Behind the Mask: On Sexual Demons, Sacred Mothers, Transvestites, Gangsters, Drifters and other Japanese Cultural Heroes

Behind the Mask looks beyond the corporate and social behavior overviews to explore what Japanese people wish and imagine themselves to be - and why. By examining the popular media and other cultural institutions that shape and reflect the Japanese collective imagination, Ian Buruma reveals the important influence and interplay of sex roles and sexuality in all areas of life. As such, he offers insight into the rather raunchy, violent and sometimes morbid side of the Japanese beyond the forms of delicacy with which we are most familiar. This lively, stylishly written book explains more about the Japanese than most Westerners ever discover. Buruma explains who sexuality and sex roles underpin the elaborate structures of Japanese culture. He sees how women are traditionally worshiped as maternal goddesses, but feared as sexual demons; how they are trained in the art of seeming passive and artificial as dolls, and highly active as prostitutes. He looks at the downtrodden Japanese father, the violent world of the Japanese gangster-hero, the ancient cod of honor as conceived by today's salaryman, and the quintessential Japanese drifter. And he looks at the middle world of the transvestite. Along the way, he shows why sadism in Japanese pornographic films is sentimental, why the album "The Suicide Pilot's Mother" hit the top of the charts, how female elevator operators are trained in the art of artificiality, why the Japanese wife may worry if her husband does not stay at the pub long after work and why many comics featrure beautiful androgynous youths.