Sexual Role Identity Among Japanese and Japanese-American High School Students

Sexual role identity was investigated by administering short forms of the Gough (CPI) femininity scale and the Franck Drawing Completion Test to 369 Japanese-American and Caucasian-American high school students in Hawaii and to 93 students in Japan. Across sex, Japanese were more feminine on both measures than either American group; within the American group, Japanese-Americans were more feminine than Caucasian-Americans on the Gough measure, but did not differ from them on the Franck. Sex-by-ethnicity results showed that males followed the ethnic pattern on both measures, whereas Japanese females were less feminine on the Gough than Japanese-American females and were equal to Caucasian-American females. Higher femininity of Japanese males may be understood as reflecting an Oriental factor of greater femininity related to definitional models of masculinity common to the East, in contrast to Western proof-of-masculinity models. Lower femininity of Japanese women may result from shifting conceptions of femininity in Japan and the East generally, while higher femininity among Japanese-American females may be a subcultural expression related to the history and origins of Japanese in Hawaii.