Japanese history is well known for celebrating homosexuality. Well, what we in the West call homosexuality. During the feudal era, homosexuality wasn’t an identity as it is today. The celebration of male love changed with many other aspects of their society during the Meiji Reformation. Like the protections single mothers and women enjoyed, homosexuality declined as Japan pushed to break out of the Tokugawa isolation and westernize.
Homosexuality in Feudal Japan
During the Tokugawa Era, which lasted from 1603 to 1868, homosexuality was a part of being a samurai. Buddhist monasteries embraced it, and male brothels associated with Kabuki theaters flourished. Male homosexuality was thought to be useful for teaching young men virtue, honesty, and an appreciation for beauty. During this time, particularly in the samurai class, relationships with women were devalued. They were only necessary for the continued existence of the household (Furnham & Saito, 2009). Men who were attracted to women were thought to also be attracted to young boys and female impersonators (McLellend, 2000b). Homosexuality among men was a normal characteristic of being samurai. Men who loved other men were still expected to have wives and families. Homosexuality wasn’t the binary it is now. It was only a small aspect of a person’s character and responsibilities.
What about lesbians? I couldn’t find information about lesbianism during the Tokugawa period. Japan was, and still is, a male-oriented society. Women had roles they were expected to play. I am certain many samurai and peasant wives were also lesbians. Like same-sex male relationships, women’s relationships were not to interfere with their duties to the family. The heart of Japanese womanhood is to be a good wife and mother. Marriage was the defining characteristic of adulthood for men and women. Even in modern Japan, singles are not considered full adults (Chalmers, 2002).
Anyway, during the Meiji Restoration homosexuality’s prominence declined. Homosexuality remains acceptable in modern Japan as long as it isn’t flaunted. It is simply not spoken about (Furnham & Saito, 2009; Nakagawa, 2010). Despite this acceptance, exclusive homosexuality is seen as something to fear and despise. Unlike the United States, this fear doesn’t come from religion. After all, Buddhist monks practiced same-sex relationships. Exclusive homosexuality is despised because it breaks gender expectations and social roles demanded by a culture that centers on family.
Discrimination in Modern Japan
Openly gay people risk social discrimination despite Japan lacking laws against the orientation. Families have been known to disown gays and lesbians because of the dishonor they bring to the family and their inability to continue the lineage (Furnham & Saito, 2009).
Lesbians, in particular, face discrimination. Women who are not satisfied with marriage and childbearing are often seen as lacking and less than a real woman. Lesbians and unmarried gay men are not seen as adults. Lesbians experience intense pressure to appear heterosexual and interested in men (Chalmers, 2002). They also lack the historical precedents that gay men enjoy. To ice the cake, parents are thought to be the reason why a girl is a lesbian. Her sexual orientation is seen as a parental failure that can and should be corrected (Nakagawa, 2010).
Same-sex Marriage
Same-sex marriage steps closer toward acceptance. Tokyo’s Shibuya Ward became the first locale to recognize same-sex partnerships as the equivalent of marriage, guaranteeing the identical rights married couples enjoy. However, the ordinance isn’t legally binding (Associated Press, 2015). Japan’s constitution prohibits same-sex marriage in Article 24 (Newswire, 2015):
Marriage shall be based only on the mutual consent of both sexes and it shall be maintained through mutual cooperation with the equal rights of husband and wife as a basis.
Boy’s Love and Yuri
Boy’s Love stories also called BL or YAOI are some manga fan’s first exposure to Japanese ideas of homosexuality.
Only the ideas found in BL are wrong.
Likewise, yuri does not represent lesbian identity. Yuri focuses on sexual encounters between beautiful girls. Written by men for men, they explore male fantasies of lesbianism rather than actual lesbian relationships. Of course, in both genres there are certain to be a few stories that touch on homosexual people’s concerns and challenges.
Japanese Homosexual Identity
Like many touchy subjects Japanese culture slips around, homosexuality lacks the hard boundaries it has in Western culture. There isn’t a strong sense of identity attached to sexual orientation. Gay men willingly marry and have children without seeing the act as a contradiction of their identity. It is simply their duty as a Japanese man, regardless of whether or not he is attracted to women. Likewise, lesbians are expected to marry and have children. Many do just that. Their attraction toward the same sex isn’t the defining part of their personality. Of course, this is all just generalization based on surveys and other research. Such private, personal matters always have exceptions. It can be difficult for those of us in the West to understand how sexual orientation can play a small role in a person’s sense of identity. However, we live in a culture that values the individual. Whereas in Japan and other Asian cultures identity is focused on the family and family history. The individual is just another part of a large tree; a part that is pressured to continue the lineage and not dishonor it.
The Problems of World View
It is difficult for those of us who are heterosexual to understand the social pressures transgender and homosexual people face. This becomes even more difficult when culture differences add further complications. Despite Westernization, Japan still remains a culture different from that of the United States and other Western societies. Applying our understanding to their viewpoints and unique cultural identity is a disservice, but at the same time we can only understand based on what we know. Basically, what I am trying to say is this: we must have care when thinking about Japanese homosexuality and not view it from our own cultural lens. There are similarities and differences between the challenges homosexual people face in Japan and other countries. It becomes even harder to understand and explain these challenges when you have a world view that isn’t discriminated against, such as mine as a white, heterosexual American male.
