Queer Precarity in Tokyo: How Homosexuality and Addiction add to the Precariousness of Gay Men in urban Japan
Written by: Rik Dammer
Graduate School of Social Sciences (GSSS) MA: Contemporary Asian Studies (CAS)
Supervised by: Olga Sooudi
Written by Rik Dammer Student Number: 10875123
2015-07-24 Amsterdam
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Thesis Outline
Introduction 4
Chapter One: Homosexuality and Precarity in Japan 6
• 1.1: Precarity as a National Affliction 6
o Marriage and Reproduction 7
• 1.2: Homosexuality in Japan 10
o Homosexuality as a Legal Precarity in Japan 12
Chapter Two: Addiction and Recovery in Japan 16
• 2.1: An Overview of Substance Abuse in Post-War Japan 16
• 2.2: Methamphetamine Use in Gay Communities 22
• 2.3: Narcotics Anonymous in Tokyo 26
Chapter Three: Social Spaces of Gay Recovering
Addicts 30
• 3.1: The Significance of Social Space 30
• 3.2: Towards an Understanding of Queer Spaces 32
• 3.3: Analysing the Operation Spaces of my Informants 34
o Spaces of Leisure and Pleasure in Nichōme 34
o ‘Hattenba’: Places of Sexual Contacts 36
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• 3.4: Gay Ghettoization 41
• 3.5: Places of Recovery 43
Chapter Four: Data Analysis 46
• 4.1: Interview Segments 46
o Kazuaki 46
o Higashi 49
o Yohei 54
o Taniyama 58
• 4.2: Concluding Remarks 66
Bibliography 68
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Introduction
Research Question
How do homosexuality and recovery from substance abuse in urban Japanese gay men contribute to the precarity of their social position and spaces?
In this thesis I will construct and support the argument that homosexuality and recovery from substance abuse can both add to the precarious position of gay men in Japan; and that this social position can be mirrored and illustrated by the spaces that these gay men socialise in. I hope that this will contribute to a broader understanding of the term ‘precarity’, which is a term often used to refer to uncertain socioeconomic circumstances, especially in relation to Japan’s economic recession that has been going on since the
1990s. I want to show that there can be factors of additional precarity (as mentioned, homosexuality and addiction) and that a precarious social position may be visible in spatial aspects. In order to make this argument clear, I will have a chapter on Precarity and Homosexuality in Japan, constructing a framework in which I can build my argument and later implement my data. It will give a general definition of precarity, and I will make clear how I am going to use that definition to strengthen my argument.
I will also try to show some of the social perceptions of homosexuality that have a deep-rooted history in Japanese society, since most of these prejudices will come back later in my informants’ data. Next, I will have a chapter on Addiction in Japan, giving a brief historical overview of methamphetamine abuse and its social perceptions, and also the
5 contemporary use of this particular drug among gay minorities. This is not only to show the social perception of addicts, but mostly to show the highly risky behaviour that can be seen in these men, while delving into some of the reasons and theories behind why such self-destructive behaviour is prominent in this specific group of gay drug users. Following that will be a chapter on Social Spaces, drawing on general theories of urban space and also theories on queer space, which is often rendered as a marginal space, and in this case I will argue that in Tokyo it functions as a precarious space.
While I will lace these chapters with occasional quotes and anecdotes from my research, I will present the bulk of my data in the final chapter, where I will take relevant passages from some of my interviews and elaborate on them with a data analysis, connecting them to the theories and arguments that I have made in previous chapter. I hope that this will create a broad understanding of concepts, as well as a strong case for my argument that homosexuality and addiction are contributors to precarity in contemporary
Japan.
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Chapter One: Homosexuality and
Precarity in Japan
The aim of this chapter is to introduce the topic of homosexuality in Japan, focusing mainly on its social perceptions and implications. I will also connect it with precarity and introduce this term that is globally used in the neo- liberal world to indicate peoples’ precarious circumstances. I will start the chapter by giving a definition of precarity that I can use to analyse my data.
Then I will delve into what it means to be a gay man in a country that places so much importance on the establishment of a heteronormative nuclear family. As such, I will show that precarity in Japan is not only about labour
(according to its traditional definition), but also about the family, opening up the possibility for homosexuality and addiction to also be seen as aspects of precarity
1.1: Precarity as a National Affliction
“Precarity” is a word of the contemporary era, picked up first by social and labour movements in Europe during the 1970s. At the time, it was used specifically in the labour market, referring to “employment that is uncertain, unpredictable, and risky from the point of view of the worker” (Kalleberg,
2009). Since most work in the history of mankind has been precarious by this definition, it has the most pertinent meaning in a select few countries that have enjoyed secure employment, referring mostly to post-war industrialised nations including the US and Japan. Particularly Japan saw a huge economic growth after the war, combined with a high level of job security, famously coined as “lifetime employment”. While beneficial at the time, it brought
7 along a structure of dependency that would collapse as lifetime employment became mostly obsolete after the burst of the economic bubble in the 1990s.
