RESEARCH
In conducting my research, I reached a sample size of eight people. Therefore, I will be very cautious to not overgeneralize my findings from my interviews. This was a phenomenon seen in the BBC documentary Sex in Japan, which received much backlash from the Japanese because they felt that the documentary took a small subset of the population and framed it to represent the entire country. In my interviews, I kept my questions as objective and open ended as possible, to avoid framing a response. A mistake that naive researchers sometimes make is writing questions in such a way that people will be guided to respond with the answers that the researchers want to hear. Also, as a foreigner in Japan, I was cautious not to make any accusatory remarks or recommendations as to how Japan could improve. My goal throughout this project was to be as respectful and unbiased as possible while at the same time gathering as much data as I could.
For collecting my own primary data, I conducted eight interviews, seven with Waseda University students and one with Miki Mizuno, our site coordinator, an older woman, in an open question and answer format. I had initially considered doing a graded survey, to gather quantitative data, but after meeting with sociolinguist Amy Snyder-Ohta at the University of Washington, I decided to conduct my interviews more openly because I felt that it would be more informative. One of the most important things to be conscious of in my research is that human perception is very limited, and it's often hard to describe the rules of your native language to someone else, because a lot of it is subconscious. While I learned a lot from the interviews, it is important to remember that language is very subjective and varies tremendously across individuals. I was also limited by time and resources, so my sample size is quite small.
A more comprehensive study would reach men and women of all ages, socioeconomic classes, and locations in Japan. The seven students that I interviewed were all wealthy and educated enough to be going to college, indicating that they would have more refined, formal speech than someone who was uneducated. Also, I conducted all of my interviews in Tokyo, and speech patterns in urban areas tend to be more progressive than those in rural areas. Because I had a small sample size, the most important thing I had to be conscious of in my research was that these interviews are not indicative of the patterns of all Japanese speakers. That being said, the interviews were very intriguing sources of primary information from native Japanese speakers.
My interviews were guided by a loose set of questions, designed to open up dialogue to reveal different opinions toward the speech dichotomy and how it manifests itself in tangible examples. One of my interview questions was “What did your parents teach you about how you should speak/What did you teach your children about how they should speak?” A female Waseda student told me that “My parents taught me to use more precise, beautiful, non-slang, female-like words when I was a kid,” and Miki Mizuno admitted that she monitored her daughter's language more carefully than her son’s. She also told me that her own parents corrected her language, not strictly, but that “they would remind me if I spoke like a boy.” This shows how conscious Japanese women are of these speech differences and that they will be corrected if they use the wrong forms. There exists an expectation that women should speak a certain way, and if they don’t it is criticized. The female student went on to tell me that “Personally, I don’t prefer to use these words which vary between male and female” because “Japanese men prefer modest Japanese women who follow their (men’s) decisions, so these words are used by females to seem like good girls.” She called the speech dichotomy “old fashioned” and seemed irritated at its existence, claiming that it is a barrier for female authority because women are forced into this sphere of modesty and gentleness.This student was very aware of the speech binary that exists in Japanese, and very frustrated by it. This was the only student I spoke to who advocated boycotting certain speech patterns to promote social change. Other students were aware of the dichotomy and its reflections of Japanese gender dynamics, but did not seem interested in doing anything to change it. They also explained that female words don’t always imply female inferiority, but that they are simply so accepted and ingrained in society that people use them without considering the underlying social implications. To reiterate, some people explained that using different words across genders was just what people do, without really considering it sexist or a symbol of male superiority. Others viewed the dichotomy differently, and even advocated for radical change.
A second question that I asked was if perceptions of language are changing. A male Waseda student told me that it is becoming more common for women to use traditionally male words, but that it is still noticeable. It is not so much looked down upon anymore, he mentioned, but rather seen as a way for women to “assert authority.” This was interesting because it shows that females using male words is a very conscious, deliberate decision associated with power dynamics. Miki Mizuno explained that while it would never happen in her generation, it is common for younger girls to use the male form of the verb to eat, which is kuu (Mizuno 2019). The generational divide here is intriguing, because females using male forms was common among the Waseda students, but jarring and noticeable in Miki’s generation. It is hard to say if this is a phenomenon that is occurring in the younger generation across all of Japan, or if it is concentrated solely in urban universities which tend to have speech patterns that are much more progressive than the rest of the population. More comprehensive interview analysis could be conducted to further examine this.
I decided to further examine gender differences through the lens of the Japanese word for husband. The Japanese word for husband, shujin, literally translates to master. To gauge changing gender roles in language, I asked the students if they were to get married, what they would call their husbands or want to be called by their wives. Feminist and linguist Hideko Abe discusses the implication of the use of the word shujin, and writes that in recent years, some women have begun using the word otto, which literally translates to “someone that you are with.” The overwhelming response from the students was otto, which demonstrates significant progression as it shows equality among partners. In Abe’s 1995 paper, she wrote that she is comfortable referring to her own husband as Otto, but refers to other people’s husbands as Shujin because she is wants to avoid offense (Abe 1995). The fact that it could be offensive to use a word that implies equality between men and women reflects the deep seated misogyny present in Japan. Nearly all of the Waseda students choosing otto over shujin reflects incredible progression.