Joanna Bator

A Japanese Fan. A Comeback by Joanna Bator
Intelligent, well written and slightly nostalgic, it’s a collection of personal essays depicting different aspects of Japanese life. Bator spent two years in Japan working at a university in Tokyo doing research. Even though she never says exactly what kind of research it was, judging by the themes in the book it must have been connected to status of women in Japan. She deals with different aspects of Japanese life in the book, including such common topics as Japanese food, language and hanami (festivals celebrating tree blossoms) but she is mostly interested in the way women fare there. And it seems that even though the country is so thoroughly modern, there is a lot of gender inequality. It’s very difficult for a woman to occupy a research position at a university, women are still expected to stop working as they get married and have kids, not to mention that there is a completely different language girls and women use with which they address their male counterparts. They have to do it with much more reverence than vice versa. It seems that this constant infantilization of women found its expression in the whole trend of culture of girls trying to remain everlasting schoolgirls with their plush toys and Hello Kitty - embodiment of kawai- Japanese for 'cute' cultural phenomenon.
At the same time gender in the arts is traditionally blurred in Japan with men playing women in kabuki and women playing men playing women in Takarazuka- the latest theatrical craze, which in fact goes back to the kabuki roots when all roles were played by women. A higher degree of sexual freedom seems to exist there uninhibited and unencumbered with no nonsense approach to sex and abortion, as long as all appearances of social conventions are fulfilled. Japan seems to be a curious mixture of life constrained by custom on one hand and emancipated by technology and freedom on the other. A somewhat strange conglomerate for a westerner.… (mere)