This was a structure of dependency on the corporation and the family. Men were often the primary breadwinners, receiving a family wage that supported their unpaid wives as well. The family depended on the breadwinner, and the breadwinner depended on his job security (Allison 2013, p. 6). As this structure collapsed, precarity in Japan is very much about the family as well as labour. I will elaborate on this in the next sub-chapter.
Marriage and Reproduction
One of Japan’s main contemporary issues is the declining marriage rate, which goes hand in hand with a declining birth rate. Traditionally, Japan has seen arranged marriages between men and women. One of the initial contributors to the declining marriage rate in the post-War era was the near- complete erosion of arranged marriages, which is a general consequence of global neo-liberalized economies and tendencies towards individualism.
More and more Japanese idealise the concept of romantic love or at least mutual affection and personal interest as a reason for marriage, but the institutions through which like-minded men and women can meet are still not sufficient (Retherford, Ogawa, & Matsukura, 2001, p. 98). This is problematised by the fact that the social pressure to get married is still very high (Hendry, 1981). There are certain factors that have become more prevalent that make one less likely to marry. Such factors include irregular employment for men and living with ones parents. As such, people in precarious economic positions are more vulnerable to the aspect of precarity related to the family as well.
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I would like to stress that precarity is not only about labour, but also about a broader range of socioeconomic uncertainties in regards to life and the future. As for the general definition of precarity, it is often defined as a state of socioeconomic uncertainty, unpredictability and risk (Standing, 2011). But I think the word ‘socioeconomic’ does not cover the kind of precariousness I have found in my informants. While most of them were indeed ‘precariously’ employed (that is to say, temporarily or part-time), a few of them had steady employment and income. Their precarity, as I will argue, comes from other insecurities, risks and uncertainties related to being gay and / or being an addict.
Because of their homosexuality, there is no normalised way of becoming a proper shakaijin (literally “society person”), which is a term often used for adults who have established a family through (heterosexual) marriage and usually have children (Dasgupta R. , 2012). They are regarded as the ‘winners’ of society, whereas the category of ‘losers’ includes unmarried women over
30, freeters (“free-term” or part-time workers), otaku (geeky, unattractive men) and hikikomori (socially withdrawn people) (Miller & Bardsley, 2005). This perceived status of ‘loser’ is what I connect profoundly to the meaning of precariousness: the inability or uncertainty of fitting in with mainstream working society. Since gay marriage is mostly impossible in Japan (see
Chapter 1.2), and means of reproduction for gays are difficult to access and scorned by society, I would argue that for my informants, being homosexual puts them in a specific precarious situation. Below follows a small excerpt of my interview with Hideaki, a 34-year old single man who is from Tokyo.
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Do you want children?
“Yes, I would probably want children, but only if I end up with a
partner who wants children as well. If I stay single, then I definitely will
not have children.”
So if you were with a partner who wanted children, how
would you make that a reality?
“Well, in Japan there is no good system for that. So maybe I would
move to my future boyfriend’s country. I have a thing for foreign boys
after all (laughs). Gays cannot get married here in Japan yet, so staying
in Japan would not be an option.”
Do you know any gay people in Japan that have children?
“No… I cannot think of anyone. Gays in Japan just do not have
children, I guess!”
This shows that for Hideaki and many other gays, having children with a boyfriend in Japan is not a viable option, despite being an option that could legally be realised even without marriage. It is interesting that Hideaki does not even consider this option, and he was not the only one. I think this is an indication as to how poorly homosexuality is perceived in Japan. In the next sub-chapter I will detail some of these perceptions, showing that homosexuality is often denied or regarded as a ‘hobby’, but not accepted as an identity or lifestyle.
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1.2: Homosexuality in Japan
An interesting note to start on is the historical context of homosexuality in
Japan. Male-on-male sex, known as nanshoku (lit. “Male colours”), has a deep-rooted history, including stories of respected samurai having affairs with younger men, which was publically known and regarded as a normal practice. During the Edo period (1603 – 1876) Japan’s urban centres had thriving districts of mostly-sexual entertainment, known as ukiyo, the
“floating world”. A common practice in this world of theatres and brothels, and which especially flourished during this era, was male-on-male prostitution (Pflugfelder, 1999). A notable part of male prostitutes were danshō, female cross-dressers. This combination of commercialism and cross- dressing heavily shaped the public perception of homosexuality (Leupp 2007, p. 142). This is still true today, as many of my informants told me that upon coming out, their families often thought that they wished to become a woman.
There is another historical anecdote that can be seen as symbolic of the general Japanese attitude towards homosexuality until this day. This is that homosexuality in Japanese people is historically seen as kari (provisional, temporary), in contrast to the shin (genuine) homosexuality as seen in
Westerners. Whereas the latter is incurable, the Japanese homosexual may still be cured through (heterosexual) marriage, at least in peoples’ perceptions (Robertson 1999, p. 22). There is an obvious overlap here to the data that my interviewees provided me. Many of them mentioned that upon coming out, their parents would often not understand what it means to be gay. Noboru’s parents told him that he was just in a phase that he would grow out of. Kazuaki’s parents questioned him upon his homosexuality, calling it a “hobby” (shumi).
