James Welker

Telling Her Story: Narrating a Japanese Lesbian Community

Abstract This paper explores queer Japanese womens 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 acknowledgement that the evolution and the shape of the community, along with the identities of the women who comprise it, are shifting and contested. This paper 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 paper 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.

Toward a history of ‘lesbian history’ in Japan

ABSTRACT In this essay, I examine the mobilisation of lesbian history in the construction and support of the idea of a Japanese lesbian community. I begin in postwar Japan, when we can find evidence for a sense of community among women who link their identities to their desire for other women, and when we see the first generation of women who identify as and generate a discourse about being ‘lesbian’ (resubian or rezubian). Specifically, I look at several key moments in lesbian discourse to identify shifts in the way lesbian history has been mobilised. I first examine writing on lesbianism in the popular press leading up to and overlapping with the putative start of the lesbian community in 1971, discourse wherein, reflecting sexological tradition, references to ancient Greece and other cultures remained common. I then consider popular writing produced within the lesbian community during what I label the long 1990s, a decade sometimes referred to as having experienced a ‘gay boom’ in the mass media and which witnessed an increase in visibility of what was then called the ‘lesbian and gay community’. During this period we can see a clear turn toward mapping out a modern and contemporary Japanese lesbian history, a process that has entailed overt acts of reclamation as well as omission. Finally, by way of a coda, I look at recent academic works that might be located in the gradually expanding field of lesbian studies, in which the past that has been mobilised as Japanese lesbian history has sometimes been repurposed and reconsidered, or challenged by the individuals whose stories are being retold.