Since the turn of the millennium, Japanese variety television has witnessed a revival in onê-kyara (queen personalities). In contemporary lifestyle media, the trans-gendered onê-personality figure is demonstrative of how suitable consumption and personal effort can bring forth the transformational happiness of the individual. The transgressive, radical potential of the figure of transformative non-normative gender is muffled by the onê-personality's positioning within variety television as a friendly expert of extraordinary and often comical proportions. Language is one of the key sites where the tensions of critical expertise and queerness are negotiated via synthetic friendship and comic relief. In lifestyle media, onê-kyara-kotoba (queen-personality-talk) is juxtaposed with conventional Japanese and emerging practices of digital orthography. This social practice of writing effectively facilitates the contemporary fetish of the onê (queen), and the consumption of homosexual and trans-gendered lifestyle experts selling the promise of heteronormative romantic love.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
AbeH.2010, Queer Japanese: Gender and Sexual Identities Through Linguistic Practices, Palgrave Macmillan, New York.
2.
BardsleyJ.MillerL. (eds) 2011, Manners and Mischief: Gender, Power, and Etiquette in Japan, University of California Press, Berkeley, CA.
3.
BignellJ.2004, An Introduction to Television Studies, Routledge, London.
4.
CollinsJ.1996, ‘Television and Postmodernism’, in MarrisP.ThornhamS. (eds), Media Studies: A Reader, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, pp. 375–84.
5.
FrithH.RaisboroughJ.KleinO.2010, ‘C'mon Girlfriend’, International Journal of Cultural Studies, no. 13, pp. 471–89.
6.
FukushimaM.2000, ‘Tobira no mukô “Onee-kotoba wa kansai-ben de aru” (Beyond the Door: “Onê-kotoba is Kansai Dialect”)’, G-Men, no. 53, pp. 202–3.
7.
FushimiN.2002, Gei to iu ‘keiken’, Potto Shuppan, Tokyo.
8.
FushimiN.MatsuzawaK.KurokawaN.YamanakaT.OikawaK.NoguchiK.2002, ‘“Okama” wa sabetsu ka: Shūkan Kinyōbi no Sabetsu Hyōgen Jiken (Does “okama” have discriminatory connotations? The discriminating expression case in the weekly magazine Shūkan Kinyōbi)’, Potto, Tokyo.
9.
GottliebN.2009, ‘Language on the Internet in Japan’, in GogginG.McLellandM. (eds), Internationalizing Internet Studies: Beyond Anglophone Paradigms, Routledge, New York.
10.
GottliebN.2010, ‘Playing with Language in e-Japan: Old Wine in New Bottles’, Journal of Japanese Studies, vol. 30, no. 3, pp. 393–407.
HillA.2005, Reality TV: Audiences and Popular Factual Television, Routledge, London.
13.
HirakawaH.2011, ‘The Dignified Woman Who Loves to be “Lovable”’, in BardsleyJ.MillerL. (eds), Manners and Mischief: Gender, Power and Etiquette in Japan, University of California Press, Berkeley, CA, pp. 136–55.
14.
HutchbyI.2006, Media Talk: Conversation Analysis and the Study of Broadcasting, Open University Press, Maidenhead.
Ikko2009, Ikko Bijin-dô: Ren'ai, beauty, ningen kankei. Kyûkyoku no onayami sôdan (Ikko's Way of the Beautiful Woman: Romance, Beauty, Human Relations. The Ultimate Advice Consultation), Shueisha, Tokyo.
17.
IrvineJ.T.GalS.2000, ‘Language Ideology and Linguistic Differentiation’, in KroskrityP.V. (ed.), Regimes of Language, School of American Research Press, Santa Fe, CA, pp. 35–83.
18.
IshidaH.MurakamiT.2006, ‘The Process of Divergence Between “Men Who Love Men” and “Feminised Men” in Postwar Japanese Media’, Intersections: Gender, History and Culture in the Asian Context, no. 12, http://intersections.anu.edu.au/issue12/ishida.html.
19.
IwabuchiK.2004, ‘Feeling Glocal: Japan in the Global Television Format Business’, in MoranA.KeaneM, (eds), Television Across Asia: Television Industries, Programme Formats and Globalization, Routledge Curzon, London, pp. 21–35.
20.
KisaragiN.2007, Bijin roku. Kirei ni ikiru 69 no hoosoku (Beautiful Woman Power. 69 Laws for Living Beautifully), Fusôsha, Tokyo.
21.
KroskrityP.V.2000, Regimes of Language: Ideologies, Polities, and Identities, School of American Research Press, Santa Fe, CA.
22.
LewisT.2007, ‘“He Needs to Face His Fears with These Five Queers!”: Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, Makeover TV, and The Lifestyle Expert’, Television and New Media, vol. 8, no. 4, pp. 285–311.
23.
MareeC.2007, Hatsuwasha no gengo sotorateji toshite no negoshiêshon kôi (Negotiation as a Linguistic Strategy of Speakers), Hituzi Shobo, Tokyo, Japan.
24.
MareeC.2008, ‘Grrrl-queens: Onê-kotoba and the Negotiation of Heterosexist Gender Language Norms and Lesbo(homo)phobic Stereotypes in Japanese’, in MartinF.JacksonP.A.McLellandM.YueA. (eds), AsiaPacifiQueer: Rethinking Genders and Sexualities, University of Illinois Press, Chicago, pp. 67–84.
25.
