Japan supporters group

Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, Volume 5, Number 1, 2004

The positioning and practices of the ‘feminized fan’ in Japanese soccer culture through the experience of the FIFA World Cup Korea/Japan 2002

Toko TANAKA (Translated by Hiroki OGASAWARA)

When women talk about soccer

Just as this paper is about to do in a performa- tive way, there is a certain effect generated once the words of ‘women’ or ‘feminine’ are attached to the title of a paper or essay. A work whose title includes ‘women’ either rarely attracts male readers’ interests or is almost ignored by the male counterpart. ‘Fem- inism? It’s a problem of women, isn’t it?’ This understanding is not exclusively Japanese re- ality. It is perhaps a commonly shared view in other male-dominated Asian countries. It is most unfortunate if the work that aims to complement the male discourses in sports writing may actually help, in spite of its orig- inal objective, exclude a certain type of read- ers and then contribute to the reductive reproduction of the field. Therefore, I would like to begin by clarifying my own position with regard to this difficulty of feminist inter- vention into sports writing.

First, whether it is in the academy or sports journalism, there is no guaranteed space for us, feminists and female writers, to produce the discourses on sports (although we should not underestimate the richness of the sub-cultural sphere, as I will discuss later). It is possible for male writers to talk about sports in general or the ‘universal sport’, if such a thing has ever existed, without hesi- tation and excuses made. This is aligned with the fact that a variety of enunciating subjects in sport, such as athletes, commentators and writers, are already predominantly gendered as masculine.

In contrast, the ‘feminized/feminine’1

writers can only access, in many cases, to such

limited subject matters as, for instance, ‘women and sport’, ‘female athletes’ or ‘sport criticism from women’s point of view’. It would be clear if we found what kind of topics female scholars were assigned to con- tribute in a sport-writing anthology. Or we just need to remember that, in sports journal- ism, feminized/feminine writers are simply the minority. Even if feminized/feminine writers became able to produce the same quality of writing as other masculinized writ- ers do, and became the regular contributors in major sports journals and magazines, this achievement is understood as not due to their ability but attributed to their uniqueness that is yielded by their own femininity. Instead of the explanation as to what this ‘femininity’ means, it is accepted that they got their chances because they had their own feminine perspective and approach, and were capable of composing sensitive writing. When femi- nized/feminine writers took the lead by a scoop, they are even backbitten by the rumour that the scoop is thanks to the ‘sleep and get’ with male athletes. In short, the enunciating position of women is placed in the territory of the ‘ladies’. They are allowed to speak and write as far as they are committed to the limited subject.

Secondly, there is a moment of hesitation as soon as women seemed to manage to se- cure their position of telling. Because of this timidity, few words are enunciated and artic- ulation has gone. It is necessary to note that the mechanism of self-censorship affects women’s telling. Whenever this mechanism operates it reminds us that women, the very targets of this policing, internally possess the

ISSN 1464-9373 Print/ISSN 1469-8447 Online/04/010052–10  2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd DOI: 10.1080/1464937042000196815

The ‘feminized fan’ in Japanese soccer culture 53

incongruity about the existing criteria by which the necessary institutional (journalistic or academic) languages are classified as either legitimate or illegitimate. However, as Michel de Certeau argues, those who are placed lower in a cultural structure are made to spontaneously cooperate with the hierarchical system of classification through the system itself. Such people are,

excluded not only from a culture, but also from the culture (since the system that eliminates them from and ‘in- struction’ also deprives them of their own traditions); and, being judged only as a function of the unique crite- rion imposed through the secondary school (but also through the family and through the milieu), they mar- ginalize themselves, becoming these ‘auto-relegues’ whom Pierre Bourdieu has studied, and who, despite them- selves, ultimately remain in complicity with the system that tends to perpetu- ate the existing relations of force.

(De Certeau 1997: 86)

It is not only in culture in general, but also in the cultural and institutional specificity of ‘soccer’, that the feminized speakers and writ- ers, ‘despite themselves, ultimately remain in complicity with the system that tends to per- petuate the existing relations of force’ (De Certeau 1997: 86). Thus, it is extremely difficult for those who become the targets of censorship and excluded from the dominant cultural norm to detach them from the struc- ture sustaining and reinforcing the existing cultural values. We/they try to speak, articu- late, analyse and express, but the means of those practices are not our/their own. This is the disadvantage of feminized/feminine writ- ers in sport.

This situation can be analogized to the darkness. In the complete darkness, one can- not rely on vision for drawing the cartogra- phy of power. In it, how can we/they practise the power?

