Marketing the Eikaiwa Wonderland: Ideology, Akogare, and Gender Alterity in English Conversation School Advertising in Japan

Abstract

In Japan, women's opportunities, expectations, and demands regarding their working and family lives are changing rapidly. A highly educated cohort of female workers, between their early twenties and late thirties, is growing increasingly discontent with a labor market traditionally marked by rigid gender stratification. These women are also growing discontent with the complex of social and cultural practices that work to sustain a highly gender-segregated society (Ueno, 1994). These phenomena have been crosscut by rapid cultural internationalization, including a huge increase in the number of Japanese women traveling abroad as tourists (Hashimoto, 2000), in search of career opportunities or to study abroad (ryugaku), and those who pursue new lives through kokusai kekkon (international marriage) or through other relationships (Kelsky, 1994; 1996; Kobayashi, 2002). Related to these trends there has been a rapid growth in the private English conversation school (eikaiwa) industry in Japan since the 1970s (Joyce, 1996). Inside these eikaiwa, the participants are predominantly women and, in terms of skill and enthusiasm, these women are better students than their male counterparts (Tolbert, 2000). Younger women are pursuing English-language learning for three major reasons (Bailey, 1998; 2002). The first reason is to enhance their career prospects, either by working for one of the increasing number of foreign-owned companies in Japan

White Western male teachers constructing academic identities in Japanese higher education

“…As a consequence, from Joel's perspective, Western men were at times 'objectified' and 'sexualised by the women', and 'commodified' by the commercial interests of a conversation school industry intent on attracting female students (cf. Appleby 2013a; Bailey 2006Bailey , 2007Kubota 2011;Piller and Takahashi 2006). In this sense, the hegemonic masculinity favoured in the conversation schools was white, Western, and heterosexually desirable.…”

“…In their accounts, the discourses that the men articulated in relation to the conversation schools reflect those identified in the research literature (Bailey 2006;Kubota 2011). In this environment, talk of 'casual sex' with Japanese women was said to be 'omnipresent' (Aaron) among Western men.…”

“…These studies present an account of the desire expressed by some Japanese women for the West, for English language, and for Western men (Bailey 2006(Bailey , 2007Piller and Takahashi 2006;Takahashi 2013). These studies build on research that has traced an historical tradition of intimacy between Japanese women and Western men, in which the latter are idealised as Hollywood-handsome, 'ladies-first' gentlemen who can offer an alternative to the traditional gender regimes said to oppress women in Japan (Kelsky 2001;Ma 1996).…”

‘What if [your] boyfriend was a foreigner?’ Romance, gender, and second language learning in an edutainment context

“…As we have argued elsewhere (Jackson & Kennett, 2013), the construct of the native/non-native dichotomy represents an 'essentialised notion of national and ethnic identities of both home and foreign culture' (Breckenridge & Erling, 2011, p. 98) that has had a profound impact on, amongst other things, the hiring practices of eikaiwa English language schools [see, for example, Bailey (2006) or Breckenridge and Erling (2011, p. 85)], high schools, and tertiary institutions [see, for example, Hall (1998) or McVeigh (2002], as well as educational policies relating to language teaching more generally (Hashimoto, 2013). Rivers' (2011, p. 3, also cited in Jackson & Kennett, 2013 prototypical exemplar of the ideal native-speaking teacher in Japan effectively illustrates the most desirable characteristics of 'authentic' and 'pure' native-speaking teachers.…”

At the Intersection of Gender, Language, and Transnationalism

“…However, the process works differently for males and females. Male white English teachers are eroticized as sensitive Prince Charmings in marketing aimed at Japanese women (Bailey 2006(Bailey , 2007Kelsky 2001Kelsky , 2008Piller and Takahashi 2006 ;Takahashi forthcoming ). Female white English teachers, on the other hand, tend to be sexualized as exotic sex objects.…”