Is There a Japanese 'Gay Identity'? Author(s): Mark McLelland Source: Culture, Health & Sexuality, Vol. 2, No.

4, Critical Regionalities: Gender and Sexual Diversity in South East and East Asia (Oct. - Dec., 2000), pp. 459-472 Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3986702 . Accessed: 23/12/2010 07:03
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at . http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=taylorfrancis. . Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Taylor & Francis, Ltd. is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Culture, Health & Sexuality.

http://www.jstor.org

CULTURE, HEALTH & SEXUALITY, 2000, VOL. 2, NO.

4, 459-472

Is there a Japanese 'gay identity'?

MARK McLELLAND This paper investigates the widespread representation of (mainly male) homosexuality in a variety of Japanese popular cultural media. Generally, representation of homosexuality in Japan is situated in the 'entertainment world' and male homosexuality, in particular, is often conflated with transsexuality and transgenderism. Discussion of homosexuality as a 'lifestyle choice' or in terms of 'sexual rights' is extremely rare, even in the Japanese gay media. It is suggested that media discourses about homosexuality, which conflate it with transsexuality, work against same-sex desiring men in Japan developing a politicized sense of 'gay identity'. Interview data from Japanese men as well as material gathered from the gay media are used to reflect on Altman's notion of 'global queering' and to question the argument put forward by some Western gay and lesbian theorists that 'gay identity' is something Japanese homosexuals 'lack', and should therefore develop.

Introduction

The 1990s saw Western academics becoming increasingly interested in East and South-East Asian sexualities. Ten years ago, information in English about sexuality, particularly homosexuality, in countries such as Thailand, the Philippines, China or Japan was extremely sparse whereas there now exist a number of articles and some book-length treatments of the topic. Much of this literature has concerned itself with the issue of lesbian and gay identities, inquiring whether indigenous homosexual identities and practices have anything in common with the recently evolved understanding of lesbian and gay identities in the west, and if so, whether this is due to western influence in Altman's (1996) terms 'global queering', or whether there are transcultural features inherent in the experience of same-sex attraction itself. The study of sexualities and particularlyhomosexualities in Asia is, however, still in its early days because, as Jackson (1999) points out, 'we have so few microhistories of the emergence of gay identities in non-Western societies to reveal the local specificities in each situation'. This paper offers an analysis of recent discourses in Japanese society concerning 'homosexuality' and shows how these representations of homosexuality differ in certain important respects from homosexuality as represented in the English-speaking world. It draws on three years of research
Mark McLelland is a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow in the Centre for Critical and Cultural Studies at the University of Queensland where he is researching the use of the internet by Japan's sexual minorities as well as the history of the debate over the decriminalization of male homosexuality in Hong Kong. His book, Male Homosexuality in Modern Japan: Cultural Myths and Social Realities, was recently published by Curzon Press. Address all correspondence to Mark McLelland, Centre for Critical and Cultural Studies, University of Queensland, St Lucia 4072, Australia; e-mail: markmclelland@hotmail.com
Culture, Health & Sexuality ISSN 1369-1058 print/ISSN 1464-5351 online X 2000 Taylor & Francis Ltd http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals

460

MARKMcLELLAND

conducted from 1996 to 1999 that included interviews with over thirty Japanese gay men conducted both face-to-face and over the internet. A number of 'texts' containing diverse and often contradictory representations of homosexual characters were also analysed, including TV dramas, talk shows, documentaries, movies, stage plays, newspaper and magazine articles, comic books (manga), books on homosexuality written by 'experts' including academics, sex educators, gay men and feminists, and various Japanese gay media including magazines, videos and internet sites. The result of this research (McLelland 2000a) looks both at media discourses about homosexuality and how these are negotiated in the daily lives of some Japanese men who experience same-sex desire. This paper, however, takes as its main topic just one of the themes: the question 'Is there a specifically Japanese "gay identity" '?

Representing

'homosexuality'

in Japan

Male homosexuality in modern Japan is hardly 'the love that dare not speak its name' and has been fairly widely represented in Japanese media from the early 1970s. It was at this time that there developed a specifically gay press (Lunsing 1995) and, more surprisingly from a Western perspective, a comic (manga) genre written by and for young women which featured homosexual love stories (Aoyama 1988, MeLelland 2000b). However, these representations of homosexual men and the discourses surrounding them were very different from the more politically constructed representations of gay men in contemporary European and US media. Indeed, although 'gay' existed in Japanese as an English loan-word (gei) it was not associated with Dolitical activism but with cross-dressing and prostitution as in the term 'gay boy' (geiboi) which was used of transvestite male prostitutes.' The gay press in Japan was and still is primarily interested in sexual entertainment, providing images and stories for masturbation. Little space is given to reflection on issues concerning gay rights, gay lifestyle or a gay identity. As Lunsing comments 'gay magazines ... present an image that is not entirely positive, i.e., gay men as sex maniacs' (1995, p. 71). Likewise, those women authors who interested themselves in male homosexuality did so in the context of highly romantic stories about beautiful youths (bishoonen). These stories were usually situated in far away 'other' places, often taking place in the past, and were unconcerned with social realism. It was not until the early 1990s that representations of gay men (and to a lesser extent lesbians) began to appear in a wide variety of popular what came to be comic books, TV shows, films-in media-magazines, termed Japan's 'gay boom' (Lunsing 1997). For the first time in recent Japanese history, discussion of homosexuality became widespread and a large number of terms, both indigenous and borrowed from English, began to appear frequently in popular media. However, although a large number of terms now exist in Japanese for describing 'homosexuality', they all tend to conflate same-sex desire with transgenderism and transsexuality. A brief look at some of the most common terms used to refer to same-sex desiring men and women shows how difficult it is to give a fixed meaning to

