International Studies Seminar, Osaka University

Date: 9 June 2017 (Friday)

Time: 10:30-12:00

Venue: Academic Exchange Seminar Room, 3rd floor,

Building E, Osaka University Minoh Campus

http://www.osaka-u.ac.jp/en/access/index.html#minoh (Access map)

http://www.osaka-u.ac.jp/en/access/minoh/minoh.html (#3: Building E, 3rd floor)

Speaker:

Sam Timinsky (University of Wisconsin-Madison)

http://eastasia.history.wisc.edu/students-sam-timinsky.htm

Title:

Japanese Salarymen's Shifting Masculinities: Men's Cooking in Weekly Magazines

Abstract:

The salaryman has long been a symbol of the postwar Japanese middle-class male. While numerous studies have been produced about salarymen’s laboring life and their role in the family, little has been written about other aspects of salaryman culture. Starting the in 1970s, the publishing house Shōgakukan implored salarymen to take up new hobbies that would allow them to be creative and to express themselves as individuals. One of the hobbies which they supported the most was cooking. In this talk, I will examine the long running series “Otoko no ryori” in Weekly Post which began in 1977 as well as the cook books of the same name released by Shōgakukan starting in 1979. Through this series, I will show how media conglomerates like Shōgakukan helped to alter ideas of masculinity, male self-expression, and ideas of gendered activity in the home by spreading what they called practical knowledge to Japanese salarymen.

His seminar paper is available for participants only.