(Photo via Wikimedia Commons)

In Japan, getting sloppy drunk with your boss can actually be a career booster. After-work drinks with clients or co-workers is seen as a team-building exercise and shows company loyalty.

So what happens when that career advancement tool turns into an addiction?

Paul Christensen, visiting assistant professor of anthropology at Union College in Schenectady, N.Y., will discuss “Suffering Sobriety: Alcoholism and Masculinity in Japan” at 5 p.m. Feb. 28 in 331 Social Sciences & Business at the University of Missouri–St. Louis. The talk is free and open to the public.

In his talk, Christensen will argue that the admission of alcoholism in Japan challenges masculine gender norms of drinking and homosociality, placing Japanese men who identify as alcoholics in a struggle between medicalized conceptions of sobriety/recovery and societal expectations.

The talk is sponsored by the Ei’ichi Shibusawa-Seigo Arai Professorship in Japanese Studies at UMSL and International Studies and Programs at UMSL.