IS THERE A JAPANESE 'GAY IDENTITY'?

461

these words. Homosexual men are often understood to be okama (literally a 'pot' but meaning something similar to the English word 'queen') and are usually represented as cross-dressed and effeminate. The use of the term okama derives from the slang usage of the term to refer to the buttocks and thereby to anal sex (Long 1996, p. 216) which is considered to be the definitive sexual act engaged in by homosexual men. But use of this term is extremely loose and it can be used to describe any man who displays transgender attributes. For instance, an article in the current-affairs magazine AERA4 (1 March, 1999) on men who adopt female names and personae in order to participate in women-only internet chat lines, describes such men as netto okama (net okama), although here there is no relation between the adoption of a female name and same-sex attraction. Japanese homosexual women are sometimes described using another 'pot' metaphor, onabe (meaning 'pan') a parallel term to okama that was developed later and only has meaning in relation to okama (Long 1996, p. 215). However, this term is less well known than the English loan word rezu (from lesbian). Onabe are represented as the opposite of okama, being masculine in both dress and demeanour. Yet this term, too, is difficult to pin down. For instance, an article in the women's magazine Da Vinci (March 1999), describes the relationship between a nyuuhaafu ('new-half': male-to-female transsexual) and an onabe. It is not possible, however, to translate onabe as 'lesbian' in this context, for, as the person identified as an onabe explains, s/he clearly understands him/ herself to be a man, albeit without a penis. The idea that same-sex attraction necessarily involves some kind of transgenderism or desire to be like or even become the opposite of one's biological sex is constantly reinforced by Japanese media which discuss homosexuality and transgenderism in the same context. For example, in the same edition of the popular magazine Da Vinci discussed above, there is an article on cross-dressing boy bands entitled 'Do you like men who are too beautiful?' The lead article includes interviews with some of the cross-dressed performers and goes into the history of cross-dressing in the Japanese music and entertainment industry. Given the large number of recent English loan words introduced in these articles, the writers provide a glossary entitled 'Words to help you understand individuals who have gone beyond their sex'. The first word defined is gei (gay) which is glossed as 'male homosexual' (dansei dooseiaisha); other words describing male homosexuals such as homo (from 'homo'sexual) and okama are described as 'offensive'. Also defined are rezubian ('female homosexual'), nonke (a gay slang term for 'straight' is defined as 'heterosexual' [iseiaisha]), toransusekushuaru ('transsexual', defined as persons who want to change their biological sex through an operation), toransulendaa ('transgender', or people who express themselves through the gender opposite to their biological sex but do not want an operation), toransubuesutaito ('transvestite', or persons who want to dress as the opposite sex because of a 'fetish'), and nyuuhaafu ('new-half', or maleto-female transsexuals or male-to-female transgendered individuals who have 'come out' [kamu auto] and work in the sex industry). This list, which suggests that gay men and lesbians somehow 'go beyond [their] sex', shows how homosexuality in Japan is often mixed up with transgenderism and the sex and entertainment industries.

462

MARKMcLELLAND

As explained above, popular magazines in particular have given extensive coverage to homosexuality in Japan but they have tended to focus on the more unusual or bizarre aspects of Japan's gay subculture. This focus has led some Japanese lesbians and gay men to criticize the media for being 'voyeuristic' (Ishino and Wakabayashi 1996, p. 100). As gay activist Ito Satoru comments, the lives of 'ordinary' gay men tend not to be reported by the media because 'to feature homosexuals whose daily lives are really no different from heterosexuals does not make interesting programming' (cited in Summerhawk et al. 1998, p. 90). So, because of the Japanese media's tendency to focus on the more unusual aspects of gay life and the linguistic conflation of same-sex attraction with gender inversion, there is little in popular culture to support the notion of a gay or lesbian identity in the politicized Anglo-American sense. The difficulty that gender normative gay men have in finding a vocabulary to discuss their same-sex attraction is made clear from this excerpt from a leaflet written by a gay Japanese university student:
Before I wrote my first article, the first thing I had to think about was 'what on earth should I call myself' ... The people who read my first message probably realize that I am 'gay', that's English, isn't it? But there isn't a word in Japanese. For example, dooseiaisha2 is a medical word and it has a discriminatory nuance, isn't it rather like a sick person? Then there's the word homo but that's English too and it's used on the television to make fun of people. I really wanted to use the word 'gei' in katakana. But, are you listening? Regarding 'gei', you think of gay boys and gay bars, don't you get the image of a man who cross-dresses ... (reproduced in Ohama 1994, my translation).

