The Costs of Grooming: Bodily Scrutiny and White-collar Masculinities in Japan

The Politics and Policing of Men’s Grooming and White-collar Masculinities

Connell’s (1995) hegemonic masculinity thesis aids in understanding masculinities as contextually contingent norms and actions that legitimate asymmetrical relations between men and women, among men, and that intersect with categories including age, sexuality, and race. Scholars such as Messerschmidt (2018) highlight how the “body is an essential part of hegemonically masculine construction” (130). Bodies unable to realise hegemonic norms are subordinated, thus legitimating “a hierarchical relationship between two different types of masculinity” (2018, 121). While hegemonic masculinities refer to normative ideals, in reality “not many men actually meet the normative standards” (Connell 1995, 79). Complicit masculinities, as their name suggests, are complicit in such standards, thereby sustaining hegemonic norms, benefitting from the social recognition, and in so doing legitimating the subordination of those who cannot realise such standards.

During the past two decades, research has explored the increasing scrutiny of men’s grooming, with a common theme addressing how practices including moisturising, haircare, dieting, and makeup reproduce hegemonic masculine norms (Luciano 2001; Barber 2008; 2016; Barber and Bridges 2017; Scheibling and Lafrance 2019; Gough, Hall and Seymour-Smith 2014). Men’s grooming products “are often marketed by way of ‘action hero’ euphemisms” (Bordo 1999, 196), while men talk about grooming for the heterosexual imperative of attracting girlfriends (Tso 2022). The reproduction of hierarchical relations among men along lines including sexuality, race, and class also becomes clear through narratives on grooming (e.g., Lawrence 2020; Slevin and Linnemann 2010). Gill, Henwood, and Mclean’s (2005) interviews on British men’s bodywork included “homophobic exchanges, designed to disavow any homoerotic desire in the speaker and to cast aspersions on the others’ (heterosexual) manhood” (59), thereby demonstrating a privileging of straight masculinity over homosexuality. Meanwhile, Hurd and Mahal (2021) find that youthful, strong bodies are ideals for older men who “feared their subordination in the masculinities hierarchies” (13–14). Akin to “hybrid masculinities” (Bridges 2014), these studies underscore how rises in grooming standards become ways through which men perpetuate inequality.

Scholarship has underscored the gendered dimensions of organisations (Britton 2000), where particular performances are key to realising white-collar masculinities, such as working long hours, organising private life around work responsibilities, and relegating domestic responsibilities—traits that signal appropriate organisational devotion (Kelly, Ammons, Chermack, and Moen 2010; Connell and Wood 2005). These are underpinned by “masculine ethics” characterised by “macho”, “heroic”, and oftentimes sexist and homophobic behaviour (Collinson and Hearn 1996, 3–4). “Masculine ethics” have not typically included the body but have emphasised “brains rather than brawn” (de Casanova 2015, 200). However, as recent scholarship has begun to address, professional-class men, too, must demonstrate their organisational value through bodily grooming. Barber (2008; 2016) highlights how wealthy white-collar men understand frequenting high-end hair salons as being members of spaces exclusive to men in privileged positions and realising professional success as upholding the same grooming standards as their wealthy clients. de Casanova (2015) similarly investigates white-collar men’s everyday clothing culture, arguing that they accept circumscribed sartorial choices in return for stable, well-paid employment, and membership to privileged middle-to-upper classes. These studies underscore how corporate-class men incorporate haircare and clothing to sustain their privilege.

