Telling Her Story: Narrating a Japanese Lesbian Community

Abstract

This article explores queer Japanese women's narratives of their own histories and the history of the “Japanese lesbian community,” which has been constructed as a space outside the heterosexual mainstream, a space where queer women can find at least temporary refuge. It begins with the acknowledgment that the evolution and the shape of the community, along with the identities of the women who comprise it, are shifting and contested. This article specifically looks at the long history of the lesbian bar scene as well as more recent history of lesbian dance parties; the early role of lesbian feminism and activism; lesbian community-based and commercial publications, paying special attention to the critical role translation has played in Japanese lesbian discourse and the construction of multiple lesbian identities; and, finally, lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) pride events and film festivals, through which the larger LGBT community has been gaining increasing visibility. This article argues that while some of the building blocks of the community are borrowed, from the “West” as well as from the Japanese gay community, there has also been creative translation, adaptation, and resistance to these imports. The resulting Japanese lesbian community is a complex and local construct, an innovative bricolage firmly sited in Japan.

KEYWORDS:

• lesbian
• Japan
• lesbian community
• lesbian bars
• lesbian activism
• lesbian publications
• translation
• influence of U.S. lesbian and gay culture

Acknowledgments

This is a revised version of an article originally published under the same title in Andrea Germer and Andreas Moerke, eds., Grenzgänge. (De-)Konstruktion kollektiver Identitäten in Japan (Japanstudien. Jahrbuch des Deutschen Instituts für Japanstudien 16), Munich: Iudicium, 2004, 119–44. While references to recent publications in English and Japanese have been added, and, due to space restrictions, some references have been removed, the article remains substantially unchanged. This article evolved from research I did for an annotated translation of a series of roundtable discussions appearing in the lesbian magazine Anise ( Aniisu Summer 2001, 28–57), for my M.A. thesis for a degree in Advanced Japanese Studies at the University of Sheffield, UK (Welker 2002).

Notes

1. With the exception of references to authors writing in English, in this article Japanese names are given in their natural order of surname preceding given name.

2. I use the term “West” here in a broad sense, reflecting the Japanese use of the terms ōbei [the Euro-American sphere] and seiō [the occident] to refer, as Kelsky argues, not to specific countries but a “generic ‘West,’” standing in contrast to Japan, and with which America is “most powerfully associated” (2001, 6).

3. While the terms “rezubian” and “lesbian,” each with its own varied history, should not be assumed equivalent, for ease of reading, I use the English version in this article aside from when I wish to emphasize the distinction between the two.

4. It is worth noting that, while the recent surveys embrace a wide range of identities, the questions in Hirosawa and Rezubian Ripōto-han (1987) assume respondents are “rezubian,” showing a shift in awareness and an increased openness to difference within the community.

5. A significant, if small, number of those affiliated with the community eschew the label woman, as is evidenced by the informants of Sei Ishishiki Chōsa Gurūpu (SICG 1998) as well as the identities expressed in the personal ads in the 1980s in the magazines Allan and Gekkō, discussed later. For an analysis of the latter, see Welker (2008).

6. For ease of reading, I refer to publications with a title transliterated into Japanese from English or another language by the English or other version rather than its Japanese transliteration.

7. The percent of married women is apparently decreasing in the community, at least among the readership of lesbian publications. Approximately 12.4% of respondents to a survey taken in 1981 were married, and another 10.5% were divorced or separated (Hirosawa and Rezubian Ripōto-han 1987, 157), while in a 1996 survey, 9% of respondents were married and another 8% divorced (SICG 1998, 126). However, 32% of the unmarried women in the latter survey felt familial pressure to get married (131).

8. This includes a regular column by male-to-female lesbian feminist transgender activist Mako Sennyo titled “Rezubian tte dare?” [Who Is a Lesbian?], which was included in most issues of both Phryné and Anise.

9. The beginning of a limited sense of community somewhat earlier can also be seen in some articles and roundtable discussions evidently written by and featuring self-professed female homosexuals and printed in “customs magazines” in the 1950s and 1960s. For an example in English translation, see Saijō et al ([1955] 2007). For an examination of this discourse, see McLelland (2004).

10. Collections of personal narratives and surveys can be found in Sugiura (2009), Toyama (1999), Yajima (1999), SICG (1998), and Fukunaga (1982). See also Ikeda Kumiko (1999), Sasano (1995), Izumo (1993), and Kakefuda (1992a). Personal narratives in English translation are available in McLelland, Suganuma, and Welker (2007), Khor and Kamano (2006), Chalmers (2002), and Summerhawk, McMahill, and McDonald (1998).

11. Witness their presence in groundbreaking books by and on Japanese lesbians (e.g., Hirosawa 1987a; Wada 1987).

12. Resubian, rather than rezubian, was the term used in the early years of the community. It is unclear, however, when exactly the term was first used in the bar scene. The spring 1975 issue of the zine Wakakusa [Young grass] and Subarashii onnatachi (1976), for example, use both pronunciations. As McLelland (2004) shows, the “perverse press” from at least the 1960s most frequently employed the terms resubosu ai [Lesbos love] and resubian, followed a decade later by rezu [lez]. Rezubian was evidently first used in the late 1960s (see Narabayashi 1967, 3)—the shift being a product of the influence of (American) English—and almost completely superceded the earlier pronunciation by the mid- to late 1970s.