As this student's testimony shows, it is very difficult in Japanese to express the concept of a 'gay identity' because many of the terms used to describe an individual who experiences same-sex desire also imply some kind of gender inversion.

Questioning

the 'identity' model

The problem that many same-sex desiring Japanese have in articulating their 'sexual identities' is the topic of a recent book edited by Barbara Summerhawk and colleagues who collected and translated a series of life stories from various sexually nonconformist Japanese individuals (Queeryapan, Summerhawk et al. 1998). In the Introduction to the volume, Summerhawk complains that in Japan, lesbians, gay men, bisexuals and transgendered individuals do not even have the 'linguistic space to exist' (1998, p. 5). But rather than accept this comment at face value it is important to interrogate the relationship between public labels such as 'gay' or 'lesbian' and the private experience of the same-sex desiring individuals these labels are supposed to relate to. Firstly, it is necessary to problematize the idea that we already know what a gay or lesbian identity means in Euro-American societies. As Dennis Altman states, 'the idea of "gay/lesbian" as a sociological category is only about one hundred years old, and its survival even in Western developed countries cannot be taken for granted' (1996, p. 79). Recent work by Dowsett (1996) and others has shown that even in supposed gay Meccas such as Sydney or San Francisco, it is difficult to give empirical content to

IS THERE A JAPANESE'GAY IDENTITY'?

463

the notion of a uniform 'gay identity'. Dowsett speaks of the 'impossibility of identity' (1996, p. 274) in relation to Sydney's gay community in that the variety of sexualities subsumed under the trope of 'homosexuality' is so diverse, and the ways in which same-sex desiring men interact with the wider 'gay community' (if they do interact at all) are all so different. He argues that academic research conducted by lesbian and gay scholars as well as medical research into HIV/AIDS infection 'both box ... (homo) sexuality into a marginalized compartment within and from which little movement [is] possible' (1996, p. 274). The problem with perspectives that take 'homosexuality' as an empirical category is that 'They leave out what is difficult to fit into the picture. They delete the ambiguities we experience in relation to object choice and in the emotional-sexual relationships we make. They omit the ambivalence we experience toward our own and others' bodies' (1996, p. 274). Other researchers such as Offord and Cantrell (1999) also question the validity of gay or lesbian identities, arguing that they are rendered possible only at the price of conformity to 'fixed images' or what they call 'supraidentities' (1999, p. 210). They point to the way in which gay media are complicit in producing, regulating and maintaining sexual identities where 'there is no space for ambiguity' (1999, p. 210). The existence of gay media, then, do not necessarily enable the expression of pre-existent and previously repressed sexual identities but themselves are a necessary component in their construction. Unlike gay media in Japan, Euro-American societies support a wide variety of media which target people with non-mainstream sexualities and thereby foster a sense of commonality or community between them. These include newspapers, magazines, internet sites, TV and radio shows, books, videos and movies as well as highly publicized media events such as Gay Pride marches and demonstrations. To a certain extent, these media can be seen as giving voice to a wide range of human experience which had previously been silenced or occluded. Just like recognizable gay towns and streets in major cities, they afford visibility to previously invisible groups and give individuals who experience non-mainstream sexualities a sense of identity and belonging. However, some queer theorists argue that over-identifying with one's sexual orientation is limiting rather than liberating. In Australia, for instance, Offord and Cantrell (1999, pp. 209-210) argue that gay and lesbian 'community newspapers' are made possible only through 'political conformity' to certain fixed and easily identifiable modes of being lesbian or being gay. They write that in lesbian and gay magazines:
The resonance of conformity, expressed through fixed images, held together by a supra gay, lesbian or sexual identity, displaces, alienates or disowns the subject who is characterized by an understanding that he or she is composed of various and diverse elements. (1999, p. 210)

So despite the many advantages that the development of various gay media produced and controlled by lesbian and gay individuals have brought, the images presented by these media are not necessarily liberating but can impose certain constructions or certain limits on what it means to be lesbian or gay. As Altman comments 'the rhetorics of liberation and modernity rarely allow for the fact that each change contains a restrictive as well as a liberative component' (1996, p. 84). Arjun Appadurai, too, speaks

