Post by Ayla on Mar 8, 2016 12:30:23 GMT 8
Blushing school boys kiss in BL manga, magical anime girls coyly hint at their “more than friends” relationship. Male kabuki performers dress up as elegant women, and androgynous female actresses in Takarazuka theater troupes have legions of female fans. But there's much more to being gay, lesbian, bi or transgender in Japan than what you see in manga and anime.
Los Angeles-based filmmaker Graham Kolbeins and New York City-based translator and producer Anne Ishii know this well. Kolbeins and Ishiii are responsible for the influx of Japanese gay manga translated into English in print over the past three years. Before the publication of The Passion of Gengoroh Tagame in 2013, gay manga was a comics genre that was mostly only available in English as scanlations. Since then, Kolbeins and Ishii have introduced English readers to even more gay manga creators, like Jiraiya, Seizoh Ebisubashi, and Takeshi Matsu with the first anthology of gay manga, Massive: Gay Erotic Manga and the Men Who Make It, published by Fantagraphics Books in 2014. Kolbeins and Ishii also run a website, Massive Goods where they sell clothing, books and accessories featuring the work of the gay manga creators featured in Massive.
Now, Kolbeins and Ishii are teaming up again for an even more ambitious project: Queer Japan. Queer Japan is a documentary that's now in the works that will feature interviews with “artists, activists, community leaders, and everyday people” to provide an “intimate look into the everyday triumphs and struggles of being a sexual minority in modern Japan.”
Besides interviews with gay manga master Gengoroh Tagame and Hiroshi Hasegawa, co-founder of G-Men magazine, Queer Japan also aims to talk with a diverse cross section of gay, lesbian, transgender and gender-queer people from various parts of Japan. Kolbeins and Ishii have several interviews in the can, and are now aiming to return to Japan for several more months of filming and production to complete the documentary and produce a companion photo book. To do this, they're hoping to raise $45,000 via their recently launched Kickstarter campaign.
ANN correspondent Deb Aoki reached out to Kolbeins via email to learn more about the Queer Japan project, and get some updates on even more gay manga that's in the publishing pipeline.
What was the inspiration behind the Queer Japan documentary? Was there a particular moment or incident that made you realize that you and Anne wanted to, HAD to make this film?
Graham Kolbeins: Rather than a specific moment, I think it's been a slow broil. Back in 2012 when Anne and I were working on The Passion of Gengoroh Tagame, I was reading a lot of non-fiction texts on the subject and became fascinated with the many complex queer cultures that have existed in Japan over the centuries. On our first trip to Tokyo to interview Tagame-san and the other artists in Massive, I got a taste of just how rich and layered queer life in Japan can be. My interest has only increased from there...
..If you only went from manga and anime, all-male kabuki, and all-female Takarazuka performers, you'd almost assume that Japan is a gay paradise -- that gender-bending and same sex relationships are fairly normal and readily accepted. But in reality, compared to US or Europe, gay culture in Japan appears to be comparatively underground. Can you perhaps speak to the hows and whys of this -- what should western fans know about the challenges that LGBTQ people in Japan face that may not be obvious to people from western cultures?
That's a big question! I'll start by qualifying that I try to avoid binary comparisons like Japan vs. the West or Japan vs. U.S., because it's easy to start making blanket statements-- and the boundaries between these categories are less stable than they may seem. Nonetheless, these are comparisons that will inevitably be drawn, and it's easy for people to get an oversimplified picture of LGBTQ issues on both sides of the coin.
If you look only at gender bending theatrical traditions like kabuki and groups like the Takarazuka Revue, or historical precedents like the Edo period's plethora of representations of nanshoku (male-male desire) in literature and art, you may get this overly rosy picture of Japan as a "haven" for queer people. It may be true that very specific kinds of male-male relationships (and certainly not lesbian ones) were accepted in Japanese antiquity, but it's important to note that after Japan's doors were forcibly opened to the West in the Meiji Restoration, that tradition was deemed part of Japan's "uncivilized" past and swept under the rug.