Masculinities scholarship has yet to analyse how men’s policing processes surrounding grooming intersect with hegemonic status. While not focusing on everyday policing, past scholarship on the costs of masculinities explores how men’s pursuit of hegemonic masculinities engender harmful costs including poor health and strained relationships. In competitive sports environments, for instance, while men often seek closer homosocial relations, such environments “diminish their capacity for intimate relationships with others” (Messner 1992, 152). Elsewhere, masculine ideals of independence result in difficulties in emotional interdependence in heterosexual relations (Hanlon 2012). However, such studies have thus far tended not to consider how privileged men may be subject to behaviour that denies them their claim to hegemonic status. The everyday policing of grooming among privileged men provides an interesting alternative perspective. Winch’s (2013) study on women’s beauty cultures highlights how “meanness pervades many girls’ intimacies” and how “normative cruelties” (10) are key in maintaining bodily ideals. In competitive contexts where men seek to sustain hegemonic ideals, men subject to similar cruelties, such as disparaging remarks about bodyweight or getting scolded for inappropriate hairstyles, not only find such cruelties unpleasant while facing strained relationships but, importantly, understand the policing as costing them their hegemonic status. As Connell (1995) reminds us, masculinities become “vulnerable when the performance cannot be sustained” (54). Such policing may not cost a man his job, but it will cost him his place on the hierarchy among men in his workplace. Highlighting these real structural costs to privileged men nuances understandings of the costs of masculinities which have tended to take men’s hegemonic status for granted. The intersection between policing processes among corporate men’s grooming and hegemonic masculinities is also visible in the Japanese context.

Grooming White-collar Masculinities in Japan

Since post-war Japan (1945-), social expectations of gender have revolved around a dynamic where men and women devote themselves respectively to full-time employment and domestic responsibilities (Ochiai 1997). Salaried white-collar men ¹ with stable employment became symbols of the country’s economic prosperity, particularly during the 1970s-80s and ideological references for masculinity. Although their status has suffered since the 1990s onset of economic stagnation with criticism for instance of their supposedly out-of-date working habits (Dasgupta 2013), an increasingly competitive job market where stable, well-paid employment is increasingly scarce means well-paid, white-collar men with stable employment remain, despite their numerical minority, the dominant group of masculinity (Gagné 2020). In contemporary society, these men may seem to lead stable careers, but many “have lost their sense of security” (Gagné 2020, 87): ever-fewer core workers are shouldering ever-increasing professional burdens, while those unable to keep up with new performance-based systems may suffer stagnant careers or even dismissal (Gagné 2020). Significantly, we shall see that men understand failing to maintain professional reputations as having real costs to their status within corporate hierarchies.

Part of maintaining professional reputation is maintaining bodies that realise economic ideals of productivity (Tanimoto 2013). Media representations, for instance, depict white-collar men’s physical (and mental) hardships in company life including onerous workloads, long hours, after-hours drinking, and frequent business trips (Roberson 2005). While typical post-war white-collar men had a simple dark suit, short hair and no “flashy” (Dasgupta 2013, 34) accessories, the 1990s saw a more polished makeover. White-collar men have been the primary targets of products such as facial moisturisers (Sōgō Kikaku Sentā 2015) and also began partaking in other practices such as shaping their eyebrows into neat crescents (Ishida 2009). Meanwhile, concern about strong body odour and protruding stomachs have also led to further scrutiny (Castro-Vázquez 2018; Puranetto 2018).

A salient antithetical reference that illustrates how realising bodily grooming norms is key to realising hegemonic white-collar masculinities is the figure of the oyaji—a derogatory term for “old man”. The oyaji figure grew prominently in the context of the 1990s onset of economic stagnation, representing “old-style salaryman types” (Miller 2006, 127). He is professionally incompetent, incapable of shouldering professional burdens, and depicted as a slovenly middle-aged-to-older man with a wrinkled suit, balding, and smelly (Monden 2015; Steger 2013). Professional and bodily incompetence also make him unpopular among women employees (Bardsley 2011). Given the steady increase in women pursuing white-collar careers which have been dominated by men and masculine ideals (Steel 2019), maintaining favourable heterosocial relations is increasingly important in maintaining professional status. Bardsley (2011) finds that a prominent theme in self-help books for white-collar men centres avoiding oyaji-like behaviour such as excess hair or strong body odour that could frighten women employees. Significantly, then, as subordinated masculinities, ² oyaji legitimise criticism of those who embody undesirable values while giving meaning to hegemonic masculinities. While people nowadays may not invoke “oyaji”, these discourses underscore that bodies that demonstrate professional competence and maintain favourable status among women are key to hegemonic white-collar masculinities. Failure to realise these may cost men their claims to hegemonic ideals. Nevertheless, scholarship has yet to explore how these ideologies manifest in men’s everyday realities, nor how men’s policing of grooming ideals may sustain or threaten their hegemonic status. These themes constitute the core focus of this article.

