Marketing the eikaiwa wonderland: ideology, akogare, and gender … · 2018-12-11 · promotions key signification is performed by white-male and Japanese-female pairings. ... ELT

In Japan, women's opportunities, expectations, and demands regarding their workingand family lives are changing rapidly. A highly educated cohort of female workers,between their early twenties and late thirties, is growing increasingly discontent with alabor market traditionally marked by rigid gender stratification. These women are alsogrowing discontent with the complex of social and cultural practices that work tosustain a highly gender-segregated society (Ueno, 1994). These phenomena have beencrosscut by rapid cultural internationalization, including a huge increase in the numberof Japanese women traveling abroad as tourists (Hashimoto, 2000), in search of careeropportunities or to study abroad (ryugaku), and those who pursue new lives throughkokusai 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 Englishconversation school (eikaiwa) industry in Japan since the 1970s (Joyce, 1996). Insidethese eikaiwa, the participants are predominantly women and, in terms of skill andenthusiasm, 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 byworking for one of the increasing number of foreign-owned companies in Japan

Marketing the eikaiwa wonderland: ideology, akogare, andgender alterity in English conversation school advertisingin Japan

Keiron BaileyDepartment of Geography and Regional Development, Harvill Box 2, University of Arizona,Tucson, AZ 85721, USA; e-mail: [email protected] 12 May 2003; in revised form 28 June 2004

Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 2006, volume 24, pages 105 ^ 130

Abstract. The English conversation school (eikaiwa) industry in Japan has grown significantly over thepast twenty-five years. In this paper I perform a semiological analysis on a set of eikaiwa promotionalmaterials gathered in Tokyo and Kanagawa during the period 1998 ^ 2002. This analysis relies on aframework of social modalities (Rose, 2001 Visual Methodologies Sage, London) within which a set ofgendered Occidentalized longings (akogare) is discussed. Career development, establishment of rela-tionships with white males, and the potentials for foreign travel and study are highlighted by theseeikaiwa promotions. These factors are presented as radical gender alterities that work against the socialmodalities encountered in Japan. These modalities include a set of rigid life-course expectations and amode of social regulation that strongly directs women's professional and personal development. WhileEnglish-language learning and use contain potentials for epistemological challenge to ideologies ofgender, the eikaiwa visually emphasize the development of new selfhood (atarashii jibun). In thesepromotions key signification is performed by white-male and Japanese-female pairings. According toKelsky (2001Women on the Verge Duke University Press, Durham, NC), the white male is representedas an agent of personal transformation and liberation associated with the development of new selfhood.The white male embodies an Occidentalist fantasy that is associated with personal freedom, careerdevelopment, and individuation. Simultaneously, the promotions articulate with the valorization offemale agency in the broader Japanese cultural sphere, and with what Kelsky (1999, page 238) terms``emergent erotic discourses of new selfhood''. Where women are featured, in contrast to Westernpromotional materials, their purpose is to appeal to other women. This is accomplished by presentingfamous women in professionally iconic settings.When they do appear, Japanese males are infantalizedand marginalized. The eikaiwa are therefore marketed as wonderlands, rich with radical genderalterities, within which the akogare of female students can be realized.

DOI:10.1068/d418

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(Suzuki, 1996), or by moving to an English-speaking country (Kelsky, 2001a). Thistrend has been augmented by economic geographies of internationalization thatinvolve a reconfiguration of the Japanese labor market and that have created a demandfor more workers with English-language-skills and, simultaneously, by the continuingrecalcitrance of domestic social, cultural, and economic institutions to change in waysthat reflect the desires of these younger women. The second purpose is to engage intravel, either for vacation purposes or for ryugaku. The third motivation is to actualizewhat Kelsky (2001a, page 130) calls `̀ eroticized discourses of new selfhood'' by realizingromantic and/or sexual desires with Western males.

In this paper I examine the visual promotions of a range of eikaiwa. Througha semiological analysis I argue that these schools seek to create a social space, or adestination, that is designed to appeal to this younger generation of Japanese womenwith professional, relationship, marriage, or studying abroad aspirations. I argue thatthe eikaiwa market the activity of English conversation as an eroticized, consumptivepractice. Through a complex and heterodoxical engagement with a set of genderedideological formations, the eikaiwa seek to invoke desire, or yearning (akogare), onthe part of these female consumers. They do so by embedding this activity into alogonomic system in which the visual pairing of Japanese women with white malesinvokes a set of social and professional properties that are radically differentiated from ahegemonic array of gender-stratifying ideologies (Iwao, 1993). This metonymy relies on theproperties of the white male signifier being defined in relation to a historical genderedOccidentalist imaginary as an `̀ agent of women's professional, romantic and sexualliberation'' (Kelsky, 2001a, page 32). However, simultaneously, the symbolic power ofthe coupling of white male signifiers with Japanese women relies on compliance with apervasive and highly heteronormative ideology of complementary incompetence (Edwards,1989, page 123).

This logonomic system is supported by an array of nonvisual aspects including thegendered meaning ascribed to English-language use in modern Japan, in which its user ispositioned as cosmopolitan, mobile, and desirable. At the same time, the female agencydepicted by the eikaiwa articulates with a growing consciousness of female consumeragency, manifested in domestic Japanese product and services advertising and in othersocial and cultural formations (Frederick, 2000; Ivy, 1995). This trend valorizes andcelebrates female erotic subjectivity and positions the white male as an object ofconsumption for sophisticated, cosmopolitan female consumers. The eikaiwa promo-tions seek to recruit female clients by actualizing and deepening their akogare throughthe medium of English-language instruction and use and an associated symbology.

The particularities of eikaiwa marketing cannot be understood in abstraction; theyresonate across a multitude of socioeconomic and cultural dimensions. In this inves-tigation I seek to integrate economic geographies of internationalization, in this casethe development of an English-language instruction industry in Japan, with culturalgeographies of visual perceptions (for example, Rose, 2001) and cultural anthropologiessuch as Kelsky's eroticized discourses of new selfhood (2001a; 2001b) and McVeigh'spractices of simulation in education (2002) and ideologies of ladylike behavior (1997;2000).

Gendered participation in eikaiwaEikaiwa is a Japanese term that can be translated as `̀ the activity of English conversa-tion''. It is often used metonymically to mean an organization that teaches conversationalEnglish, particularly one of the big private English conversation schools. According to theELT News (2002) Internet site:

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`̀English conversation schools (popularly known as èikaiwa' schools) can be locatedin almost every town and city in Japan. They hire native English speakers to teachconversational English to children and adults. The size of these schools range fromsmall office buildings to national chains covering the whole of Japan.''There are many hundreds of eikaiwa establishments. The largest companies are

NOVA Intercultural Institute, GEOS, AEON, and ECC (the big four). Each of theseorganizations has an extensive network of schools located throughout Japan and anetwork of recruitment offices abroad. The corporate history of AEON serves asa typical example of the historical growth of one of the bigger English schools.Founded in 1973, it had 25 branches in 1984. By 1989 this had increased to 149, and by1997 there were 230 branches. At that point, AEON employed over 2000 personnel, ofwhom about 500 were foreigners (AEON, 1997). The other big schools exhibit similarpatterns of expansion over this period (ECC, 2004; NOVA, 2004).

