Foreign Policy Blogs

Japanese celeb commits suicide

Miyu UeharaMiyu Uehara, a Japanese celebrity known locally as a “tarento” (talent), hanged herself early Thursday morning. (Some news sources are mistakenly reporting her name as Miyui or Miyuki.) She had just turned 24 on May 2.

Uehara was a model who had been “discovered” when she was 18 working at a hostess club (a pricey club where female “hostesses” flirt with male customers). She modeled for men’s magazines and was a regular guest on TV shows.

In her last blog entry posted at 7:47 p.m. Tuesday, she said, “About the ‘real’ me, I can’t find love.”

The media are taking the comment in her final blog entry to be a motive for her suicide. If it is true, it is baffling that a beautiful young model would have trouble finding love. Unless you understand how females in show business are treated in Japan.

In December of last year, Tomomi Itano, a member of the all-female pop group AKB48, was asked if she was looking for Mr. Right, and she responded, “We’re not allowed to look.” She went on to add, “Marriage isn’t forbidden though, so I’d like to get married before I’m 30.”

Itano’s quote shed a little light onto the entertainment industry in Japan, as well as sexism in Japanese culture. Young female celebrities are often denied the “privilege” of having a boyfriend. This is necessary to keep up the illusion that they are (sexually) available to their male fans. They are told to think of their fans as their boyfriends. No one in Japan, not even women, see this as a problem. They say the women are young, having fun and making money, so it is perfectly all right for their employers to deny them the right to have boyfriends. However, they are apparently allowed to marry, even though they can’t have a boyfriend. I take this to mean that if their agency arranges a marriage for them, they can get married (arranged marriages are still common in Japan, and that would be the only explanation as to how a woman can find a husband without dating).

The restriction on boyfriends is also indicative of Japan’s hierarchical society and work culture. The fact that agencies and the public passively accept that a woman’s employer can restrict her right to have a boyfriend is a remnant of Japan’s not-so-distant feudal past. Back when I was dating my wife, her boss told her, “Women at this company get married on a seniority basis, and there are two women ahead of you.” However, there were no repercussions when we got engaged, and she quit that job before we got married. Of course the pressure on a celebrity not to date would be much stricter than on a secretary at a box company.

I think Miyu Uehara was another victim of Japan’s sexist, top-down work culture.

 

Author

Dustin Dye

Dustin Dye is the author of the YAKUZA DYNASTY series, available through the Amazon Kindle.

He lived in Okayama, Japan, where he taught English at a junior high school through the Japan Exchange and Teaching Program for three years. He is a graduate from the University of Kansas, where he received a bachelor's degree in anthropology.

His interest in Japan began in elementary school after seeing Godzilla fight Ghidorah, the three-headed monster. But it wasn't until he discovered Akira Kurosawa's films through their spaghetti Western remakes that he truly became fascinated in the people and culture of Japan.

He lives in Kansas with his wife, daughter and guinea pig.

Visit him online at www.dustindye.net.
E-mail him: [email protected]