Learning to Embody White-collar Masculinities

As Dasgupta (2013) argues, to realise hegemonic white-collar masculinities in Japan, men must successfully proceed through important life-stages of entering university, securing well-paid and stable white-collar jobs, and rising up their corporate ladders. Therein, demonstrating professionalism (namely, competence in one’s duties and ability to shoulder heavy workloads) is key to sustain the status of reliable man. Men must also demonstrate successful claims to white-collar masculinities through bodily control. Some companies instruct new recruits “how to embody and perform [the status of reliable worker] correctly through the disciplining of body and mind down to minute details” (Dasgupta 2013, 72). In this vein and within the context of increased anxiety over job security and career development (Gagné 2020), the participants in this research negotiate grooming standards to claim and sustain hegemonic status within their companies.

To begin, how do superiors police subordinates? Haruki, 64, a manager at a large department store illustrates the importance his company places on new recruits’ bodily control. Now in a position where he interviews candidates and overlooks inductions, in Haruki’s estimation new employees are “soft” (amai):

They’re indecisive and just can’t be bothered. When you enter the world of work life gets tougher, you have no choice but to do things. To get that change-over into them (kirikae o mi ni tsukeru) – well, you have Sparta Training ... [In my induction], we were taken to the mountains for two weeks. It was like military training ... There were courses and in the classrooms there were windows. Outside there was a lot of snow. If your eyes wandered even just a bit by accident, the instructor came right up to your face and yelled, “What the hell are you looking at?”

Haruki’s account exemplifies how new companies place importance in drilling into recruits hegemonic masculine values such as commitment and discipline. Describing new recruits as “soft”, he uses the phrase “kirikae o mi ni tsukeru”, which literally means “to attach to the body the change-over”. Bodies become focal points for superiors to ensure that new employees adhere to company expectations of white-collar masculinity. Although the company no longer uses such bootcamps, opting instead for a 2-week induction up north, they still emphasise bodily control. Instructors instil into recruits correct grooming, as well as bodily technique in bowing to customers or exchanging business cards.

Younger participants on the receiving end of bodily disciplining such as Shinpei, now 33, finance industry, explain how poor grooming may disadvantage their hierarchical position. In Shinpei’s first company after graduating from university, shaving facial hair daily was important:

Those with the authority to decide promotions think that people with common sense should be promoted. Otherwise this would damage the company by ... causing an unexpected loss from their rude appearance ... Common sense is one of the evaluation factors … Rather than thinking about expressing my individuality by growing out facial hair, following the rules – the cost-benefit, the benefit is greater, shaving one’s facial hair … It’s not good [but] by following rules, you won’t damage your reputation.

This underscores Shinpei’s particular awareness of his superiors’ judgment, and also the potential of real costs to these men’s hegemonically masculine status.

Other participants detailed the various ways their bodies are subject to policing from superiors. Toshihiko, who had only been at his company for 6 months after graduating from university, described his induction ceremony. Immediately after the new recruits were officially made new employees of the company, the managers made them all line up to have their bodies inspected, particularly their suits, hair, and facial hair. Those who failed the check, often because their hairstyle was too long or if it was styled in an undercut, were made to get it cut immediately by the managers.

We were lined up, then [the manager would say] OK, fail, OK, OK, fail ... those who failed went to thousand-yen ³ places and were made to line up again. OK. Those who failed again were made to come back after cutting it themselves in the bathroom. Strange isn’t it?

