Masculinity and Body Weight in Japan: Grappling with Metabolic Syndrome

Abstract

The second volume of Toyota Yuu’s highly popular manga series Cherry Magic! Thirty Years of Virginity Can Make You a Wizard?! (2019) has a bonus episode in which 30-year-old inconspicuous salaryman Adachi goes on a company trip where he bathes in an onsen with his male work mates. One of his colleagues, the handsome and ever popular Kurosawa, turns out to be in love with Adachi and shows off his slim, muscular body with six-pack abs, toned specifically for this occasion and expressly designed to impress Adachi. Kurosawa actually finds Adachi’s rather fluffy belly very cute and attractive, as his monologue tells us: ‘fair, smooth like rice flour dumplings’ that would feel nice and cuddly—to Adachi’s ensuing embarrassment. This episode highlights two concerns about the male body in contemporary Japan—muscularity, and especially, chubbiness. Genaro Castro-Vàzquez’s Masculinity and Body Weight in Japan is a scholarly investigation that allows the reader to delve into the widely reported issue of body weight and social pressures created by the fear of metabolic problems among adult men. In this book, Castro-Vàzquez asks the question ‘How are masculinity and body weight control entangled in contemporary Japan?’ (5). The book deals with the issue of metabolism and how it is intertwined with the idea of masculinity (or masculinities, respecting Connell 1995) in contemporary Japan.