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Working Out in Japan: Shaping the Female Body in Tokyo Fitness Clubs
Laura Spielvogel
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Description for Working Out in Japan: Shaping the Female Body in Tokyo Fitness Clubs
Paperback. Japanese fitness clubs combine entertainment and exercise, reflecting the Japanese concept of fitness as encompassing a zest for life as well as physical health. This book reveals through an account of these clubs how beauty, bodies, health, and leisure are understood and experienced in Japan. Num Pages: 264 pages, 23 illustrations. BIC Classification: 1FPJ; JFC. Category: (P) Professional & Vocational. Dimension: 5817 x 3887 x 19. Weight in Grams: 435.
Beer, ice cream, and socializing; thighs, abs, and pecs—Japanese fitness clubs combine entertainment and exercise, reflecting the Japanese concept of fitness as encompassing a zest for life as well as physical health. Through an engaging account of these clubs, Working Out in Japan reveals how beauty, bodies, health, and leisure are understood and experienced in Japan today. An aerobics instructor in two of Tokyo’s most popular fitness club chains from 1995 to 1997, Laura Spielvogel captures the diverse voices of club members, workers, and managers; women and men; young and old.
Fitness clubs have proliferated in Japanese cities over the past decade. Yet, despite the pervasive influence of a beauty industry that values thinness above all else, they have met with only mixed success . Exploring this paradox, Spielvogel focuses on the tensions and contradictions within the world of Japanese fitness clubs and on the significance of differences between Japanese and North American philosophies of mind and body. Working Out in Japan explores the ways spaces and bodies are organized and regulated within the clubs, the frustrations of female instructors who face various gender inequities, and the difficult demands that the ideal of slimness places on Japanese women. Spielvogel’s vivid investigation illuminates not only the fitness clubs themselves, but also broader cultural developments including the growth of the service industry and the changing character of work and leisure in Japan.
Fitness clubs have proliferated in Japanese cities over the past decade. Yet, despite the pervasive influence of a beauty industry that values thinness above all else, they have met with only mixed success . Exploring this paradox, Spielvogel focuses on the tensions and contradictions within the world of Japanese fitness clubs and on the significance of differences between Japanese and North American philosophies of mind and body. Working Out in Japan explores the ways spaces and bodies are organized and regulated within the clubs, the frustrations of female instructors who face various gender inequities, and the difficult demands that the ideal of slimness places on Japanese women. Spielvogel’s vivid investigation illuminates not only the fitness clubs themselves, but also broader cultural developments including the growth of the service industry and the changing character of work and leisure in Japan.
Product Details
Format
Paperback
Publication date
2003
Publisher
Duke University Press United States
Number of pages
264
Condition
New
Number of Pages
264
Place of Publication
North Carolina, United States
ISBN
9780822330493
SKU
V9780822330493
Shipping Time
Usually ships in 7 to 11 working days
Ref
99-1
About Laura Spielvogel
Laura Spielvogel is Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Western Michigan University.
Reviews for Working Out in Japan: Shaping the Female Body in Tokyo Fitness Clubs
“Working Out in Japan is a theoretically sophisticated analysis informed by wide reading and well-grounded in the author’s extensive experience as a fitness instructor.”—Allen Guttmann, coauthor of Japanese Sports: A History ”Laura Spielvogel views notions of the body and gender in contemporary Japanese popular culture from an interesting new angle. This highly original work offers an important complement to the Western-dominated literature on the body, sports, and fitness by describing the distinctly Japanese body culture that is a product of both regional traditions and transnational influences.”—Susan Brownell, author of Training the Body for China: Sports in the Moral Order of the People's Republic “A thoughtfully researched and well-written book. It provides a comprehensive case study of Tokyo fitness clubs and the contributions of the management, patrons, and staff toward the debates over identity and gender roles as experienced through the female body.”
Tracy Taylor
Sociology of Sport Journal
"Enjoyable, professional, and well-written. . . . Spielvogel's book . . . manages to be both scholarly and entertaining. . . . It ranges widely and fluently over a range of issues that already exist in a very scattered form in the literature and succeeds in relating them in fresh and interesting ways that should provide new models for anthropologists of Japan to take up and extend even further."
John Clammer
Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute
"Exceptionally well-done. . . . A rare and highly welcome complimentary perspective to our general understanding of the way cultural ideologies are inscribed upon the body. . . . One of the best and most convincing books I have read this summer. . . . This book is a fine ethnographic account, a theoretically sophisticated narrative, and an absolute must-read for anyone with a general interest in sport, consumer culture, the body, or the feminine in late-capitalist Japan."
Wolfram Manzenreiter
Monumenta Nipponica
"[Spielvogel's] study covers an extraordinary range of topics and examines them with uncharacteristic theoretical breadth. . . . This well-written, thoughtfully argued, accessible study is a welcome addition to the growing body of excellent ethnographies on sport, leisure, and body culture."
Thomas B. Stevenson
Journal of Anthropological Research
Tracy Taylor
Sociology of Sport Journal
"Enjoyable, professional, and well-written. . . . Spielvogel's book . . . manages to be both scholarly and entertaining. . . . It ranges widely and fluently over a range of issues that already exist in a very scattered form in the literature and succeeds in relating them in fresh and interesting ways that should provide new models for anthropologists of Japan to take up and extend even further."
John Clammer
Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute
"Exceptionally well-done. . . . A rare and highly welcome complimentary perspective to our general understanding of the way cultural ideologies are inscribed upon the body. . . . One of the best and most convincing books I have read this summer. . . . This book is a fine ethnographic account, a theoretically sophisticated narrative, and an absolute must-read for anyone with a general interest in sport, consumer culture, the body, or the feminine in late-capitalist Japan."
Wolfram Manzenreiter
Monumenta Nipponica
"[Spielvogel's] study covers an extraordinary range of topics and examines them with uncharacteristic theoretical breadth. . . . This well-written, thoughtfully argued, accessible study is a welcome addition to the growing body of excellent ethnographies on sport, leisure, and body culture."
Thomas B. Stevenson
Journal of Anthropological Research