There has been a widespread perception that Japanese society is ‘tolerant’ towards homosexuality and queer cultures in general (Vincent et al. 1997: 46—47). This type of observation is often made when Japan is compared to the West in binary terms with regard to sexual norms. Some have supported such an assumption by simply referring to the lack of anti-sodomy laws in the contemporary Japanese legal system. However, this does not mean that Japanese sexual minorities receive the same legal protection as they do in some progressive Western countries in terms of recognising the rights of queer citizens. For instance, at present, compared to countries such as the Netherlands and Belgium, Japan has no legal protection for any kinds of same-sex relationships. Others have argued that Japanese society is less homophobic due to the fact that Japan is a nonChristian country, and thus there are fewer incidences of hate crimes against homosexual people motivated by Christian fundamentalist ideology. There are two problems with such generalisations.
First of all, this type of cross-cultural comparison presumes that Western countries have a monolithic religious identity. In presenting some Western countries as Christian-based cultures, the perspectives of people with diverse religious backgrounds who live in those countries are overlooked. This view not only ignores the history of secularism in the West, but it also turns a blind eye to the fact that gay bashings or hate crimes are not necessarily caused by religious intolerance. Second, Japan is not a mono-religious nation either. Despite the fact that many people who live in Japan identify with both Buddhism and Shinto (the indigenous animist religion), there also exist religious minorities of Daoist, Christian and Muslim backgrounds as well as a range of syncretic ‘new religious movements’ founded in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Furthermore there have been some incidences of homo gari (gay bashing) in Japan (Kawaguchi and Kazama 2010: 125—44), and these hate crimes have not necessarily been motivated by religious concerns.
As mentioned previously, the pre-modern custom of nanshoku (male-male homoeroticism) amongst Buddhist monks and their acolytes is often quoted, albeit anachronistically, as proof of Buddhist-based Japanese society’s tolerance towards homosexuality. Several gay activists in the 1990s fought against such a far-fetched assumption which ignores the social as well as legal discrimination facing sexual minorities in contemporary Japan (Vincent et al. 1997: 46—48). Although the gay rights movement in Japan has striven to debunk the myth of Japan being a homophile country, discussion of the relationship between religion and sexuality has not been the movement’s main concern. In other words, the intersection between sexual minorities and religious ideologies has not drawn much attention in Japan.
However, in the late 1990s, an incident occurred amongst Christian communities in Japan which suggests that looking at the intersection of sexuality and religion is important in understanding the issues facing minorities within Japan’s sexual minority groups. The whole debate started in 1998 when one gay male seminarian applied to become a minister at the United Church of Christ in Japan (UCCJ). The executive members of the UCCJ rejected his application and expressed the view that homosexual men were unsuitable to become ministers of this protestant church. The UCCJ’s decision met with strong criticism and protest from church members and activists. In the series of protests that followed this homophobic decision, it was mainly feminist activists from within the church, rather than gay male members, who called into question the homophobia prevalent in the institution (Horie 2006: 149—52). The feminists criticised the ways in which the institution controls the sexualities of its members, which is a fundamental cause of misogyny and homophobia amongst some Christian communities in Japan. This incident and the debates surrounding it are indicative of the fact that the politics of queer cultures in Japan are not entirely divorced from religious issues, including Christian ones.
The UCCJ incident in 1998 coincided with another discrimination case in a religious organisation in Japan. This concerned the Korean Christian Church in Japan (KCCJ) which rejected an openly lesbian minister as a guest lecturer for a symposium designed for the organisation’s youth members. The KCCJ is a Christian-based organisation mainly for zainichi people (resident-Koreans) in Japan. The lesbian minister in question was Horie Yuri, a sociologist, and a representative of the Ecumenical Community for Queer Activism, a Christian-based LGBT group in Japan. Horie notes that this KCCJ incident was not just about homophobia, but was also concerned with the unresolved issues of ethnic minorities in Japanese society. Horie claims that her participation in the symposium was rejected by the KCCJ not only because of her sexual orientation, but also due to her being ethnically Japanese (Horie 2010: 150—51). It is assumed that Horie’s identity as lesbian and a Japanese posed a dual challenge to the principles on which the KCCJ is based: being both Christian and zainichi. This incident might have reinforced the assumption that there are no lesbian members within the KCCJ. Furthermore the KCCJ incident is indicative of the difficulty of establishing productive dialogue and collaboration between different types of minority groups in Japan, whether they concern sexuality, religion, or ethnicity.
Apart from a few studies, such as those by Horie, academic investigation into the complex intersections between sexuality, gender, race, ethnicity, religion, and nationality in Japan is still to come. The cutting-edge intersectional perspective pioneered by Horie has not so far been employed in other studies on sexual minorities in Japan. Overlooking religious and other factors in thinking about the issues of sexual minorities in Japan continues to obscure the concerns of minorities within sexual minorities.