Ikumen : Japans neue Väter als neuer Markt?

Ikumen: Japan’s ›New Fathers‹ as a New Market?

While fathers have generally held a distant position in the Japanese family in the past few decades, the last few years have seen changes in the image of fathers in Japanese society. The Japanese public increasingly recognizes the importance of father involvement in everyday family life, and more and more men are making efforts to actively engage in childcare. This is illustrated through ikumen, a popular term used in Japan to describe fathers who are actively involved in child-rearing. Ikumen receive widespread media attention as well as support from the Japanese government, which hopes to use these »nurturing fathers« to counter declining birth rates. This paper deals with the economic side of the ikumen phenomenon. After giving a general overview of the ikumen phenomenon, we set out to give an outline of an emerging ikumen market. To do this, we make use of quantitative and qualitative data gathered from secondary data analysis, expert interviews, a content analysis of the magazine FQ Japan as well as ethnographic research. Based on this research, we examine a recent surge in ikumen goods, business initiatives that aim to bind involved fathers as customers, the economic potential of the ikumen market and the relationship between the ikumen phenomenon and the ikumen market. Our results show that the ikumen market can be traced back not to business-side innovation but to processes of transformation in Japanese society. Aiming to turn nurturing fathers into customers, businesses themselves are becoming participants in this ongoing example of social change, and partake in shaping a symbiotic relationship between the ikumen market and the ikumen phenomenon.