Medico-scientific concepts of sexuality imported from Germany and elsewhere became popular in the early 20th century and terms like homo replaced nanshoku. After the Pacific War, gay culture flourished in uniquely Japanese ways. Gay bars stated popping up in major cities, and their gender bending employees, dubbed gei boi (gay boys) were widely reported on in the press throughout the 1950s, a time when the word "gay" had yet to even enter the popular consciousness in America. The hentai zasshi (perverse magazines) of the same presented a variety of sexual minorities alongside each other: gay, lesbian, transvestite, and BDSM erotica could co-exist in the same magazine. A variety of queer communities formed and evolved over the late 20th century, but there was no major gay rights movement paralleling America's in the late '60s and '70s. Generally, sexuality remains a part of people's private lives in Japan. It's not uncommon for people to have a relatively open queer life that they would, however, never bring up at work or with their family.
That's not to say queer people live in cozy co-existence with straight society in Japan. According to the non-profit group Nijiro Diversity, 70% of sexual minorities have experienced bullying in school. Less than 19% of major corporations in Japan offer non-discrimination policies for LGBT workers (compared, for instance, to over 95% of Fortune 500 companies in the U.S.). There are no national and very few local anti-discrimination laws preventing housing and financial discrimination against LGBTQ people. So while there are some really robust and inspiring queer scenes in contemporary Japan, queer people still face a lot of institutional discrimination.
Are things changing now? It seems like LGBTQ culture has been more in the news in recent years in Japan than ever.
Yes, the last few years have seen increased attention to LGBTQ issues in the Japanese media. Same-sex marriage has entered the national conversation and in 2015, several wards have introduced partnership certificates that could be a step towards full marriage equality. This movement began in Shibuya, followed by Setagaya ward and more recently Iga and Takarazuka, the birthplace of the Takarazuka Revue. Outside of these gestures toward marriage equality, however, Japan lacks any serious policies protecting LGBTQ people.
The Tokyo gay pride parade has existed in various forms since 1994. Nogi Sumiko told me a revealing anecdote about how the media covered the first gay pride parade. Following the footage of participants celebrating, the male newscaster's unapologetic commentary was, "Well, that was disgusting." This same reporter, Nogi mentioned, is now frequently seen on panels enjoying spending time with "onee" (drag queen TV talents). Last year, the conservative prime minister Shinzo Abe's more liberal wife, Akie Abe, made history by appearing in the Tokyo Rainbow Pride, alongside Hiroshi Hasegawa. So, the perception of LGBTQ pride movements seems to have shifted significantly in just two decades.
In N. America, as gay culture became more visible, and less of a subculture/underground thing, it took several decades to get to acceptance and relative social normalcy that you see today. That said, a fair amount of the resistance to LGBTQ rights that you see today comes from conservative Christians. In Japan, Christianity is not as big a cultural or political force as it is in N. America. Given that, what factors make being "out" in Japan difficult?
It's interesting-- in some ways being a non-Christian country has made it easier for queer people in Japan to get along without being bothered by bigots. At the same time, homophobia exists on a more implicit level than it does in nations like America and England, where religious anti-queer rhetoric is predominant in public and political discourse.
In his great book Contact Moments: The Politics of Intercultural Desire in Japanese Male-Queer Cultures, Katsuhiko Suganuma discusses the seminal activist group OCCUR's attempts to dismantle state-sanctioned discrimination in Japan by exposing the "quiet" (otonashii) nature of homophobia in Japan. As long as queer culture doesn't pose a threat to the hetero-normative culture, it will be "tolerated" to a certain extent. "And when it appears 'intolerabe,' the otonashii homophobia awakes and deploys a cynical defense against the deconstructing force. In such circumstances, the otonashii homophobia keeps its pretense of being 'tolerant' about homosexual culture, but it does its job to condemn it in an implicit manner."
