Uchi / Soto or the Dichotomies of Japanese Society.

The Japanese society is structures by dichotomies that narrate every day’s actions and interactions
between people. The strict classification based on oppositions flows to separate people, spaces and
emotions. Throughout these dichotomies race, class, hierarchy and gender are reproduced and organized.
One particular example that interests me is the notion of Uchi and Soto. Uchi (内) translates as everything
that is inside: the family, the school, the company, the Japanese society as a whole social apparatus, the
Japanese nihonjin (Laplantine 2017). Soto (外) is the outside: the client, the outdoors, work superiors, the
foreigners gaikokujin (Laplantine 2017). An old notion that still can be found rooted deep in the society,
is that women are the inside and men are the outside. This notion of separating people and spaces into in-
group and an out-group will also be found in other dichotomies that I would explain further on. The
fragile Japanese self, according to Ide, includes those notions respectively from the center as shown in
Figure 1 below (Ozawa 2004). He adds in the notion of Yoso which is rarely talked about by scholars.

Figure 1: Japanese self-structure (Ide 1995, 2012)

Various academics have noted that it is a key element to understanding how the Japanese society
functions between itself, and in relation to Others. The idea of Uchi - Japanese, and Soto - foreigner, or
everything but Japanese can be seen in the race thinking that was created during the nationalist period of
Japan’s history. Taking it’s roots in the thinking of Nihonjiron, a study of many Japanese academics who
have discussed the uniqueness of the Japanese society and culture. This idea of Japanese uniqueness,
difference, or identity is formulated as the anti-image of foreigners and thus can only be affirmed by
formulating the notion of Other (namely the West) (Yoshino 1992). The notion of “their” difference is
used to enhance the sense of “us” for the purpose of organisation own identification (Wallman 1979). If
we go back Nancy Jay’s argument about the A/not-A, we can conclude that A is the Japanese, the unique.
Everything that is not-A, by which the A identifies itself, is “the infinitation of negativity” since it is not
unique or special. Through this pattern of A/not-A – Uchi/Soto was constructed the notion of the Japanese
race. We have seen the importance and the impact that the dichotomy of Uchi and Soto has on the
structure of hierarchies, individual, race and social interactions. They are the core of the gender
construction of the Japanese society. I would like to show an example of how this hierarchies would
interact in an everyday situation by using an example illustrates in Hiroko Itakura’s book (Itakura 2001):

(Talking about her boss, she) would use an exalted expression, together with a
differential style, appropriate to her own low status, and to his position as president of
the company. If, later on in the day, she was asked by a fellow member of the company
about the president’s whereabouts, the secretary would probably use an exalted
expression about her boss, but a polite, or possibly plain style, to the person speaking

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 to her. If, however, a visitor was to arrive from elsewhere and inquire after the
company president, the secretary would use a humble expression about her boss.
Precisely because the visitor is an outsider, the secretary places her boss and herself in
the same in-group, using a humble expression to signify the visitor’s superior status
(Itakura 2001).

As we can see the Uchi and Soto relationships have an impact on the gender interactions between men
and women. Different language and social behaviour will be adopted depending wheather the person
belongs to the Uchi or Soto group. Thus, constantly changing the social interactions between men and
women based on this dichotomy. Hiroko Itakura explains in his book that in situations where men and
women belong to the same Uchi, hierarchical relationships will tend to be confirmed when gender
variables coincide with other variables such as the position in the company and age. In other words, a
person who holds a senior position, who is older and who is male is likely to be higher in the hierarchy
than a person who holds a junior position who is younger and who is female (Itakura 2001). He further
notes that it also suggests that gender relationships between Japanese men and women are determined
within a combination of factors of social range, age, Uchi and Soto.

Uchi and Soto influences the gender relationships between men and women. As well as structures the
hierarchical relationships within each gender in the course of interactions. I would like to show a practical
example that was created by Miyabi Ozawa. The author investigated how binary gender identities interact
through the use of words. He has analysed conversations between female participants in Tokyo while they
discuss a public incident involving male students at a neighbouring college (Ozawa 2004). Through the
use of language, he shows how female students make a binary difference between themselves the male
students. The female student talks about the non-normative behaviour of the male students and distances
herself, and the females in general, from them by positioning the female students in her in-group. It is
noticeable because the female students refer Minna (everybody) discussing the male students and
excludes from that group the female students and herself. The fact that she has been referring to Minna
for only males suggests that she had established in her mind the characters involved in the non-normative
behavior as male students (Ozawa 2004). What is important to note here, is that at no point in the
conversation does the female student refers to the male students as “male students”. She creates the
identification of gender by including only herself, female, and other females into the Uchi group, thus
suggesting that everybody who is not in the in-group must be male by deduction. Therefore, it shows her
binary distinction between the males who are involved in the non-normative behavior, of the Soto group,
and females who are not. Those speaker’s ingroup Uchi / outgroup Soto positionings create gender
identity in these kinds of Japanese interactions (Ozawa 2004).

Figure 2 (Ozawa 2004)

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I would like to present one more example on how Uchi and Soto can structure gender relationships. As
said in the beginning of the article, there’s a traditional gender ideology that men are the Soto and women
are the Uchi. Suggesting that women stay at home and take care of the inside of the family. In her article
about Japanese women and the use of makeup as performance of a gender ideology, Mikiko Ashikari
notes how Japanese women care about their facial complexion and use whitening makeup when going
outside. She writes about how women’s whitened faces serve as a symbolic action that communicate
gender relations (Ashikari 2003). White skin complexion has always been seen as an ideal image of a
women, based on a rather ancient gender ideology. Women perform a gender ideology in the codified
space of Soto for the public.

Women present the white face in public, performing the subjectivity of ideal women
based on the gender ideology. The practice of face whitening enacts the gender
ideology of the tradition and the past, and this bodily practice itself is a mode of
knowledge about the gender ideology. In other words, the gender ideology is
authorized through the public, Soto, representation of "ideal" gender relations
(Ashikari 2003).

In conclusion, we have seen how the dichotomies of Uchi and Soto dictates the hierarchical, racial, gender
and individual relationships between people in the Japanese society. The interactions between genders are
determined through different factors but the notion of in-group or out-group determines the use of
language while speaking to the opposite gender or sex. Finally, in the last example, we have seen how
through the use of in-group and out-group it is possible to construct a binary gender identity through the
use of affiliation and distinction. Referring one last time to Nancy Jay’s notion of A and not-A dichotomy.

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