As soon as the question is raised, we realise that we join hands with her standing next to me. This ‘her’ then

holds the hands of another her next to her and then … As the chain of hand- in-hand continues we/they could be- come cartographers, gaining our own peculiar space. We may even be able to find a line of light in the apparently pitch-darkness. If we strain our eyes, it would be possible to see the bright radiance in ‘her’ eyes next to us. It may not be that dark after all, as far as their/our eyes mutually resonate in silence. Hence, open your eyes, watch out around us, and try it harder but gently.

In the darkness, it would be far better to be sensitive and grope for others’ hands, miming what others do, than doing a rash thing.

We/they need to become the ‘cartogra- pher’ in the Deleuzian sense and then create our/their own proper map, the map that can be a guidance of our/their own way. This cartography is carried out through bricolage by which the pre-existing means, the pre-given perspective, and the preferred coding, all of which are not provided as our/their own, can be even partly appropriated. The art of brico- lage is elaborated and accumulated through everyday practices. One day we/they may be able to find it surprisingly peculiarly creative to produce a sub-cultural sphere.

In this paper, I wish to describe the ways in which the fan culture is ‘feminized/made to be feminine’ in sporting spectacle and to clarify the ways in which the feminization is inevitably inter-connected with much larger problems. During the 2002 World Cup, such inter-crossing points have been found in the media in Japan as well as outside Japan, in our/their practices, and in the anonymous discourses that narrated the event. It is poss- ible, first of all, to talk about our/their pecu- liar cultural practices and then make trace a few problems of commercialization, racism and machismo on the terrain of the sub-cul- tural sphere.

The position of ‘feminized/feminine’ fans

The following scene may not be totally un- familiar: watching a soccer match or talking

54 Toko Tanaka

about soccer with friends and family, men talk eloquently while women remain quiet. Why do women remain silent although a lot of women like watching and talking about soccer? On the other hand, there are not a few women who tell their love of soccer and what they know about soccer by pushing aside the situational power that forces them to self- regulate themselves. However, as soon as they try to speak, curiosity comes up in such a phrase as ‘you know it very well for women’s standard’ or ‘I haven’t seen a woman like you talking about soccer’. When I come across some women who declare that they are serious soccer fans, they stubbornly insist that ‘I’m not a mi-ha2 fan, I’m watching soccer seriously’. What this scene represents is that we are placed in a discursive, practical and gendered hierarchical relation, which pri- oritizes a particular mode of spectatorship in soccer games.

There are many female supporters in the stadium. They express their own distinctive fashion and support their team at their will. Some combine the replica shirt with trendy cloths. In summer, the team shirt is arranged with Sabrina trousers and high heel sandals. In winter, summer wears are replaced by half- coat with fake-fur. Some fans prepare a tele- photo-lens and wait for players coming on to the pitch. Sun-tanned high-school football girls occupy one corner of the stand, whereas housewives enjoy their rare free time on the other corner. Some high-school girls wear the team shirt over their school uniform. This ‘fashion’ can be observed every Saturday afternoon at a J-League match. They rush off to the stadium as soon as school finishes. Their school skirt is transformed to ‘micro- mini’ style and combined with the team shirt. They deliberately choose the smaller size shirt because they believe that the smaller size makes their body look much sharper and good looking. Equipped with well-used Loafer shoes and white socks, hand-made beaded accessories and colourful hairpins, a group of high school girls ambush the team coach arriving at the stadium (iri-machi as they call it, meaning ‘waiting for coming in’). During half-time, it is time for their mobile phones to work at full throttle. They exchange

what they saw, thought and experienced about the game and players with friends and family in other stadium and home. This is what has happened during the World Cup. A lot of women came to take part in the event while far more women enjoyed the game on television.

You may quickly denounce the above de- scriptions by saying that; ‘you would want to suggest that women’s supporting style is dif- ferent from men’s and women have their own unique style. But is it to essentialize the femi- ninity after all?’ On the contrary, what I want to suggest is this; the everyday activity of watching and talking about soccer is a quite ordinary cultural practice. This practice is pro- duced in the possible realm of the bodily arts approved in everyday life. It is also squeezed out by means of the composite of resources that are available in everyday life. We ‘watch soccer’ under particular social and cultural conditions through which a variety of arts of practices are gendered. It is necessary to as- sume to a certain extent the bodily arts his- torically accumulated and gendered in everyday life when the cultural practice is considered.

