The 1980s saw an increase in commercial venues catering for women loving women. Onabe bars catering mainly to male clientele had been in operation for decades in areas of Tokyo known for their nightlife cultures (McLelland 2004: 3-26; Bessatsu Takarajima 1987: 102). In the 1980s lesbian bars began to appear in the so-called gay area of Tokyo, Shinjuku ni-cho-me (on Ni-Chome, see Suganuma 2011). Bar Sunny opened as a type of small bar known as a sunakku (snack) in 1984. Ribonnu (Ribonne) and Mazu ba (Mars Bar) opened their doors as rezubian bars respectively in June and December 1985. Ribonne developed out of the ‘women’s-only’ nights Tomita Chinatsu ran weekly for women out of Matsuri (Festival), a gay men’s venue owned by the publisher of Japan’s first commercial gay magazine, Itoh Bungaku (1932-) (on Itoh Bungaku, see
Mackintosh 2006). For Masami, owner of Mars Bar, opening the bar in 1985 was the achievement of a goal she had wished for since she was eighteen years old (Bessatsu Takarajima 1987: 103).
Women’s spaces developed out of the feminist movement in the 1970s and 1980s (Mackie 1980: 106—10; see also Shigematsu in this volume), and lesbian community spaces also emerged in the 1980s (Sawabe 2008: 10-18; Welker 2010: 364). The LF Centre (Lesbian Feminist Centre) was active from 1981 to 1983, and the International Feminists ofJapan (IFJ) also began a series of retreats. These ‘Dyke Weekends’ continue today (on the early days of IFJ, see Blasing 1980: 109-10). Regumi Sutajio in Tokyo (Regumi Studio in Tokyo) began in 1987. Regumi Studio was formed by the editorial collective of the first commercial lesbian publication Onna o aisuru onnatachi no monogatari (The Story of Women who Love Women) (Bessatsu Takarajima 1987). The anthology contains articles spanning everything from rezubian community circles and yuri-zoku (lesbian) pornography, to baisekushuaru (bisexual) love. The term yuri-zoku (literally ‘lily-tribe’) is attributed to Itoh Bungaku, publisher of the gay men’s magazine Barazoku (Rose Tribe) (Welker 2011: 211-28). The anthology also includes an interview with Russian literary translator Yuasa Yoshiko (1896-1990), who is described as a dandii (dandy) literary figure, and reclaimed as a lesbian icon (Sawabe, 2007a, 2007b: 167-80; and see below). Both the anthology and the space created by the editorial collective, Regumi Studio, enabled women to find and become involved in a lesbian community (Sawabe 2008: 6-32; Regumi Sutajio Tokyo 2008).
The expansion of women’s-only spaces is an important moment in contemporary queer women’s culture. Queer space can be understood as ‘the place-making practices within postmodernism in which queer people engage’. It ‘also describes the new understandings of space enabled by the production of queer counterpublics’ (Halberstam 2005: 6). Moreover, as Ingram et al. note ‘[i]n the fragments of queer-friendly public spaces available today, a basis for survival, contact, communality and sometimes community has begun’ (Ingram, Bouthillette and Retter 1997: 3). This notion of ‘friendlier’ space is mentioned in the lesbian/bisexual women’s press in Japan in the mid-1990s in relation to Shinjuku ni-chome. A staff member of Hanako, a women’s only bar in Ni-chome, commented in the magazine Phryne that ‘by coming to Ni-chome you can liberate yourself and make friends. I’m happy if we can provide that bridge’ (Phryne Network 1995: 278).