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Abstract
Coalescing in the 1980s, visual kei is currently a Japanese music subculture known for flamboyant theatrics, a woman-dominated fanbase, and its performers’ non-normative, often playfully queer gender expressions, which defy heteronormative binaries and hegemonic conceptions of gender and sexuality. This article illuminates the queer facets of visual kei through an in-depth investigation focusing on two forms of binary-destabilizing expression: onnagata/josō and “gender free” or gender-bending. The first involves complete adoption of feminine-coded clothing by self-identified male performers, the second a disregard or even intentional disruption of gendered boundaries. Combining ethnographic fieldwork data with close analysis of social media discourse, this paper explores the “queer lives” of visual kei performers through their personae. This double-pronged approach is necessary as these queer expressions are created and reiterated through both the “live” concert performance and the appearance of “lives” created through social media. In creating these “lives,” performers often employ casual, fluid utilization of queer expression which destabilizes normative gender and sexuality narratives while not necessarily explicitly invoking any queer identity. Through elucidating these multifaceted, ambiguous yet queer performances, this paper aims to help complicate current discourse on queer lives in Japan and wider scholarship.
Keywords:
Acknowledgements
As well as the co-authors and editor of this issue, to who I am indebted, I would also like to thank Dr. Sophie Charlotte van de Goor, without whose help this chapter as it is now would not have been possible. Most of the research for this paper was carried out with the generous funding of the Japanese Government (MEXT) Postgraduate Scholarship, which I received from 2012 to 2018.
Notes
1 All quotes by performers are translated into English from the original Japanese by the author, unless otherwise noted. All timestamps are Japan Standard Time.
2 Kaya, Twitter post, March 22, 2014, 12:28 a.m. https://twitter.com/Kaya_rose/status/447031924624617472.
3 Shindō Wataru, Twitter post, July 5, 2014, 12:24 a.m. https://twitter.com/WATARU_SHINDO/status/485081848767188992.
4 I did research, continuously from April 2012 to January 2020, with short spans in 2009, 2010, and 2011, and personally attended approximately 445 live performances.
5 More specifically, homonormativity, based on these same ideals, additionally “upholds” and “sustains” these “dominant heteronormative assumptions … while promising the possibility of … a privatized, depoliticized gay culture” (Duggan Citation2003, 50), or a “lesbian and gay assimilationism to the so-called heteronorm” (Giffney Citation2009, 5) in which “homosexual community norms [marginalize] other kinds of sex/gender/sexuality difference” (Stryker Citation2008, 147).
6 For discussions of visual kei which focus on the music, see Takako Inoue’s chapter in Vijuaru kei no jidai, especially pp. 130-143 (2003a) and Ken McLeod’s work which involves discussion of gendered musical hybridity (2013).
7 The importance and centrality of the music in visual kei, as opposed to the performance (inclusive of music) and/or persona, is another debate that deserves attention but falls outside the scope of this article.
8 Rock and metal have historically been considered and found to be heteromasculine by some scholars (see for example Denski and Sholle 1992; Krenske and McKay 2000), though this interpretation has in turn been challenged repeatedly by others (see for example Cohen 1997; Hill 2016, especially 105-132). Ascribing the theorized resistance or hybridity within performance of these genres to possibly connected genres in terms of broader gender and sexuality norms is not what this article sets out to do.
9 While Takuo Morikawa disagrees with my interpretation here, the connection has been made by popular Japanese discourse (Morikawa Citation2003, 52–53), and is additionally evidenced through my fieldwork, in which I have repeatedly witnessed visual kei performers covering and referencing artists such as David Bowie and glam-inspired The Cure and Bauhaus, as well as noticed musical and aesthetic similarities in numerous performances.
10 This generalization has also been erroneously compounded in more recent work (Johnson Citation2019, 304).
11 Another potential defining factor is the composition of its fan base and fan activities. See Johnson Citation2019.
12 This includes hosting a seminar titled “Is ‘Japan’ ‘queer’?” (<Nihon > ha < kuia > ka?) in February 2018, in which the term hentai seems to be explicitly connected to the conception of “queer” (CGS Online (English) 2018), a potentially problematic (yet not uncommon) equivalence addressed by queer scholar Akiko Shimizu ten years prior (Shimizu 2008, 360).
16 http://www.f-w-d.co.jp/index.html; see also sun-krad (http://www.sunkrad.jp/band.html)
17 It must be noted that this, as well as all references to fan activity within this article, has been noticed exclusively within domestic Japanese fan practices (albeit including non-Japanese fans); I have conducted no fieldwork among fans outside of Japan, and thus cannot speak to their practices.
18 This may be related to ideals of “romantic availability” also found in male idol groups (Glasspool Citation2012).
19 As of 2019, Hisame has changed personas and is now Lanju of the band gulu gulu.
20 Ioana Fotache notes that these terms are both thought to be derogatory within the current LGBT movement in Japan (2019, 28, 34), but a discussion of terminology and its appropriateness is outside the scope of this article.
21 Given the comparative lack of any explicit self-identification, however, I do not have enough information to extrapolate further on this hypothesis.
22 For a broader discussion of cross-dressing in the Japanese context through the case study of Kaya elsewhere, see Johnson, n.d.
23 Indeed, from the early 2000s onwards, a large group of sometimes cross-dressed, multiply queer performers (including transgender women and gay men) known as onē (“older sister,” albeit written in katakana when referring to the performers to mark its separation from this meaning) have been both popular and widespread in Japanese media, albeit commonly understood as “only entertainment” instead of “challenging acceptable gender norms” (Maree Citation2013, 99, 2015).