Bearing in mind this assumption, I have to admit that the feminized mode of soccer sup- porting activity may be plain and less visual- ized than is the masculine counterpart. Male supporters can collectively organize support- ers’ clubs or play park soccer wearing their favourite teams’ shirts. In contrast, the active territory of the feminized pattern may appear to be confined in a certain limited space. In- deed, feminized supporting activities tend to prefer a secret mode of communication through letters and the internet to committing themselves to publicly organized fan activity or talking in public.

Furthermore, the feminized voice is al- ways deferred. When our/their voice and ac- tivity make a detour time lag is inevitable. There are various vehicles such as media in the course of this detour.

Colourful pen script, brightly pat- terned small notebooks, murmuring, cyber space, mobile phone communi- cation, mobile e-mailing, comic type

The ‘feminized fan’ in Japanese soccer culture 55

illustration, poem, look-alike cartoon in magazines, ‘message in a bottle’ cir- culated from class room to class room, conversation in a fast food restaurant, different jargons, colourful idioms.

Detour, or time lag, can be perceived as something like resonance. The active territory of the feminized fandom is found in less showy spaces, such as websites and e-mail, coterie magazines or mobile phone conversa- tions, tea break conversations in schools and offices, rather than easily visualized places of the stadium and mass media. Because of such less visible modes of communication and the time lag, our/their support activity is hard to notice compared with the journalistic and aca- demic discourses.

The mode of practices of ‘feminized/femi- nine’ fans

It may be possible to classify what we/they notice and choose to talk about when soccer is narrated in such a difficult situation. The fol- lowing can be found in several fan websites, fanzines and books, or in actual conversations and readers’ letters to magazines.

Players’ facial expressions (crying, smiling, anger, joy, etc …), their movements (talking, raging, swearing, passing beautifully, etc …), and the sites where those movements take place (on the pitch or on the bench, before, after or during the game, when the play stops, during or before and after the training, on the television): fans memorize those elements in details, and talk and write about them. The persistent attachment to a moment when something takes place in the stadium is nar- rated as if the filmed record is replayed in a video device. Such an attachment is narrated and spelled out as a memory that is amalga- mated with fantasy. However, who can be convinced by the claim that ‘masculine’ fans’ memory is not affected by fantasy when they talk and write about ‘that historic goal’?

‘Feminized/feminine’ fans’ activity ex- tends from the on-the-pitch matters to indi- vidual players. Many fans have even set up websites where the story of their travel to the training ground is introduced. Some provide ‘pre-harvest’ information, such as ‘we

couldn’t get him in the first team session, but instead we were eye-caught by xxx in satellite (second team) whose ball touch was superb’, which is not unusual. Others inform us that ‘ooo kindly appreciated us fans’. Those narra- tions of information would never appear in professional soccer journals. The fans are also highly interested in what the players wear. The knowledge is exchanged sometimes as to what kind of necklace or ring they wear dur- ing the training and the game, or how they wear the shirt. The range of interests expands even to players’ private clothing and hairstyle when they appear on television.

Players are evaluated by whether they are ‘good looking (iketeru)’ or ‘bad (iketenai)’, or can be ‘prince-like’ or ‘pretty (kawaii)’.3 For instance, when Turkish midfielder Il Han Ma- siz scored a winning goal, his good looks repeatedly appeared on television. Immedi- ately afterward, his popularity quickly grew through the Internet and by word of mouth. A women’s magazine, which had nothing to do with soccer, featured ‘Il Han Information’ for several weeks even after the tournament finished. In this way, we/they continue watching soccer extremely keenly in the sta- dium or in the training ground, and on tele- vision or through magazines, in order to look for ‘our own idol’.

Some articulate their surprise, admiration and appreciation of a variety of skills dis- played on the pitch. While they are actually watching the match, some put it in their home pages or talk to friends by mobile phones once these friends have ventured home. On the other hand, they may orchestrate booing or give banter in the Internet chat pages. Those ‘feminized/feminine’ fans are more aware of the way soccer is actually played as well as of the orthodox way of seeing it than male journalists and commentators who de- spise them as mi-ha. Yet, we/they do not express our/their awareness explicitly in pub- lic.

Some of the aforementioned modes of watching soccer are cross-cultural in the sense that they commonly share some elements with other fan cultures. They may resemble the ways in which boys’ pop groups and visual bands are chased and loved by their

56 Toko Tanaka

followers. Buying the dedicated magazines and photo-books, watching the video tape that records their television appearance, bringing the bromides, and even writing car- toons and short stories because of too much love for them. As shown in these activities, the patterns of love chasing are countless. Those self-made stories and witness reports, vary from fantasizing how players think themselves or how they monologue, and then letting them speak about their inwardness, to writing of the excitement of homoeroticism when seeing players hugging and touching each other. We/they conduct our/their wit- nessing in order to pursue our/their specific mode of watching, fantasized imagination and eroticism, rather than competing over the amount of knowledge, the authenticity of spectatorship or the absolute empiricism of ‘you need to play in order to know’.