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The word ‘hobby’ was used often by my informants upon describing the reactions of the people around them, such as in this excerpt of my interview with Toru, a 37-year old single ice-cream maker:
When did you know you were gay?
“I have known I was gay since elementary school. I did not think I was
doing anything strange. Around that time I started having sort of
playful sexual contact with my cousin, but you cannot really call it sex
at that age. My first time for real was when I was in university at 21
years old, with my first boyfriend.”
How did you meet your boyfriend?
“Well, there was no Internet back then, so I found him through a gay
magazine called ‘Badi’. I had to send a letter to the magazine to reply
on his personal ad, which must be hard to imagine for you [as a young
person]. One time I left an issue of Badi on the reading table and my
mother found it. She got really angry about it! She got so upset that I
had to stay at my boyfriend’s place for a week until she calmed down.
She thought that being gay was just a hobby, so that was quite
difficult. I have never talked about it with my dad. I went to university
for 4 years, and the first 3 years I was really scared to come out. Some
people must have noticed, but I did not say anything.”
Toru’s mother’s belief that homosexuality is just a hobby is a common one in
Japan, as I described by the popular notion of ‘temporary’ homosexuality on the previous page. But the fact remains that homosexuality is neither temporary nor curable, placing homosexuals in a vulnerable and precarious
12 position because they are socially expected to change an important part of who they are and what they want. It seems that homosexuality is not taken seriously; it is not regarded as something real. Japanese law reflects this attitude, as I will describe in the next sub-chapter.
Homosexuality as a legal precarity in Japan
So what is it that puts gay men in a legally precarious position? I have already briefly touched upon certain social notions that might prevent them from entering normalised society. Because of their marginalised social position and the scrutiny that exists against them, it seems very difficult for gays to establish a family unit. Toru, an informant mentioned in the previous paragraphs, even thought it was “impossible” (muri). While it is technically possible, Japanese national law does not facilitate equal parental rights to gays, for example. While as of May 2015 gay partnership is a legal reality in
Japan, the scope of this law is limited. Despite being the first country in East
Asia to legalise gay partnership, it is only possible within the Tokyo ward of
Shibuya, which counts about 270.000 inhabitants (not even 0.01% of the whole Japanese population) (the Guardian, 2015). Only one of my informants lives in this ward, so for the rest of my informants it is still not a judicial reality.
While there is gay partnership in this small district, I would still say that Japan as a whole is a nation in which gay marriage or partnership is very limited.
As spatial aspects will take an important role later on in this thesis (Chapter
3), it is pertinent to take a closer look at Shibuya, firstly asking why it is that gay partnership has become legal here, and not elsewhere. This can be contributed to several factors. First of all, Shibuya is one of Tokyo’s trendiest areas, known for its creativity and liberalism, with the ward’s mayor Toshitake
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Kuwahara stating that the new law is in line with the area’s character (BBC,
2015). The neighbouring ward of Setagaya has indicated that it will look into following Shibuya’s footsteps regarding LGBT rights. This is indeed in line with the character of the area, since Setagaya houses Japan’s first (and so far only) openly transgender official, having elected transgender woman Aya
Kamikawa into its ward assembly in 2003. This aspect of being in a liberal area has probably contributed to the pro-gay law being introduced in
Shibuya, alongside having a liberal mayor. Not all of Tokyo politicians are as liberal, especially at the time when Tokyo’s governor was the far-right
Shintaro Ishihara (in seat from 1999 to 2012), who is very conservative and has given controversial discriminatory remarks on some marginalised groups, including homosexuals and also Koreans and other ethnical minorities. As the governor, he did not have the power to completely reject Shibuya ward’s decision to implement the law, but he did limit its scope significantly. The ward was able to grant gay couples hospital visitation rights and the ability to apply for housing as a couple, but other rights such as tax benefits that straight couples enjoy were not implemented for gays (McKirdy, 2015). As such, the legal position of gays remains precarious, even in Shibuya.
As described in Chapter 1.1, precarity in general is a position without predictability or security. Insecurity is something most people in Japan deal with, whether it is economic or financial insecurity, but I would argue that gays have an additional dimension of precarity. While conducting my interviews, one of the main things that I felt was a sense of uncertainty.
Uncertainty about the future, uncertainty about being openly gay (or not), uncertainty about the desired or existing relationships they have. The fact that most of my informants were recovering addicts, adds a third layer of precariousness, so to speak. Most of them had experienced struggles at work
14 due to their time as active addicts. Some of them were unemployed, while some worked part-time, and a few of them had regained a full-time job; all after a period of unemployment due to being committed to some sort of rehabilitation facility, usually a clinic that provides a full stay for several weeks or months.
In the above paragraph I mentioned a “triple threat” of precarity, with the general economic uncertainty all Japanese have to deal with, supplemented by being gay and being a recovering addict. In order to get a firmer grip on how this plays out, in the next chapters I will introduce an overview of addiction in Japan, following it with theories on social spaces and queer space, giving a spatial aspect to the material I have discussed so far and the data that my informants gave me.
