Despite the best efforts and substantial funds of large, predominantly Western pharmaceutical companies, the low-dose birth control pill was banned from Japanese markets until September 1999. Since that time, less than 1% of Japanese women who are using birth control are using the pill (Norgren, 2001:130). There are many popular medical(ized) explanations for why Japanese women aren't using the pill; it increases cancers in women who take it, increases cancer rates in the general population (because women users will excrete excess hormones into the environment), causes harm to a fetus conceived while a woman is on the pill, and increases rates of STDs. Further, some people believe that the pill will threaten Japanese social fabric; because younger generations are waiting longer to marry and women are having fewer children later in life, there is already a public discourse on "parasite singles" and how their actions are changing Japanese society (cf. Yamada, 1999). Thus, within Japanese discourses, the pill's low popularity is described in both medical and social terms.
In light of these popular concerns, I am investigating how pharmaceutical companies are attempting to market the pill. Indeed, I suggest, the process of marketing the pill to Japanese women is very much a project of translation; Western pharmaceutical companies are trying to mimic their Western successes in Japan. In this project I investigate marketers' attempts to make advertising culturally legible and the semiotics of advertising they create: what verbal and visual rhetorics can be meaningful in this context? Further, I consider the ambiguous role of the popular media in this dynamic. Because the media is at once shaping and being shaped by popular opinion, I investigate both the production and consumption of media images and advertising of the pill. How do marketers create ads and how do women react to them? I consider how women respond to advertising, reformulating their subjectivities in relation to modern discourses on femininity, maternity, modernity, sexuality, and independence. Thus, I am interested in the dialectical interaction between advertising and individual subjectivities, as well as nuanced understanding of the debates within advertising companies about how to create campaigns.
Research Questions
I begin my research by considering the pragmatic details of pill distribution and consumption in Japan. Who is interested in the pill? How do women get prescriptions for the pill? Because medical insurance does not typically cover the birth control pill, I consider how women pay for it, and what influence the cost -- usually about $30 a month -- has on their decisions. If young women are still using their parents insurance, any visit to a gynecologist will come to their parents' attention. Do young women consider such issues when thinking about birth control? Do they discuss options with their parents? What role do midwives, who have been a traditional source of birth control, play in this process?
After investigating how women can get prescriptions for the birth control pill, I consider why they would want to take the pill. Where did they learn about the pill and what are their opinions? What role does the media play in shaping their birth control decisions? How do age and class impact these dynamics?
In my next line of questioning, I investigate why doctors would be willing to prescribe the pill. What is the relationship between pharmaceutical companies and doctors or midwives? How have pharmaceutical companies attempted to sell birth control pills to these medical professionals? Are doctors given financial or personal incentive to write prescriptions for pills? What, if any, taboo remains about the pill?
At a different point in the chain of marketing, I am investigating how such marketing is created. What Japanese firms are currently creating advertising for birth control pills? What rhetorics are they employing within these ad campaigns? What is their target audience? How important are anthropologists, perhaps acting as cultural specialists, in this process?
Finally, I revisit women in light of this last series of questions. How do women respond to such ads? Do they consume the ads as the advertisers intended? What rhetorics are meaningful to them? How do they identify with advertising and use it to shape their own subjectivities?
Works Cited
Norgren, Tiana. 2001. Abortion Before Birth Control: The Politics of Reproduction in Postwar Japan . Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press.
Yamada, Masahiro. 2000. "The Growing Crop of Spoiled Singles." Japan Echo 27(3): 49-53.