Immediately after the ceremony, the new employees travelled to a small mountain resort town a couple of hours outside of Tokyo for a week-long training camp. Not only was this substantial in terms of specialised job skills but it also consisted of embodied activities including bowing correctly and ensuring proper grooming when meeting clients, such as by wearing a suit and tie along with the company’s pin, and by polishing one’s shoes. Even outside the training camp’s formal sessions, managers would discipline inductees for not following the prescribed rules. For instance, instructed to arrive for breakfast in the dining hall every morning wearing their suits, when an employee turned up in pyjamas, two superiors proceeded to angrily and loudly scold him in front of everyone, ordering him to return dressed appropriately. This incident is akin to Steger’s (2008) ethnography where white-collar men unable to wake up on time after heavy drinking sessions are considered “slovenly” (darashinai). Slovenliness carries gendered significance. Because lack of bodily control signals lack of professional reliability, which is key to white-collar masculinities, slovenliness threatens men’s ability to sustain hegemonic masculinities. In addition to these masculine values being reproduced through explicit policing among men, they also bring into focus new recruits’ low hierarchical positions within the collective company. Toshihiko lamented how even the superiors disciplining new recruits would not necessarily pass their own tests. But this is beside the point. I suggest that bodily disciplining is a way that men reproduce company hierarchies. Thus, by grooming to standard, new recruits not only embody ideals of white-collar masculinity, but also their lower status within the company.

White-collar men do not learn such discipline and quickly forget it; white-collar masculinity is a constantly policed performance. Wataru, 27, has recently begun working in sales for a large financial company. “I’ve just moved jobs so I need to be sure I look sharp for my superiors,” who tell him to “‘cut your hair short and style it neatly’. I get told that. ‘Do up your tie.’ Those kind of things.” His new workplace is strict and often he gets a ticking off. Also, nearby his section in the office, there is an etiquette teacher who belongs to the administrative staff but also trains others in manners and business etiquette. Wataru avoids this area of the office, fearful he will be told off by the teacher about his grooming. He repeatedly complained that these rules are a “pain in the ass” (mendō-kusai). Occasionally he forgets to shave in which case he wears a face mask and hides from superiors to avoid invoking their anger. Wearing face masks is common in Japan (Horii 2012) ⁴ and Wataru draws on such common-place practice to cover his inattention to his grooming. In contrast, he does insist on wearing a tie in the office, hoping that it creates a better impression to others, even though his section manager assures him that it is unnecessary and despite its restrictiveness making concentration harder. For Wataru, who is a mid-career hire and has not gone through a formal induction programme, he is particularly conscious to avoid being told off by his superiors to keep intact his professional reputation.

Keeping up with Appearances

While workplaces may emphasise men’s literal incorporation of white-collar masculinities during the early stages of careers, laying claim to one’s hegemonic status as professionally competent is an ongoing realisation where men remain on guard throughout their careers. Participants must negotiate more informal bodily norms that may become subject to criticism, in particular body shape and balding. Once more, such criticism for men puts into question their ability to sustain hegemonically masculine ideals and thus may come at a cost to their status among colleagues.

Physical exercise and sports are important to participants’ professional identities. Recent government concern over sedentary lifestyles, particularly among middle-aged men liable to alcoholism and poor diets due to work stress (Kawanishi 2009) has prompted “specific bodyweight control strategies” (Castro-Vázquez 2018, 1139), resulting in greater scrutiny of men’s physiques and fitness. For entertainment company consultant, Jun, 40, maintaining physical fitness is key to keeping intact his professional reputation. After having been invited by a colleague to participate in a triathlon, Jun has done triathlons, marathons, and other sports including basketball and football. His slim and athletic physique stands as proof. His ideal physique is one efficient for work:

The ideal physique is one that makes work easier. There are, like, these bodybuilders in the office, and, well, I think that’s great, but I’m not sure it’s very good for work [laughs] ... I mean it’s completely useless for work right? ... Being agile … that’s what’ll get people to ask you to do work for them. So [exercising] consistently – if you do nothing then you won’t get that physique.

In contrast, Keisuke, 22, frequents the gym to build a muscled physique with bodily aspirations including Hollywood action heroes like Captain America and Wolverine. Far from “useless”, a muscled physique is, in fact, useful for work:

I think a man must be strong, physically at least. [Why is that?] Like I get embarrassed. I don’t want to be looked down upon. So, like, being fit gives you an advantage ... I mean, in other words, I guess people don’t look down upon me ... that’s why I have to do it. Because I’m not confident in myself.

Importantly, then, while both participants have differing ideals, they both understand their physiques in terms of maintaining professional status which is simultaneously about being better than other men. Keisuke’s desire to not be “looked down upon”, meanwhile, underscores the hierarchical element of embodying masculinities and the threat of subordination when one fails to live up to ideals.