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Chapter Two: Addiction and
Recovery in Japan
This chapter will function as an introduction to another important one of the main themes of my research, which is substance abuse and recovery in
Japan. This is aimed to illustrate how (most of) my informants’ status as recovering addicts influences their social positions. It is necessary to have this background for two reasons. First of all, a historical background is needed to frame substance abuse within Japanese society, revolving mainly around the hiropon crisis of the post-war era. Secondly, it introduces another element of vulnerability to the position of my informants: being an addict, active or recovering. This is on top of the vulnerability of being gay as discussed in
Chapter One. Ultimately, these multiple vulnerabilities are what makes their position so precarious.
2.1: Substance abuse in post-war Japan
“In 1999, I was arrested for drug possession. I was caught with ‘shabu’
(crystal meth) in my pocket. They took me to the police station, where
I was placed in a cell for 20 days awaiting my sentence. Then my
parents came to pay my bail, so I got to wait for my sentence at home
from then on. In the end, I was put on probation with a heavy warning,
because it was the first time I had come into contact with the police.
They told me that if it happened again, I would be sent to prison
straight away.”
- Taniyama (44)
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That is what one of my informants told me about his life as a drug user. He details an event that many other have also experienced. Methamphetamine is illegal in Japan, as it is in most other countries in the world. However,
Japan’s special history with this particular drug embeds Taniyama’s story in a long history of police and government trying to deal with methamphetamine addiction, with its climax right after the end of the Second World War. After
Japan’s defeat in 1945, the country ended up under control of the Allied forces. While the Occupation, lasting from 1945 until 1952, was officially administered by all of the Allied Powers, it is often referred to as the
“American Occupation” of Japan (Takemae, 2003). After the occupation, methamphetamine addiction became the symbol of a damaged and dependent Japan (Kingsberg, 2013, p. 141), which I will detail over the course of the following paragraphs.
The catalyst of Japan’s first narcotics crisis was the large-scale abuse of hiropon, a potent stimulant known today as methamphetamine. Hiropon was mainly given to soldiers, pilots and factory workers during the War years to keep them alert and to suppress hunger. This reflects the brand’s name, which stems from the Latin word ‘Philopon’, which means, “love of labour”.
Such a situation is not unique to Japan, as methamphetamine was mass- produced in all major war nations such as the United States, the United
Kingdom and Germany (Rasmussen, 2008). It became especially popular in
Japan, where it was also commercially marketed as a medicine for low blood pressure and daytime sleepiness. At the end of 1954, the Asahi Shinbun (one of Japan’s most popular newspapers until this day) estimated around 1,5 million domestic methamphetamine users (Asahi Shinbun October 15, 1954).
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While contemporary social perceptions of substance abuse generally involve a moral judgement of addicts, framing them as weak people, or people lacking self-control and the will to live a productive life (Corrigan, 2009, p.
139), it is important to keep in mind that this was not the case for Japan at the time. Hiropon had been a widely commercialized medication that was ought to keep people alert and awake during work. Japan has long prided itself on its high work morale, so at the time the usage of hiropon could even be seen as a patriotic decision in rough economic times. As its destructive potential became clear, public perception framed its users as victims of its time, instead of passing moral judgement. I would like to take a full quote from Kingsberg excellent article on post-war methamphetamine abuse (2013, p. 147), who in turn got it from a government task force on stimulants’ publication, for it perfectly illustrates the social perception of addicts at the time:
“After the end of the war, people lost their spirit, the country was
catapulted into extreme economic disorder, and both hope for
tomorrow and the dreams of the past were lost; so students drifted
into nihilism and decadence, and turned to the powder that could
make them forget [hiropon]” (Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department
Stimulant Supervision Countermeasure Report 1955, p. 19)
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Figure 1: an anti-drug campaign poster by the Ministry of Health,
stating the dangers of hiropon. The visualisation of the skull and the
headless body alludes to the image of addiction that the government
sketched, as illustrated in the aforementioned quote by the
Metropolitan Police Department.
An interesting note is that the hypodermic needle was embraced as an essential piece of modern technology, which lead to the fact that nearly all post-war consumers of hiropon administered it through intravenous injection
(Kingsberg, p. 143). At the time, Japan was modernising rapidly, and thus became susceptible for new inventions to become highly popular.
Kingsberger states that at one point, hiropon was sold including needles in any grocery shop. While this habit is obsolete nowadays, it is still reflected, as most of the people I met in the rooms of NA in Tokyo had been addicted to injecting meth. This surprised me, since in my own experience in the
Netherlands, there is a much wider variety of different drugs of choice, and the way of administration is usually by insufflation or inhalation. I have only met a handful of recovering addicts that had used hypodermic injections during their active addiction, which is considered to be quite extreme. When
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I expressed my surprise about this during an NA LGBT (Lesbian, Gay,
Bisexual, Transgender) meeting in Tokyo, someone asked the group, which consisted of around 15 people that day, “which of you were addicted to injecting meth?” upon which every single one of them raised their hand.
