Real Men Don’t Hold Their Liquor: The Complexity of Drunkenness and Sobriety in a Tokyo Bar

This paper looks at the performance of drunkenness among primarily male patrons at a bar in an upscale Tokyo neighborhood. I look at how my experience working as a bartender and observing the drunken, sober, and sometimes performative behavior of customers initially clashed with my preconceptions of gender norms surrounding alcohol consumption—specifically the notion that to properly perform as a male drinker one must be able to ‘hold one’s liquor’ and drink heavily but not become excessively intoxicated. Instead, my fieldwork reveals a different framework, in which men who embody characteristics of strong, dominant masculinity refuse offers to consume alcohol. Extrapolated to a broader level of analysis, I argue that an anthropology of alcohol in Japan and elsewhere must emphasize sometimes contradictory ethnographic evidence to highlight the cultural complexity of alcohol and its consumption or refusal. In short, an over-reliance on past conclusions pertaining to the role of drinking and drunkenness in Japan has concealed the cultural intricacies behind shifting norms of acceptance or refusals to imbibe.