464

MARKMcLELLAND

eloquently of the limitations of all forms of labelling, even when the labels are self-applied when he argues that 'many of us find ourselves racialized, biologized, minoritized, somehow reduced rather than enabled by our bodies and our histories, our special diacritics which become our prisons' (1996, pp. 170-171). This means that holding up a supposedly clear, unambiguous Western 'gay identity' as an example for sexual minorities in Japan is problematic, not least because the content of such an identity is difficult to articulate. Barbara Summerhawk, for example, is critical of the Japanese language for its failure to distinguish between 'sex, gender, sexual orientation, and gender expression' (1998, p. 5) as if making these distinctions were unproblematic for many native English speakers. She remarks that sexual minorities in Japan do not have the 'linguistic space to exist' (1998, p. 5). Identifying as a bisexual woman herself, Summerhawk states that in Japan 'Bi consciousness is still unfolding' (1998, p. 2) and that 'few queers in Japan so far claim bisexuality as a long-lasting identity' (1998, p. 9), suggesting that Japanese 'queer' people's failure to identify with such labels hampers their efforts to form and benefit from supportive communities. She assumes that there are empirical states which can be labelled 'lesbian', 'gay', or 'bi' and that it is only a matter of time before Japanese 'queers' recognize themselves in these labels and begin to form self-supporting communities as has happened in the US and other Western countries. In Summerhawk's account there is no consciousness that these terms might be problematic or that 'identity' in Japan might be differently constructed, making a 'long-lasting identity' based upon sexual object choice unintelligible. Dutch anthropologist Wim Lunsing also has criticized Western researchers who argue that 'gay identity among the Japanese must be strengthened, which implies that Japanese gay people must become like Americans' (Lunsing 1997, p. 284). Lunsing rejects this approach in Japan where 'sexual preference is generally not seen as a feature that determines one's personhood more than partially' (1997, p. 285).

Gay men and marriage in Japan During my own interviews with Japanese same-sex desiring men (McLelland 2000a), it became clear that many had very flexible and ambivalent feelings about sex and relationships with men and women and several of them, despite experiencing their primary sexual impulse as directed towards other men, did not necessarily rule out marriage to a female partner. It became clear that the Western discourse of 'gay identity' deployed by some researchers was insensitive to the ambiguity that many of my Japanese informants reported. For instance, one informant, a 30-year old man who actively seeks out sex with other men, refuses to live with his male partner because, as he says 'in Japan people would regard me as gay if I lived with a male partner'. Instead, he would prefer to get married to a woman and start a family. In this case 'gay' is not an identity to which he aspires. Another example of a man who resists accepting a 'gay identity' is taken from the gay activist Ito Satoru's internet problem page:

IS THERE A JAPANESE'GAY IDENTITY'?

465

At present I'm wondering about getting married to a woman. Although I don't have a partner who wants to marry me, when I think about my parents and social standing etc. of course I think I want to get married. But, even if I do get married, I don't think my sexual interests will change. When I bring up this kind of topic with my gay friends, they often say such things as 'it would be a shame for your partner'. But it's not that I want to have a fake marriage [gisoo kekkon]; I'm confident that I can treasure [daiji ni shite] and love [ai sutru]my female partner. But it would be unreasonable to stop dating guys completely.

Another gay man writes in to the same problem page that although he experiences no sexual desire towards women, he does not want to give up the possibility of marriage entirely. After all, he comments, 'for a man and woman to get married, form a household (katei) and bring up children, is the greatest happiness'. He says that he is afraid that 'solely because of my sexual desire [seiyoku no tame dake] I must live alone without getting married', and therefore clearly illustrates that 'sexuality' is not, for him, the most important aspect of his personhood. Interestingly, he rejects pressure from others as the main reason for getting married, saying instead that 'family [kazoku] is a wonderful thing ... after all'. Like the first man quoted above, this man is not interested in forming a partnership with any particular woman but instead sees marriage as a 'project' designed to achieve a household/family through the production of children. He values the institution of the family to such an extent that his total lack of sexual interest in women is not seen as an obstacle to marriage. The way in which these two men discuss marriage is common among gay men in general in Japan where it is marriage as an institution which is prized; that marriage can also be a partnership or relationship between two people who are 'in love' is seldom entertained and shows how marriage is differently understood in Japan.3 The 'marriage problem' (kekkon mondai) is a very common theme on gay internet chat sites, and many gay magazines contain personal ads from lesbians and some straight women who wish to enter into marriage with gay men. Media directed at women in Japan, including women's magazines and movies, often present gay men as preferable marriage partners for straight women because gay men, considered to be 'feminine' are understood as more sympathetic to women and their subordinated position in Japanese society (McLelland 1999). Summerhawk on the other hand claims that gay Japanese men who get married do so to hide what she terms their 'true identity' (1998, p. 11) and that they 'hope to survive in the closet', inferring that Japanese gay men necessarily understand their marriages to be deceptive or sham. Yet, as the above examples from Japanese gay men show, not all gay men understand potential marriage with women to be fake. For many people in Japan, marriage is not constructed in terms of the Western 'companionate model' and the reason to get married is to establish a 'household' (katei) which differs in many ways from the rather romanticized Euro-American concept of 'the family'. As Refsing comments, in Japan 'marriage has been perceived as a practical arrangement in which two outwardly compatible persons with unambiguous role definitions enter into the socially well defined project of establishing a family' (1995, p. 345, emphasis added). This definition of marriage is still very much alive among gay men in Japan, gay writer and activist Fushimi Noriaki going so far as to describe marriage as simply a 'mutual reproduction project' (saiseisan purojekuto) (1991, p. 17).