While confirming the still existing popularity of the hypodermic needle in
Japan, it also alludes to a specific popularity of methamphetamine among gay communities. This is a phenomenon not exclusive to Japan, as methamphetamine is by far the most popular drug in urban gay communities throughout the US and Europe. I will detail the popularity of methamphetamine among gay users in chapter 2.2, after the following paragraph on the more recent developments about the drug in general in
Japan.
By the 1970s, Japan had changed drastically from a dependent war-ravaged nation to an independent economic powerhouse, in which the increasing wealth of the people once again called for a supply of stimulants. Since the brand hiropon had completely disappeared, methamphetamine had to be imported in its street-drug form from other parts of Asia. This is its crystal- structured form known nowadays as crystal meth, or shabu in Japanese slang.
Whereas hiropon had symbolized the national post-war state of despair, mobilising the nation in a collective effort to combat its use, shabu was (and still is) simply seen as a consumer’s choice in a highly industrialized and commercialized society (Kingsberg, 2013, p. 157). Whereas the hiropon crisis spawned all sorts of structured movements against its use, this time drug- users were largely ignored by society because they no longer evoked a national pity. It is perhaps because of this reason that a need developed for self-help groups for addicts who had no one else to reach out to. One of such groups, Narcotics Anonymous (NA), was introduced to Japan in the
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1982 (Official NA Website, 2015), making it one of the first non-English speaking countries to see NA meetings. In chapter 2.3, I will describe my own experience with NA in Tokyo, mapping its spaces and visitors.
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2.2: Methamphetamine Use in Gay Communities
In this sub-chapter I want to try and tackle the question as to why is it that stimulants, and methamphetamine in particular have gained such a widespread popularity among gay communities across the world, which is said to have reached epidemic levels of abuse in major metropolitan gay communities (Reback, 1997). One of the answers may be found in the psychological effects of the drug. It is said to induce euphoria, boost self- confidence and self-esteem, alongside acting as an aphrodisiac. These qualities are said to be particularly alluring to gay and bisexual men (Halkitis,
Parsons & Stirratt; 2001, p. 21). This is illustrated by the following quote I got from one of my informants, who preferred to stay anonymous with this sensitive information.
“I used to visit many hattenba (gay cruising areas), I would go a few
times a week and stay there for hours! Usually, most people were on
shabu [crystal meth]. Most hattenba are open 24/7, so you can walk in
and out whenever you wish. For example, you must have heard about
the 24-hour ‘kaikan’ [a gay sauna, close to where the gay bars are
centred in Tokyo]. Drugs are not allowed there, but if you keep them
hidden then they do not check for it. And of course there are many
dark and hidden-away areas for cruising. So it is a perfect area to use
drugs! Since I stopped using, I do not visit these places anymore. It is
less fun without drugs, and it is also too dangerous to see it around. I
might get tempted, which is not what I want right now.”
- An anonymous informant.
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Not only does methamphetamine reportedly stimulate sexual experiences, it also lowers the user’s boundaries and impairs judgement, leading to a significant increase in unsafe sexual encounters, which in turn greatly heightens the risk of contracting HIV for stimulant-using gay men. Halkitis,
Parsons & Stirrat (2001) call this the “double epidemic” in urban gay communities: methamphetamine abuse that goes hand in hand with high rates of HIV contraction. This connection is not singular, as HIV can be caught both by the behavioural effects of the drug (unsafe sex) as well as the mode of administration, which is by inhalation or injection, the latter also being able to transmit HIV. Since both of these behaviours are seen predominantly in gay communities, it is fair to say that my informants have been particularly vulnerable to this double epidemic of drugs and disease. This is fortified by the attitude towards safe sex in Japan, which is notoriously held in low consideration. HIV is seen as a foreign disease, so Japanese men often falsely think that as long as they are in Japan, only having intercourse with Japanese partners, they will not be exposed to HIV (Sawazaki, 1997).
This type of self-destructive behaviour reminds me of the so-called ‘death drive’, which is a concept used in queer studies. Queer used to have the same meaning as ‘gay’, but nowadays it refers to any person who does not conform to heteronormative sexuality or gender norms (Iasenza, 2010).
Shortly put, “the death drive names what the queer, in order of the social, is called forth to figure: the negativity opposed to every form of social viability”
(Edelman 2004, p. 9). Queer theorists such as Edelman argue that ‘queers’ symbolically stand for the opposing side. This rhetoric is as old as the story of
Sodom’s destruction that came to symbolise the sinfulness of homosexuality.
A recent manifestation of this rhetoric has been seen during and after the HIV
24 crises of the 1980s, as gays were (and still are) blamed for the physical infestation and destruction of humans.
While queer theory’s ‘death drive’ largely talks about an external, symbolic sort of rhetoric, I would argue that this death drive has been internalised by gay people worldwide, especially those who find themselves in precarious circumstances. How can one not assume an internalised death drive when looking at the case of HIV-positive medication rejecting gay methamphetamine abusers, as I discussed a few paragraphs earlier? There is a disregard for their own physical safety, which has been contributed to many factors, including the social (un-)acceptance of homosexuality but also uncertain perspectives of the future. This can be closely tied to precarity, which indicates a social position of uncertainty and vulnerability.
