The Resilience of Hegemonic Salaryman Masculinity : A comparison of three prominent masculinities

Abstract: It was the aim of this thesis to explore whether salaryman masculinity has lost its status as hegemonic form of masculinity to otaku masculinity or herbivore masculinity. The thesis makes use of the theoretical framework of hegemonic masculinity as first used by R.W. Connell. In order to assess changes in masculinity, sixteen semi-structured in-depth interviews have been conducted with students, both male and female, from Waseda University in Tokyo, Japan. The main findings of the research were that other than what a great deal of literature on hegemonic masculinity in Japan suggests, the salaryman lifestyle still serves as a powerful ideal in the lives of young students, and that otaku and herbivore masculinity have not taken over the hegemonic status of salaryman masculinity. The fact that it has been suggested otherwise was found to be mostly due to misguided understandings of what the terms otaku and ‘herbivore man’ mean, which in its turn is due to poor ethnological grounding and lack of an emic perspective.