24 Recent images can be viewed on Kaya’s official website (https://kaya-rose.com/), Twitter (@Kaya_rose, https://twitter.com/kaya_rose), and Instagram (@kaya_official_account, https://www.instagram.com/kaya_official_account/).
25 While Kaya uses the English loanword for “gender identity” (jendā aidentiti) in the section’s subtitle, he does not use it in his explanation below.
26 Kaya, Twitter post, December 19, 2019, 4:12 p.m. https://twitter.com/Kaya_rose/status/1207559359162511360.
27 In the 2019 tweet, he uses “Kaya” as an all-encompassing category, stating “[I] am the singer Kaya. [My] genre is Kaya. [My] sex/gender is also Kaya. (laughs)” (“Kashu no Kaya desu. Janru ha Kaya desu. Seibetsu mo Kaya desu. wara”).
28 Kaya retweeted a Miwa Akihiro quote: after being asked “Why are you so strong?” Miwa replied, “Because I’m half woman.” (美輪明宏bot, Twitter post, November 24, 2015, 9:45 p.m., https://twitter.com/_miwa_akihiro/status/669134655866585088)
Kaya added in a follow-up tweet, “That’s exactly right,” marking his response as connected with the “>RT” (“retweet”) marker (Kaya, Twitter post, November 29, 2015, 9:13 p.m., https://twitter.com/Kaya_rose/status/670938706082062340.)
29 Notably, there is a male gendered option: fudanshi.
30 Kaya and Sakurai Ao appear to have a close relationship, and Kaya has performed with drag queens on multiple occasions (see the following tweet for an example: Kaya, Twitter post, February 11, 2020, 0:23 a.m., https://twitter.com/Kaya_rose/status/1226889533335076864).
31 In the original utterance, the informant used no pronouns; they were inserted for English readability by the author.
32 Kaya, Twitter post, October 8, 2017, 11:51 p.m. https://twitter.com/Kaya_rose/status/917039630272290816.
33 See his live schedule (https://kaya-rose.com/live/) for up-to-date details.
34 For example, the previously mentioned onnagata Hizaki, who is often addressed with the honorific hime, is one of a number of onnagata guitarists.
35 I use feminine pronouns here due to Tomoka’s strict characterization as a woman, which includes how she is addressed and spoken of by other performers.
36 See TOMOZO’s official twitter account @tomozo_0315 (https://twitter.com/tomozo_0315) for more details.
37 Igarashi Tomoka, Twitter post, March 31, 2016, 9:21 a.m. https://twitter.com/igarashi_tomoka/status/715574837922521089.
38 Japanese feminine language has been discussed as both constructed and not representative of actual gendered language use, but is nevertheless often applied as an explicit marker of femininity (see M. Inoue 2006).
39 See twitter account @daisukeee108 (https://twitter.com/daisukeee108).
40 See twitter account @sato_jennifer_D (https://twitter.com/sato_jennifer_d).
41 Luvia, Twitter post, September 5, 2016, 11:31 p.m. https://twitter.com/CNVL_luvia/status/773045894694318080. Indeed, he specifically points out that his gothic Lolita style outfit was chosen based on his own preferences.
44 As of 2020, Shindō also uses the tag “genderless” (jendāresu), particularly on Instagram (@ruco_inc, https://www.instagram.com/ruco_inc/) posts. Potentially, this type of performance is connected to the broader fashion movement in the 2010s, whose similarities with visual kei more generally are clear enough to deserve mention in journalistic account (Freeman 2016). However, an in-depth investigation into the activity and performances under the “genderless” umbrella do not fall under the scope of this article, and I cannot at this time demonstrate any explicit link between the genderless movement and visual kei.
45 See Shindō Wataru, Twitter post, January 25, 2019, 10:10 p.m., https://twitter.com/RUCO_inc/status/1221057644749672448 and Shindō Wataru, Twitter post, September 30, 2019, 0:48 a.m., https://twitter.com/RUCO_inc/status/1178335695909392385 for examples.
46 After leaving band LIPHLICH in January 2019, which at time of writing in February 2020 was his first and only band aside from support roles, Shindō’s fans (as determined through followers) have decreased in number, but this is somewhat typical of unaffiliated performers who are not vocalists.
47 Recent images of his performance persona can be viewed on Loki’s official Twitter @More_Loki (https://twitter.com/More_Loki).
48 A slightly modified version was employed again at his birthday solo event in Tokyo on December 8, 2019.
49 See Loki, Twitter post, October 9, 2016, 0:08 a.m., https://twitter.com/More_Loki/status/785134833395601408.
50 Another visual-based moniker was kamidate kei, roughly “spiked hair type,” used in the same time period for bands notable for their extremely vertical hairstyles, particularly early era BUCK-TICK (Morikawa Citation2003, 90–91).
51 Shindō Wataru, Twitter post, May 7, 2015, 11:43 p.m. https://twitter.com/WATARU_SHINDO/status/596324489249427456.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Adrienne Renee Johnson
Adrienne Renee Johnson is a lecturer in the Department of English Language and Literature at Shirayuri University and a PhD candidate in the Graduate School of Interdisciplinary Information Studies at the University of Tokyo. Her dissertation investigates the history and development of visual kei, using the genre/subculture as a case study of subculture under neoliberal capitalism, and exploring how it reflects wider social shifts in Japan from the Bubble period onwards. She has published on the connections between visual kei and Japanese girl culture, and has forthcoming work in an edited volume on Japanese popular culture.