I have seen people close to me in which this internalised death drive in the shape of the double epidemic as described above had manifested. I have personally seen the experiences and motivations from a friend who passed away in 2013, at age 27. He was a regular methamphetamine user and he was HIV positive. He told me that he had stopped taking his HIV medication, because he thought it was made to poison him. This delusional paranoia is a typical symptom of stimulant abuse (Curran, et al 2004), and particularly perilous when it leads to HIV-positive users deliberately not taking their medication. Another unfortunate implication is that HIV-positive people, who do not take medication, are much more prone to transmitting the virus through sexual intercourse than their medication-adhering counterparts, which is due to the viral load that is present in bodily fluids, which medication is aimed to minimise. All these factors are like ink drops in water, since they only allow the problem to spread. I hope that the connection is obvious by now, as risky behaviour, unsafe sexual encounters and methamphetamine
25 use, all among gay men, are heavily correlated with each other. And most importantly, they all contribute to the particularly precarious circumstances that these men may find themselves in.
Since HIV-status is a sensitive issue, I did not ask for this very often, but I have confirmed that at least six of my close informants in Tokyo were HIV- positive. I have also heard it be mentioned by several other people who shared their stories during NA meetings. Sources such as the Japan HIV centre report that men are often complacent about HIV, thinking that there is nothing that can be done about it (Sawazaki, 1997). Further along in this chapter I will take HIV-status alongside homosexuality and drug abuse as factors of precarity, which I would argue are all intertwined.
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-AP .O 4AMACHI ４９ 東京都障害者福祉会館 4OKYO TO 3HOGAISHA &UKUSHI +AIKAN 田 町 港区芝5丁目18－2 3HIBA -INATO KU 4OKYO 7EDNESDAY 3ERENITY 'ROUP 交通：JR田町駅より徒歩5分。都営地下鉄浅草線・三田線三田駅下車。 7:00pm ～ 8:30pm ←至品川 歩道橋 Closed meeting ←至品川 芝税務署 Wednesday Serenity Group 東京都障害者福祉会館 7 （高層都営住宅の 1・2 階） Fri. 090-8478-2635 第一京浜国道 港勤労福祉会館 2nd & 4th Friday Only 森永ビル 田町駅 三田駅 NEC A7
三田駅 A10 A8 Tamachi Station 三菱自動車 Mita Station - Toei Subway Line - JR Line ショールーム 芝五丁目 日比谷通り 至大手町→
至浜松町→ 至新橋→ ●都営地下鉄三田線出入口 浅草線は A7、三田線は A8 が最も近い出入口です。 2.3: Narcotics Anonymous in Tokyo A10 のエスカレーターは、昇・降両用です。 ウェンズデイ・セレニティ・グループ ( 090-8478-2635 As preparation for my research, I had found a list of NA meetings in Tokyo prior-AP .O to my 9AWATAJUKU stay. This list is featured in the appendix of this chapter, and 市原市立八幡公民館２階 )CHIHARA SHI 9AWATA +OUMIN KAN ５０ 八幡宿 市原市八幡1050－1 shows a variety ND &LOOR of 77 meetings a week within the 0EANUTS 'ROUPspecial wards of Tokyo. For 9AWATA )CHIHARA #ITY #HIBA 交通：JR内房線、八幡宿駅より徒歩5分、P有 comparison, there are 40 weekly meetings in Amsterdam. Both cities are国道１６号 not イトーヨ ー カド ー 7:00pm ～ 8:30pm )T¯ 9¯KAD¯ Open meeting 市 even near the amount of meetings in the US, where larger cities 原can have Peanuts Group 支 八幡運動公園 7080-9804-5577 所 0ARK hundredsFri. of meetings a week with a daily and←至五井 nightly八幡交差点 coverage. In Tokyo 4O 'OI 八幡 No meeting on holiday 運動 there are about 10 meetings a day, which are mostly at the same time公園 (7pm) 駅入口交差点 e -EETING 0LACE CANgT BE USED ON at different locations..ATIONAL (OLIDAYS Because DURING of THE this, .EW I had to pick one meeting八幡宿 to go to, 9EAR AND MID !UGUST g/BONg &ESTIVAL 駅 4O (AMANO th9AWATAJUKU 3TATION which I did atHOLIDAYS #ALL AHEAD TO lND OUT THE AL random. My first meeting was on Friday the 10 *2 5CHIB¯ ,INE of January, at至浜野→ ピーナッツグループ TERNATE LOCATION (080-9804-5577 7pm in the Ikebukuro area.
