2020 年 21 巻 1 号 p. 387-420
Perceptions of young women in Japan are examined in relation to female self-defense. Several women in Japan were surveyed, with some chosen for interviews. It seemed that self-defense was often connected not to learning assault-prevention techniques but to purchasing self-defense tools. This finding opens two avenues for discussion. First, the marketization of personal safety is explored, as is the genderization of these tools and the subsumption of women's safety into a logic of consumption. Second, the shift from viewing the body as a weapon to viewing the object as one, which projects various forms of subjectification onto women, is discussed. These include the outsourcing of women's agency to an external object. It is concluded that this outsourcing often results in the reinforcement of tropes of fragility and the neutralization of resignifications of the female body that emerges from practitioners who focus on the body as the instrument of self-defense.
