Reconstructing Adult Masculinities

Over the past two decades, Japan's socioeconomic environment has undergone considerable changes Within this context, "freeters" - young part-time workers aged between fifteen and thirty-four who are not housewives or students - have emerged into the public arena as a social problem. This book, drawing on six years of ethnographic research, takes the lives of male freeters as a lens to examine contemporary notions of masculinity and adulthood. It queries how notions of adulthood and masculinity are interwoven and how these ideals are changing in the face of large-scale employment shifts, whilst also considering whether male freeters can become "proper" adult men in contemporary Japan.