-AP .O )KEBUKURO ５１ がんばれ！子供村 4階研修室 'ANBARE +ODOMO MURA 池 袋 豊島区雑司ヶ谷3－12ー9 :OUSHIGAYA 3HINJUKU 'ROUP 4OSHIMA KU 4OKYO 交通：JR・東京メトロ・西武池袋線、池袋駅より徒歩10分。東京メトロ、雑司が谷駅1番出口より徒歩6分。都電荒川線、鬼子母神前駅より徒歩5分 副都心線 雑司ヶ谷１番出口 7:00pm ～8:30pm 都電荒川線 Open meeting 東池袋四丁目駅 都電雑司ヶ谷駅 鬼子母神前駅 +ISHIBOJIN MAE 3TATION Shinjuku Group 4ODEN !RAKAWA ,INE 東 7090-6018-7867 京 鬼 Fri. 音 子 楽 母 目 首都高 大 神 白 学 通 ND &RI '3- 明治通り り グ 目 リ 東 通 白 ー 小 ン ジ り ローソン 学 大 ュ 校 通 ン ミニストップ り ク 堂 交 サンクス 学 番 習 )KEBUKURO 3TATION 川村学園 院 *2 ,INE 3EIBU )KEBUKURO ,INE 大 学 東口（西武口） 西武新宿線 至大塚 至新宿 池袋駅 目白駅 JR 山手線 東武東上線 新宿グループ (090-9686-8900 Figure 2: a map showing the location of the Friday night NA meeting in Ikebukuro, taken from the Japanese NA website, najapan.org.
While the main street that I used to navigate from Ikebukuro station was a broad road with large office buildings, stores and neon signs, the meeting place was in a more residential area. As I approached the building, I initially though it was a school. Most buildings in Tokyo have names, and this one was called “Ganbare! Kodomo-mura”, which roughly translates as “Try your best! Children’s village”. It is a narrow building that consists of four floors, of
27 which the top one was reserved for the NA meeting. As I walked up the stairs
I glanced into some of the other rooms. Most were closed and empty, perhaps because of the time, but some of them were occupied by small groups of people who seemed to be having informal meetings.
As I entered the meeting room, only a few people were there. The first one who noticed and greeted me was Yohei, a nice young man who I ended up interviewing later on in my research. As it turned out, he was the chairman of the group, which means that he is the person who reads the format for the group, which includes introductions and the specifics of the meeting. He told me that he was not expecting new people since they were holding a business meeting, which includes organizing things about the group’s practical matters with a dedicated service committee. As I was used to in the
Netherlands, business meetings are usually held after a meeting. However, in this group (which is called the “Shinjuku” group and has several meetings and locations), the entire meeting was scrapped in favour of the business meeting. Yohei apologized and said it would probably be boring for me, but
I asked if it would be okay for me to just stay and listen. This was not a problem, and so I found myself in an all-Japanese business meeting which lasted for about 90 minutes, and I have to admit that I zoned out about halfway in since it was all about specific affairs I had no knowledge of.
When they were done, some of them cautiously approached me to ask me where I was from and what on earth I could possibly be doing at an NA meeting in Ikebukuro. I told them that frequenting NA meetings is an important part of my life in recovery in Amsterdam, and that I would be studying in Tokyo for three months, so I would like to get to know people in recovery and visit meetings. We talked for several minutes, but soon we had to leave the building because the room had to be closed by a certain time.
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After the meeting, one of them proposed that we should all go together for coffee, and it was decided that we all go to the nearby Caffé Veloce. This is when I was properly introduced to some of the core members who I would see weekly from that point on.
The world I found myself in was a world of recovering addicts. The nature of the situation is that we all need to program to maintain our recovery. This means different things individually, but I later found out that for one of the newer members, Takeko, these post-meeting coffee dates kept him clean from drugs on difficult nights. Takeko later confessed to me that despite attending many meetings, he could not maintain his sobriety for longer than about a week. Most weekends, he would relapse and use amphetamine
(“speed”, or supiido in Japanese). Other members such as Yohei were clean for over a year, but they still kept going to meetings because it was their refuge, and their fellow members had become good friends. In the coming weeks I would learn more about the lives of these members, often recurring around similar themes: they started out in the gay scene going partying, drinking and visiting hattenba (cruising areas), and they started using drugs and got heavily involved in the drug-using scene. As I mentioned earlier, every single person that was part of the regular core (about a dozen men) had been addicted to shooting up methamphetamine. As I learned, most of these men had gone through intensive rehabilitation programs, often staying at a clinic for several months. Most of them were still in some sort of after- care, like day-care or weekly appointments, but they credited NA for staying clean after their time in the clinic.
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As I progress through my thesis, I will keep a tight focus on NA as a social place for these men. While elaborating on themes such as precarity and homosexuality in Japan, I will keep connecting this to my target audience: this group of gay recovering addicts in Tokyo. I want to show how their unique and marginal position can be used to paint a picture of precarity in
Japan that has remained largely invisible. I want to shed light on this group of people who are rejected by society for a multitude of reasons, and see how they cope with that. The next chapter will introduce a theory on social spaces and queer space, alongside mapping out some of the spaces that were important to my informants.
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Chapter 3: Social Spaces of Gay
Recovering Addicts
An important part of my informants’ stories is the different physical and social spaces they find themselves in. I think that it is very important to map out these locations, spatially on a canvas that is urban Tokyo, and socially on the map of a neo-liberal society that is simultaneously homogenous and fractured, just like its spaces. What can the analysis of these spaces teach us about my informants and their position in society? How do the temporal manifestations of these spaces contribute to this? I will draw on the macro, abstract theories on the social significance of space; and connect this to the micro; the spaces that were significant to my informers. The goal of all this is to contribute to my hypothesis that both homosexuality and addiction are aspects of a precarity that runs deeper than the general socioeconomic precarity present in Japanese society and its spaces.
