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ASIAPACIFIQUEER

University of Illinois Press

Contents

Introduction Fran Martin, Peter A. Jackson, Mark McLelland, and Audrey Yue...........................................................................................11. Embodied Masculinities of Male-Male Desire: The Homo Magazines and White-Collar Manliness in Early 1970s Japan J. Darren Mackintosh...............................292. Lilies of the Margin: Beautiful Boys and Queer Female Identities in Japan James Welker............................................................................463. Grrrl-queens: One-kotoba and the Negotiation of Heterosexist Gender Language Norms and Lesbo(homo)phobic Stereotypes in Japanese Claire Maree.....................674. Politics and Islam: Factors Determining Identity and the Status of Male-to-Female Transsexuals in Malaysia Yik Koon Teh...........................................855. Recognition through Mis-recognition: Masculine Women in Hong Kong Kam Yip Lo Lucetta..............................................................................996. Being a Young Tomboy in Hong Kong: The Life and Identity Construction of Lesbian Schoolgirls Carmen Ka Man Tong...................................................1177. The Romance of the Queer: The Sexual and Gender Norms of Tom and Dee in Thailand Megan Sinnott....................................................................1318. Bad-Assed Honeys with a Difference: South Auckland Fa'afafine Talk about Identity Heather Worth...................................................................1499. Villa, Montano, Perez: Postcoloniality and Gay Liberation in the Philippines J. Neil C. Garcia....................................................................16310. Bading na Bading: Evolving Identities in Philippine Cinema Ronald Baytan.........................................................................................18111. Representation, Politics, Ethics: Rethinking Homosexuality in Contemporary Korean Cinema and Discourses Jin-Hyung Park...........................................19712. Lesbianism and Taiwanese Localism in The Silent Thrush Teri Silvio...............................................................................................21713. How to Be Queer in Taiwan: Translation, Appropriation, and the Construction of a Queer Identity in Taiwan Song Hwee Lim..........................................23514. King Victoria: Asian Drag Kings, Postcolonial Female Masculinity, and Hybrid Sexuality in Australia Audrey Yue...................................................251Contributors..........................................................................................................................................................271Index.................................................................................................................................................................275

Chapter One

The Homo Magazines and White-Collar Manliness in Early 1970s Japan

J. Darren Mackintosh

The Homo Magazines of the Early 1970s: A "Failure"?

The first specialized, commercially marketed, professionally produced, and nationally distributed magazines catering exclusively to men who loved men—or homo, as these magazines' readers were called—appeared in the early 1970s in Japan. Starting with the publication of Rose Tribes (Barazoku) in 1971 and followed in quick succession by The Adonis Boy (1972), Adon (1974), and Sabu (1974), the homo magazines featured an eclectic mix of essays on male-male eroticism, lifestyle columns on Japan's popular and homo cultures, pornography, and regular readers' contributions sections, the most important of which were the personal columns where men sought contact with other men.

All of these items had been seen before. In the two decades following the Allied occupation of Japan (1945–52) to the early 1970s, publications catering to male-male sexuality generally took two forms. There were the "common interest journals" (dojinshi) of a variety of unrelated private members' clubs organized by and for men who love men, which were made up of members' literary and/or artistic contributions. There also was a genre of "erotica magazine" (fuzoku zasshi) that treated male-male sexuality in feature sections as one of an array of male-female and male-male sexual desires. Because of the dispersed nature of this publication activity, the culture of male same-sex love was fleeting in its visibility for many. Moreover, its representation, created by a disparate range of authors and artists, was atomized and eclectic, reflecting the wide spectrum of male-male sexual performances, practices, understandings, and concepts that characterized the early- to mid-postwar era (1950s-1970s) ranging from the "transgendered" (gei) to the hypermasculine.

Barazoku challenged this situation when it first hit the bookstands in 1971. Marketed in mainstream bookshops, it broke the barrier separating main-stream society from its underground to bring the largely hidden world of homo into the public gaze. Moreover, the visibility was to be sustained since the magazine would appear regularly (published every other month after its launch and monthly from 1974). Homo desire could now be explored in a venue that was accessible to anybody across the nation. As a result, the atomization characterizing previous decades was potentially eclipsed, if momentarily. Barazoku and the magazine genre it generated were a success, expanding and enduring to help define the culture of male-male sexuality in Japan in the last quarter of the twentieth century.

Despite their relative success and longevity, the significance of the homo magazines to the postwar history of male-male sexuality has been judged by some as doubtful. Ethnographer Wim Lunsing, for example, suggests that the influence magazines like Barazoku had on fostering lasting gay networks and stimulating gay political activity was limited at best. Writer Nokami Teruki is more ambivalent on the ability of the magazines to raise sociopolitical awareness, arguing that they were undermined by their close association with the commodified sexual world of bars, sex clubs, and cruising areas that had emerged in postwar Japan's major cities. Gay activist Minami Teishir is the most critical, asserting that the homo media activity of the early 1970s and especially Barazoku (the vanguard publication) all failed to incite the homo voice politically. These are important arguments that serve to highlight what seems to be an unavoidable conclusion concerning the homo magazine genre. Despite the optimism of its founders to effect positive change for the lot of homo—Barazoku editor Fujita Ry predicted a "new dawn" —very little resulted. Certainly, a gay movement such as is witnessed in the Anglo-American West has not been mirrored in Japan in terms of numbers or sociopolitical influence. Most crucially, antihomosexual prejudice continues to affect the lives of many.

Despite their varied perspectives, Lunsing, Nkami, and Minami share a common approach. They all extol a model of sociopolitical change informed by a theory of global convergence according to which the Japanese case is measured against the historical experience of gay liberation and...