Homosexuality in Japan...

[Tsuzuki]

I love shounen ai and stuff, but I've never really understood where Japan stands in homosexuality. The culture is different, and it seems that being gay isn't as discouraged as it is in America. Like hazing, etc.

I need to know a few things for a story I'm writing.. if anyone with knowledge of this stuff would be kind enough to expand on it, I would be very grateful. <3

-Is gay adoption legal?
-Is gay marriage legal?

Anything else about the culture would help [img]tongue.gif[/img] I wish I knew where to read up on this stuff.

[Risu-chan]

The ultra-short form is that while Japan doesn't have the religious taboos against it that the West does (in fact, the monks thought it was less sinful to sleep with other monks than to sleep with women, although of course you were supposed to deny your body entirely if you could), they have a much stronger societal prejudice against anything that doesn't get itself defined as normal.

Neither gay marriage nor gay adoption is legal; gay people still get mocked and beaten up, although the reason usually has less to do with "you're going to hell" and more to do with "you're abnormal" -- heck, handicapped people have a hell of a time getting around in Japan, because there's no concept of accessibility being a national goal. It's almost the opposite. People are expected to be able to conform to their surroundings, often including stairs and escalators and six-inch wooden beams put across the bottom of gates to prevent cars (and incidentally wheelchairs) from going through....

I'm too tired to be very coherent at 3 a.m.; I have a book on it I got by accident while trying to research the use of color layering in Heian-era kimono (long story ^^;;; but it may help to know that the book's title is "Male Colors." ^^;;;; Or at least that's my rationale for why I ended up with a book on homosexuality when I thought I was getting a book on Heian-era kimono layering, it's better than saying "I'm stupid and don't always read book synopses before clicking the order button"... @_@)

The book goes a lot into the monastic/historical tradition of acceptance of homosexuality and not as much into the modern problems anybody faces when they're different in Japanese society... not just gay people; also foreigners, women who get college degrees, women who don't get married, women who do get married but still want to work, women who have children and still want to work... broadly speaking, the Japanese "ideal" state of being is "being a man who works and is married to a woman who doesn't work except to take care of the house and the children." Anybody who doesn't fit that pattern is going to encounter some level of societal resistance to the notion that they're not fundamentally flawed as human beings...

and it's really interesting that they USED to be not only a lot more open to the idea but also enthusiastic about praising people in specific types of homosexual relationships -- but again, you always had to follow the rules. If you were the younger/socially inferior one, you had to be the uke; otherwise both you and your partner were likely to get a lot of grief over it. Unless of course you were a certain Tokugawa shogun whose name I forget, whom nobody quite dared to give grief about being uke to one of his servants, but shoguns got to rewrite the rules...

oh yeah -- and don't try being a lesbian even in historical Japan. Gay guys were all right because they were two men getting along without women, and the world was designed for men, so of course leaving women out of the picture entirely was a noble and worthwhile goal. Women, on the other hand, were largely chattel, broodmares, servants, and so on, with occasional fierily spectacular exceptions, but in general women had no place in business or in politics so they had no place in the world that mattered. So women loving each other was a peculiarity to be noted with some bemusement and looked away from...

maybe that helps explain the spectacular lack of a tradition of *good* serious shoujo-ai stories, as opposed to the bad hentai variety...

anyhow, gonna go fall over in a minute... ^^;;

[Tsuzuki]

@______@ wow, that was a lot of help. Thank you so much!

[tenjou_sama]

That's it...I think we're going to have to start calling you Professor Risu-chan from now on [img]wink.gif[/img]

[rev.tsukiyama]

As Risu-chan says, Japan had a culture in the past (pre meiji era) where homosexuality was considered socially preferable to heterosexuality. (whee! my all time favourite topic) With the influx of western values and other social factors this waned for a while.

In recent decades, there has been a so-called gay-boom where the homosexual minority has defined itself in much the same way as those in the west. Japanese gays also use the rainbow flag. I'm pretty certain gay adoption isnt legal, neither is gay marrige, technically. I suppose it depends on your religion, you could get married, but it might not be recognised by the state.

I think mark McLelland has written a book about modern homosexuality in Japan, but I'm not a fan of his typical 'academic' approach to gay issues and his theories about yaoi. But that's just me, perhaps it'd be helpful to you.

[Risu-chan]

^^;;; Professor Risu-chan hmm? I kind of like the sound of that... particularly considering that non-faculty staff members get treated like second-class citizens at the university where I work. Oh well...

if anyone wants an example of me going off rambling on what I was ACTUALLY trying to research when I found that book... ^^;;;

http://www.acen.org/forums/showthrea...&threadid=1088

The thing is, while I love giving people information about everything ranging from kimono to computers, I'm only mentally wired to do it when I *don't* have to write assignments and grade quizzes and write finals and stuff. I've taught summer courses, and hated the experience; I wish there was a teaching job where they let you just talk things over with people and collectively brainstorm and everybody tell what they know... oh hey, they call that the Internet! ^__~

[Celstarion]

I heard that in Canada it has been made legal for gays to marry. Do you think other countries like Japan would start this too?