Conclusions

This web page was designed to facilitate a presentation in the Gender Section of the International Association of Media and Communications Research (IAMCR) annual meetings in Barcelona, Spain, July 21-26, 2002
The panel in which this presentation was made concerned

"Mediations of Gender in Japan"
Conceptions of gender are produced, presented, filtered, distributed, modified and often influenced by a variety of media.
Among the media considered by the panelists, relative to Japan, included:

spaces

organizations

magazines

popular music
My contribution has been the medium of television advertising

	In this broad overview, I have reviewed a series of studies I have conducted As a unity, they provide a systematic, sustained portrait of what it is to be male, female and (to a lesser degree) a "third sex" in Japan I have shown how factors such as color and environmental elements such as water and land can work to mediate gender presentations
On this website one can also find a discussion of how particular "genderisms" are mediated in TV commercials. Included among these are: spatial relationships supra-ordinate and subordinate positioning ranking by social and occupational function the tendency to pose women in a diminished capacity in the presence of men a decided association of women with the emotional and tactile a separation of men from the family unit Such genderisms are ubiquitous and vary systematically between men and women

In the remainder of this presentation I have focussed on how, within the past few years, there has been an explosion in intimacy in Japanese commercials

Originally such intimacy was only foreign-centered
In the past few years, however, emotional expression has taken more overt forms among Japanese

There is suddenly more kissing and hugging going on

Still and all, sexuality tends to center around women

As a class, women tend to express emotions in physical form

Men are depicted as reluctant or unable to initiate the expression of emotions

men tend to rely on women to begin discussion about feelings or else the physical embodiment of emotional states

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In the remainder of this presentation I have focussed on how, within the past few years, there has been an explosion in intimacy in Japanese commercials

Originally such intimacy was only foreign-centered In the past few years, however, emotional expression has taken more overt forms among Japanese There is suddenly more kissing and hugging going on

Still and all, sexuality tends to center around women As a class, women tend to express emotions in physical form Men are depicted as reluctant or unable to initiate the expression of emotions men tend to rely on women to begin discussion about feelings or else the physical embodiment of emotional states