466

MARKMcLELLAND

Lunsing (in press) has recently written about Japanese sexual and gender identities, particularly as they relate to the marriage and family system and argues that Japanese understandings of marriage are in some ways more flexible than those pertaining in Anglo-American cultures. Based on a large number of interviews with Japanese gay men, lesbians and feminist women, many of whom are or have been married, he argues that:
What is different in Japan [from North America and northern Europe] is that there are ... marriages in which the man recognizes his homosexual desire, which is accepted by the wife, or in which the man does not have many qualms about hiding his homosexual desire from his wife. In North America, northern Europe and Australia such constructions appear to be less feasible due to the importance attached to the contents of marital relationships, due to heterosexual couples being expected to present themselves as lovers.

Globalization

and gay identity

Many of my Japanese gay informants resisted the Western discourse of gay identity and gay rights in a number of ways. For instance, take the following personal communication from a man in his early 40s:
Because I think that being gay is a personal problem [gei wa paasonaru na mondai] I don't think that stressing rights is useful and I cannot agree with gay-lib thinking [geiribu teki kangae]. It's important to fight against prejudice but it's better to do this quietly. I could live happily if people could just understand that homosexuality [dooseiai] isn't especially unusual but is just one kind of love.

This man simply wants his same-sex attraction to be acknowledged by the wider society. He sees his orientation as a personal issue which should not have consequences for how he is treated by others. Hence, it is not surprising that the issue of 'gay liberation' (geiribu) is a frequent focus for debate on a number of Japanese gay internet sites (though not in gay magazines), particularly on the gay activist Ito Satoru's homepage. One 23-year-old man writes that:
I know a guy who is involved in 'gay lib' and it feels like all he goes on about are 'gay rights' [gei no jinken], all he does is argue. If you're gay [gei datte] you can do anything you want with regard to love [ren'ai] and sex [sekkusu], so is it really necessary to go on about gay lib? Why is it necessary to support gay lib?

The man cited above considers 'being gay' to reside in the choice of a samesex love partner and sex acts and does not seem to feel that there are constraints in Japanese society restricting who you love or have sex with.4 Ito's partner, Yanase Ryuta, who also shares his homepage, notices this and comments that the above writer has too narrow a definition of 'being gay'. He suggests that being gay is not limited simply to whom you choose to sleep with but has wider social ramifications. He states that 'You say that "you can love and have sex, so what's the problem?" But is it really the case that it's easy to live as a gay man in this world?' Ito himself then adds instances of how gay men are restricted in Japanese society, pointing out that a gay couple cannot walk down the street hand-in-hand, or kiss each other goodbye, or check into a love hotel. Also he says that most gay men must put up a pretence of being straight in front of workmates and neighbours which is an

IS THERE A JAPANESE 'GAY IDENTITY'?

