Filozofski vestnih Letnik/Volume X X I I I • Številka/Number 2 • 2 0 0 2 » 1 1 1 - 1 1 7 
T H E INVISIBLE M A L E B O D Y 
HIROSHI YOSHIOKA 
Two conversations I recently had with friends motivated me to write on this 
subject. One was about the leaflets I always find in my mailbox at my apart-
ment in Kyoto. They are all the same size, as small as a page of a pocket paper-
back, showing naked young female bodies, with their stereotypically inno-
cent-looking faces, unsuited to their provocative poses. These are advertise-
ments for a "sex delivery service," which is quite common in Japan's urban 
areas today. Girls are delivered like pizza, and the customer is charged for 
every twenty minutes (the maximum use is 120 minutes). Once when I showed 
a magazine to my friend she found an advertisement in it recruiting new "work-
ers" for this job; the advertisement explained how easy and safe the job was. I 
even found an advertisement for males who could work as drivers taking the 
girls to the customers. 
"Here, you see," said the friend, "you can buy sex on one side, and sell it 
on the other. This kind of business used to be dominated by yakuza (Japanese 
gangsters), and perhaps still is, but you can no longer detect any danger or 
crime in this advertisement. Prostitution has become a part of industry in this 
country. Sex is just consumption, neat, safe and systematic. Girls are not forced 
to do it f rom poverty. They just want to make quick money for their own 
pleasure. So, what's wrong?" I replied that sex is always represented through 
female bodies, and they are therefore too visible in the society. This over-
exposure blinds us, and makes our own bodies invisible. On the other hand, 
male bodies are invisible behind the profusion of female. Perhaps male bod-
ies are inseparable from industry itself. They are submerged in the system. 
The other conversation was about the photo exhibition of Laurie Toby 
Edison, an American photographer, which took place in September 2001 at 
The National Museum of Art in Osaka.1 The show included works from two of 
1 Recent Works of Laurie Toby Edison: Meditations on the body, The National Museum of Art, 
Osaka, Japan, August 2, - September 2, 2001. 
I l l 
H I R O S H I YOSHIOKA 
her series of work: Women En Large, Familiar Men and Japanese Women, a new 
series she was working on. I have been interested in Edison's approach to 
photography because she challenges the representation of human bodies that 
is deeply influenced by mass media. In mass media you can never encounter 
fat female bodies unless they are supposed to illustrate something negative 
(the body before dieting) ,2 In the same way, men's naked bodies are not shown 
as such, never seen as something "familiar." They are always represented as 
signs of sexual (bodies of actors, rock musicians, etc.) or physical strength 
(those of athletes, football players, etc.). Edison's photography breaks this 
unspoken code, and makes us notice how invisible human bodies are in fact 
in our society. 
Laurie Toby Edison, 
from Meditations on the 
Body (2001) 
2 Women En Large: Images of Fat Nudes, Photographs by Laurie Toby Edison. Text by 
Debbie Notkin, Books in Focus, San Fransisco 1994; website: h t t p : / /www.candy 
darling.com/lte/gallery.html 
112 
T H E INVISIBLE MALE BODY 
I have known the curator of this exhibition, Ms. Akiko Kasuya, for many 
years. When the exhibition was over I asked her what kind of response she 
had got from visitors. "It's amazing," she said. "First I thought it would be the 
nudes of fat women that might be provocative to some of the audience. I was 
wrong. It was the male bodies in the Familiar Men series which turned out to 
be more embarrassing." "Embarrassing to whom?" I asked. "To some middle-
aged male viewers, those who work in the administrative office of the mu-
seum, for example. They found the series almost disgusting. They told me 
that theyjust couldn' t stand looking at that part of Edison work." I asked: "Is 
this because they think male bodies are not something you can appreciate in 
the artwork?" Kasuya answered: "Perhaps, because those are the bodies of 
ordinary men, in normal, everyday situations." 
I thought she was right. If the male body were shown as something excep-
tional, like those of macho athletes, film stars or even gays, these images would 
be accepted much more easily. Finding the body marked as something ex-
traordinary, the viewer would have a feeling of safety, a feeling that would 
reassure him that he doesn' t belong to what is represented here. But what we 
can see in Edison's photos are just ordinary males. They are naked, but with-
out any appeal to their physical strength, nor can we see here any sign of 
sexual seduction. 
So, why should usual and ordinary male bodies be seen with embarrass-
ment, while unusual and extraordinary ones are seen as a commonplace? 