There is no ‘graduation’ in this kind of fan activity. It continues with working, and bring- ing up children after marriage, even though what to do may be slightly different from time to time.4 There is also no such thing as gradu- ation in other popular cultural genres. Many adult women see themselves deeply struck by the ‘super-hero programme with special ef- fect’, which until recently have been regarded as aiming for small boys. However, their mothers became the most fanatic viewers. Those mothers invest their affection in the TV programme, appropriating the ways in which they have constructed similar practices in other sub-cultural spheres. Such multi-genre sub-cultural spheres are utilized as a site where a variety of voices and practices of women are interlinked and syncretized. Those voices and practices may often be fractured according to different choices of life style and generations. Feminist movements may tend to be disempowered through the ‘internal-fric- tion’ of the hostile division between ‘full-time housewives’ and ‘working women’ or by the conflict over the moral norm between mothers and daughters.

However, those characteristic modes of fandom in the sub-cultural sphere raise larger and more complex problems. Those problems may become explicit in such a big event as the

soccer world cup to which those who belong to different social categories give substantial attention.

One such problem is concerned with ‘race’. Before and during the world cup, as Kim Hyunmi precisely pointed out, the ‘femi- nized/feminine’ fans got the opportunity to distinguish their favourite players from others according to their liking and to be excited about these players’ performances at the site of bodily spectacle where ‘different types of more than 200 male bodies were exhibited’ (Kim 2003: 21). Indeed, this might have been conspired with the starlet construc- tion system devised by the media. Yet, even if the possibility of the media manipulation is subtracted, we/they have ‘deterritorialized’ the object of male pleasure through the affec- tive investment.5 On this point, Kim concisely notes that,

Because the power relation between men and women has been broken down through ‘gaze’, it makes women emerge not as the position of ‘being seen’ but as the position of seeing the male body.

(Kim 2003: 24)

When it comes to overturning the relationship between the ‘seeing/seen’, and the ‘choosing/ chosen’, it is possible to assess the way that a variety of modes of supporting soccer, which have actually operated as ‘their secret joy’, are visualized through the public spaces and the mass media during the World Cup. However, why have we/they crowded to see Beckham, Owen and the Italian players, almost all of who have white skin, rather than Henry and Desailly? The principle of our/their prefer- ence clearly exposes our/their liking, which appears to be affected by skin colour and the area where players come from. Furthermore, it needs to be remembered that it is strong heterosexism that sustains the racial leanings to white skin. We women are in many cases required to face the male body from the view- point of ‘female’, which is lined with hetero- sexual desire.6 White supremacism and the love for sports athletes as the heterosexual

The ‘feminized fan’ in Japanese soccer culture 57

targets mutually supplement each other through their conspired relationality.7

This phenomenon highlights my second point; that is, the post-World Cup corporate strategy of advertising and commodification of players. Although our/their way of watch- ing the game may continue partially to over- turn the existing mode of spectatorship — the ‘masculinized spectatorship’ — the love in- vested has been transformed into money and collected by corporate capitalism immediately after the world cup. When Il Han scored the winning goal against Senegal, his photograph was quickly inserted into the promotional TV advertisement of Sky Perfect TV, a pay-per- view satellite broadcasting company. This ad- vertisement appeals to us/them that ‘we/they can meet him (and other foreign players) whenever we/they like by joining the satel- lite’. Beckham, on the other hand, appeared in the advertisement of TBC, which is an aes- thetic salon for women. It tells ‘Beckham- philia women’ to ‘become beautiful by coming to the salon’. We/they have once gained the position of loving and enjoying the beauty of Beckham, but this relationship has been immediately overturned once again.

Whereas photo-books of those popular ike- men (good-looks) players were continuously published, some travel agencies set up, one after another, the tour that invites supporters to see the players and to dine with them. The targets of this commercial activity are financially stable single working women. The income of those women is exploited by photo- books and overseas tours although it may be a wiser way of using money than saving the money for marriage in the bank accounts.

As I will discuss further in the next sec- tion, it should not be overlooked that during the world cup such ‘feminized/feminine’ fans became a suitable photographic object and then were consumed as a commodity for the purpose of competition over the viewing figures. Our/their body and spectatorship are represented and consumed as mi-ha rushing to see certain players, trying to shoot by good cameras, and shouting in a piping voice.8

Those descriptions denote the ‘women as childish and slightly stupid’.

