understand emic conceptions of health, beauty, and the body, I was not surprised to discover that the more time I spent in the field, the more contradictions I observed. Local constructions of the mind-body experience, conceptions of discipline, and definitions of health were neither consistently Western nor wholly Japanese. As I demonstrate throughout this book, even in the relatively bounded space of the fitness club, I routinely observed practices such as the profound emphasis on thinness and the insistence on timetables and uniforms that reflected aspects of Japanese culture at the same time they were consistent with cultural institutions in the West.
Rather than examine the consumption of aerobics in Japan as yet another example of the way Western cultural imports have been domesticated and recreated in Japan, I choose to focus on the ideological tensions that not only polarize Japan and the United States but complicate emic conceptions of health, leisure, gender, and beauty. When we maintain that the fitness clubs are either American or Japanese (or even some combination of the two), we assume that American and Japanese cultures are consistent and uncontested belief systems that can be transposed onto an import. I assert that the myriad local Japanese cultural notions and assumptions often reveal more contradictions among one another than those observed between the imagined Japanese and Western monoliths. As this is a key theoretical point that is played out throughout the rest of the book, I do not go into the specifics here beyond asserting that conceptions of mind and body, discipline, and beauty are far more complicated than the theoretical model of a "Japanized" Western import leads us to believe. Although local contradictions and inconsistencies make it impossible to pin down precisely what is American and what is Japanese, this difficulty in no way prevents nations from creating imaginary national boundaries and a sense of patriotic solidarity through the use of sport.
The Militarization of Sport: Imagining Japan and the United States
To understand the reasons aerobics took off in Japan in the late twentieth century, we must first contextualize aerobics within the longer trajectory of sport and the construction of health and the body since the turn of the century. There is no question that the Japanese government used and continues to use sport and restrictions on the physical body as a way to create patriotism and a sense of nationhood. From the regulations on diet, institutionalization of the mentally and physically infirm, and nation-building calisthenics that characterized the 1930s and 1940s to the more recent projection of Japan as a clean and competitive nation through the display of Japanese athletes in the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, the physical body has served as an extension of the nation. In Igarashi's (2000) recent historical account of the transformation of bodily practices since the postwar period in Japan, he examines the role that sport and, more generally, bodily practices have played in the recasting of Japan's identity vis-a-vis the United States.
(Continues...)
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Table of Contents
Illustrations ixAcknowledgments xi
Introduction 1
1. The History of Aerobics in Japan: The Sexy American Import 33
2. The Discipline of Space 61
3. The Discipline of Bodies 85
4. Cigarettes and Aerobics: Frustrations with Gender Inequities in the Club 115
5. Young, Proportionate, Leggy, and Thin: The Ideal Female Body 142
6. Selfishly Skinny or Selflessly Starving 174
Conclusions 207
Notes 215
Bibliography 227
Index 243
What People are Saying About This
Laura Spielvogel views notions of the body and gender in contemporary Japanese popular culture from an interesting new angle. This highly original work offers an important complement to the Western-dominated literature on the body, sports, and fitness by describing the distinctly Japanese body culture that is a product of both regional traditions and transnational influences.
— author of Training the Body for China: Sports in the Moral Order of the People's Republic
Working Out in Japan is a theoretically sophisticated analysis informed by wide reading and well-grounded in the author's extensive experience as a fitness instructor.
— coauthor of Japanese Sports: A History