アジア研究学会のプロポーザル

　山口智美さんがふぇみにすとの雑感で書いているとおり、来年のアジア研究学会＠シカゴで予定しているパネルに参加させていただいています。パネル全体のテーマは、いま米国の日本研究者たちのあいだで大流行の「ジェンダーフリー」とインターネットを絡めた話らしいんですが（Gender-free Backlash on the Internet and Beyond: National Politics and Feminism in the 21st Century Japan）、わたしだけ何故か「ポスト・ジェンフリ」のネット騒動と称して WaiWai 問題やります。

Convergence of Xenophobic Uprising and Feminism Online: Japanese Internet Users' Responses to Mainichi Shimbun's Denigrating Depictions of Japanese Women and Girls

ABSTRACT

In June 2008, Mainichi Shimbun newspaper of Japan was forced to shut down WaiWai, a column that appeared on its English language website, amid massive criticisms from Japanese internet users for what the paper later acknowledged as "incorrect information about Japan and indecent sexual content." The column was authored by the Chief Editor of the English edition, and showcased summaries of stories that had appeared in Japanese tabloids, which were often salacious and/or sensationalistic.

While some readers had protested the column earlier without much publicity, a serious campaign against it was mounted in spring 2008, when participants of the popular 2 channel online message board and other internet users began compiling a list of offensive articles, and complaining not just to the newspaper, but also to the companies that advertised on Mainichi's website. The eventual success of the campaign demonstrated the power of unorganised masses connected via web-based infrastructure (message boards, blogs, wikis) by populist outrage.

But at the same time, the rhetoric that developped from these websites also gave a glimpse into curious complicities of feminism and nationalism, as most critics focused on the column's repeated depiction of Japanese women and girls as sexual perverts, as well as the contradiction between the allegation of anti-Japanese racism on the part of the Australian-born editor, and the anti-Korean/Chinese sentiments that some protesters simultaneously expressed.

This paper explores these contradictions, and addresses the difficulties progressives face as the technologies empower simplistic, nationalist moral panic to spread ever more quickly and widely.

　そのうち日本語で何か書くかも。