The gaze towards the ‘feminized/feminine’ fans

As discussed so far, there are multiple ways of existence in soccer fan cultures. However, the richness of those fan cultures tends to be frequently forgotten when they are repre- sented by the mass media. Referring to de Certeau’s idea of culture once again, I would argue that the moment the media took a look at us, the ‘feminized/feminine’ fans the ‘tear between “what is happening” and “what is being thought” ’ is disclosed (De Certeau 1997: 85).

The fans visiting the stadium wearing sexy cloths and fashions are exposed to the dan- gers of becoming the target of photographs for newspapers, magazines or sports websites. In fact, this is clear if we look at large photo- graphs of the faces and particular parts of women appearing in male magazines and the sport news websites during the World Cup. The shots focusing on the women’s bodies are almost exclusively the ones that highlight the bare skin of their breast, groin, hip and legs. Compared with the actual fashion of women in the stadium, which colourfully varies, the representation of the female fans in newspa- pers and television is the surprisingly and uniformly similar clothing of ‘exposing’ fash- ions. The way the media represents the female fans in the stadium is cross-cuttingly identical beyond the differences of country, race and the genre of sports.

Les Back, Tim Crabbe and John Solomos well-summarize this point. Back et al. observe that black female fans covering their bodies with sexy clothes in the stadium become the photography target of male fans and camera- men. According to Back et al., the colourful and erotic fashions and performances of the dancehall-queen style exhibited by black women could produce the ‘potential trans- gression’, which confronts the space of the soccer stadium where the male-centric norm and body technique become predominant. However, Back et al. also point out that this potential transgression of black female fans is vulnerable to the danger that it ‘could be re-inscribed by the male soccer audience who reduces these women and their agency to

58 Toko Tanaka

sexual objects’ (Back et al. 2002: 29). The sexy fashion and behaviour of the women disturb the masculinity in the stadium while at the same time their distinctive style is violated by the male gaze. Moreover, those women could be conspiring with masculinity such that it appears that the negotiation of those women with the masculine principle does not exist. Although this negotiation perhaps quietly takes place here and there in the stadium, as well as in the discursive space, the conspiracy could be made possible by excluding the otherwise visible and observable voices and presences from the frame of the finder.

Another problem comes out when ‘female’ soccer fans are collectively represented by the media; that is, the mi-ha bashing phenomenon. There were not a few self-claimed ‘soccer fans’ among the media-wise male figures, from the general public to entertainers ap- pearing in TV shows. Clearly, some of them suddenly became soccer fans and even ‘ex- perts’ of soccer when the World Cup began. Presumably, because the World Cup brought about a strange phenomenon in which some entertainers, especially male stand-up comedi- ans, were given a number of opportunities to get TV jobs or to gain a chance to speak out once they declared themselves as soccer fans, everybody wanted to talk about soccer. As, I suppose, this country did not have sufficient human resources in the soccer critique, what they talked about was extremely poor in terms of the quality of talk. Japan did not seem to have enough population to a produce sufficient quantity of first-class soccer com- mentators. However, it was only because they were ‘male’ that they could spend peaceful time not being labelled as mi-ha or ‘impro- vised’ fans.9

In contrast to the male counter-part, fe- male fans have been always collectively named and signified in just the same way as the representation of the ‘ignorant mass’ has long been suffered whenever they appear in the media. The collective description of female fans during the World Cup was extremely stereotyped in the professionally written me- dia. Some of them even scorned us/them in explicit ways. For example, in a book pub- lished after the World Cup, a male ‘soccer

journalist’ wrote resentfully that ‘I can resign to Beckham after Beckham in women’s magazines. But I don’t understand why some newspaper articles reporting the match against Argentina were also full of Beckham’ (Gotou 2002: 6).

Indeed, it is true that many women’s magazines heavily featured Beckham. How- ever, as this soccer journalist clearly noted, the newspapers that he seemed to trust were ‘full of Beckham’ too. It is firmly necessary to criticize such a version of gender discrimi- nation as his, which referred to women’s magazines in order to accuse the media for their overwhelming ‘Beckham-philia’ trend. Elsewhere, he also wrote that;

As the information for those mi-ha fans is necessary, I don’t mind if women’s magazines publish a special issue for Il Han and Beckham.

I would want writers and the media to report a properly knowing report for knowing people because it would be much healthier if the proper one co-ex- ists with the mi-ha one. Everybody doesn’t have to say difficult things, but professional journals shouldn’t butter up on mi-ha.

