Japan in the Queer News
a strange start to Pride Month
Two very different articles landed in my inbox this week. Let me pull on a few threads and offer some context.
Baby Steps?
The first was this story, circulated by Jiji Press and appearing in multiple newspapers and websites.
In sum, the government of Ōmura, a small city in Nagasaki Prefecture, took the domestic partner registry problem for queer people in Japan to an unexpected level and allowed two gay men to register within the same household.
Citizens of Japan register their family and residence with the relevant local government, and that registration is updated when there are deaths, marriages, divorces, and births. For example, when Hiro and I needed to provide a (translated) copy of his birth certificate, the equivalent document was that registration. I now know where both of Hiro’s parents were born, their ages, and Hiro’s younger brother’s birthdate as a result.
Although many municipalities in Japan now offer a separate but not really equal way to register a same-sex relationship, that registration is not included in the family registration document.
What happened, therefore, in Ōmura was new.
I am happy for the two men involved, not that I know them.
That congratulatory feeling, however, faded after a sip of coffee. I have a different perspective now.
These are two people out of millions of queer people in Japan.
This is a small municipality out of hundreds of city governments.
There are still zero rights afforded to queer people, in terms of marriage equality or even bodily autonomy, at the national level.
And, of course, there are no spousal visas for same-sex non-Japanese partners of Japanese people.
I am also, cynical though it is, suspicious of the timing.
On May 18th, as I noted here, an article in Japanese appeared, reporting on Canada’s decision to grant refugee status to a Japanese lesbian couple. Some English-language coverage has subsequently appeared, including this May 28th article in the South China Morning Post, a Hong Kong newspaper, rightly criticizing Japan’s lack of progress on issues of both queer and gender equality.
But this is not the time for paltry attempts at face-saving with a feel-good article that benefits just two people, Japan.
Shaming the Ashamed
This morning, I woke to find this article waiting.
Having read and studied Yukio Mishima, and having lived in Japan when Akihiro Miwa was still a fixture on talk shows and entertainment programs, I have some thoughts.
Mishima embodied internalized homophobia. That self-hatred, in an opinion that is likely worth as much as the contents of the buckets carried by the night-soil men that Mishima lusted after as a child (when he wasn’t masturbating to reproductions of the death of Saint Sebastian), connects directly to his fetish attachment to fantasies of pain, mutilation, and death. (I am not a psychologist—I speak only from a personal understanding of internalized homophobia, one that was thankfully free of martyrdom imagery.)
The article also refers to Miwa as someone Mishima danced with once.
Not quite.
Mishima often referred to Miwa as his muse when the two worked on movies together during the 1960s. It is also believed that Mishima first met Miwa in the early postwar period when the two frequented the same gay bars and parks during the Occupation, sleeping with GIs for much-needed cash.
Mishima was sickly as a child, and I find it easy to believe that Miwa had teased him about his lack of musculature. Mishima had no doubt already begun planning his ill-fated coup attempt in 1968 when Kurotokage was released. I have to conclude that if that coup was to fail (as Mishima was nearly certain it would) and that if such a failure, in Mishima’s mind, required him to commit ritual suicide, Mishima considered the body-building regimen critical for the doomed hero image he wanted to embody.
This photo failed to capture one of the coup's most tragi-comic aspects. Mishima had prepared a speech in which he intended to rouse Japan’s Self-Defense Forces into restoring Japan’s Imperial glory. But nobody heard the speech. Metropolitan Police helicopters buzzed overhead, drowning out Mishima’s words.
To read more about Mishima, I recommend Bad Gays: A Homosexual History by Lemmey and Miller.
Creative Updates
I had the opportunity to pitch directly (via Zoom) to two agents today. The first person offered good feedback on ways to tweak my pitch (although she passed on the project overall). The second person asked me to send her the first twenty pages from my manuscript, which I immediately did.
I am participating in
’s #1000WordsOfSummer challenge (and this newsletter counts toward my 1,000 words for today). I have essays to write and memoir chapters to tweak, so I’m looking forward to this challenge's accountability.And I am working on several new designs for t-shirts this Pride Month. I’ve got the usual suspects: traditional Japanese patterns, text treatments (including my responses to Pope Francis), and Pride flags galore. The circular design and the pixel hearts are new this year, though.
More designs are coming, but at the bottom of my Linktree page are links that let you vote for your favorites. Your vote helps me decide which designs to add next!
By the way, all T-shirts are on sale. Class t-shirts are just $13 until 5 PM CDT on Monday, June 3rd. Shop here!
Thank you, as always, for reading.
Very interesting essays today. I appreciate your perspective on the Omura Machi recent change. Let’s hope it spreads to the national level and really becomes the law of the land where same-sex couples are granted equality. Even though I am legally married in the US with my Japanese husband, our marriage isn’t recognized in Japan even though heterosexual marriages are. Clearly discrimination because all marriages should hence be recognized.
Good vibes for those 20 pages!