During 1997 ^ 98, and again in 2002 ^ 03, I undertook participant observation andinterviewing in a range of eikaiwa in the Kanagawa prefecture and metropolitan Tokyoareas. My objectives were to describe and account for the highly gendered participationobserved. The majority of eikaiwa students, sometimes overwhelmingly, were female(AEON, 1997; TOZA Gaigo Gakuin, 1997, faxed memorandum, 1998, students' files).Further, a number of female students took English study much more seriously thantheir male counterparts (Tolbert, 2000).Whereas typical dialogs with professional malesoften focused on topics such as golf bookings in Hawai'i, or slang jokes, their femalecohorts often demanded coaching in resume writing, application letters, personal state-ments that would aid their ryugaku plans, and many other focused study-oriented orcareer-oriented tasks. They also requested homework more frequently and seemed to bemore enthusiastic to have their skills tested by means of the TOEIC (Test of English forInternational Communication) or TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language)examinations.(1)

But women's enthusiasm for eikaiwa was not limited to career-enhancement goals.It is clear that women are much more enthusiastic to use English in almost everycontext (Field, 2002; Lamphier, 1998). It seemed, in some way, to have more meaningfor them than for their male cohort. Moreover, under almost all circumstances out-side the eikaiwa, Japanese women seemed more at ease when using English to talkwith foreigners (Hamabata, 1990). Various ethnographers have drawn attention to theepistemological potentials of English language to reconfigure Japanese social practices(for example, Bestor, 1989, pages 215 ^ 216), and Japanese studies literature, includinganthropological works (Fujimura-Fanselow, 1995, page 136) and vernacular writings(for example, Hattori, 1999; Shoji, 1998), highlights the strongly gendered propertiesof this epistemological challenge.

The gendered powers of English language in JapanGiven this context my aim is to examine the ways in which eikaiwa market theirproduct, and to understand how these visual and textual strategies induce, contributeto, reflect, and reproduce the gendered participation described. This analysis is basedon a notion of textual representation in which meaning is never given a priori. Textualrepresentations, including visual ones, must instead be analyzed with respect to theirspecific social context before meaning can be ascribed to them (Rose, 2001). Buildingthis social context is not straightforward. It involves negotiating intersubjectivelybetween the position of the observer and the productions under review.(1) Both exams are devised and administered by the Educational Testing Service (ETS, 2002a;2002b). The TOEIC exam tests business communication skills and the TOEFL exam is oftenrequired for study abroad.

Marketing the eikaiwa wonderland 107

To begin with, the gendered meaning of English-language learning in modernJapan must be evaluated. To understand the complex social, economic, and culturalcontext in which English-language learning and use enjoy their specific, genderedmeanings, it is necessary to establish briefly what they are perceived to work against.This can be achieved through a mode of social regulation (MSR) framework (Harvey,1989; Humphrys, 1995; Itoh, 1995; Peck and Miyamachi, 1995).

The post-Meiji MSR has been built on a framework of gendered ideologies thatdefine women's places in society at various stages throughout the life course (Kameda,1995; Osawa, 1994). These include ryosai kenbo, or `good wife, wise mother' (Madge,2000); eikyuu shushoku, or `lifetime employment' in the home for the housewife(Iwao, 1993); and kyouiku mama, or `education mother', ensuring that mothers performthe socially necessary task of attending to their children's education (Allison, 1996;Dickensheets, 1996; Pasquale and Edwards, 1999). In the case of Japan's labor market,aspects of gender stratification have been exhaustively documented (Brinton, 1993) andevaluated by participant observation (Lam, 1992; Ogasawara, 1998; Roberts, 1994).The classic MSR dictates that women occupy short-term, lower-skill `office ladies' 'posts, denying them responsibility, vertical mobility, and professional development incorporations (Kodera, 1994).

However, the cultural roots of ideologies of gender performance in Japan aremanifold and complex and are beholden to more than the functioning of state ^corporatist and nationalist institutions and projects (Iwao, 1993; Lebra, 1984).Although there are a range of these ideologies, with multiple and sometimes contra-dictory compulsions, the outcome is that a behavioral, spatial gender-performativeenvelope is established for both men and women (Coonan, 2000). Traditionally, thefeminine domain has been geolinguistically coded as uchi ni, or inside the home(Kondo, 1990; Lebra, 1976), and formal-sector working participation is restricted toflexible, relatively low-status, low-pay jobs such as office ladies' posts (Ogasawara,1998) or department store clerks (Lam, 1992). In recent years, in tune with the culturalturn in the social sciences, the dialectical, and often unstable, relationship betweenideologies of gender and everyday cultural practices has been examined through avariety of case studies of: consumer preferences (Tobin, 1992); wearing of the kimono(Goldstein-Gidoni, 1999); how various levels of schooling inculcate gender-performativepractices (McVeigh, 1997; Takahashi, 1994); and the symbolic performative ideologiespresented visually and textually in modern women's magazines (Frederick, 2000).

One aspect of gendered ideology is found in the form and character of language.Japanese possesses a highly formalized mode called keigo. But even in more regularspeech forms, at all times feminine and masculine forms of address are expected(Inoue, 2002). Kanji morphology has been criticized by Shoji (1998) for the way inwhich the visual representations of the characters, and their juxtaposition and etymol-ogy, serve to remind women of their status and place in society. Against this context,English language is seen by women as an activity that opens a space of gender-performative action within professional, social, and popular cultural spheres (Hastings,1993; Seat, 2000). For example, Kelsky (2001a, page 100) notes that `̀ English and otherforeign languages are perceived as the single most indispensable `weapon' (buki ) inwomen's battle for advancement in the business world.'' But English-language use isabout much more than opening new workplace opportunities for younger Japanesewomen: it is deeply imbricated in gender-performative alterity. It is about finding newlife spaces, about defining new modes and ways of living. As Bestor's example shows,English-language use has potentials for both men and women. However, given thehistorical context replete with many of the ideologies which younger women findunacceptable, its potentials are particularly powerful and alluring for women. In being

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used deliberatively to open these spacesösometimes in strategic ways that challengethe MSR, sometimes in personal struggles against specific forms of patriarchal domi-nationöEnglish language powers an epistemological challenge to the structures thatshape the bounded performativity of gender in Japan. As Stanlaw (2000, page 99)notes in his examination of the music of popular young female artists Seiko Matsuda,Yuki, and Yuming:

`̀The use of English helps to endow female-created Japanese music with new alter-natives and potentials for women, and these, through the popularity of the musicand the artists, in turn give encouragement to Japanese women who are pioneeringnew roles and ways of living and being in society.''In the modern Japanese social context the meaning of English-language learning is

strongly gendered. For men, where it is necessary, it functions as a communicationtool, whereas for women it opens a gateway to Stanlaw's `̀ new ... ways of living andbeing'': that is, atarashii jibun or transformed selfhood. As Kelsky (2001a, page 87)says:

`̀ the new self (atarashii jibun) is based on a broad and deep shift of allegiancefrom what women describe as insular and outdated Japanese values to what theycharacterize as an expansive, liberating international space of free and unfetteredself-expression, personal discovery and romantic freedom.''

This moment of empowerment, or birth of the new self, is often coupled explicitly withEnglish language. According to one Japanese feminist scholar, `̀ With English I felt thatI was entering another realm, a place of possibility, an oasis'' (Koike, 2000, page 72).For such women, use of English can be seen as a highly politicized maneuver thatchallenges, undermines, and openly rejects many of the gender-rectifying ideologies ofthe MSR. In sum, in modern Japan the use of English is a fashionable, cosmopolitan,and progressive practice that is seen and understood clearly by women in particular tobe socially, professionally, and personally empowering. Also, for women, it possesses adimension that resonates with another modern cultural transformation: that is, it hasbecome an eroticized practice.

Eroticized discourses of new selfhoodRecently eroticized discourses of `new selfhood' have come to permeate Japanesepopular culture produced by, aimed at, and consumed by women (Sakamoto, 1999).For example, Rosenberger (1996, page 22) analyzed a number of Japanese women'smagazines and induced several `ìdeal characteristics'' from their `àccompanyingimages'': namely, `̀ international sophistication, sexual attractiveness (internationaland domestic), and the latest fashion consumption.'' Ivy (1995) examined eroticizeddiscourses of new female selfhood used in the Japan Railways Discover Japan railcampaign, in which ``young women [are] travelers/consumers ... for whom travelpromises a new self through the means of erotic possibility'' (page 39). Kelsky (1994;1996; 1999) has described the subjectivity of a cohort of Japanese women who travel insearch of transnational romance and sexual adventure. She also details an extensivelitany of very popular Japanese women's writings that valorize this form of femaleagency (Kelsky, 2001a, pages 129 ^ 130).

The eikaiwa adverts are marketing a product that embodies these ìdeal character-istics' of Japanese female consumer lifestyle. They are brought together through themedium of English-language training, either through ryugaku or inside the eikaiwa.However, Occidentalist tropes of whiteness are bolstered and crosscut, and occasion-ally challenged, by other representative ideologies of gender, youth, and so on thatexist in other Japanese productions (Ivy, 1988).


In their extensive content analysis of gender portrayal in Japanese media, Ford et al(1998) found that:

`̀ although some indigenous gender stereotyping was evident, several traits previouslyassociated with Japanese women (devoted, obliging, rattle-brained, superstitious, thor-ough) were associated with men. Also, men were not linked with certain stereotypicalmale traits (autocratic, blustery, forgiving, generous, severe)'' (page 113).

In terms of the relationship between these productions and what they term `̀ Westerngender portrayals'' (page 120) they found two key differences. The first is the role ofwomen as active consumers who are engaged with (marketing and buying) high-pricedcommodities and services. This reflects the economic structure of household financesunder the prevailing MSR in which young single women who live at home and have noinvestment in the corporate social structure have more disposable income than anyother group in Japan (Yamada, 1999). The second difference lies in the great degree ofcontrol that housewives customarily exert over the family budgets. Thus, youngerwomen are economically better positioned than men to consume these products.

Regarding the performative aspects of the people in these portrayals, according toFord et al (1998, page 121) `̀ What is particularly interesting is that male central figureswere depicted more often as decorative than their female counterparts, a counter-stereotypical portrayal.'' From this it seems that females are accorded more agencythan males in Japanese productions, something which is not predicted by Ford et al's`stereotypical' (and possibly Orientalist) norm of Western gender balance. This c̀ounter-stereotypical' aspect is visible in the eikaiwa productions, where the majority of womenare the active agents and males (both Western and Japanese) perform `decorative' roles(Dallmann, 2001). Whereas Western women are also sometimes shown in decorativeroles, Japanese women are almost never shown in this mode in eikaiwa advertisements.

AkogareAkogare (or `longing for', `idealization') entails a yearning for that which is unattainable.According to Kelsky (2001a, page 26):

`̀What is suggestive about akogare is that it is a rather precise gloss, in an idiomaticregister, of the term `desire' in Lacanian usage, in which the fetish substitutes forthe thing that is desired but is impossible to attain.''

In simplified terms these desires encapsulate a set of elusive, phantasmagoric notionssuch as freedom from ideologies of giri (duty) and their policing mechanisms of seken,or the institutionalized surveillant gaze of Japanese society (McVeigh, 2002, page 103);increased social mobility; excitement; openness; change; space; power; and manyothers.

Akogare is embedded in the acquisition and practice of English language. In theeikaiwa world, akogare is developed out of the overlay of a set of Occidentalistimaginaries on the prevailing ideologies that shape women's social spheres and instan-tiate the variegated social and professional stratifications. Akogare is imbricated inatarashii jibun, and English language is both the mechanism and the objective. Akogareis desire: in this case it is women's desire for power, work, and the consumption of anidealized masculinity embodied in white English-speaking males.

The social construction of whiteness, masculinity, and akogareA dominant signifier of eikaiwa advertising is an Occidentalist whiteness and/ormasculinity, often embodied in the gaijin (foreign) instructor, situated in relation tothe young Japanese female, as embodied by the prototypical eikaiwa student. As Kelsky(2001a, page 145) notes:

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`̀whiteness functions in Japan as the transparent and free-floating signifier ofupward mobility and assimilation in `world culture:' it is the primary sign of themodern, the universal subject, the c̀itizen of the world'.''

The gendering of this whiteness is crucial to eikaiwa advertising. By himself the whitemale signifier is abstracted.What is imperative is the coupling of his image in romanticor sexualized proximity with a Japanese female. As Hattori (1999) notes, there is adeep-rooted heteronormativity layered into the classic postwar MSR in Japan. Accord-ing to Edwards's (1989, page 123) theory of complementary incompetence: `̀As maleand female, individuals are incomplete in their competencies and thus compelledto marry.'' Thus, under conditions of compulsory heteronormativity and marriageubiquity (Raymo, 1998; 2000), depicting white males and Japanese women togetherplays on the heteronormativity of the ideologies that underpin the MSR. While thewhite male symbolizes rejection of the gender stratifications that encode the workplace,his presence nevertheless reminds viewers of the need to conform to the heterosexualpartnership or marriage norm.

But why not deploy Japanese or Asian men? Moreover, what are the specific codesattached to the white male in this gendered, Occidentalized Japanese imaginary?

`̀White men appear in women's media as sensitive, refined and without sexism _,They are redisu fastu jentoruman (ladies-first gentlemen) _ . They figure, as sensitive(yasashii ) husbands, as the heroes in the mythos of kokusai kekkon (internationalmarriage), and, as egalitarian employers, in the narratives of cosmopolitan careers''(Kelsky, 2001b, page 421).

The white male has been encoded in these ways by the historical processes of Orien-talism and its countermovement of Occidentalism at work in Japan. The mythos ofwhite masculinity is reproduced by imagery in all forms of popular consumer cultureand through ongoing and socially codependent processes of Orientalism on the part ofinstructors and self-Orientalism on the part of eikaiwa students (Bailey, 2002; Kelsky,2001a; McVeigh, 2002).

It is important to explain how the trope of white masculinity performs its metonymicduties. The signifier of white masculinity conflates an eroticized akogare with a class-boundconsumption ideology and an Occidentalized notion of social mobility. Figure 1 (over),which was drawn by one of Kelsky's Japanese informants (Kelsky, 2001a, page 152), showsa hierarchy of desire. In this hierarchy of desire the `Western' man is positioned at the topof this ladder as the only male who matches the àdvanced' Japanese woman. Only `top'Japanese men are good enough even for àverage' Japanese women, and there is no positionfor an àverage' Japanese man. The adjectives used to describe all other Japanese men arepejorative: c̀onservative', `ignorant', and `lazy' men who are `rejected' by Japanese womenand who are `forced' to `turn to SE Asian women'. Although this hierarchy is clearlysuffused with an ethnocentric and nationalist superiority complex on the part of Kelsky'sinformant(s), it does provide some measure of explanation for the status and socialpositioning of Western men and Japanese women. In this informants' eyes, as the inter-view makes clear, Western means `English speaking' and does not correspond preciselywith gaijin, or foreign. English-language skill is necessary to communicate with thisidealized Western male and so English-language skill becomes a pathway to realize one'sakogare. A corollary of this framework is the assumption that to some extent, even in theabsence of Western males exhibiting these mythical characteristics, a Japanese woman'sown characteristics of `sophistication', àttraction', and `talent' can be measured by herEnglish-language skills (Clay, 1997). Class status is conferred both by facility in Englishand through establishing a relationship with the white male, the signifier of upwardmobility. This understanding is important in evaluating the visual marketing strategy of


the eikaiwa, which is intended to `̀deceive us into thinking that we can choose our socialposition through what we consume'' (Rose, 2001, page 92).

In her analysis of a wide range of television and print advertisements Kelsky(2001a, page 132) argues that:

`̀ the white man is packaged and sold as a romantic hero in Japan and globally, by bothdomestic and multinational corporations, in ways that make him ìmaginable' as theagent of women's professional, romantic and sexual liberation.''

