Feminist and LGBTQ+ Studies

Abstract

This paper explores how gender-based violence (GBV) is embedded, negotiated, and rendered invisible in Japan’s music industry. Drawing on long-term qualitative research conducted from 2019 to 2025—including 17 in-depth interviews with female musicians and professionals, as well as recent fieldwork within the club and electronic music scenes the research investigates how power, aesthetics, labor precarity, and gender intersect in shaping everyday experiences. Rather than overt physical violence, many participants described ambiguous situations involving sexualized expectations, aesthetic control, coercive networking practices, and informal harassment, which often remain unnamed and unaddressed due to social norms and institutional silence.

The study avoids a binary framing of victim/resister, instead emphasizing how actors in these industries navigate gendered constraints through subtle forms of self-regulation, avoidance, and adaptation. Some participants articulated strategies of boundary-setting or symbolic distancing, while others relied on social networks to buffer against hostile environments. These micro-navigations unfold in an ecosystem marked by informality, competitive pressures, and male-dominated hierarchies. Recent developments (2024–2025) suggest a slow cultural shift, with some venues and collectives introducing anti-harassment protocols and initiating conversations around consent and safety. However, systemic transformation remains limited.

This research contributes to broader debates on GBV in the field of art and culture by highlighting how silence and normalization function as structural tools of control, while also inviting a decentered perspective that challenges Western frameworks. It questions what forms of recognition and response are possible within creative industries shaped by inequality, precarity, and culturally specific gender norms.

Biography

Chiharu Chujo is Maîtresse de conférences (Associate professor ) at the University of Jean Moulin Lyon III, specialising in Japanese studies, the sociology of music, and gender studies. Her research focuses on gender dynamics in the Japanese music industry, particularly hip-hop and electronic music, using socio-anthropological and ethnographic approaches. She has translated academic works and manga, including Femmes du jazz (Marie Buscatto) and Be Creative (Angela McRobbie), and organised international seminars on Japanese popular culture and music. Her recent publications include: Chujo, Chiharu. “Navigating the Boundary Between Subjection and Agency.” Gender-Based Violence in Arts and Culture: Perspectives on Education and Work, edited by Marie Buscatto, Sari Karttunen, and Mathilde Provansal, 2025, pp. 49–72.