467

intolerable situation and that 'I want to live as a gay [gei toshite ikitai] in a more relaxed manner'. However, Ito and Yanase are very public figures who have become media personalities on the basis of being an 'out' gay couple.5 It is not the case that all gay men in Japan necessarily feel the need to be so open about what they consider a private aspect of their lives, for, through coming out, many men feel they are thereby associated with the effeminate stereotypes about gay men which exist in the wider community. Lunsing also found a similar reluctance among many of his informants to get involved in political activities concerning their sexuality. He comments that 'the reasoning is that homosexuality can be engaged in freely by all those who choose to do so and therefore little need is felt to engage in political activities' (1997, p. 285). The reluctance to come out and thereby be associated with narrow stereotypes is echoed in another personal communication, this time from a man in his late 20s who writes, 'I'm not "a gay" but "a person" [gei de naku hito deshoo], but the people around me won't think this way'. Just like this man, many other Japanese homosexual men resist the fetishization of sexualobject choice both by gay organizations as well as society at large, and insist on being viewed simply as people, stressing that their same-sex attraction is not especially unusual or different. These men do not have an agenda on social or family reform. The views of these gay men largely support Robertson's contention that 'As long as an individual's sexual practices do not interfere with or challenge the legitimacy of the twinned institutions of marriage and household, Japanese society accommodates-and in the case of males, even indulges-a diversity of sexual behaviors' (1998, p. 145). What is important is that marriage and the household 'must not be compromised by a politicized sexual identity'. It is for this reason that Lunsing (in press) discusses both 'out' gay men and feminist women as facing similar problems in Japan with regard to their freedom of sexual expression, for both groups are stigmatized, not so much because of their chosen sexual acts, but because of their perceived opposition to conventional family roles. None the less, there are same-sex desiring Japanese men and women for whom 'gay' and 'lesbian', in the Anglo-American sense, are important and intelligible categories. Members of the Japanese gay-rights group OCCUR, for instance, actively promote Western concepts such as gay identity and gay rights. Lunsing says of OCCUR that it 'provides a clear example of gay Japanese following American gay and lesbian discourses' (Lunsing 1997, p. 284). For instance, at a recent conference on legal rights for same-sex couples held in London, one of OCCUR's members gave a talk entitled 'Towards legal protection for same-sex partnerships in Japan from the perspective of gay and lesbian identity' (Yanagihashi 1999) and it was argued that Japanese gay men and lesbians needed to strengthen their understanding of themselves as gay men and lesbians in order to build up a community-based movement which could pressure the government for increased social rights. The fact that organizations like OCCUR have recently developed in Japan and that they are encouraged and supported by foreign lesbian and gay researchers and organisations is a clear example of globalization at work. However, the problem with Western researchers who take up the cause of groups like OCCUR in English6 is that the experience

468

MARKMcLELLAND

of all same-sex desiring men and women in Japan comes to be refracted through this imported terminology and it gives the impression to an outside observer that Japan is somehow 'behind' some supposed Euro-Arnerican ideal with regard to gay rights. Same-sex desiring men and women who identify with Western models of being 'gay' or 'lesbian' are, however, a minority within a minority in Japan. Dennis Altman (1996) has argued that the process of globalization in which modes of experience characteristic of Euro-American societies are becoming increasingly widespread through the development of global media, entertainment and tourism means that no society can fail to be influenced to some extent by western ideas, including newly developed Western discourses of sexual identity. This point is illustrated in the following personal communication from one of my informants:
Recently there seem to be more gay-related books being published than before but still I think that there are not yet enough. These kinds of books have been very useful in confirming the fact that I'm gay [jibunga gei de aru koto]. From now on there are important issues I need to think about in my own gay life [jibun no gei raifu]. I can say that books which discuss the issue 'Whyam I gay?' [naze jibun ga gei] are very important to me. Somehow, even with my gay friends I'm not able to discuss questions like 'What do you think about being gay?' or 'How are you going to live as a gay from now on?' I have no idea what other Japanese gays think about these things. Even if the number of other gays thinking [about these things] is small, I still want to know [about them]. So, I'd like you to make the results of your research known soon. I think it would be useful for some people.

This man, through reading books about the 'gay life' made possible through the pioneering efforts of Western gay and lesbian activists, has been encouraged to think about his life in a way which is quite different from other Japanese people. As he acknowledges, the number of other Japanese people thinking this way, even among Japanese gay men themselves, is small. He is looking forward to me (a Western 'gay' researcher) publishing my research about Japanese gay men which he thinks will be useful in answering questions about himself which are not currently addressed in his own society.

Researching

the 'local'

As a privileged white male writing at the beginning of the twenty-firstcentury, I have been able to cash in on the intellectual kudos of 'gay theory' which has enabled me to obtain funding for research which seeks to explain Japanese 'gay men' to an English-reading audience. When travelling in Japan and interacting with Japanese gay men, I was sometimes seen as an 'expert' on homosexuality; at one stage being interviewed for a Japanese gay magazine and asked to offer words of advice. This put me in the uncomfortable position of having to try to articulate what 'homosexuality means' to me, when what I in fact wanted to find out was what homosexuality meant to my Japanese informants.7 At times I was perplexed by the responses of my informants because the way in which they expressed themselves seemed incompatible with my pre-conceived notions of what it meant to 'be gay'. During the course of the research, it became necessary to question whether the notion of an exclusively gay or lesbian 'identity' (something that

IS THERE A JAPANESE'GAY IDENTITY'?