Because of his pervasive presence and specific pairing with Japanese women in eikaiwaadvertisements, in conjunction with the findings of the eikaiwa ethnography, thisunavoidably leads towards a predominantly eroticized interpretation and framing ofthe presence of white men in the eikaiwa advertisements. Based on the comments of myinformants, together with the eikaiwa advertisements, this eroticized discourse of newselfhood functions as a master trope. Other tropes, such as manga-fication (cartooniza-tion) of foreign peoples and places, are not absent, but they operate complementary to,and sometimes within, the broader framework. Moreover, this master trope shapes themeaning of the visual absences discussed later. Those who have studied and workedinside the eikaiwaöthat is, the students, staff, and instructorsöstrongly believe thatthis is the guiding framework. As my informant pool was drawn from this sample theweight of my informants' interpretations shapes the piece. However, the weight of thisimpression depends on the viewer's positionality: over the six years that I have beenconducting this research and presenting the results, I have noticed that the degree towhich readers privilege the weight of the eroticized selfhood discourse in their inter-pretations is inversely proportional to their physical and social distance from eikaiwa.It should also be noted that other Japanese advertising that targets young womenreferences, celebrates, and exploits this eroticized female subjectivity and that theeikaiwa promotions are in fact mild representatives of this genre (as discussed in pressarticles such as Japan Times 1992; 2004).

In many of these eikaiwa marketing campaigns atarashii jibun, or `new selfhood', isconflated with èrotic possibility' and displaced from domestic terrain into the Occi-dentalized West. These productions further deepen the embedded relationship between

More sophisticated and more attractive

Japanese men Japanese women

`Top'Japanesemen whoare `goodenough'forJapanesewomen.

Àverage'Japanesewomen whocan besatisfiedwith aJapaneseman.

Sophisticated, attractive,and talented (àdvanced')Japanese women who willbe satisfied only with aWestern man.

Less sophisticated and less attractive

Conservative,ignorant, and lazyJapanese men whoare rejected byJapanese womenand forced to turnto Southeast Asianwomen.

Figure 1. Scale of sophistication and attractiveness (Kelsky, 2001a, page 153).

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travel, self-realization, and erotic possibility that lies at the heart of many eikaiwapromotions. The key difference between eikaiwa advertisements and these others,though, is the extent to which the promised discovery of new selfhood is bound upin an Occidentalist West through the practice and customs of mythicized English-language learning and how these depend on the presence of the white male signifier.Again, it is not possible to separate the career-improvement motivation from the eroticpotentials and the traveling possibilities opened up by this English-language training.The conflation of these ideals, and their mobilization in visual promotions through acompounded akogare, is key to much eikaiwa marketing strategy.

The major focus is on the images used by the big four eikaiwa. Reliable figures foreikaiwa market share are not readily available, although it is believed that somewherebetween 70% (accjjournal 2004) and 95% (AEON, 2004; NOVA, 2004; TEFL.com,2004) of all private English-language students in Japan attend the big four. Seven ofthe nine selected adverts in this paper are big four productions, and the other two areproducts of GABA, a medium-sized eikaiwa with twenty-one schools (GABA, 2004),and of ICC, a much more modest enterprise with eleven small locations. These ads arerepresentative of the eikaiwa promotion market in terms of both the ratio of theirmarket share to total eikaiwa sector size and the cross-section of school sizes.

Not all eikaiwa deploy advertising saturated with forms of gendered and eroticizedOccidentalist akogare to entice students. Berlitz, for example, did not. However, Berlitzhad the reputation of being a serious businessman's English school. Unlike othereikaiwa, Berlitz is a foreign transplant. Physically, it had relatively few branches, allof which were located in Tokyo's business districts. Moreover, as the majority ofstudents were salarymen, Berlitz did not conform to the eikaiwa norm in terms of itsgender mix. Berlitz also displayed less visual footprint than other eikaiwa, for example,it had far fewer ads on rail networks and on television. Berlitz, in short, was anatypical eikaiwa. Other English schools that provide contract lessons for companyclasses did not advertise at all, and used their existing connections to secure newbusiness. Therefore, the visual promotion of eikaiwa is heavily biased towards themass-market schools that rely primarily on gendered akogare to sell their product.

It is also evident that the tenor of these advertisements has changed since theheyday of this form of kokusaika (internationalism) in the early 1990s. With economicinvolution underway in Japan, and an increasing introversion beginning to take hold inthe popular imagination, the jubilant, flagrant sexuality of the early 1990s eikaiwa adshas been attenuated to a still strong, but more subtly rendered, eroticized imagery.(2)

MethodologyThese images were gathered during my fieldwork in the Kanagawa and Tokyo Bayareas. Most were placed inside the rail cars of the major networks, although a few werealso visible on billboards positioned near the rail lines or in stations. Because of theenormous number of people who commute by train in urban Japan (Cybriwsky, 1991),these locations are optimal for maximum viewing exposure. The advertisements weresufficiently well known to be topics of conversation among Japanese people. On theoccasions when I asked Japanese informants about these productions, almost everyonehad seen them, and those few who had not had heard about them. I found nobody who

(2) In the early 1990s one famous eikaiwa promotional campaign featured the tag line `Ì will rabuyou''. This promotion featured a Japanese female student reciting the line to a white male instruc-tor. This played on a stereotypically self-Orientalist rendering of Japanese pronunciation of `love':the double entendre here meaning both the romantic Ì will love you' (rabu meaning `love') and themore sexualized invitation in English Ì will rub you'. This rather crude level of sexualization ismissing from more recent eikaiwa promotions.


did not know about the eikaiwa advertising. Therefore it is reasonable to conclude thatthese selected productions represent a meaningful engagement with a form of massvisual culture that is widely viewed and understood.

In each case the methodology followed was to request an interview with theinformant and then to ask informants if they were willing to evaluate some of thesepromotions. Informants were selected by asking eikaiwa students and instructorswhether they were prepared to answer some questions about the images. This grouptotaled seventeen people and it included ten former or current eikaiwa students andseven gaijin, or foreign, instructors all of whom had worked in eikaiwa previously.Seven of the students were female and three were male. Without explaining my ownunderstanding, or leading the informants, I showed the informants the advertisementsone by one and asked them to explain who the advertisements were aimed at, and whatmade them think so. I asked the informants to pay particular attention to elementsidentified as significant, such as number, age, gender, race, and placement of people, thetype of activities that they were undertaking, and the props and settings shown (Rose,2001, pages 75 ^ 77). In the interests of respecting the informants' time constraints, theseinterviews did not last longer than two hours. In a few cases, this meant only a smallnumber of images were discussed. In several cases, after answering these questions, theinformants asked me what I thought about these issues and a discussion commenced.

``What's next? '' White males in eikaiwa promotionFigure 2 is a recent ECC advertisement, featuring a smiling young Japanese woman onthe left and a gaijin male instructor on the right.While the central promotion is ECC'sspring English-language course, there are implications in the arrow containing thephrase `̀ What's next?'' in English. This arrow is pointed directly at two images. Thecloser one is a photograph of a professionally attired woman walking alone through ahallway.(3) On the far side of the ad, directly aligned with the arrow, is the gaijin

Figure 2. ECC promotion, spring 2002. A colour version of this and subsequent figures can beviewed on the E&P website, at http://www.envplan.com/misc/d418/.(3) This woman is in fact Australian actress Nicole Kidman shown starring in a movie calledThe Others.

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http://www.envplan.com/misc/d418/

English instructor. Although his garb is professional and he is wearing spectacles, hisprofessorial demeanor is contradicted by his expression and his youth. He announces,with perhaps a hint of double entendre, `̀ My lesson plan!''(4) The relative size andposition of the office lady and the instructor emphasizes the office lady's capacity forchoice, telling viewers that the office lady is in control and makes decisions, while theEnglish instructor performs in whatever role she wishes. He is thus positioned as anobject of consumption for this office lady. The implication here is that he is `̀ What'snext?'' for the office lady. The text in the box on the right underneath reads `̀ From now,meet together''.