In any case, it is important to understand that yaoi and yuri do not represent Japanese homosexual relationships. On the same note, hentai doesn’t represent Japanese heterosexual relationships. You can go ahead and smack your forehead and shout duh! But the messages we consume help form that worldview I talked about. We must remember not to allow media to shape our views without our knowledge.
References
Associated Press. (2015). Tokyo Ward 1st in Japan to Recognize Same Sex Marriage. The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2015/03/31/world/asia/ap-as-japan-same-sex-marriage.html?_r=0
Chalmers, S (2002). Emerging Lesbian Voices from Japan. Psychology Press.
Furnham, A., & Saito, K. (2009). A Cross-Cultural Study of Attitudes Toward and Beliefs About, Male Homosexuality. Journal Of Homosexuality, 56(3), 299-318. doi:10.1080/00918360902728525
McLelland, M. (2000a). Is there a Japanese ‘gay identity’?. Culture, Health & Sexuality, 2(4), 459-472. doi:10.1080/13691050050174459
McLelland, M. (2000b) Male Homosexuality and Popular Culture in Modern Japan. Intersections: Gender, History, and Culture in the Asian Context. 3. http://intersections.anu.edu.au/issue3/mclelland2.html
Nakagawa, Ularam (2010). Japan’s Lesbians Still Scared to Come Out. CNN. http://travel.cnn.com/tokyo/life/lesbians-in-Japan-struggle-to-build-their-own-community-814836
Newswire (2015) Abe Lays Down Constitutional Barrier to Gay Marriage in Japan.
Much of the language surrounding gender identity is still in flux. I suspect it will be some time before academia reflects the changes and finalizes them in the dictionaries.
“Yuri […] Written by men for men”
No
Not just by men
Have you never heard of Yuru Yuri?
The magazine Yuri Hime is targeted at girls.
https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=VOYk_PtqMjQC&pg=PA99
Thanks for the link! I wasn’t aware of the magazine. When I research I tend to keep to academic databases so I will lost track of some internet sources. According to the sources, many (most?) yuri stories are aimed at men. That isn’t to say there aren’t exceptions. When I write I assume people know there are always exceptions, which has got me in trouble a couple of times :D. But, anyway, the exceptions are the great part of anime–it has a broad, varied audience.
“It becomes even harder to understand and explain these challenges when you have a world view that isn’t discriminated against, such as mine as a white, heterosexual American male.” – was that really necessary?
I like to remind people to read what I write with some skepticism. It’s the librarian in me. I strive for accuracy in my research, and I try to be even-handed. But my particular experiences can create bias and skew how I present information without my awareness. Statements like the one you quoted are calls for caution and for developing your own information literacy. I haven’t experienced the discrimination a homosexual male in Japan has experienced; therefore, I can only report the information without fully understanding the experience. I didn’t mean to imply superiority or anything that could be interpreted from the statement.
I just want to say (four years later!) I actually really appreciated that very statement in this article, it stood out to me as an excellent acknowledgement of something that has very real impacts on how we understand the world, and I think it’s exemplary academic practice to encourage readers to read with skepticism and to recognise that every viewpoint has limitations. And it can be really difficult to acknowledge one’s own limitations when coming from a position of advantage, because it doesn’t necessarily *feel* like a position of advantage. So big ups from me for your original statement Chris 🙂
Thank you! Advantage can be difficult to see, and even more difficult to acknowledge when someone (not speaking of myself, just in general) is on the bottom end of that advantaged group and sliding toward the disadvantaged.
“Okama is also used to refer to transgender men.”
Actually, transgender women. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans_woman)
Thanks for the additional information. I have to note that I don’t trust Wikipedia as a source any longer.
It’s probably a good bet that it refers to trans women, as depictions of trans women in their popular media is often just exaggerated stereotypes of a gay man, with visible stocking but preferring a female name and “crossdressing”. We do the same thing in the west with thinking that trans women are somehow just very, very gay men, who in fact are so gay that they became women, as if there’s a single axis of queerness and it all comes back to sexual attraction with trans women at the far-end of the spectrum. It’s a natural way for a cis person that grew up in a cis-heteronormative society to understand gender identity because it’s something you aren’t really aware exists unless it doesn’t align with your birth-sex and/or gendered expectations.
Keep in mind that many writers will say “transgender men” when referring to trans women because of innate transphobic language rooted in ignorance. Instead of the idea that trans women are women who were assigned male at birth and later corrected it, the assumption is that they are ultimately are and always will be men who became transgender when they transitioned to women, which is of course false. I respect the distrust for Wikipedia, but at the same time the info has to come from somewhere. I’d be surprised if there was a specific name for trans men and not trans women, as trans men are often erased by just being seen as mannish lesbians or gone completely undercover living as cis men because of the stigma.