469

the west 'has' which Japan 'lacks') is a useful formulation when trying to understand homosexuality in Japan. Of course, the use of Western categories of sexual identity and the deployment of forms of social mobilization characteristic of Western nations cannot be denied to Japanese same-sex desiring men and women, but judging Japanese people who do not see their experience reflected in these terms as somehow 'failing' to develop an US-style sexual identity is surely to fall into ethnocentrism. Japanese society is changing and, as the 1990s 'gay boom' in the media and the increasing number of gay-rights groups such as OCCUR show, Japanese people are thinking about sexuality in new ways and through new terms. However, this does not mean that Japan will follow the same path as has been taken by some Euro-American societies ('the West' does not, after all, operate with a singular discourse of homosexual identity). Although the spread of characteristically 'Western' notions of gay rights and gay identity is clearly having some effect on Japanese society, it is worth considering Altman's suggestion that when non-Western societies encounter recently developed discourses of sexuality: new identities may develop but their development is not predictable through Western experience' (1996, p. 91). In this regard, the case of Japan, as Asia's most fully modernized nation, is of great interest for the study of (homo)sexualities. However, before Western analysts can speak out authoritatively about what 'homosexuality means' in Japan, a great deal of work yet needs to be done. As Jackson (1999) has suggested, what is needed is the development of a series of 'microhistories' which attend carefully to 'the local specificities in each situation'. It is unlikely that the local specificities of gay and lesbian liberation in the US or Europe can illuminate, except in very general ways, the lives and experiences of same-sex desiring Japanese. Please note that Japanese names occur in Japanese order: surname first. Notes
1. The term geiboi is used to refer to cross-dressed male prostitutes in Matsumoto Toshio's 1968 film Bara no sooretsu (Funeral procession of roses). 2. Dooseiaisha (literally 'same-sex-love-person') is the Chinese-character translation of the English word 'homosexual' which entered Japanese as a sexological term at the beginning of the twentieth-century. It is common in sexological and sex-education literature but not in popular media. 3. Iwao Sumiko in her book on Japanese women suggests that 'Americans expect much more from a marriage than do the Japanese' (1993, p. 69) pointing out that although US and Japanese women broadly agree on the importance to a marriage of such factors as 'financial security', Japanese women consistently rate 'having a good sexual relationship', 'keeping romance alive', and 'sexual fidelity on the part of spouse' far lower than do US women. Japanese feminist Ueno Chizuko explains this when she states that 'Japanesecouples get married for the institution and not out of romantic love' (1997, p. 285). 4. There are no legal restrictions on sex between men or sex between women mentioned in Japan's legal code, unlike in many Western countries that maintain unequal age of consent laws. See West and Green (1997, p. 67). 5. After the success of Ito and Yanase's 1994 book Love Notes of Men who Love Men (Otoko to otoko no ren'ai nooto) where they discuss the problems they have living together as a family with Ito's invalided mother, the production team for the television comedy show Denpa shoonen (Young airwaves) turned up at their home and asked that the well-known television personality Matsumura Kunihiro, who was dressed as a kindergarten student, be allowed to stay the night 'as a child of the family'; the implication being that Ito and Yanase might like to play the role of parents, because, of course, 'real' families have children (see the account given in Ito and Ochiai (1998, p. 12); and also Summerhawk et al. 1998, p. 91).

470

MARKMcLELLAND

6. Not all Western researchers who have encountered OCCUR have commented favourablyon this organization. The US lesbian author and activist Sarah Schulman, for instance, received a 'vicious tonguelashing' and was accused of 'serious crimes' when she met four members of OCCUR (AKA) in Tokyo in 1992. Her 'crime' was supporting an international lesbian and gay film festival sponsored by a straight company (Schulman 1994, p. 241). 7. Lesbian activist Sarah Schulman and a gay colleague also encountered this problem when they attended a meeting of Japanese lesbians and gay men in Tokyo in 1992. She says 'absurdlyJim and I were suddenly being held up as examples of the free and integrated homosexual. We were supposed to recite the rules for successful gay life', to which they self-confessedly responded with 'the worst psychobabble'.

References
Altman, D. (1996) Rupture or continuity? The internationalization of gay identities. Social Text 48, 14, 77-94. Aoyama, T. (1988) Male Homosexuality as Treated by Japanese Women Writers. In G. McCormac and Y. Sugimoto (eds) The Japanese Trajectory: Modernization and Beyond (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Appadurai,A. (1996) Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press). Dowsett, G. (1996) Practicing Desire: Homosexual Sex in the Era of AIDS (Stanford: Stanford University Press). Fushimi, N. (1991) Puraibeeto gei raifu (Privategay life) (Tokyo: Gakuyoo shoboo). Ishino, S. and Wakabayashi,N. (1996) Japan. In R. Rosenbloom (ed.) UnspokenRules: Sexual Orzentation and Women's Rights (London and New York: Cassell). Ito, S. and Ochiai, K (1998) Jibunrashiku ikiru: dooseiai to feminzzumu (Live more like oneself: homosexuality and feminism) (Kyoto:Kamokawabooklet). Iwao, S. (1993) The Japanese Woman: Traditional Image and Changing Reality (New York: The Free Press). Jackson, P. (1999) Global Queering in Thailand: Peripheral Genders and the Limits of Queer Theory, paper presented at IASSCS Conference on Sexual Diversity and Human Rights, Manchester Metropolitan University, July 21-24. Long, D. (1996) Formation process of some Japanese gay argot terms. American Speech, 71, 215-224. Lunsing, W. (1995) Japanese Gay Magazines and Marriage Advertisements. In G. Sullivan (ed.) Gays and Lesbians in Asia and the Pacific: Social and Human Services (Binghampton, NY: Haworth Press). Lunsing, W. (1997) 'Gay Boom' in Japan:changing views of homosexuality?Thamyris, 4, 267-293. Lunsing, W. (in press) Beyond Common Sense: Negotiating Constructions of Sexuality and Gender in Contemporary Japan (London: Keegan Paul). McLelland, M. (1999) Gay men as women's best friends and ideal partners in Japanese media: are gay men really a girls' best friends? US-Japan Women's Journal, English Supplement, 17, 77110.