The harsh criticism of non-hegemonic white-collar bodies is also apparent when participants talk about being overweight. Ogino (2002) writes that being overweight signifies “slovenliness, weak-will, and incompetence” (367). Participants draw on this ideology to legitimise scrutiny of others’ bodies. Overall, they had a general aversion to overweight bodies which they would invariably deem as “slovenly”, made them “uneasy”, or “bothered them”. Isamu, 27, who works in a real estate company, reflects this ideology regarding his president:

Our president is quite slim and stylish, I mean he’s pretty cool but if the president of my company looked bad, I wouldn’t want to work here ... Not looking after yourself, lacking in self-management, I really don’t like those kinds of people.

While Isamu would be unlikely to vocalise his thoughts if his president’s grooming was not up to scratch, we see that even superiors’ hegemonic status may come under threat of the critical gaze of subordinates. We return to this theme in the following section.

Elsewhere, Kazuki who works in the restaurant catering industry has similar thoughts about body shape. In his particular job as a menu developer, there is often the need to taste-test a lot of items. Surrounded by temptation, one needs to “restrain the desire to eat a lot. You really need the will, the willpower to do that, otherwise you’ll get fat and that’ll mean you look slovenly, like you don’t take your job seriously.” Labelling such bodies as “slovenly” reflects the moral dimensions related to fatness, reminding us of professional incompetency, a clear mark against hegemonic ideals of white-collar masculinity. Kazuki himself is lean and spritely, frequenting the gym and recently having taken up surfing. Changing jobs mid-career, when he prepared for the job interview, he made a particular point of going running and putting in extra gym sessions in the evenings to embody the ideal employee. While he himself has never been the target of comments, he recalled a recent incident involving one of his colleagues who also participated in taste-testing:

There’s this one guy whose stomach is coming out quite a lot and the other day [in the middle of the office] the president was like, “you, go to the gym”... There’s a gym around the corner, and she was like “off you go”. I mean he’s quite fat ... [Is there some relation to being fat and doing his job?] Even though he’s really fat, he’s good at his job, this guy. But he’s fat so, it’s a waste or, I mean, he’s really good at his job but, his impression is [makes a laboured groaning noise].

While being overweight may in fact suggest an enthusiasm for food and professional aptitude, whether or not Kazuki is able to expressly verbalise it (unlike his boss), it is clear that being “fat” runs counter to his industry’s particular values of restraint, thus legitimating his subjection to cruel disciplining and damaging his ability to sustain hegemonic white-collar ideals.

Another concern among participants is hair loss. Luciano (2001) details how for men, maintaining a full head of hair has been a common component of maintaining professional masculinity. Steger (2008) writes that in Japan the “condition of one’s hair reflects the spiritual state of one’s mind, and symbolises (male and female) energy and vitality” (229). Control of one’s hair demonstrates the responsibility required to succeed as responsible man, whereas someone with messy hair is not considered up to the task. If messy hair signals irresponsibility and a lack of energy and vitality, losing one’s hair sits on a completely different level, signalling a tremendous loss and a particular threat to one’s white-collar masculinity.

All participants in this study are concerned about hair loss. Minoru, 33, expressed particular negativity about the prospect of balding.

The expressions ossan (“old man”) and hage (“baldy”) go together as a set ... You really worry about what other people think of you, right? If I were to go bald, I’d feel forlorn, sad, I mean it’d be regrettable ... If I went bald, I’d really worry about being looked at. I’d end up not wanting to leave the house.

Reference to “worrying about what others think” and therefore “not wanting to leave the house” once more underscore the fear of others’ criticism. Moreover, Minoru’s explicit reference to the “ossan” carries particular significance. “Ossan” is another variant of “oyaji” which, as we saw above, is professionally incompetent, serving as an antithetical figure to hegemonic masculinities. Minoru’s account thus clearly illustrates the incongruity of balding with ideal images of professional ability.