These conversations reminded me of a passage in a newly published book 
I am reading, whose title could be literally translated as What It Means to Make 
Love with a Man.3 The book is the record of a long talk by three female writers 
based on their experiences with men. The main topic of their conversation is 
how men are framed with a limited image of sex and sexuality in our contem-
porary society. Among the three is Tomoko Minami, a writer and sex worker 
who declares that she has seen more than thirty thousand penises(!) She has 
observed that many men seem to hate looking at their own naked body in the 
mirror. "Many men feel that the male body is ugly. They say their desire is 
spoiled by seeing their own body in the mirror. It's perhaps because they are 
not accustomed to being looked at. They don' t understand how women look 
at them, either in a sexual or non-sexual way." 
The sex industry exploits fantasy. It casts sexual fantasy into a certain 
mold, which is based on the dichotomy of the overexposed female body and 
the invisible male body. What interests me here is that, in industrialized soci-
3 Otoko woDaku tolukoto, by Ayako Saito, Tomoko Minami and Xanae Kameyama, Asuka-
shinsha publishers, 2001. 
113 
H I R O S H I YOSHIOKA 
eties, to be a man one is required to hide the individual body under one's 
social function. Being a man means being able to identify oneself with what 
one is supposed to be in society, instead of what one really is. And I suppose 
this can be seen in Japan in an especially obvious form, as here moderniza-
tion in this aspect has gone very far, even farther than in Western countries. 
Modernization has taken the form of standardization and uniformity. 
Uniform might be the key to thinking about the structure of desire in this 
culture. People love being uniformed, because they are brought up in such a 
way. The uniform put on the body produces "uniformed sexual fantasy." 
Uniforms for female students and workers are very often associated with men's 
sexual fantasies. Miwa Yanagi, a contemporary Japanese artist, critically rep-
resented this shared male view in her early works.4 On the other hand, uni-
forms for men show how they function in the system. By wearing uniforms, 
women have to suggest, and men have to deny, the existence of their body. 
Here I am not only referring to uniforms like those of policemen, but to 
everything people put on the body to show how they should be treated. Uni-
form culture in this sense can be seen in two very popular male stereotypes in 
modern Japan: "Salary-man" and "Otaku." "Salary-man" is a j apan ized En-
glish word for an office worker, but the important thing is that it implies that 
someone is decent, normal, average and safe. Their actual uniform is a suit 
and a tie in a rather sober color. "Salary-man" represents the sociable side of 
the Japanese male identity. "Otaku" is the other extreme. They can be recog-
nized by their untidy clothes, disheveled hair, stubble and so on. They restrict 
their world to a particular field (such as animation, computer manipulation, 
etc.) and they typically lack skills in sociability and communication. They are 
sometimes even infamous for their "loli-con," the sexual fantasy about prepu-
bescent females (the word is derived f rom "Lolita complex"). 
These two types - Salary-man and Otaku - may seem to be the opposites 
of each other, but they have the same desire in common, to deny their indi-
vidual existence as a man. They share the hatred of looking at their own body, 
and try to hide behind the uniform appearance. It is important to under-
stand that these two characters stand for two basic functions in Japanese soci-
ety which enabled the quick development of the country: Salary-man repre-
sents the spirit of cooperation, while Otaku is an expert in technology. What 
we can see behind the diffusion of these two popular male stereotypes is how 
important the process of industrialization is in transforming the individual 
male body into an invisible one; it was made, transformed into an anonymous 
part of the system in order to maximize the efficiency of the state machine. 
4 http:/7www.yanagimiwa.net/ 
114 
T H E INVISIBLE MALE BODY 
To make the male body invisible means, however, to set it up in the mythi-
cal dimension. The Japanese body has become a sanctuary, like the emperor's 
body used to be before World War II. The body is notjust invisible, but some-
thing that shouldn' t be mentioned in secular words. Sheer racism can result 
f rom this when people have to face the body issue. In 1994 some "onsen" (hot 
spring) bathhouses in the small town in Hokkaido put up signs "Japanese 
only," because they had been disturbed by drunken Russian sailors. They tried 
to exclude all foreigners, but actually the nationality was not the point, the 
distinction was made between Japanese and "foreign" bodies. A person who 
had already become a naturalized citizen of Japan was also denied entry into 
the bathhouse because he had a Western body5. 
In this context, I have been very interested in works of art which attempt 
to resist this invisibility and mystification of the male body, and to recover the 
possibility of its representation. 
Miyako Ishiuchi has taken photographs of human bodies, both male and 
female, but they are not normal nude photos. Like Edison, she is interested 
in the aspect of the body that has been excluded in the mass media. She has 
been attracted, for example, to "scars" on the body, the skin of old people, 
rough nails of middle-aged women and so on. In the interview I had with her 
for the critical journal Diatx., 6 1 asked about the interest she has in "scars" 
and the skin of elderly people. "For me, the photograph is a device for visual-
izing the flow of time, rather than fixing a moment," she replied. "Time is 
invisible, but you can see it on the human body." In the course of conversa-
Tadasu Takamine, 
Kimura-san, perfor-
mance (2000/2001) 
5 For fu r the r in format ion on this incident, visit: h t tp : / /www.debi to .org /o taru la 
wsuit.html 
6 Diatxt. volume on "Future Memory," ed. Hiroshi Yoshioka, Kyoto Art Center, 2000. 
For fur ther information on this journal , visit http://www.diatxt.com/index_e.html 
115 
H I R O S H I YOSHIOKA 
tion she mentioned the "quietness" of the body in her works. Though her 
works include criticism of the mass media which brainwash us everyday with 
perfect young bodies, Ishiuchi's works are an alternative way of looking at the 
body, rather than an attack on the dominant way of body representation. 
It is also important to mention Miyako Ishiuchi's selection of works en-
titled Sawaru: Chromosome XY,1 which shows close-up images of male bodies 
together with their normal portraits. Their bodies are all so close that we feel 
as if we are touching, rather than watching them (The first part of the title 
"Sawaru" simply means "touch" in Japanese). Closeness creates a feeling of 
intimacy, but it doesn't lead to the eroticism we see in commercial photos. 
Here again, the crucial thing is that they are all ordinary men, young and old, 
Japanese and nonjapanese . Under each portrait you read their name (in 
English) and their year of birth, without any implication of their job or any 
social role. Still, most men in the portrait seem to try to show their social 
status (you can read this from their expression). By presenting this interest-
ing contrast between the ID-like portrait and the unusually close sight of the 
body, Ishiuchi seems to suggest a new way of looking at male bodies. In other 
words, she is trying to demystify the male body, to ease its tension, and to 
rescue it from the suppressive invisibility in our modern society. 
While Ishiuchi's work suggests the possibility of representing the male 
body by giving it a gentle look, Tadasu Takamine's approach shows a harsh 
and violent approach toward the issue. In his multi-media performance en-
titled Kimura-san, he obviously addressed the subject of "disability,"8 but I think 
the work connotes the issue of the male body too, or, maybe the male body as 
something systematically "disabled." 
"Kimura-san" is the name of a man who was a victim of the Morinaga 
arsenic milk poisoning incident in 1955 in Japan. In spite of the disability 
affecting a large part of his body, he has lived alone in Kyoto for fifteen years. 
Takamine had worked for five years as one of the voluntary aid staff visiting 
his house once or twice every month. One day, he happened to "discover" 
that Kimura-san had a sexual drive like any other man, and this dramatically 
changed his views of the bodies of disabled people. He masturbated the man 
who was obviously unable to have a relationship with a woman in a normal 
situation. The artist videotaped the scene, at that time without any intention 
7 Sawaru: Chromosome XY, by Miyako Ishiuchi, Shinchosha publishers, 1995. 
8 In relation to the more general theme of this work, i.e., to the issue of the sexuality of 
handicapped people, I would like to note that there is a book and website by a writer who 
is in a wheelchair himself, about f reedom of sex for people with handicaps. Tatta Go-
senchi noHadoru or Sex for the handicapped, which has never been spoken of, by Yoshihiko Nojo, 
Wani Books, 2001. ht tp: / /www.netlaputa.ne. jp/~k-nojo/CHIKA/ 
116 
T H E INVISIBLE MALE BODY 
to make it public. But he finally decided to use the tape in his performance, 
partly because Kimura-san himself wanted the tape to be publicly presented. 
In the performance Takamine wears a kind of framed headgear (like 
that of an ice hockey player), with two small video cameras attached inside of 
it which take close-up pictures of his eyes. He sits in front of a table with plates 
of glass on it, and behind him there is a huge screen showing the scene of 
Kimura-san's body. In the course of the narration (which is in English and 
read by his own recorded voice), he abruptly smashes the glass by hitting it 
with his head, and the moment he does this the screen suddenly changes into 
the image of his irises. He does this again and again. 
"The world awakes by laughter," when Kimura-san's face shows the mo-
ment of ecstasy on the screen. "This is based on something, but not on sexual 
desire. His behavior - just the opposite of masculine - is a rare sphere in 
which no one will lose their reality." By "opposite of masculine," the artist 
refers to Kimura-san's disability, not only in the sense of his physical handi-
cap, but in the sense of "the disability to refuse." In order to survive, the man 
has no choice but to accept others. ... "his body does not have privacy in the 
first place."9 This very "disability" leads to the laughter that awakes the world, 
affirming the visibility and existence of the body. 
The body is not a matter of fact. On the contrary, it is still an unknown 
dimension which we should explore very carefully, through artistic expres-
sion and philosophical thinking as well as normal scientific investigation. And 
I believe that various attempts to recover the visibility of the male body could 
radically change our view of many problems in our society, many of which are 
caused by the stiffness of masculinity. 
9 The full text of the narration (both English andjapanese) is published in Diatxt., vol. 
3., "Vita Sexualis," 2001, including other works by Tadasu Takamine. 
117