This advertisement was a talking point among many Japanese at the time. Oneinterviewee told me that the Japanese woman shown on the left is a famous TV actressand personality named Hikaru Nishida. Why Hikaru Nishida? According to McVeigh(2000, page 175):

`̀Many young women attempt to imitate the appearance of pop singer AmuroNamie who, it is said, is not considered `beautiful' but rather `homely' (or justcute). Thus, many young women regard Amuro as someone they c̀an emulate'.''

Several informants noted that, unlike many of the younger (under twenty years old)models in Japan's teen-focused popular visual culture, Nishida exhibits a more `mature'and `restrained' style. In particular, her unaltered and unstyled black hair and unos-tentatious clothing mark her as a respectable office lady, someone who is beyondteenage fads. Nishida's sober and professional demeanor speak to `everywoman': thatis, office ladies whose ages range from early-twenties to mid-thirties.(5) Moreover,through her English skills and mobility in the Occidentalized West, she had developedwhat was perceived as a powerful career (Manase Productions, 2003). Nishida is thusshown as someone who can be emulated, whose passage to success and fame has beenwon through the development of her personal talents and in particular through exploi-tation of her English-language skills. However, given an understanding of men's andwomen's roles based on the ideology of complementary incompetence (Edwards, 1989)she was still regarded in Japan as incomplete. Thus, ECC is suggesting that by findingan idealized gaijin male she has in fact completed herself: she is achieving the `holytrinity' of career success, foreign residency, and a relationship with a Western male.ECC's tutelage is positioned as central to this life-completing event. Exactly why shewould need to take ECC's lessons if she already speaks good enough English to sustaina professional career in an English-speaking country is not elucidated.

The next month ECC followed with the ad shown in figure 3 (over). As before, thecentral character is Nishida. Here she is placed in juxtaposition with a smiling younggaijin male. It is very clear that romance is in the air. Two of the idealized, Occiden-talized goals of developing English-language skills (establishing relationships withWestern men, and traveling to an exotic location) are rendered as explicitly as possible.The blue sky shown in this location represents any one of the popular Pacific islandresort destinations where English is spoken (for example, Hawai'i, Guam, Fiji). Thegaijin male could be a resident of this location or another tourist, or he could of coursebe the English instructor from her ECC classroom. His identity is deliberately leftvague by presenting only his face and not showing any of his clothing.

(4) In most eikaiwa the instructor is not given much latitude to set the lesson content: a set textmust be followed, and in some instances a set script even specifies how many minutes are spent onthe `̀ introduction'', `̀ grammar target'', `̀ expansion drills'', and so on. Thus, ECC's promise that theinstructor can deliver `̀ my lesson plan'' is not often borne out, at least for students with lower-levelor intermediate English skills.(5) Everywoman characteristics are also appreciated by men (compare Allison, 1994, page 63).


One young female informant noted that the choice of phrasing in the picture on theleft emphasizes English language as a medium of romantic and/or erotic attraction. Thetext says `̀ English conversation diet. Your limit is when?'' Thus, English conversation isa `diet': as she told me, both the activities of English conversation and dieting work toimprove the attraction of female clients for the mythical gaijin male pictured. The choiceof the word `limit' is also strategic in that it suggests a plan. Given the juxtaposition ofthis text with the image shown, my informants insisted that the `limit' was romanticand/or sexual involvement with aWestern man. The ad offered a challenge for the femaleviewers: how far dare you go? Moreover, through the continuation of the `̀ What's next?''tag line, a connection is being invoked with the production from the previous month, andpresumably with the one for the next month too. ECC's promotion, therefore, became aglacial, freeze-frame soap opera played out in the advertising spaces of rail carriages.

This ad also features a blonde female instructor in the very small classroomdiorama on the immediate right. And there is another female instructor pictured atthe top right. Although this might seem, potentially at least, to provide a female imageof the West for the consumption of a male audience, this was not the interpretationoffered by any of the informants. They claimed that her youth, demeanor, size, andlocation all positioned her in a supporting role to the central characters pictured to theleft. Her physical isolation and manga-fied presentation diminish her claim to authority.Moreover, all the informants found her presentation nonsexual.

Although inWestern contexts there is also the possibility that ads such as this couldappeal to males with foreign-based careerist plans, this is not a preferred reading.My informants told me that Japanese men would not desire Nishida's career path,preferring instead to work in Japan, for Japanese companies. In their eyes, Japanesemen do not share the desires that ECC's ad seeks to invoke in the audience.

Figure 3. ECC promotion, spring 2002.

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GABA's monochromatic ad (figure 4), featuring a young Japanese woman wearinga serious expression manacled to a tall and equally serious young English teacher,enjoins the reader to `̀ color your life!'' I believed that this production was moreenigmatic. On the surface, it appears that nobody is having much fun. This begs thequestion of why not, suggesting that the answer is to be found in the power of Englishlanguage to `̀ color your life!'' The implication is offered that English language willbreak the chains, or unlock the handcuffs that restrain both participants. As theEnglish instructor is not in need of these lessons, the target audience is clear.

However, GABA's ad was regarded by one informant as the most sexualized of allthe ads she saw. She asserted that it was aimed specifically at office ladies. Sheexamined critically the positioning and location of the people in the picture, notingthat, although both people are standing still and looking directly at the camera, thehandcuff is being `led' by the woman and not by the gaijin instructor. Examining theirexpressions, she noted that the woman's is more `knowing' and ìn control' while theman's smile is less well developed. To my informant this meant that the Japanesewoman was using the handcuffs to bind the Western instructor to her purpose. Shealso felt that the use of handcuffs referenced sexual practices that saturate Japanesemanga (comic books) and other male-oriented and sexualized popular culture produc-tions, but that in contrast to classic manga discourse (Funabashi, 1995, page 257) thewoman is the active agent: GABA visually promises the female client control, if notoutright domination, over the bodies of the male gaijin instructors.

The primary verbal signifiers identified by my informants were the kanji phrase`hitori jime' (ònly for you', connoting an exclusive òwnership' idea) running verticallythrough the picture, and the katakana phrase `man-tsu-man' (man-to-man). This phrasehas implications above and beyond the word `private'. In the eikaiwa industry the usual

Figure 4. GABA promotion, spring 2002.


phrase to indicate one instructor working with one student is `private'. NOVA andGABA, on the other hand, use `man-tsu-man'. Several informants told me that`man-tsu-man' connotes `with you only' or `for you only'. One asserted that, althoughin non-Japanese English the word `private' would carry more weight, this was not herpreferred interpretation. Further, she observed that here this language contains a subtleconnotation of being `available for personal purposes'.

Given my informants' readings it seems that the GABA ad was much more sex-ualized than it had initially appeared. I did not see these aspects in this picture, in partbecause I was working from an assumption that if such a handcuffing was shown, witha tall Western male and a much smaller Asian woman, it would be that the westernmale was in control. My interpretation was mirrored by those of several Westerneikaiwa instructors. But, when I raised this in response to my Japanese informants'interpretations about who was in control, they rejected this argument. According toseveral of them this is not a plausible interpretation for the young female viewers atwhom the ad is directed.

I asked one former eikaiwa student, a 25-year-old Japanese female clerical workerat a manufacturing company, about her impressions of the ads shown above. With herpermission, her e-mail response is quoted below:

`̀ In my opinion, those advertisements target at the young women, who are around20s to 30s. The man and woman on advertisements look like `boy friend and girlfriend' rather than `teacher and student'. I even got impression that they impliesthat students [women] can find not only good teachers but also boyfriends, who arenative English speakers.The reason:1. These advertisements, all teachers are young men and all students are youngwomen.It should be OK that teachers are women and students are men.2. From my experience, most young Japanese women [maybe most Asian women,too] are easy to have a crush on Native English speaker, especially, Caucasian.One reason is that Japanese men do not have a custom or culture like `Ladyfirst', westerner guys seem to be more kind and gentle for Japanese women.Some young women even try to find a boyfriend who is Native English speaker,in order to improve their English. I saw those people at ex-Language school''(informant's e-mail, 2002).

