Into the arms of dolls

Japan's declining fertility rates, the 1990s financial crisis and the (maternal) comforts of the posthuman

Dados Bibliográficos

ID3977945
AutoresHeidi J Nast (0000-0003-1302-037X, DePaul University, autor correspondente)
Ano2017
Volume18
Fascículo6
Páginas758-785
Data de publicação2017-08-18
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessNão
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoSocial & Cultural Geography (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 1464-9365 • E-ISSN: 1470-1197
EditoraInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/14649365.2016.1228112
OpenAlexW2527146023
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas16
Referências citadas34

Japan's 1990s financial crisis proved psychically traumatic for many men, their trauma exacerbated by decades of falling fertility rates and related sociospatial attenuation. The crisis disrupted a range of heteronormative practices that had stabilized post-war gendered identities, especially marriage and stay-at-home motherhood. Some men consequently began seeking comfort in the company of youthful-looking, large-format, hyper-feminized commodity-dolls of which there are two psychical kinds: 'infantile' dolls used largely by precariously positioned young men for comfort and play; and expensive 'Oedipal' silicone sex dolls associated with Japanese salarymen whose jobs had become less secure. Both have worked emotionally for two reasons: dolls are evocative of the maternal – the basis of intersubjective (be) longing/Eros; and the dolls are owned, ownership allowing pleasure and control more securely to intertwine. Following the oil crisis and the de-industrialization that followed, men in racially and economically privileged terrain across the US and Europe turned to similar kinds of commodity dolls for comfort, if for differently sexed and racialized reasons. Japanese men's doll markets therefore speak to certain particular and general conditions of masculinity and geopolitical economic trauma

Aesthetics · Art · Commodity · Economics · Financial crisis · Masculinity · Pleasure · Posthuman · Sociology · Gender Studies · Gender, Feminism, and Media · History · LGBTQ Health, Identity, and Policy · Psychology · Reproductive Health and Technologies