13. Onabe, the honorific form of nabe [a kind of pan], is the female version of the older term okama, the honorific form of kama [pot], a term that has long been used to refer to homosexual men, particularly very effeminate or cross-dressing men.

14. SKD stands for Shōchiku Kagekidan [the Shōchiku Revue], an all-female theater troupe described by Jennifer Robertson (1998, 6) as “a ‘lowtown’ theatre appealing to a blue-collar clientele” in contrast with the “uptown,” better-known, and also all-female Takarazuka Revue.

15. An English translation of Toyama's chapter on Mizuno (1999, 209–21) can be found in McLelland, Suganuma, and Welker (2007, 153–65). This gender blurring phenomenon wherein ostensibly heterosexual women enjoy being served by women dressed as men, resonates in the popularity of the all-female Takarazuka Revue as well as the shōnen ai manga (boys’ love comics) of the 1970s, discussed below.

16. For more on the tachi/neko dynamic, see Chalmers (2002, 27–29).

17. Redisu baa are also called rezu baa and rezubian baa both inside and outside the community.

18. Respondents in Chalmers (2002), Yajima (1999), and SICG (1998) used pseudonyms, which I have indicated with quotation marks.

19. One quarter of respondents in SICG (1998) said they do or would look for a romantic partner at a lesbian bar, although only 8.5% reported bars as having been where they met their current partner, 5% their first female sexual partner, or 0.3% their first female love interest (52–53, 57–58). However, over 23% of respondents in the Anise survey (Aniisu Summer 2001, 75) reported lesbian bars being the first lesbian space they went to.

20. Consider the depictions of early North American lesbian bar culture offered in, for example, Kennedy and Davis (1993).

21. The first lesbian disco was apparently Space Dyke, which began in 1983 (Aniise Summer 2001).

22. Thirty-one of the 148 respondents in an Anise survey (Aniisu Summer 2001, 74–75) said that dance parties and clubs were their first step into the lesbian world. While only 8% met their current lover and 6.4% their first female sexual partner at a party or social event, over a third indicated they would use such events to find a partner (SICG 1998, 53, 57–58)

23. The establishment of Regumi Studio Tokyo and its zine Regumi tsūshin [Regumi journal] are discussed in Hisada (1987). See also Tsuruga (1995).

24. On the tension between native lesbians and lesbians by choice, see also Lunsing (2001, 296–97).

25. Izumo's role in Subarashii onnatachi is briefly discussed in Izumo and Maree (2000, 69–70). The rift in the community and the subsequent publication of the Za daiku [The dyke] and Hikari guruma [Shining wheel] in 1978 are discussed by Izumo in Izumo et al. (1997, 58–62).

26. While the idea of a “gay boom” (gei būmu) in the media would seem to imply a new and sudden flourishing of representations of gays (and perhaps lesbians, bisexuals, and transgenders) in the mainstream media, in fact, the mainstream media, especially magazines, has had a particular interest in “homo” and “okama” [a broad category that might include effeminate, sometimes cross-dressing homosexual men and/or male-to-female transgender individuals] through much of the postwar era. See, for example, the list of articles on homosexuality in postwar magazines compiled by Ishida Hitoshi and other scholars at Chūō University (Ishida 2004).

27. Ōe Chizuka, for instance, recalls that reading the same article helped her on the way to joining the community (Aniisu Summer 2001, 39). While an article on Wakakusa no Kai and their zine Eve & Eve (Ivu ando Ivu) appeared in Fujin kōron three years earlier (Suzuki 1983), unlike Hirosawa's article (1986) the earlier article did not include contact information for the group.

28. This work has been given additional lesbian significance through multiple and immensely popular interpretations performed by the all-female Takarazuka Review (see, e.g., Robertson 1998, 74).

29. Yaoi, which stands for yama nashi [no plot], ochi nashi [no punchline], imi nashi [no meaning], refers to the sub-genre of shōjo manga [girls’ comics] that features loosely connected male–male sex scenes for the voyeuristic enjoyment of teenage girls and young women. For a history of yaoi and shōnen ai manga in English, see Mizoguchi (2003). For a discussion of the lesbian appeal of yaoi, see Mizoguchi (2000) and of shōnen ai manga, see Welker (2006a).

30. While only four of the seventeen articles are direct translations from English—including essays by or about the ideas of lesbian theorists Monique Wittig, Susan Gubar, and Diane Hamer—just three of the remaining articles could be said to be focused on Japanese lesbian life, rather than global or more specifically Western lesbian life.

31. The choice to translate the title of Odd Girls as Resubian rekishi [Lesbian history], rather than, for instance, “American lesbian history,” positions the “lesbian history” contained therein to be read as part of the larger Japanese lesbian history, regardless of the obvious cultural differences.

32. In contrast to the picture painted in Kakinuma and Kurihara (1993), noted earlier, in a recent reading list in Anise just two of the eleven lesbian-themed novels are translations, as are seven of the twenty-two non-fiction works on sexuality and/or gender (Aniisu Summer 2001, 176–177).

33. Sometimes the borrowing seems more tenuous: Koyama Yūko, for instance, credits the coming out episode of the American television series Ellen, which has never been broadcast in Japan, as the impetus for the first daiku maachi [dyke march] in 1997 (1997, 1).

34. It should be noted that in the case of the Tokyo parade, an inability to coordinate plans as well as, at times, in-fighting among various organizers has led to its cancellation a number of times, including most recently the 2008 parade. A one-day festival was held in its stead in May 2009, with the parade scheduled to be held next in August 2010.