メンズリブ研究会はいかにして活動の停滞を迎えたのか

機関誌『メンズネットワーク』に投稿された話し合いの場に関する批判的記述を事例に

抄録

    This study considers the "Men’s Lib Kenkyukai (Men’s Lib Research Group)", the main Men’s Liberation group in Japan that was founded in 1991 and became defunct in 2010. The Men’s Lib Kenkyukai official publication, "Men’s Network," is used as a case study in this research, which attempts to provide, by analyzing participant-provided critical accounts of its group dialogue from the publication in question, an explanation for the reasons behind the group’s gradual decline.

    Though the "permeation of messages," where the men’s movement’s nationwide expansion resulted in a decline in the unique value of men’s issues in the media and government, and the "manifestation of differences," where a diversity of participants brought about differences in problem awareness and goals, have been cited as the main reasons for the Men’s Liberation movement’s decline in Japan during the 2000s, these claims not only lack empirical support but hard data.

    To that end, the concepts of "message permeation" and the "manifested differences" ground the main hypotheses of this research, which then examines their efficacy by contrasting them with critical accounts published in the journal in question. This study seeks to establish the following factors as those which in part contributed to the Men’s Lib Kenkyukai activities coming to an overall standstill: (1) the challenge of discussing personal (private) experiences with other men, a practice not previously highlighted in existing research; (2) variations in male participants’ knowledge regarding feminism; and (3) saturation brought on by the overall loss of the group’s shared objectives. These results offer a more empirical understanding of the complex processes that ultimately resulted in the fall of the Men’s Lib Kenkyukai.