This informant's identification of redisu fastu (kindness) and yasashisa (gentleness)as classic and eroticized signifiers of Occidentalist white masculinity correspondsverbatim with Kelsky's analysis.

The informants considered ads of this type stereotypical for eikaiwa. A number ofother eikaiwa advertising campaigns conducted previously fit this pattern: for example,NOVA ran a famous series of TV commercials in 1995 explicitly invoking `love'(depicted between Japanese women and gaijin men) to sell its English classes. However,imagery that conforms to, and reproduces, the codes seen here is not confined toeikaiwa advertisements. It is evident in Japanese women's internationalist writingsand in the Orientalist discourses of Western advertising agencies.

Even when white males were featured by themselves the target audience was clearlyunderstood by the informants to be young Japanese women. In spring 2002 AEONproduced an advertisement that featured cult actor Ewan McGregor, wearing a casualstyle that reinforced his cultural positioning as an icon of cool, alternative movie fame.(6)

(6) Mr McGregor's attorney did not grant permission to reproduce this advertisement. Theadvertisement is described in the same way as the preceding figures.

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His presentation here was consistent with his no-nonsense, direct speech in his movieroles. His maniacal leer and beckoning hand encouraged the female students, while hisflirtatious potential was emphasized by the kiss mark placed under his signature to the leftof his face.

A subsequent AEON ad again featured McGregor, but compared with the previousad his posture was shown as more contemplative and less challenging and aggressive.In this ad, he wore a sports jacket slung casually over a shirt, hinting that, althoughhe could be a `wide boy' and have fun, he was also very capable of performing in aprofessional role.(7)

Women in eikaiwa advertisementsWhite(ned) women appear in many Japanese advertisements. Whereas in Westerncontexts their appearance is often a deliberate attempt to sexualize products for bothmen and women, their appearance in Japanese commercials can be read differently(Darling-Wolf, 2000). As Kelsky (2001a, page 256) says:

`̀ It is important to distinguish between the fetishization of blonde, Marilyn Monroeimages of western female beauty, reflected in the white female models used inadvertising and the objectification of white women more generally, and misgivingsabout actual Western women as friends, lovers or wives.''According to Kelsky (2001a, page 188) the relationship between white men and

white women `̀ in the vast majority of Japanese television commercials and other mediacontexts'' can be explained thus: `̀ the white woman functions merely as a vehicle tothe larger authority of white men.'' This is manifested in the ways in which they act:`̀ White men are depicted to an extraordinary degree as speaking and writing subjects.In contrast to white women, who recite nonsensical ad copy, white men instruct,harangue, philosophize'' (page 189).

It is interesting that the impression that women were used to sell the eikaiwaproduct to other women, and not to men, was unanimous among my informants.This differs from what Ford et al (1998) term the `stereotypical' portrayal of womenin Western contexts, in which their role is to sexualize the product for both male andfemale consumers. For example, in ECC's ad (figure 3) both the white woman and thewhite man are `reciting nonsensical ad copy'. However, the marginality of the woman'sposition and her small image graphically situate her as peripheral to the centraleikaiwa activities. This conforms to a visual culture in which images of women, evensexualized ones, are often used to market to other women (Templado, 1996).

An AEON advert from summer 1998 showed a slightly `̀Asianized'' (or perhaps`̀ Hello Kitty-fied'') Mariah Carey telling students that they could `̀ Communicate!''if they attended the promoted AEON classes.(8) This is an invocation of the capacityfor individual freedom of expression and of engaging those freedoms to productiveends. When associated with a woman of Mariah Carey's wealth, fame, and power thisconjuncture highlights the potentials of English-language learning for women.

Carey's presentation here in this advert is what Ford et al (1998) call `counter-stereotypical' in the sense that she did not function as a draw for Japanese maleclients as she has undoubtedly done so for SONY records in the West. It is interestingto contrast Carey's demure and respectfully white-clothed, face-only appearancein this AEON promotion with those she made contemporaneously on the front coverof her two CD releases Butterfly (1997) and Rainbow (1999). On both these CDcovers her full-body pose is much more provocative and much more skin is exposed.(7) Mr McGregor's attorney did not grant permission to reproduce this advertisement. Theadvertisement is described in the same way as the preceding figures.(8) The text enjoined prospective students to `̀ Use your own words!''


In the music business, visually sexualizing the product both for men and women is acrucial promotional device. However, the eikaiwa industry avoids sexualizing Westernwomen in this way. This behavior contradicts the general ubiquity of selling productsto men by using women's bodies. As Carey is widely regarded as an attractivewoman whose features and body make an ideal platform for basic sexualized productpromotion, AEON's failure even to attempt this form of exploitation is noteworthy.

My informants all told me that Carey was aimed at younger female clients. Theirprimary reasoning for this was that `̀ Japanese men don't find Western women attrac-tive'' or a variation on this theme.(9) More specifically, one informant asserted that tomarket to Japanese men in this way ``they would have to use morning musume''.(10) Theybelieved the marketers understood this and prepared Carey's image accordingly.They also pointed out that, at that time, Carey was at the peak of her fame and wasvisible on television and on giant posters outside record stores everywhere in urbanTokyo. Carey's image was embedded into a transnational system of signification,allowing the English school to present a distinctly gendered notion of empowerment.Carey symbolized iconic and professionally powerful status. Here Carey becomes Junoand Aphrodite. English language becomes global power.

But the intended audience for this advertisement was not limited to people seeking toenhance their careers. Its physical location was chosen to maximize exposure to potentialstudents on their way to Narita airport, which is the primary international gateway forforeign airlines into the Tokyo metropolitan area. AEON was also therefore marketingEnglish language at another major group of consumers: office ladies taking foreignvacations. For these women the way that Carey's physical appearance was carefully alteredpresented a vision of agency and empowerment with which they can identify.(11)

ICC occupied a different market niche from the big eikaiwa, being much smaller andmore oriented towards foreign travel. ICC's promotion (figure 5) features a Westernwoman with three students in a small, intimate classroom setting. Two of the studentsare female, one is male, and they are all Western. All are young, attractive people.Nevertheless, as the informants asserted, the important characteristic of the women inthis advert is that they are once again aimed at attracting other women and not men.This is accomplished through the customary tropes of alterityöspecifically, depicting awoman as a professional (the instructor, or sensei ) and setting her in a location whereinstruction manuals (the white binders in the shelving) are prominently supportingher. According to one informant, she ``looks like a professor''. She is supported byboth male and female students attentive to her teaching. Bright, vibrant colors wornby the students indicate their freedom and lack of conformity to dress codes rigorouslyenforced in the formal Japanese work sector (McVeigh, 2000; 2002). The blond malestudent to the right performs a limited but distinctly sexualized signifying role. Bypresenting him as friendly, respectful, and attentive to women in a professional setting,

(9) The repeated invocation of tropes of physical attraction, or dating potential, by informants inthese interviews was noteworthy. That is, the first reaction of the informants to most eikaiwaadvertising was to assess the romantic or erotic potentials of the featured people and how theymight be used to target certain customer groups. Given free rein, informants rarely made anycomment on the actual qualities, processes, or careerist potentials of English-language learning atthese schools. Their view of eikaiwa corresponded more closely with instructors such as Donovan(2000), who called his eikaiwa `̀ a dating agency''.(10) This means literally `morning daughter' or `virgin'. The informant was referring to the preferredideology of pure, infantalized teenage femininity used to sexualize women when marketing toJapanese men (Funabashi, 1995, pages 256 ^ 257; McVeigh, 2000, pages 146 ^ 148). Already in herlate-twenties, Carey was too old, powerful, and perhaps therefore too threatening to fill this role.(11) Ms Carey's attorneys did not grant permission to reproduce this advertisement. The advertisementis described in the same way as the preceding figures.

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the promotion suggests that this man's character is contradictory to the stereotypicalcharacterization of the Japanese male [he is respectful of professional competence, yet alsoyasashii (gentle) and redisu fastu (kind)]. This increases the draw of the eikaiwa forfemale students seeking romantic involvements with Western men and/or for thoseseeking to enhance professional competencies. The text `̀ Join ICC, Join the World!''hints that Japan is behind `world standards' in certain areas, particularly in terms ofwomen's employment opportunities.

In fact, I worked for this school for several months. Although their student cohortswere similar in composition to other eikaiwa (that is, the students were mostly youngerwomen), they appeared to be more focused on study abroad and expended moreeffort preparing for standardized tests such as TOEIC and directed less effort at usingthe school as a `dating agency' (see Donovan, 2000). It was not clear to me to whatextent ICC's promotional tactics reflected this reality, or contributed to it by recruitingstudents with careerist purposes.

Figure 5. ICC promotion, summer 1998.


However, not all promotions follow the stereotypical pattern of the ECC andGABA ads. NOVA's recent ad (figure 6) is more complex. It features a crowd standingin a train car, an environment probably very similar to the scene on the viewer's train.The people depicted are looking towards the ad as though it were a television screen.This is a ploy aimed at differentiating NOVA from the plethora of eikaiwa thatadvertise on train billboards as NOVA is the only one that uses television forits lessons. The advantage of this, as the text proclaims to the readers, is that NOVA'slessons are now available 24 hours a day. This is a reminder to prospective customersthat NOVA is bigger and more powerful (and, hopefully, better) than the others.

On the left is a prototypical young salaryman. However, NOVA's English-languagelesson does not seem to offer him anything that he finds pleasant or tempting. Rather,the salaryman's expression is one of bikkuri (that is, surprise and outrageöbikkuriconnotes the kind of surprise that is not always pleasant). Behind him, sitting downand only partially visible, is an office lady who is looking almost surreptitiously at thescreen. The young woman standing immediately to the salaryman's left is also out-raged, but not unpleasantly. She leans toward the screen with curiosity. On her left is amother holding her daughter's hand. She is likewise very interested in the product.NOVA alludes here to its range of services, as it also markets `kids' lessons specifi-cally for children. The older man positioned behind her shoulder is only moderatelycurious. On the far right the young man wears an almost studied expression of blandindifference, as if he does not care very much about NOVA's offerings. In the rowbehind there is a young man who resembles movie actor Keanu Reeves but with longerhair. He watches the screen with detachment. At the back of the train is a youngsalaryman. He is distanced from NOVA's product by his location.

Although certain classic aspects of gendered performance are visible in thisadvertisement, when compared with other eikaiwa productions this ad is subtler in

Figure 6. NOVA promotion, spring 2002.

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its invocation of aspects of gendered akogare. This may be in part because NOVA'scorporate culture is (now) generally more conservative, and in part because its frater-nization regulations were the strictest of the major chains. Nevertheless, my informantsbelieved that the central positioning of the female characters was not accidental.Although this ad may have been targeted at a broader audience than the others, itemphasized and centered women in its visual imagery and it depicted males as lessenthusiastic about the product.

Boys onlyGEOS's recent ad (figure 7) features two young Japanese men positioned in a comicalposture in front of Sydney's Opera House. No Westerners, and no women, are visible.My original impression of this ad was that the buffoonery of the men's positioning,together with their dress, posture, and expressions showed that these men are notinterested in English for career improvement. To me, they invoked imagery of JimCarrey or maybe Chevy Chase, of comical buffoons on a National Lampoons Vacation,rather than showing young men what serious purposes their English skills might have.

My Japanese informants confirmed this impression. From them I learned that thesemen are famous TV comedians who are popular with a segment of young women viewers.Several of them also noted that these comedians cannot speak English and have noreason, careerist or otherwise, to make sacrifices to learn it at an eikaiwa. These infor-mants believed that there was an implication that even if these men were learning Englishwithout serious purpose they would nevertheless have fun doing so. Moreover, in theopinion of my informants, these men are being shown to entice women to enroll at thiseikaiwa. They noted that the performative characteristics of these men are consistent withthe model developed earlier. This ad reinforces the idea that, for travel and fun, English

Figure 7. GEOS promotion, March 2002.


language is the essential gateway. This ad hints that the eikaiwa customer can have funin exotic places, such as Sydney, by learning at this school. It also subtly encourages thefemale customers who might be interested in attending eikaiwa to meet dynamic andwell-traveled young Japanese men who know how to have fun.

Other significant aspects of this ad include the lack of any female presence.Although there are elements of Occidentalist mythos at workösuch as the idea thatEnglish language permits free and loud expression of potentially countercultural views(see Field, 2002)öEnglish-language learning is not sexualized for these young men asit almost invariably is for the women. There is no erotic discourse of new selfhood forthe men pictured.

Another recent GEOS ad shows the same comedians dressed in prison garb,floating in a purple-colored space with the romanized letters G, E, O, and S. For thesemen there is no connection with career plans or serious purposes for studying English.Nor is there any sexualization of the activities or people associated with the eikaiwa.Divorced from meaningful communicative practice, English language is presented as azone of fantasy or childlike wonder. Moreover, this treatment of Japanese males in eikaiwaadvertising mirrors one of the primary characteristics of the Japanese male as representedin the discourses of the internationalist women analyzed by Kelsky (2001a, page 182):`̀ Even when they are not depicted in scenes of abjection and failure with foreign women,Japanese men in women's internationalist writings are often infantilized.''

The relationship between gendered eikaiwa practices and other performative ideol-ogies is evident in a range of marketing spheres. Kelsky (2001a, page 195) describes aTV production for Frontier cigarettes. It is set inside an eikaiwa where the students areall female, except for one salaryman. The teacher is `̀ a severe-looking, tailored, middle-aged blonde British woman'' (page 195). The teacher drills the salaryman on thecorrect pronunciation of `Frontier'. For him, the eikaiwa experience is demanding,stressful, nonerotic, and even threatening. Consumption of the cigarette is shown asan escape from the demands of the foreign woman, as presented through the Englishlanguage. Although there is an audience of Japanese women, they are not shownexperiencing this stressful encounter with the West. The focus of the ad is the cigarette,but its spatial and social context are significant. The eikaiwa, then, is depicted as astressful, nonpleasurable space for salarymen. English language is not fun, and Japanesemales are not shown using it adroitly or effectively.

More generally, visual absences are important in understanding the gendering ofthe preferred readings. None of the advertisements examined showed Japanese malesobtaining career training in an eikaiwa. Nor did any advertisement show a Japanesemale alone with a Western female instructor, with the exception of the Frontiercigarette ad described by Kelsky in which the encounter was a highly negative eventfor the man.

These social modalities are played on and reinscribed by some of the pedagogical textsused inside the eikaiwa, which project the Orientalist fantasies of Western writers and theOccidentalist ones of Japanese managers onto students and teachers. For example, Kelsky(2001a, page 232) shows an example of an early 1990s text called Heart to Heart (Pereiraet al, 1992) in which the story line depicts the American hero, Clint, falling in love withhis student. Although the required texts I encountered during my own eikaiwa experiencewere not as blatantly eroticized as this one, they did contain elements of Orientalism thatreinscribed taken-for-granted notions of cultural differences in gender performativityöthat is, Japanese women being shown holding powerful career positions inWestern settingsand using English to manage their male subordinates.

