Just "a bunch of softies and sissies"?: Masculinities in the Ryukyus

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Scuola Italiana di Studi sull'Asia Orientale ISEAS
Ecole Francaise d’Extreme-Orient EFEO

(European Consortium for Asian Field Study, ECAF)

KYOTO LECTURES 2011

Thursday, February 24th, 18:00h
co-hosted by the International Research Center (Institute for Research
in Humanities, Kyoto University)
This lecture will be held at the Institute for Research in Humanities
(IRH), Kyoto University (seminar room, 1st floor).


Just "a bunch of softies and sissies"?: Masculinities in the Ryukyus

Speaker: Erick Laurent

Discussant: Tanaka Masakazu

Dozens of studies have been devoted to the women of Okinawa (mainly concerning their role in religious phenomena). Strangely enough,
though, no serious research has yet examined Ryukyuan men, from a
historical, cultural or psychological standpoint. This absence
persists in spite of the fact that all the European travelers who
visited the islands from the 16th century onward found the Ryukyuan
men "special", that is, different from their Chinese or Japanese
counterparts. They invariably described these men as soft, feminine,
very accommodating, or as lazy, cowardly, stupid and dominated by
women. More recently, they have even been described as "a bunch of
softies and sissies" by a US military official in a famous e-mail to
Washington as exposed by a journalist. Masculinity, actively
constructed through conflicts and cultural influences, therefore seems
to be of particular interest in the Ryukyu islands, owing to their
geographical position and their complex relations to neighboring
cultures (mainly China and Japan) and/or colonial-like powers
(Satsuma, America). The research that will be presented, while at a
preliminary stage, intends to illustrate the articulation between
masculinity, ethnicity and colonialism in the Ryukyus through
historical and ethnographical data, and in present-day Okinawa, mainly
through fieldwork.

Erick Laurent is a zoologist (Liege University, Kyoto University) and
an anthropologist (EHESS Paris, Kyoto University). He teaches cultural
anthropology, gender, fieldwork and homosexual studies in Gifu Keizai
University. His previous work explored the concept of mushi in
Japanese culture (Les mushi dans la culture japonaise, 1998, Editions
du Septentrion ; Lexique des mushi et leurs caracteristiques dans la
culture japonaise, 2002, College de France), as well as male
homosexuality in Japan (Les chrysanthemes roses : homosexualites
masculines dans le Japon contemporain, 2011, Les Belles Lettres). He
has been conducting fieldwork on Ryukyuan masculinity in Okinawa for 2
years.


Tanaka Masakazu is professor at the Institute for Research in
Humanities, Kyoto University. He has done extensive research work in
the fields of social and cultural anthropology in South India, Sri
Lanka, Singapore and in Japan.

For more detailed directions:
http://www.zinbun.kyoto-u.ac.jp/access/access.htm


Italian School of East Asian Studies (ISEAS)
Ecole Francaise d’Extreme-Orient (EFEO)

Du même auteur, on peut lire en ligne l’article suivant: Érick Laurent, « Sacrés mushi ! Des rites consacrés aux insectes », Ateliers du LESC [En ligne] , 30 | 2006 , mis en ligne le 08 juin 2007. URL : http://ateliers.revues.org/84