(Yamazaki and Gotou 2002: 127)

Here, linked with the genre of women’s magazine, the frequently used idea of mi-ha is regarded as identical with the ‘feminized/ feminine’ fans that are ‘female supporters’ and ‘female spectator’. Then, emplaced in the dichotomous and hostile relation to those who ‘say difficult things’ or ‘knowing people’ who are associated with professional journals and classified as such, the ‘feminized/feminine’ fans, being identified as mi-ha, are signified as ‘improvised fans’ or the ‘fans who can’t know how to see and talk about soccer’. As I have noted, however, despite the problem within, such as race and race thinking, extraordinarily rich and complex practices are produced and consumed among the despised, scorned mi-ha mode of fandom. Thus, I would argue that male journalists such as this one are those who don’t actually know ‘how to see and talk

The ‘feminized fan’ in Japanese soccer culture 59

about soccer’ since they do not seem to be able to read the rich culture of women’s fan- dom and sincerely listen to them.

Meanwhile, the relatively visible character- ization of mi-ha fans is the one that appears in the soccer corner of women’s magazines and TV shows. There, the following leads and captions were seen.

‘20 Parisienne’s view of Troussier’, ‘Takuya and Hide, yell each other by mobile just before kick-off’, ‘Real Il Han, much more popular than Beck- ham’, ‘Heart break Ronaldo, his son ignored Daigorou hair’.10

Looking at those leads, I found them very similar to those in sport tabloids in terms of the vocabulary employed. I wonder how many people can give a correct answer if they were asked in which media those wordings appeared. Here, it is pertinent to bear in mind that whatever vocabulary they employed, those words are never interpreted as mi-ha as far as they are written by ‘soccer journalists’. It is an exercise of power in the name of naming to categorize someone as mi-ha so that a particular mode of spectatorship, which is ‘feminized’, could be despised and violently refused.

Such an exercise of violence is ordinarily repeated in less official places and less visible fields of everyday life. It is even possible that it becomes more violent in unofficial places of everyday life. When the date of large-scale international soccer approaches, there takes place discordance between newly participat- ing ‘female/feminine’ fans and knowing, otaku type ‘masculinized/masculine’ fans that have already been there in several fan web- sites of the Japan team.11 In this cyber space, the fans who newly take part, having less convincing knowledge about professional soc- cer criticism and spectatorship, are exposed to the violent mi-ha bashing by being literally feminized, as well as through such warnings as ‘support the team more seriously’ or ‘don’t come, you mi-has’. As soon as this bashing occurred, those who are regarded as mi-ha are so frightened that they can rarely return to contributing to the site. They are immediately weeded out of the communicative field of

soccer fandom. Otherwise, they express the more acceptable way of ‘supporting the Japan team more seriously’ or the more ‘proper way of soccer criticism’. Consequently, they repro- duce the already defined code and rule as they are.

What I have observed from this mechan- ism of dismissal is that those who are con- vinced that ‘it is only them who watch and talk about soccer seriously enough’ tend severely to attack and expel other modes of fandom. The potential machismo in soccer fandom can been seen in the accusing, despis- ing and ignoring tone against ‘feminized/ feminine’ fans. The excuse often expressed when they attack something they cannot ac- cept is the aggressive and macho competitive consciousness such as; the holy sacredness of the national team, the aestheticization of the serious battle between fellow, nationalized men, ‘it is me who knows best’, or ‘it is only me who has correct knowledge and gaze to watch soccer’. In short, the mode of sport spectatorship, including soccer, is the site of cultural struggle through which the gendered norm is assessed. The most violent power in this struggle is the combination of nationalis- tic tendency in the support of the national team with the machismo that protects the ‘masculinized’ spectatorship. Eventually other modes of practices are ferociously driven away.

In conclusion, when the particular mode of ‘feminized/feminine’ fans is contested by the existing forces, what we need to think about, discuss and discover is this; it is in this nego- tiating situation where a critical view of the authenticity of soccer supporters, in other words, the ‘masculinized characteristics’ of the soccer fandom, comes into existence. The violent exercise of bashing words unexpect- edly reveals that a variety of modes of soccer supporting, one of which is conventionally called mi-ha, potentially has a certain effect of dislocating the power of the mainstream, au- thenticated interpretation of what it is to be a soccer supporter. It seems likely that the fragile, the heterogeneous and something that is positioned as a target of assault, may tend to be considered vulnerable to the violent biting of bashing. However, rather than stay-

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ing in this way of thinking, I would suggest that this very heterogeneity is so powerful that it could astonishingly yield the bashing itself as a reactionary force. It is wiser to look for the way that the power of heterogeneity can be amplified and to produce certain novel languages to describe it.