MareeC.2014 (forthcoming), ‘Queer Crossings into Primetime TV: Intralingual Media Translation in Japan’, in CurranB.Sato-RossbergN.TanabeK. (eds), Multiple Translation Communities in Contemporary Japan, St Jerome Publishing, Manchester.
McLellandM.2003, ‘Gay Men, Masculinity and the Media in Japan’, in LouieK.LowM. (eds), Asian Masculinities: The Meaning and Practice of Manhood in China and Japan, Routledge urzon, Oxford.
28.
MillerL.2004, ‘Those Naughty Teenage Girls: Japanese Kogals, Slang, and Media Assessments’, Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, vol. 14, no. 2, pp. 225–47.
29.
MillerL.2011, ‘Subversive Script and Novel Graphs in Japanese Girls' Culture’, Language & Communication, vol. 31, pp. 16–26.
30.
MiyakeK.2007, ‘How Young Japanese Express Their Emotions Visually in Mobile Phone Messages: A Sociolinguistic Analysis’, Japanese Studies, no. 27, pp. 53–72.
31.
NishimuraY.2003, ‘Linguistic Innovations and Interactional Features of Casual Online Communication in Japanese’, Journal of Media and Communication, vol. 9, no. 1, http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol9/issue1/nishimura.html.
32.
OkamotoS.2006, ‘Perception of Hiniku and Oseji: How Hyperbole and Orthographically Deviant Styles Influence Irony-Related Perceptions in the Japanese Language’, Discourse Processes, vol. 41, no. 25, pp. 25–50.
33.
Osugi and Pîko1979a, Osugi to Pîko no konna atashi de yokattara (Osugi and Pîko's If You're Happy with Someone Like Me), April Music, Tokyo.
34.
Osugi and Pîko1979b, Osugi to Pîko no waruguchi hanbun hyakunin bun (Osugi and Pîko's A Hundred People Worthy of Half-slander), CBS Sony, Tokyo.
35.
Osugi and Pîko1979c, Onna no shippo shittemasuka: Dare mo iwanai anata no kyûsho (Do You Know the Woman's Tale? Your Weak Spots of Which No one Speaks), Seishun Shuppan, Tokyo.
OtsukaT.1995, Ni-chôme kara Uroko (Be Awakened to 2-chôme), Shoeisha, Tokyo.
38.
ParkJ.S-Y.2009, ‘Regimenting Languages on Korean Television: Subtitles and Institutional Authority’, Text & Talk, vol. 29, no. 5, pp. 547–70.
39.
ParkJ.S-Y.BucholtzM.2009, ‘Introduction Public Transcripts: Entextualization and Linguistic Representation in Institutional Contexts’, Text & Talk, vol. 29, no. 5, pp. 485–502.
40.
Pîko2007, Sorosoro honto no koi o shinasaiyo (It's About Time You Felt Real Love), Seibidoshuppan, Tokyo.
41.
SebbaM.2007, Spelling and Society: The Culture and Politics of Orthography Around the World, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
42.
SebbaM.2009, ‘Sociolinguistic Approaches to Writing Systems Research’, Writing Systems Research, vol. 1, no. 1, pp. 35–41.
43.
SmithJ.S. Shibamoto2011, ‘When Manners are Not Enough: The Newspaper Advice Column and the “Etiquette” of Cultural Ideology in Contemporary Japan’, in BardsleyJ.MillerL. (eds), Manners and Mischief: Gender, Power, and Etiquette in Japan, University of California Press, Berkeley, CA.
44.
TakeyamaA.2008, ‘The Art of Seduction and Affect Economy: Neoliberal Class Struggle and Gender Politics in a Tokyo Host Club’, PhD thesis, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
45.
TakeyamaA.2010, ‘Intimacy For Sale: Masculinity, Entrepreneurship and Commodity Self in Japan's Neoliberal Situation’, Japanese Studies, no. 30, pp. 231–46.
46.
TalbotM.1995, ‘A Synthetic Sisterhood: False Friends an a Teenage Magazine’, in HallK.BucholtzM. (eds), Gender Articulated: Language and the Socially Constructed Self, Routledge, London.
47.
TanimotoN.2004, ‘Before/After naki seikei: Katei toshite no jiko/mooshin suru jiko’, in AbeNanba (eds), Media bunka o yomitoku gihoo, Sekai shiso sha, Tokyo.
48.
TranterN.2008, ‘Nonconventional Script Choice in Japan’, International Journal of the Sociology of Language, no. 192, pp. 133–51.
49.
UematsuK.2004, Obusu no iiwake (Excuses for (Her Honourable) Ugliness), Kôdansha, Tokyo.
50.
UematsuK.2006, Kore de bijin!! Kirei no moto wa kami hitoe (With This You are a Beautiful Woman!! The Foundation of Beauty is a Paper-thin Margin), Kôdansha, Tokyo.
51.
UematsuK.2008a, Ai sare hime ni naru no yo! Ai no nai jinsei wa onna o minikuku suru no (You will Become a Loved Princess! A Loveless Life Makes a Woman Ugly), Sekaibunkasha, Tokyo.
52.
UematsuK.2008b, ‘Obusu’ taiji! Bijin-ryoku UP de shiawase hitorijime! (Exterminating ‘Her Honourable Ugliness’! Monopolise Happiness by UPing Your Beautiful Woman Power!), Kôdansha, Tokyo.
53.
YonezawaI.2008, Cosme no jidai: ‘Watashi asobi’ no gendai bunka-ron (The Cosmetics Era: A Contemporary Cultural Theory of ‘Me-play’), Keiso shobo, Tokyo.
