From men to ‘boys’—The cooking danshi in Japanese mass media

• The increase in Japanese men making their own bentō sparked a bentō danshi boom.
• Bentō danshi's cooking style differs from men's adventurous or women's home cooking.
• Cooking is portrayed as supporting his work and helping him up his sexual appeal.
• Although positioned within the domestic sphere, he is never bound by its demands.
• The boom indicates a reshaping of the contours of hegemonic masculinity in Japan.

SynopsisUntil recently, men's cooking in postwar Japan has almost always been associated with the professional realm. In December 2008, a Tokyo Walker article on the “sudden increase” (Andō, 2008) in the number of men making and bringing their own bentō (boxed lunch) to work sparked a new discourse of the cooking man—that of the bentō danshi (lit. bentō ‘boy’). The simple and healthy everyday meals that the danshi make in their clean and neat home kitchen are clearly distinct from the bold and adventurous 'men's cooking' (otoko ryōri). Furthermore, given the common perception of bentō–making as feminine-work in Japanese society, might this suggest that Japanese men and/as a result of their kitchen work are becoming more feminized? In this paper, through a textual analysis of cookery books, websites and television programs that are targeted at, or sell the image of the bentō danshi and the cooking danshi, I argue that the nurturant and ‘feminized’ masculinity that is presented in the bentō danshi discourse constructs and comprises a newly emerging ideal masculinity in contemporary Japan.