Ramble: Gender Roles in Persona 4

( Copied from an Ask-Post on my tumblr, originally posted on September 30th 2018)

dakotadeadmanwalking @tumblr asked:

Thank you for the reply, it was illuminating. Here's another ? if you don't mind. A fellow p4 fan discussed how strictly defined gender roles are in Japan and how this affects the game and Dojima's SL (re: his comment about how Chisato & coffee) but that must mean it's unusual for Yu to cook right? It's a game mechanic but his friends love his food and he's ready to make lunch for Golden Week without complaint. What does that mean for Yu as a character and his upbringing?

Let me tell you a story.

Back in 2014, I went to Japan on a 1 year exchange stay for my Bachelor’s degree. I took classes at Shuto-Dai - Tokyo Metropolitan University. One of the more progressive universities in the country. 

In one of the Japanese classes meant specifically for exchange students, one of my male course-mates dropped a mention of how he had made Bento boxes for himself before during a discussion. Our female, Japanese teacher? She made a wide-eyed face and stepped back in surprise, laughing awkwardly for a bit before finally responding. “Yeaaah… men here don’t usually do that.”

That experience really stuck with me. It’s a topic that comes up again and again in my studies: Men in Japan are conditioned to not acquire any domestic skills whatsoever, since it’s seen as “embarrassing”, which leaves many of them effectively unable to fend for themselves without the support of a girlfriend or wife. A lot of men (especially Hikikomori) apparently live off Junkfood for that reason; even if they ordered the ingredients per online-order, they still wouldn’t be able to cook. Society didn’t allow them to learn how.

Persona 4, as a game, seems to take special pleasure in subverting and deconstructing gender expectations, pointing out the absurdity of them in the process. 

Yu was specifically designed to suit a masculine father archetype, as mentioned in the artbook, yet he cooks, cleans, takes a mother role for Nanako and perfectly slots himself into the spot in Yosuke’s life previously taken by Saki Konishi, something his Social Link even points out.

Kanji is a tall, intimidating boy, but he’s a talented artist who loves textile works and arts and crafts, something that’s shown to be his biggest strength in-game, yet the game also makes no secret of how this strength of his was turned against him by society, and how society doing so makes absolutely no sense, because there’s no logical reason his talents should devalue his masculinity.

Chie loves her tomboyish skills and interests, yet has a strong inferiority complex thanks to them, because society conditioned her to believe that being herself makes her less of a “real girl” (something that comes out even stronger in the Japanese version than in English.)

For Naoto, the lack of positive female role models in the media she loved and grew up with in her childhood caused her serious issues with her gender identity, which, combined with the extremely patriarchal structures in Japanese law enforcement, caused her to hide everything about her that society had taught her could be perceived as a “weakness”, living in fear of one day being “found out”. 

Rise’s sexualization caused her to temporarily lose sight of what she loved  about her job in the first place.

Yukiko’s sexualization caused her to not realize that taking charge of the inn actually meant *taking charge* of it, not being controlled by it.

A lot of Yosuke’s teenage awkwardness stems from how society told him guys are supposed to act around each other and around girls, which leads to him putting a foot into his mouth much more often than necessary. This is never played as him “acting rational”, but always played for comedy. 

The only team member almost entirely exempt from this is Teddie, who didn’t grow up in Japanese society, yet even he picks up some ridiculous things from how the teenagers around him act and exaggerates these behaviors, pointing out how silly they really are. 

The girls can’t cook because society made them think all girls must have the innate ability to be master chefs, and so they see taste-testing and following recipes as something only “inferior women” do, hence why it takes Naoto (post-character development) joining them for them to finally and actually produce something actually edible and even delicious. 

Heck, this even extents into P4D, where it’s shown that Kanami, a girl who never had any problems with her gender identity whatsoever (mostly because she had a dozen of other traumata keeping her busy) actually CAN cook really well. 

Even if it’s not in the way tumblr would often like it to be, gender identity and how unhealthy treatment of it by society can cause mental issues is a BIG, BIIIG topic in the bigger continuity of Persona 4 and its cast, and the game seems very aware of how Japan’s treatment of these issues has caused a ton of downright pathetic problems that never needed to exist in the first place.