As a non-Christian nation, there are also separate issues preventing same-sex marriage from gaining traction in Japan. Here's what Hiroshi Hasegawa said on the matter in our interview: "[In the Japanese LGBTQ rights movement], everyone was looking to copy America and Europe in gay activism. When it comes to gay marriage-- in the West, in Christian cultures, God issues the right to marriage based on a relationship between a man and a woman in an equal contract. In Japanese society, however, marriage is a union of ancestors and families. It's a family issue. I believe it's similar in China. Marriage is not a union of individuals but a union of households, so the framework of marriage is very different from the West."...
www.animenewsnetwork.com/feature/2016-03-07/interview-queer-japan-filmmaker-graham-kolbeins/.99515
Los Angeles-based filmmaker Graham Kolbeins and New York City-based translator and producer Anne Ishii know this well. Kolbeins and Ishiii are responsible for the influx of Japanese gay manga translated into English in print over the past three years. Before the publication of The Passion of Gengoroh Tagame in 2013, gay manga was a comics genre that was mostly only available in English as scanlations. Since then, Kolbeins and Ishii have introduced English readers to even more gay manga creators, like Jiraiya, Seizoh Ebisubashi, and Takeshi Matsu with the first anthology of gay manga, Massive: Gay Erotic Manga and the Men Who Make It, published by Fantagraphics Books in 2014. Kolbeins and Ishii also run a website, Massive Goods where they sell clothing, books and accessories featuring the work of the gay manga creators featured in Massive.
Now, Kolbeins and Ishii are teaming up again for an even more ambitious project: Queer Japan. Queer Japan is a documentary that's now in the works that will feature interviews with “artists, activists, community leaders, and everyday people” to provide an “intimate look into the everyday triumphs and struggles of being a sexual minority in modern Japan.”
Besides interviews with gay manga master Gengoroh Tagame and Hiroshi Hasegawa, co-founder of G-Men magazine, Queer Japan also aims to talk with a diverse cross section of gay, lesbian, transgender and gender-queer people from various parts of Japan. Kolbeins and Ishii have several interviews in the can, and are now aiming to return to Japan for several more months of filming and production to complete the documentary and produce a companion photo book. To do this, they're hoping to raise $45,000 via their recently launched Kickstarter campaign.
ANN correspondent Deb Aoki reached out to Kolbeins via email to learn more about the Queer Japan project, and get some updates on even more gay manga that's in the publishing pipeline.
What was the inspiration behind the Queer Japan documentary? Was there a particular moment or incident that made you realize that you and Anne wanted to, HAD to make this film?
Graham Kolbeins: Rather than a specific moment, I think it's been a slow broil. Back in 2012 when Anne and I were working on The Passion of Gengoroh Tagame, I was reading a lot of non-fiction texts on the subject and became fascinated with the many complex queer cultures that have existed in Japan over the centuries. On our first trip to Tokyo to interview Tagame-san and the other artists in Massive, I got a taste of just how rich and layered queer life in Japan can be. My interest has only increased from there...
..If you only went from manga and anime, all-male kabuki, and all-female Takarazuka performers, you'd almost assume that Japan is a gay paradise -- that gender-bending and same sex relationships are fairly normal and readily accepted. But in reality, compared to US or Europe, gay culture in Japan appears to be comparatively underground. Can you perhaps speak to the hows and whys of this -- what should western fans know about the challenges that LGBTQ people in Japan face that may not be obvious to people from western cultures?
That's a big question! I'll start by qualifying that I try to avoid binary comparisons like Japan vs. the West or Japan vs. U.S., because it's easy to start making blanket statements-- and the boundaries between these categories are less stable than they may seem. Nonetheless, these are comparisons that will inevitably be drawn, and it's easy for people to get an oversimplified picture of LGBTQ issues on both sides of the coin.
If you look only at gender bending theatrical traditions like kabuki and groups like the Takarazuka Revue, or historical precedents like the Edo period's plethora of representations of nanshoku (male-male desire) in literature and art, you may get this overly rosy picture of Japan as a "haven" for queer people. It may be true that very specific kinds of male-male relationships (and certainly not lesbian ones) were accepted in Japanese antiquity, but it's important to note that after Japan's doors were forcibly opened to the West in the Meiji Restoration, that tradition was deemed part of Japan's "uncivilized" past and swept under the rug.
