Visual Kei, part one.

Wow, I actually had visitors on my blog! That’s very nice of you all! If I could ask for something – please support me by leaving comments, because I tend to give up easily, and that’s probably the only thing that can make me want to work harder!

Okay, today I’d like to post something not strictly related to X Japan. It’s actually an excerpt from a book I’ve been reading recently:

(The Era of Visual Kei: Rock, Make-up, Gender). I’m kind of into analysing what visual kei is, where did it come from and so on, both from social and aesthetic points of view, so I chose an excerpt which explores one of these areas.

NOTE: I know my English sucks. I’m sure you’ve already noticed English is not my first language, and this text was difficult enough to understand, let alone translate into English. I think I’m gonna edit it a little bit more later, but I’d love to know what other people think (not about my translation, but the text itself, obviously), so I’m gonna post it anyway.

Excerpt from chapter: 拡張された〈男の美学〉, Expanded “man’s aesthetics”, by 井上貴子

Rock is a music which emphasises masculinity. As women are generally excluded from bands, one can say that such only-men formations are a type of homosocial* communnities, which aim at putting a pursuit of “man’s aesthetics” or “masculinity” into practice. In fact, YOSHIKI’s performances in a band called X used to be described as “aesthetics of a moment”, “aesthetics of destruction”, “aesthetics of death”, but let’s not discuss these kinds of “aesthetics” just know.

Let’s see: traditional Japanese family nowadays consists of a father – “salaryman”, mother – housewife, and one or two children. Because father is devoted to working for a company, housekeeping and looking after children is therefore left to mother, which means that mother has almost no contact with society except for people associated with her children, while she is doing her best raising children and making it her reason for living. When young boys refuse to sink into the world of their fathers which revolves around a company, when they want to escape the world of housekeeping to which their mothers belong, that is, when they can’t find their position in an existent patriarchal society to which men and women are gradually rammed into, they can build their identity by chosing or making another community, a goal which they achieve by founding a rock band or joining one.

Rock bands were founded to fulfill “man’s aesthetics”, and are another type of homosocial community. Such communities are totally different than those like school or corporation, to which we are implicitly forced to belong to by general public. In case of a band, everyone dicides whether one wants to found a band or belong to one on ones own. Unlike a corporation though, where women are reluctantly being admitted, girls don’t get angry if they are rejected. So, when a boy can’t identify himself in the communities he is forced to belong to and is dissatisfied with, in a formation such as a band he can, in a group of the same sex colleagues, easily realize himself.

For a young boy, who is dissatisfied with his self being captured in a world where all the values are related to society, X might be one of role models. It is because X, in spite of obstacles, succeeded in establishing the band’s desired self. And that’s why originally X was more popular among young boys, rather than girls. At the beginning, hardly any girls or elderly people were interested in rock music, but even though X put on outrageous make-up and had extreme metal sound, it was widly know for producing ballads of beautiful melodies, and because of that, the number of such fans increased rapidly.

The reason why, if we compare it to other countries, the number of Japanese rock bands putting on make-up increased rapidly at that time, was obviously largely due to the boom started by X. Thanks to X, many Japanese rock bands learned not only how to produce a major hit, but also how to put on a visual image, and as a result of that, a number of “reserve troops” of amateur bands, and especially a number of “beautiful boys” in such bands increased. Men’s magazines began to devote many pages to fashion, hairstyles and make-up, which were intended for such boys; many beauty salons for men were open. In other words, boys gained access not only to what was formerly thought to be masculinity, habitually connected with powerful sound, but also to a “beautiful” look usually considered women’s realm.

And that’s how, starting from X, visual rock musicians, though usually considered a symbol of making clear distinction between sexes, moved in a totally different direction by applying both sound which emphasise masculinity and make-up, women’s realm. Or rather we could say that the adopting women’s realm – make-up, aims at extending the area of the former “man’s aesthetics”, which is put into practice through rock music. In other words, the “expanded man’s aesthetics”, constructed on base of visual rock, was achieved by readopting one of the ways of expressing oneself with ones body, which is a make-up. Visual rock bands, while based on rock sound, a symbol of conventional “man’s aesthetics”, could be seen as male homosocial communities that fulfill extended “man’s aesthetics” by making use of make-up that evokes transgender image.

“Pretty” is a word that was usually used to judge a girl or a woman. On the other hand, man’s value typically referred to his interior, and man’s expressing oneself with a body used to have been oppressed. What was allowed in the sense of expressing man’s aesthetics, was a well-trained body of a primitive man, or a macho. Moreover, it had to be accompanied with a great physical strength. “Expanded man’s aesthetics”, however, instead of already existing self-expression in a sense of expressing ones “masculinity”, makes use of expressing oneself with ones physical appearance, something that is thought to have become the domain of the opposite sex. Women have been long before gaining experience in exploring men’s realm. Not only do they were men’s clothes, like trousers, but also there are no people who pay attention to girls cutting their hair short**, let alone who think it has something to do with ones sexual orientation. On the other hand, if a boy put on a skirt, everyone would probably look at him suspiciously. So, couldn’t we say that, comparing to girls, boys where for a long time oppressed in a way that they can’t express themselves with their bodies. “Extended man’s beauty” lets them explore women realms, as girls did with their realms, and thus it plays a role in expanding men’s realm.

* You probably know what homosocial means, but just in case (I had to check it with wikipedia myself): “In sociology, homosociality describes same-sex relationships that are not of a romantic and/or sexual nature.”
** In Japan, especially in Heian period (794–1185), women didn’t cut their hair letting them grow even up to 2 metres and more. Noblewomen had to have long hair, no matter how hard it was to maintain them or how dangerous it was in face of a war for instance, when they made saving ones life/running away much more difficult. If you wish to explore the subject a little more, I recommend two classical literature works, The Tale of Genji (Genji Monogatari) and The Pillow Book (Makura no Sōshi), both written by women. And you can find some nice pics on wikipedia, like this one: