Marrying a Marilyn of the Tropics: Manhood and Nationhood in Filipina-Japanese Marriages

Carla Freeman (2001) has recently argued that both globalization theory and the very processes defining globalization are ascribed a masculine gender and as a result, masculine globalization theory has implicitly produced a powerful dichotomous model which is separated from empirical studies of local gendered experiences of globalization. Expanding on this argument, I discuss Japanese men's desires for masculine, national, and modern identities in relation to their Filipina wives in urban Japan. I contend that inquiring into men's experiences as situated in intermediate locations between individual subject formation and local and global structures of power opens up a space for new theoretical imaginations to emerge, contributing to our efforts to destabilize the masculine domination commonly found in theories and depictions of intermarried "First World" men and "Third World" women. In addition to humanizing descriptions of the partners of intermarried women, I situate in broader global historical contexts the polarized pair, First World/Third World, within which Filipina-Japanese liaisons are normally located. My ethnography suggests that such relations not only create personal relationships but also haunt the meanings and power relations of the binary terms, thereby altering the theoretical frameworks. By juxtaposing

previously unimaginable actors and attributes, the paper shows the surprisingly transnational dynamics and gendering human relations born of the increasing numbers of cross-national, cross-ethnic marriages at the multiply crisscrossed intersections of the global and the local.