To create an alternative language to talk about soccer, we/they attempt to practise it through the fan activity in everyday life. Bricolage the limited resources available for us, and knitting them with the hand of delicacy, we/they manage to create an unknown, un- seen gadget in order to ‘avec-faire’ (De Certeau 1990: 50). The bricolage fills the sub-cultural sphere with this gadget and enriches our/ their ordinary life.

Author’s note

This is a heavily revised version of the paper presented at ‘Inside-out: Beyond the FIFA World Cup: Shared Event, Different Experi- ence — Globalisation, State, Gender and Cul- tural Studies’, November 2002. The author would like to thank the organizers for the invitation and the discussants for their pro- ductive questions. The research on which this paper is based is also helped by the specific subject research support fund, number 2002A–052, issued by the Ministry of Edu- cation and Science in Japan.

Notes

1. I choose ‘feminized’ or ‘feminine’ fan instead of ‘female’ fan. What is the strategic significance of using these idioms? Indeed, those wordings may objectify themselves as the targets of slight and despise. However, my choice is made un- der the influence of what Felix Guattari called the ‘devenir-femme’. This is a metaphorical de- vice to signify the metaphor, the work of an alternative imagination, the expression of poss- ible resistance and the heterologies, all of which represents the others’ point of view, which is excluded from the mainstream narrative of sports culture writing.

2. mi-ha is a derogatory calling of the fans who are regarded as improper, temporal and unreliable. They often become the target of exclusion because of their ‘not being serious enough’.

3. It is a particular pattern of the kyara-dachi

(distinctive characterization). The ‘prince’ originates from the position of male heroes in Japanese girls’ comics. The object to which this ‘title’ is applied is determined by the interrelation between his looks and his manner and behaviour in the whole story. Good exam- ples can be drawn from the ‘prince on the hill’

in Igarashi Yumiko � Mizuki Kyoko’s Candy Candy (Igarashi Yumiko � Mizuki Kyoko 1995), ‘Oscar

’ of Ikeda Riyoko’s The Rose of Versailles (Ikeda Riyoko 1994), or those manners and behaviour of the ‘elder student adored by heroine’ typically appearing in the 1980’s school comics. By the same token, kawai ko chan

is deeply associated with girls’ comics. However, it is more influenced by the yaoi culture. The yaoi culture is a distinctively sub-cultural idiom predominantly used in the alternative comic market to the largely circulating commercial one. As ya stands for yama-nashi (no climax), o for ochi- nashi (no point) and i for imi-nashi (no mean- ing), the yaoi culture may be interpreted as a parody of previous narratives. It often works as an allegory of sexualized relations among the male casts. Kawai-ko-chan, for instance, is given to the character which quietly indicates the ‘receiver’ character of the basic coupling of the yaoi culture of ‘receiver/attacker’. He is not necessarily good looking but can be objectified as a fancy treasure. For instance, Oliver Khan of Germany attracted the hearts of elder housewives when he conceded defeat by Brazil and lay on the goalpost for a while.

4. Many examples are found in the readers’ letters section in soccer journals and respective sup- porters’ magazines such as: ‘I’m a 34 years old housewife with 14 year and 9 year old sons. So excited about J-League but sometime I feel ashamed when I found myself so blindly ex- cited like teenage girls’ (Soccer Ai 1999: 71). What is detected from this wording is that even though despite her adulthood she feels ashamed of her ‘girly’ excitement, she still wants to communicate with others who might have the similar affect as hers.

5. Elsewhere I have discussed the potential bash- ing of this kind of intervention. See Tanaka (2003).

6. However, a few exceptions continue to emerge in the sub-cultural sphere. For example, how is it explained from which subject-position those who write the yaoi stories and comics produce their work? Is it actually possible to determine that a person writes as a gay man or a straight woman? I would say that the transition from the fixed subject-position and genderization as ‘woman’ has already begun when we are at- tracted by soccer that is supposed to be a masculine genre.

7. Kim’s view is helpful in that she describes the relationship between race and nationalism in

The ‘feminized fan’ in Japanese soccer culture 61

the Korean context. The similar problem is ob- served in Japan too during the World Cup, but the configuration of the fantasized love of white masculinity and nationalism seems slightly different from Korea. It would be inter- esting to carry out a comparative study about this point in terms of the geopolitical and his- torical relationship between the two countries.