McLelland, M. (2000a) Male Homosexuality in ModernJapan: Cultural Myths and Social Realities (Richmond: Curzon Press). McLelland, M. (2000b) The love between 'beautiful boys' in Japanese women's comics. Journal of Gender Studies, 9, 13-26. Offord, B. and Cantrell, L. (1999) Unfixed in a fixated world: identity, sexuality, race and culture. Journal of Homosexuality, 36, 207-220. Ohama, G. (1994) Male Homosexuality and its Social Acceptance in Modern Japanese Society. BA thesis submitted to Social Sciences Department, International Christian University, Tokyo. Refsing, K (1995) The Discourse on Cultural Differences in Danish-Japanese Marriages. In S. Clausen, R. Starrs and A. Wedell-Wedellsborg (eds) Cultural Encounters: China, Japan, and the West (Aarhus:Aarhus University Press). Robertson, J. (1998) Takarazuka: Sexual Politics and Popular Culture in Modern Japan (Berkeley: University of California Press).

IS THERE A JAPANESE 'GAY IDENTITY'?

471

Schulman, S. (1994) My American History: Lesbian and Gay Life During the Reagan/Bush Years (London: Cassell). Summerhawk, B., McMahill, C. and McDonald, D. (eds) (1998) Queer Japan: Personal Stonresof Japanese Lesbians, Gays, Bisexuals and Transsexuals (Norwich: New Victoria Publishers). Ueno, C. (1997) Interview. In S. Buckley (ed.) Broken Silences: Voices of Japanese Feminism (Berkeley: University of CaliforniaPress). West, D. and Green, R. (eds) (1997) Sociolegal Control of Homosexuality: a Multi-Nation Comparison (New York and London: Plenum Press). Yanagihashi,A. (1999) Towards Legal Protectionfor Same-Sex Partnerships in Japan from the Perspective of Gay and Lesbian Identity, paper presented at the conference Legal Protection for Same-Sex Partnerships, King's College London, 1-3 July.

Resume Cet article examine la representation tres repandue de l'homosexualite (surtout masculine) dans differents media culturels et populaires du Japon. Au Japon, la representation de l'homosexualite se situe generalement dans le 'monde du spectacle', et l'homosexualite, masculine en particulier, est souvent associee a la transsexualite et aux 'transgenders'. Les debats sur l'homosexualite en tant que 'choix de vie' ou en termes de 'droits des minorites sexuelles' sont tres rares, y compris dans les media gays japonais. L'article suggere que le discours des media qui associe l'homosexualite a la transsexualite, va a l'encontre du sens politise de 'I'identite gay' que les hommes qui se desirent entre eux tentent de developper au Japon. Les donnees des entretiens avec des hommes japonais ainsi que le materiau collecte 'a partir des media gays sont utilises pour refleter la theorie developpee par Altman sur le mouvement global 'queer'. Ils remettent en cause l'argument avance par certains theoriciens gays et lesbiens occidentaux, a savoir que 'l'identite gay' est une chose qui fait defaut aux homosexuels japonais, et que par consequent ils devraient developper.

Resumen Este documento, investiga la extendida representacion de la homosexualidad (principalmente masculina) en varios medios culturales y populares de Japon. Generalmente, la representacion de la homosexualidad en Japon esta situada en el 'mundo del entretenimiento' y la homosexualidad masculina, sobre todo, relacionada directamente con la transexualidad y el trans-genero. Es raro que ocurran discusiones sobre la homosexualidad como 'opcion de estilo de vida' o para defender los 'derechos sexuales', ni siquiera en los medios de comunicacion 'gays' de Japon. Aqui explicamos que los discursos sobre homosexualidad en los medios de comunicacion, que la asocian con transexualidad, van en contra de los hombres japoneses que desean relaciones con el mismo sexo, y que estan desarrollando un sentido politico de la "identidad gay". Se utilizan datos de entrevistas a homosexuales japoneses y material reunido de reflexionar sobre medios de comunicacion 'gays' para la nocion de Altman "homosexualidad global", y

472

MARKMcLELLAND

para cuestionar el argumento de algunos teoricos lesbico-gays occidentales de que los japoneses carecen de una identidad 'gay' y deberian desarrollar.