7 years after Japanese student’s death, has anything changed for LGBT community?
- A promising law student took his own life in 2015, at a time a grass roots shift in LGBT acceptance among Japanese was occurring
- Years later, even as sexual and gender diversity are increasingly normalised, a chasm still remains between the public and politicians
But the last thing he anticipated was for the recipient of his affections to spread the news he was gay to other students without his consent. Until then, Takei had hidden his sexuality from almost everyone except a few close friends, with even his family kept in the dark.
Traumatised at being outed, Takei’s mental health rapidly declined. Once bright and energetic, he became withdrawn and developed depression. Being in the same room as the classmate gave him so much anxiety that he would sometimes throw up.
Sexuality in Japan
While Japan is today a generally conservative nation when it comes to LGBT issues, history suggests it was not always so.
Before the arrival of Western values in the 19th century, there was evidence of homosexuality in Japanese society. In the Samurai eras that dated back to at least eight centuries ago, there was a system of gay relationships known as shudō, between senior and younger warriors. Except for a brief period around the 1860s in the early Meiji era, gay sex had not been criminalised in Japan.
After that, attitudes towards homosexuality in Japan went through ups and downs.
In the 1910s, homosexuality started becoming viewed as a perverted sexual desire, and in the following decade, the term doseiai took root as the Japanese translation of homosexuality. In the following era of militarism, books concerning sexuality between men were considered “anti-patriotic”.
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These perceptions eased after World War II ended, and gay bars and hattenba – places to find sexual opportunities – sprang up. In the late 1980s, with the arrival of Aids, the homosexual community became the focus of attention again.
In recent years, alienating attitudes towards the LGBT community have persisted, although younger people say they have witnessed some improvements in social understanding.
As of September 2021, 31 countries and territories have same-sex marriage systems in place, according to the non-profit group EMA Japan. But while a 2019 OECD report shows Japan ranked second to last out of 35 countries in terms of protective legislation, the country’s acceptance of sexual minorities had progressed compared to the 2000s and was already at the OCED average level in 2014.
Shota Kimura (not his real name), 26, a master’s degree student in Tokyo, said he could sense that young people’s views had changed rapidly in the past few years.
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As a young boy growing up in Gunma Prefecture, Kimura said he hated being in school, where he was called okama – a pejorative term. The bullying was so bad, he contemplated taking his own life.
When Kimura joined an American football team as a first-year student at college in 2014, he witnessed the players bullying a gay member, forcing him to install a gay dating app. These incidents rarely happen today, he said.
“It’s surprising that a junior member of the team, two years younger than me, came out as bisexual,” he said.
Kimura said those who came after the millennial generation were lucky to be born in a more accepting age with better access to information, pointing to TV shows like Glee for normalising LGBT characters on screen.
“I have the impression that homosexuals of that generation over 26 or in their 30s went through angst in their childhood. I don’t feel that young people have much to worry about.”
A representative from Dentsu Inc’s Diversity Lab told This Week In Asia that the use of the term “LGBT” had risen rapidly in recent years.
The results of surveys it conducted with respondents in their 20s to 50s showed that awareness of the phrase had almost doubled from 37.6 per cent to 68.5 per cent between 2015 and 2018, and rose further by 11.6 percentage points to as much as 80.1 per cent in 2020.
“You can say that the term has become common knowledge,” the spokesperson said. “Younger people are more aware of the term by age comparison, and they are more interested in understanding and supporting LGBTQ+ people.”
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Noritaka Moriyama, an associate professor at Waseda University who specialises in queer studies, noted there was more nuanced media content about boys’ love – a genre that originated in Japan – in recent years.
The 2018 drama series Ossan’s Love normalises gay love, a move that Moriyama says removes the gap between heterosexuality and homosexuality. Another 2019 series, What Did You Eat Yesterday? focuses on the dining life of a gay couple.
Moriyama said previous depictions of gay relationships tended to focus on sex, but this drama gave a lens on the daily life of an average couple who happen to be men.
Among the biggest coming-outs in the entertainment industry, bestselling Japanese singer Hikaru Utada said they were non-binary during an Instagram live session in June last year.
The improvement in social acceptance can be seen in local politicians such as Ken Hasebe, 49, who was in 2015 elected the mayor of Shibuya ward, a district in Tokyo known for its youth culture. It is also the venue for the annual Tokyo Rainbow Pride.
Under his leadership, Shibuya in November 2015 introduced a “same-sex partnership system” to recognise “relationships equivalent to marriage” between homosexual couples.
Signalling improved public acceptance of the move, a survey showed that a total of 131 municipalities across Japan had the same policy for their residents by mid-October 2021, covering 41.1 per cent of the country’s total population. And as of September 2021, data from Shibuya City and non-profit organisation Nijiiro Diversity showed there were 2,277 couples registered in same-sex partnerships.
A Shibuya ward official told This Week In Asia that the district’s certificate was currently being used for applications for public residence, but that Shibuya intended to further expand the privileges under the certificate.