8. The particular mode of fans’ activity implied in the idea of mi-ha seems to be regarded as distinctively characteristic in girls in Asian re- gions. The nearly possessed love mingled with reality and fantasy, the shrilling voices of screaming, the tears of excitement, and eventu- ally the faint, these mi-ha activities apply not only to sports fans but also to the girl groupies of boy idol groups, as I have already pointed out. Referring to Butler, I would rather like to re-appropriate the idea of mi-ha and to carry out the practice of resistance against the mi-ha bashing by actively and aggressively self-ac- claiming as such and strategically assigning the idea to the process of re-signification. Yet I propose to think further about the emphasis on ‘infancy’ that the idea of mi-ha implicitly indi- cates. Although my thought on the infantile element of the mi-ha is still premature, the bodily practice of mi-ha consists of the body technique oppressively enforced by the male- centric society and the one that enforces Asian women to learn (obviously this ‘Asian’ is an ‘imagined’ Asian that similarly resembles what Edward Said argued in his Orientalism (1979). When the meaning of mi-ha is considered as a delicate compound of infancy, prettiness and stupidity, I cannot help thinking of its simi- larity to the position of Asian women in Eu- rope. Even if Asian women reach adulthood they are treated as if they are still teenagers who need the care and patronization by adults who are, in many cases, European men. I will discuss this point elsewhere.

9. I cannot forget a scene in the NHK programme ‘Saturday Sports’, which is broadcast every Sat- urday evening. One day the female caster who has been in charge of the programme for years and must have experienced enough to know a variety of sporting genres said that ‘from today I take charge of soccer’. The male partner in- stantly asked her, half-jokingly, whether she knew actually that soccer is a game of 11 play- ers. It was too complex a feeling to describe in a word since I was convinced that this verbal exchange was too complicated a situation to dismiss as a silly joke. Although this male caster might have said that without any mal-in- tention at all, it is in such a habitual enuncia- tion beyond the speaker’s intention and consciousness that it makes a tiny but import- ant truth emerge.

10. These are drawn from some major weekly women’s magazines such as Josei Jishin

(Koubunsha , Shuukan Jo- sei (Shuhu to seikatsu sha

) published in June and July 2002.

11. As is widely known, in the web chat-pages such attributions of social research as ‘sex’, ‘age’, ‘social strata’, ‘position’ and ‘occupation’ no longer work to indicate a contributor’s so- cial life. They become ambiguous and meaning- less. It is to say that ‘femininity’, ‘masculinity’, ‘youth’ and ‘intellectual’ are all masquerade and performance. Nonetheless, it is important that those categories maintain a kind of materi- ality in cyber space and remain to be used as the code when we contribute to and read the site.

References

Back, Les, Crabbe, T. and J. Solomos (2002) ‘Gringos, reggae gyles and “black, white and blue”?’ (trans) Arimoto Takeshi , Gendaishisou , Seidosha (April): 20–42.

De Certeau, Michel (1990) L’inventon du quotidian 1, Paris: Gallimard.

De Certeau, Michel (1997) Culture in the Plural, (trans.) T. Conley, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Gotou, Takeo (2002) ‘The last exit of the world cup ’, in Soccer Hihyou , Hutabasha

16: 6–7. Igarashi Yumiko � Mizuki Kyoko

(1995) Candy Candy, , Cyuko Bunko

. Ikeda Riyoko (1994) The Rose of

Versailles , Syueisya Bunko .

Kim, Hyunmi (2003) ‘Feminization and women’s fandom in the World Cup 2002’, (trans) Sakamoto Chizuko , Gendai Shisou , Seidosha (January): 16–28.

Said, Edward W. (1979) Orientalism, New York: Random House.

Soccer Ai (1999) Nikkan Sports Sha (February): 71.

Tanaka, Toko (2003) ‘Women’s programme is …’, Kinohyouron Sougensya 34(March): 122–126.

Yamazaki, Kouichi and Gotou Takeo (2002) ‘By the time post

World Cup syndrome is cured’

, Soccer Hihyo Hutabasha 16: 118–128.

Special terms

iri-machi iketenai kawaiiiketeru

62 Toko Tanaka

Author’s biography

Toko TANAKA is a PhD candidate at Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan. Her research con- cerns are the politics of gender, power, media and everyday practices and cultural studies.

Translator’s biography

Hiroki OGASAWARA has been awarded PhD in Sociology at Goldsmiths College, University of London and currently teaches at the Faculty of Cross-Cultural Studies, Kobe University, Japan.