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Eikaiwa as destinationIn his deconstruction of the tourist marketing of the Hawaiian islands by the Hawai'iVisitors Bureau, Goss (1993, page 663) claimed that:

`̀The task in destination marketing is to promote vacation travel by targeted reader-ship to a specific destination. Like other forms of advertising, it generally involvesthe sublimation of social desire onto the image of a commodity. Destinationmarketing works by (re)presenting socially desirable consumer life-styles with iconsof a particular place, and suggesting, through various rhetorical devices, a sub-stantive connection between them, drawing upon and reproducing socializing andspatializing discourse. Destination marketing is, therefore, simultaneously impli-cated in the construction of place imagery and the constitution of subjects whoexperience that image in specific ways.''

Although NOVA has long used the motto `ekimae ryugaku ', meaning to `̀ study abroad,in front of the train station'' (Kazayaki, 2000), the ryugaku destination is more diffuseand universal than the local station, the islands of Hawai'i, or any other specificlocation. The destination is instead a social space (Lefebvre, 1991) termed the West.The eikaiwa promotions examined are engaged in destination marketing that `subli-mates social desire' onto the c̀ommodity', but here Goss's `social desire' is radicallygendered and, to paraphrase Marx (1978), the c̀ommodity'öthat is, the eikaiwaöis nota thing: it is both the process of English-language learning and the Occidentalizedlifestyle of (female) English speakers depicted therein. Moreover, when white males areembedded in this eroticized gendered Occidentalist imaginary there are metonymicrelationships both to their presence and the promised relationships that the studentscan develop with the instructors. These elements include the rejection of the customarilygendered performances of the Japanese workplace and denial of, or escape from, thesocial and institutional controls exerted over young women by the nationalistic, mascu-linist nation-state and its patriarchal corporatist partners (McVeigh, 2000; 2002; 2003).In this way, a dialectic relation is established between what Goss terms `̀ place imagery''and the `̀ constitution of subjects who experience that image in specific ways''.

Eikaiwa advertisements promise that this social space is physically located in theeikaiwa and other idealized spaces of English-language use, as well as acknowledgingand drawing upon its existence in popular cultural productions such as Hollywoodmovies and music (Pronko, 2003). These eikaiwa advertisements then reinscribe aspectsof the idealized nature of spaces of English-language use.(12)

It is important to understand the properties of eikaiwa as destination because,despite the fact that many students intend to use their skills to move abroad, English-language learning has meaning for women other than `̀ predominantly highly educated,urban, mostly single career women between the ages of twenty and forty five, withextensive study abroad or work abroad experience'' (Kelsky, 2001a, page 5). Not all ofthe eikaiwa students I encountered were highly educated, nor were they career women.Many were office ladies who were looking for marriage, hoping to give up theirwork afterwards. Many had not yet studied or lived abroad, even if they talked abouthow much they wanted to do so. For a significant number with no careerist orinternationalist intent, regardless of the reality, the eikaiwa constituted an eroticizedplayground, a rather convenient Disneyfied West around the corner from her railwaystation, populated by Bauer's (1995) `̀ Indiana Joneses'' and other `̀ men of action'' whowould `̀ tell it like it is''. Eikaiwa promotions sought to manufacture this image.

Indeed, eikaiwa as a destination is marketed in this way outside of the conversationschool orbit. For example, figure 8 (over) shows the cover of the October 1998 edition(12) In this deconstruction I posit no correspondence between the ideal, Occidentalized socialformations presented and social realities in English-speaking countries.


of the magazine Ryugaku USA, or `Study abroad USA'. The front cover depicts awoman's leg. She is wearing a red high-heeled shoe, and the subtitle in English is`̀ Working Girl''. This title contains a hint of classic eikaiwa marketing double entendre.While it connotes serious careerist purpose for learning English abroad, it also nods tosexualized and glamorized female characters presented in popular movies such asWorking Girl and Pretty Woman. This ideological coupling of (hetero)sexuality andwork is ideal for eikaiwa.

The issue of who, exactly, is responsible for these productions is critical. It could beargued that these advertisements are simply the product of the Orientalist imaginationon the part of Western ad agencies. Indeed, Kelsky (2001a, page 196) notes that:

`̀Many of the female-targeted commercials that employ the idiom of Japanese femaledesire for the white man, are, however the creations of Western multinationalcompanies such as VO5, SeaBreeze, and Vidal Sassoon.''I attempted on a number of occasions to secure an interview with eikaiwa promo-

tions directors; however, none of these efforts were successful.(13) Although Western adagencies and/or Orientalist imaginaries may indeed be at work in the creation of these

Figure 8. Ryugaku USA, October 1998.

(13) The difficulties of securing institutional cooperation for this type of research in Japan are wellknown and documented (for example, Bestor, 1989; Hall, 1998; Hamabata, 1990).

126 K Bailey

promotions, it is important to consider that, in contrast to Kelsky's examples, theeikaiwa sell a culturally specific product to domestic consumers. These ads are nottargeted at Western males. Moreover, there is a strong self-Orientalizing element atwork among potential eikaiwa customers that is expressed in their frequent collusionwith these ideologies outside of the eikaiwa orbit.

Summary of eikaiwa advertisement strategies: the wonderlandThe goal of these eikaiwa promotions is to recruit younger female students. They striveto do so by creating and alluding to mythical Occidentalized spaces whose propertiesare defined by a complex array of gender performative ideologies. Some of these areradical alterities (for example, the signification properties of the white male andthe workplace) and work directly against the prevailing MSR while others, operatingsimultaneously, conform to a prevailing and highly heteronormative ideology ofgendered complementarity, for example, appeals to kokusai kekkon (internationalmarriage). English language is the necessary skill that permits its users to access thisspace. Appeals to the exotic, in terms of locations, and the transgressive nature ofshowing women being accorded professional respect by both men and other women,work to position this imaginary space as a space of radical alterity for women. Theproperties of this social space are so positive, powerful, empowering, and unrealisticthat the eikaiwa can appropriately be characterized in terms of a `̀ wonderland''.The eikaiwa are marketed as wonderlands: that is, as places (destinations) of promiseand wonder, of becoming, of transgression, of unreality. These properties imbricateboth the place and practice of eikaiwa. Thus the eikaiwa wonderlands become locisituated at a nexus in time and space where heterodoxical, and Occidentalized, ideol-ogies of gender performances are brought into being and are lived out through akogarefor the practice and simulation of English-language learning.

But the properties of these eikaiwa wonderlands are exclusively gendered. Accordingto Kelsky (2001a, page 191):

`̀The nature of white male authority, the akogare directed toward that authority, andthe commodity-mediated resolution promised to the mixed feelings that authorityelicits differ dramatically depending on the target audience, which is broadlydistinguished according to gender and age. Commercials that target young workingwomen, for example, `sell the fantasy that involvement with white males will lead topersonal fulfillment', Russell writes. `The Japanese woman becomes more desirable,more independent, more herself in the white man's presence'.''

These strategies and presentations play on and deepen the relationship betweenEnglish-language use and akogare. As Kelsky suggests, this akogare is invoked bypromising that English-language skill is a gateway to developing relationships with(in these cases) highly idealized gaijin males. The akogare invoked by these productionsis assembled from a composite of several other tropes of gender performative alterity,including the potentials of a professional career for women in places where Englishlanguage is used and, to some degree, the social capital that comes with knowing, andbeing seen to be learning, English language. Although this social space is certainlyregarded, as a former eikaiwa instructor says, as `̀ a world of vigor, excitement, frank-ness _ cleaned of all the niceties and duties and restraints that the younger Japanesewere starting to resent'' (Bauer,1995, page 166), it is inhabited not only inhabitedby (Western) ``men of action like Indiana Jones''. These eikaiwa wonderlands are alsothe domain of Juno and Aphrodite, of Cameron Diaz and Mariah Carey, and, mostimportantly, of Hikaru Nishida.


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Marketing the eikaiwa wonderland: ideology, akogare, and gender … · 2018-12-11 · promotions key signification is performed by white-male and Japanese-female pairings. ... ELT