Medico-scientific concepts of sexuality imported from Germany and elsewhere became popular in the early 20th century and terms like homo replaced nanshoku. After the Pacific War, gay culture flourished in uniquely Japanese ways. Gay bars stated popping up in major cities, and their gender bending employees, dubbed gei boi (gay boys) were widely reported on in the press throughout the 1950s, a time when the word "gay" had yet to even enter the popular consciousness in America. The hentai zasshi (perverse magazines) of the same presented a variety of sexual minorities alongside each other: gay, lesbian, transvestite, and BDSM erotica could co-exist in the same magazine. A variety of queer communities formed and evolved over the late 20th century, but there was no major gay rights movement paralleling America's in the late '60s and '70s. Generally, sexuality remains a part of people's private lives in Japan. It's not uncommon for people to have a relatively open queer life that they would, however, never bring up at work or with their family.
That's not to say queer people live in cozy co-existence with straight society in Japan. According to the non-profit group Nijiro Diversity, 70% of sexual minorities have experienced bullying in school. Less than 19% of major corporations in Japan offer non-discrimination policies for LGBT workers (compared, for instance, to over 95% of Fortune 500 companies in the U.S.). There are no national and very few local anti-discrimination laws preventing housing and financial discrimination against LGBTQ people. So while there are some really robust and inspiring queer scenes in contemporary Japan, queer people still face a lot of institutional discrimination.
Are things changing now? It seems like LGBTQ culture has been more in the news in recent years in Japan than ever.
Yes, the last few years have seen increased attention to LGBTQ issues in the Japanese media. Same-sex marriage has entered the national conversation and in 2015, several wards have introduced partnership certificates that could be a step towards full marriage equality. This movement began in Shibuya, followed by Setagaya ward and more recently Iga and Takarazuka, the birthplace of the Takarazuka Revue. Outside of these gestures toward marriage equality, however, Japan lacks any serious policies protecting LGBTQ people.
The Tokyo gay pride parade has existed in various forms since 1994. Nogi Sumiko told me a revealing anecdote about how the media covered the first gay pride parade. Following the footage of participants celebrating, the male newscaster's unapologetic commentary was, "Well, that was disgusting." This same reporter, Nogi mentioned, is now frequently seen on panels enjoying spending time with "onee" (drag queen TV talents). Last year, the conservative prime minister Shinzo Abe's more liberal wife, Akie Abe, made history by appearing in the Tokyo Rainbow Pride, alongside Hiroshi Hasegawa. So, the perception of LGBTQ pride movements seems to have shifted significantly in just two decades.
In N. America, as gay culture became more visible, and less of a subculture/underground thing, it took several decades to get to acceptance and relative social normalcy that you see today. That said, a fair amount of the resistance to LGBTQ rights that you see today comes from conservative Christians. In Japan, Christianity is not as big a cultural or political force as it is in N. America. Given that, what factors make being "out" in Japan difficult?
It's interesting-- in some ways being a non-Christian country has made it easier for queer people in Japan to get along without being bothered by bigots. At the same time, homophobia exists on a more implicit level than it does in nations like America and England, where religious anti-queer rhetoric is predominant in public and political discourse.
In his great book Contact Moments: The Politics of Intercultural Desire in Japanese Male-Queer Cultures, Katsuhiko Suganuma discusses the seminal activist group OCCUR's attempts to dismantle state-sanctioned discrimination in Japan by exposing the "quiet" (otonashii) nature of homophobia in Japan. As long as queer culture doesn't pose a threat to the hetero-normative culture, it will be "tolerated" to a certain extent. "And when it appears 'intolerabe,' the otonashii homophobia awakes and deploys a cynical defense against the deconstructing force. In such circumstances, the otonashii homophobia keeps its pretense of being 'tolerant' about homosexual culture, but it does its job to condemn it in an implicit manner."
As a non-Christian nation, there are also separate issues preventing same-sex marriage from gaining traction in Japan. Here's what Hiroshi Hasegawa said on the matter in our interview: "[In the Japanese LGBTQ rights movement], everyone was looking to copy America and Europe in gay activism. When it comes to gay marriage-- in the West, in Christian cultures, God issues the right to marriage based on a relationship between a man and a woman in an equal contract. In Japanese society, however, marriage is a union of ancestors and families. It's a family issue. I believe it's similar in China. Marriage is not a union of individuals but a union of households, so the framework of marriage is very different from the West."...
www.animenewsnetwork.com/feature/2016-03-07/interview-queer-japan-filmmaker-graham-kolbeins/.99515