Those who themselves experience hair loss are subject to various cruelties. Takuma, 56, has in the past 2 years been losing his hair which he attributes to his stressful and busy working life. In the office it has attracted the attention of a superior, the company president, and some company executives who teasingly ask him, “is everything okay?” in reference to staying on top of his duties. He had been taking prescription drugs costing 17,000JPY (around $150) a month for a year and when his hair grew back, his colleagues “stopped asking me if I was okay.” He explained how he wants to be

popular among women but also men. [Going bald] becomes the target of jokes and that’s hard to swallow. I really hated that, being seen like that. For me, going bald is—I hate it.

While the joking and teasing from colleagues was of a light-hearted tone, Takuma clearly finds it unpleasant. Further, it puts into question Takuma’s ability to cope with professional duties and, in turn, presents a real cost to his claims to hegemonic white-collar masculinities.

Women’s “Harsh” Judgment

As discussed above, another important element to realising hegemonic white-collar masculinities in Japan is being liked by women colleagues. In Ogasawara’s (1998) ethnography of a large bank in Japan, women clerical employees induce stress in their men superiors by employing various modes of resistance to those they dislike, such as purposefully “forgetting” to carry out tasks or leaving early when they know a manager has urgent business. In this way, men must treat women well to keep favourable relations with these women which, in turn, enables them to perform their professional duties unhindered. Since Ogasawara’s (1998) study, heterosocial popularity continues to grow in prominence with increasing numbers of women pursuing white-collar careers in a traditionally masculine-dominated area and various efforts from industry and government to promote “gender equality” (Steel 2019).

It is in this context that the men in my study also understand their grooming as winning approval from their professionally subordinate women colleagues to maintain good relations which, in turn, gives them an advantage in maintaining claims to hegemonic masculinities. We see once more that being disliked by women and subject to policing has real disadvantages for men. As Keiichi, 61, a manager at a large bank makes clear:

If I’m disliked by women, work gets difficult … If a woman doesn’t like you and you delegate to them some work, it might turn into a situation where you break the trust you have with them. So I’ll end up hesitating whenever I want to get them to do something. If that happens, not just the relationship between me and the woman but the whole team dynamic will begin to fray, and that’ll lead to a general drop in team performance ... Before even thinking about increasing sales performance, you have to put effort into your work relations … If you break trust with women, it’s seriously difficult to repair.

Keiichi clarified that “For me, the desire to be liked is the same as the desire to be trusted”, and because it is “seriously difficult” to mend relations with women colleagues, putting effort into grooming is putting effort into his relations. Similarly for Kōhei, 34, manager at an IT company, who says that women are particularly sensitive to men’s body odour, communication drops among himself and women colleagues, making his office environment “difficult to work in”. It is significant that participants single out women, placing them in a differentiated category where they must be given particular attention, which includes attention to grooming. Among participants is a fundamental understanding that women colleagues hold men to grooming standards above and beyond general standards. In the words of manager Shō: “They don’t like dirty things ... or if a guy’s suit is wrinkled or his trousers are dirty, they’ll always make that into a topic of conversation among themselves.”

Men’s concerns about women’s scrutiny may indicate an upsetting of white-collar power relations where women have typically found themselves in marginal positions. Scholarship has made clear that companies, for instance, have been shown to “promote sexualized female bodies” (Gottfried 2015, 75–76) in their own employees to attract men, practices that are premised on women’s persistently low-ranking, often non-regular roles which are underpinned by the expectation of their responsibilities of domestic labour. Caution, however, is required. The number of women in managerial positions, while rising slowly, remains relatively low, their numbers at 6.5 percent of department heads (buchō), 12.1 percent of section heads (kachō), and 12.9 percent of subsection heads (kakarichō) (JIL 2017). This small proportion reflects the workplaces of participants in my sample, where the large majority of managers are men and where women tend to hold lower-ranking positions. In such contexts, Nemoto (2016) argues that gender biases that designate men as natural workers and women as other remain pervasive. My findings echo these trends. Women’s criticism, I suggest, does not fundamentally alter asymmetrical gendered power relations. Nevertheless, these men’s essentialist framing of women as critical judges prompts white-collar men to take even greater care to appease women’s higher standards. Thus, in addition to heterosocial scrutiny primarily among men, criticism from women may also cost a man his ability to sustain claims to hegemonic masculinities.