Government resistance
On a central government level, a chasm exists between the public and politicians, but even among members of the ruling conservative Liberal Democratic Party, there is a divide on LGBT rights.
Last year, after five years of debate, a non-partisan lawmaker committee reached an agreement to pass the “LGBT Understanding Promotion Act” before the Tokyo Olympics, instead of the “LGBT Discrimination Prohibition Act” previously proposed by the opposition.
The LGBT Understanding Promotion Act would require the government to enact a basic programme to promote understanding of sexual minorities through public education.
However, during the amendment negotiations, a coalition of MPs decided to push for the addition of the phrase “discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity is unacceptable” to the bill. This step sparked opposition from the conservative wing of the LDP.
[Radical LGBT activists] demand what the US has adopted [for Japan] regardless of the difference in historical background, culture or customs
Ultimately, the bill ended up being scrapped with the disapproval of the LDP’s top brass, making it one of the rare occasions when a bill with non-partisan approval failed to get passed in the Diet.
One article in the left-leaning Sekai magazine suggested that former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe played a decisive role in abandoning the legislation.
Koji Shigeuchi, an advocate for LGBT rights and the LDP’s only adviser to the non-partisan committee, said in his view, unlike in the West, Japan’s problems were not as serious, so an outright ban on discrimination was not an appropriate solution.
Shigeuchi, who embraces an incremental approach, criticises the thinking of radical LGBT activists. “They simply demand what the US has adopted regardless of the difference in historical background, culture or customs. This approach however does not fit” how Japan operates, he said.
Even so, there are pockets of proponents within the LDP, especially among the younger lawmakers. Shinjiro Koizumi, a rising star in the party and son of former Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, addressed his support for same-sex marriage in March 2021. In addition, the runner-up to Prime Minister Fumio Kishida in the September LDP leadership race, Taro Kono, also said he endorsed same-sex marriage.
A joint survey conducted by the Asahi newspaper and the University of Tokyo last year found that 43 per cent of LDP MPs favoured the early passage of the LGBT Understanding Promotion Act.
According to the latest Marriage For All Japan survey, nearly 10 per cent of LDP members supported same-sex marriage.
On the ground, an analysis done by Takashi Kazama, a gender expert and professor at Chukyo University, and other scholars indicated that in 2015, 51.2 per cent of respondents supported same-sex marriage, while four years later, the figure was 64.8 per cent.
Another survey they conducted in 2019 showed that, about 80 per cent of respondents in their 20s and 30s were in favour of same-sex marriage, with respondents in their 70s having the strongest opposition.
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A major reason for opposing LGBT rights is the defence of traditional family values.
In 2021, LDP lawmaker Shoji Nishida wrote in a right-wing publication: “Throughout history, the family has been the social unit of the Japanese people, not the individual … Everyone supports each other, everyone puts up with each other, and everyone forgives each other. By extension, we have a society and a nation. If we destroy the family, which is the very foundation, society and the nation will be easily destroyed.”
Moriyama, of Waseda University, said Japan’s long-held census registration system often came between progressive ideals of what constitutes a family.
In Japan, the family register is considered sacred and activities such as divorce, for example, is viewed as “polluting” the record.
A 33-year-old office worker, who wishes to be known as Ryo, said it was usually not beneficial for anyone to come out in a Japanese workplace.
He believed that only foreign companies were equipped with measures to protect LGBT employees. Explaining the prevalence of a nuclear family unit in corporate Japan, Ryo said: “If you don’t have your own family, you probably won’t get a promotion and it will be easier to get relocated.”
Will the government be pushed?
Kazama, the gender expert, believes that the LGBT bill and the legalisation of same-sex marriage by the central government will still be difficult to achieve with the LDP holding a majority of seats in the Diet.
But at the same time, he expects it will be increasingly difficult to ignore the rights of same-sex couples, and the population of people living under local jurisdictions allowing same-sex partnerships crosses the 50 per cent mark.
It is only a matter of time before this threshold is met. Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike indicated in December 2021 that she intended to introduce the system to the entire Tokyo region in the 2022 financial year. With a population of 14 million, the region makes up more than 10 per cent of Japan’s total number of people.
Lawyer Kato hopes the Diet will act on same-sex marriage before all rulings of local courts in other cities and the Supreme Court come out around 2024.
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He believes that once same-sex marriage is established in Japan, after Taiwan, it will lend momentum to other LGBT rights movements across East and Southeast Asia.
But for at least one person, progress has come too late. The sister of the late Yuji Takei said the family had not completely come to terms with his death.
Sharing what her brother was like when he was alive, she showed him making the most of his life in law school, including being involved in disaster relief in Miyagi as a legal volunteer following the 2011 earthquake.
“I think his vision of becoming a lawyer was beginning to take shape,” she said.
In the last paragraph of Takei’s will, found on his computer, he wrote that he wished he could have allowed his mother to hug his grandchildren’s faces. He added: “I wish I could have become a lawyer and help people in need.”
