Gender de manabu Shakai-gaku (Learning Sociology Through Gender - 4th edition)

This book is an introductory text that, as the title suggests, provides a digestible commentary on gender from a sociological approach. The book has retained its popularity since its first edition in 1998, and this is the fourth edition of the book. The information is updated with each successive edition, but the main content is unchanged. It uses a sociological approach to show how gender is related to familiar everyday events and to the experiences people have across their life course, including those related to growing, studying, working, and raising a family.
 
In the reviewer’s view, the appeal of sociology lies in its ability to show how the experiences of everyday life and what we describe as “personal” experiences are related to social structures and social issues. The book, in its commentary on gender, makes use of this advantage of the sociological approach. Experiences that, at first, appear personal—such as indulging in fandom or fretting about finding a job—vary by gender and, as such, reflect gender structures.
 
That is not to say, however, that the individuals are entirely regulated by gender structures. Individuals have the ability to engage in practices that subvert gendered meanings and effects in an effort to change society. Take, for example, Chapter 3’s discussion on language. Japanese has distinctive “women’s language (onna kotoba)” and “men’s language (otoko kotoba),” including in personal pronouns; it is the norm to use gendered personal pronouns, with “boku” for boys and “watashi” for girls, such that if a schoolgirl were to use “boku,” the teacher would likely correct her. Research has revealed, however, that girls dislike using “watashi.” This may be because girls do not feel that the word expresses themselves. When girls avoid the use of the word, they are, arguably, distancing themselves from gender categorizations.
 
Such gendered pronouns exert a powerful influence in the men/women division and contribute to situations where individuals feel discomfort or disgust in their stipulated gender division or in the physical body they were born with. One such individual reported that they mitigated their bodily disgust by consciously adopting the use of “boku” as used by gender-neutral characters in anime and other media. As this example illustrates, while speech is regulated by gender structures, individuals can refrain from using gendered words, subvert the meaning of the words, or coin new words, in an attempt to distance themselves from prevailing gender roles or to transform the structure of such.
 
In summary, gender, as a force that divides people into men and women, is deeply embedded in everyday life. This book offers sociological insights for reappraising such a gendered everyday life.
 

(Written by TAKAYA Sachi, Associate Professor, Graduate School of Humanities and Sociology / 2025)