Participants have a particular concern about noticeably emitting body odour, with the ideal being odour-free. Attention to men’s body odour and other smells such as cigarettes and food has increased recently, evidenced in the emergence of the term “smell harassment” (sumeru harasumento). Significantly, discourses claim that it is white-collar women in particular who are more likely to be offended by a men’s body odours (Puranetto 2018). While concern about body odour cannot be said to be uniquely women’s concern, I suggest that it is in the context of greater awareness of such issues that my participants understand their own body odours. Keiichi, introduced above, has many anecdotes about overhearing women colleagues’ grooming conversations, mostly related to men’s body odour. Recently, one man in the workplace became the target:

[Women colleagues] talk about [one of man’s grooming], but only when he’s not around. For example [laughing], “Just by walking behind him, I can smell him. When I walk behind him, I notice.” That’s what I’ve overheard ... This kind of talk doesn’t go on in the office but when we’re out eating or drinking, so not at work but when we’re taking a break. “Just by walking behind him, I notice his smell. What! Doesn’t he smell?” It’s just part of women’s idle chatter but when I hear it, it makes me wonder if [my own body odour] is okay ... Women are much harsher aren’t they?

Keiichi’s framing his women subordinates as being “much harsher” about men’s grooming thus serves as particular motivation for him to ensure he himself does not become a topic of conversation. It is also interesting how he describes these exchanges as taking place outside of the office or “idle chatter” (zatsudan). This frames women’s body talk as separate from core business, a point to which I return below.

Other participants assume that women are critically judging men out of earshot. Kōhei, also introduced above, cares about his grooming primarily because “well, there are a lot of women, a lot of young people ... so because there are so many [women and young people] I put care into my grooming.” For Kōhei, he styles his hair with wax every day, giving it a wet look; he grows out his facial hair carefully in a way that avoids making him look unclean; and he is particularly careful about not producing any unwanted body odours lest his women colleagues notice.

Compared to ordinary companies, [body odour] doesn’t really come up, but among women colleagues it probably comes up, though it doesn’t reach my ears ... conversations [among women colleagues] like “that person stinks” ... I don’t really mind [if people smell] but women are very sensitive to body odour, so I have to take care of my body odour for women, otherwise I’ll start worrying about it too. Men don’t really care about it ... [To avoid smelling] I check if I’m sweating, I check my clothes and I put on body cream.

Interestingly, Kōhei has not actually heard his women colleagues talking about anyone’s body odour or bad grooming (“it doesn’t reach my ears”) but rather assumes that they “probably” do talk about these things. This provides adequate reason for him to put particular care into his body.

Similarly, Yūji, 57, works in the sales and development section of a large, up-market department store where people in the office, according to him, are particularly aware of and worry about their fashion choices and bodily habits. This is heightened, he says, because

There are more women than men in my workplace which people are quite conscious of. So a room with just guys, [high school or university] club or something, smelling of sweat is fine ... But in places with a lot of women – for instance here in the mornings when I take the elevator, it’s like eighty percent women and twenty percent men ... so I can’t relax, [because] I don’t want to be disliked by them.

It is noteworthy that Kōhei and Yūji do not “really mind” body odour or find it “fine” if among men. It is only in the presence of women that they begin to grow anxious. Also noteworthy is that participants frame women’s criticism not in terms of gaining praise from women but avoiding criticism or being disliked. It is therefore unlikely that a man would go out of his way to find praise among women by standing out, meaning that the best praise a man can get from women at work is no remark at all.

In sum, these men’s concern about women colleagues’ scrutiny of grooming reproduces a form of “emphasised femininity” (Connell 1995). Participants demonstrate essentialist understandings of women’s scrutiny as a compartmentalised, informal, and trivial “women” issue; it is “idle chatter” that happens “among themselves”. Women, according to Keiichi, must be treated with caution otherwise relationships will break down and be difficult to mend. The ways men express anxiety and unease in their relations with women constitutes one way in which men put women at a distance and consider them fundamentally other. In this way, men’s concern about having their grooming policed by women and resultantly costing them their professional reputations in itself plays a role in reproducing women’s structurally subordinated positions, while simultaneously constructing hegemonic masculinities.