3.1: The significance of social space
Spaces cannot be discussed in a simplistic way, for its relevancy is based on both their physical properties and social constructions. A full rundown of spatial theory would be redundant and irrelevant for the scope of this thesis, but I do want to introduce some of its notions in order to create a framework in which I can analyse my informants’ spaces and actions. Most contemporary societies are neo-liberal, rendering a large part of their spaces as economic or political. These kinds of public spaces are globally relatively uniform, and it is argued that their existence is threatening to eliminate all of its occupiers’ differences, since every element has to be interchangeable and thus
31 analogous (Lefebvre, 2009: 192). This shows itself in the globally recognisable structure of all metropolises, with its capitalist spaces such as banks, shops, factories, offices, government buildings, etc.; which are connected by uniform infrastructure such as motorways, airports and walk paths. It is therefore argued by Lefebvre that adversely, social spaces are spaces of difference. This is especially true for spaces that have a specific social function, such as in the gay area, and thus attract a specific target audience. Suganuma (2011) in his article on queer space in Tokyo calls these social spaces “counter-public”, which would place them directly against the normalising public spaces as discussed above. This makes sense, as I will later detail prejudiced rhetoric that is at times used by people in power such as politicians when describing Nichōme.
I can directly apply the concept of public vs. social spaces to some of the places that were prominent during my fieldwork. I spent most of my time in
Shinjuku, one of Tokyo’s busiest and most prominent wards, having a multitude of functions such as commerce and politics. Public areas are mainly occupied by suited commuters and slow-walking shop-goers. Its epicentre is
Shinjuku Station, the busiest railway station in the world, in which people flash by so quickly that they can hardly be distinguished out of the sprawling uniform mass. It is perhaps surprising that just minutes away from this epitome of public spatial monotony is a variety of social spaces that are so specific in their functions that only a small fraction of the large crowd is interested and allowed in its boundaries. I am talking about Shinjuku’s
Nichōme (“Block Two”), Tokyo’s infamous gay district, with all the gay bars, clubs and cruising areas that can be found in its nooks and crannies.
Mitsuhashi argues, in her article on the male to female cross-dressing community in Shinjuku, that the locations (between the mainstream
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“straight” district and the gay districts) and properties (unnoticeable for outsiders, “invisible”) of its operating spaces can serve as a metaphor for this sub-culture’s place in society (2006, p. 211). I think this is equally true for the gay community, as I will describe and analyse its spatial properties and connect this back to their social position of precarity in Chapter 3.3. But first,
I will introduce the concept of ‘queer space’ in Chapter 3.2.
3.2: Towards an understanding of queer spaces
Queer theory, the field of academics dedicated to examining the socially constructed nature of gender and sexual acts, provides some theories about queer spaces. A key element is that marginalised groups have historically been known to create new spaces in order to explore their needs and desires, and also to survive and prosper, as stated by Ingram (1993). The same author also boldly states that the examination of queer spaces requires a “queer observation”, arguing that it would be almost impossible for non- queer researchers to make a proper analysis of queer space. In my case, this was a practical truth, as the LGBT groups I visited in Tokyo were “closed” groups, meaning that they only allow LGBT people to attend their meetings.
I once asked, “What if I had been straight?” to which I was told that they would have referred me to different meetings that were not LGBT groups.
This is in order to provide a safe haven for LGBT members, who might be uncomfortable or scared around straight people, especially being in such a vulnerable place as a recovering addict. This serves the main purpose of NA, which is to help the newcomers who are still early in recovery, and probably in a poor mental state.
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However, the claim of Ingram seems to go beyond this, making it seem as though only queer people can fully understand queer space; this would mean that it takes a gay researcher to do research on gay sub-cultures, because straight researchers would not understand it. I do not agree with this at all, I actually think it is very important that non-LGBT researchers are able to come into our community (I say “our”, because I am myself gay) and are able to make a neutral observation. Having said that, being part of the research target audience (whether that is Thai women, African-Americans, etc.) might certainly have its practical benefits, such as entrance to the field and informants’ goodwill. But I reject the claim that it is necessary to be queer in order to understand queer space. That would go against the core principles of scientific research, and anthropology is a social science after all.
Going back to the point of queer spaces in Tokyo, I have already touched upon one of the several important needs for new (in this case, queer) space: safety. A word that was often used to describe the meetings by its members was ‘anzen’, meaning both “safety” and “peace of mind”. This is an aspect of queer space that is not often considered, as many theorists rely on detailed descriptions of places where the sexual needs of its visitors are met. I therefor think that it is important to map out the spaces with different purposes, such as safety, alongside spaces of sexual desire. This will show the different aspects of queer space, and the different purposes and connotations that these spaces hold for my informants. I will connect this with general theory on the social significance of space, mapping them out and placing them within the theoretical that I have built in this chapter so far.
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3.3: Analysing the operating spaces of my informants
Spaces of leisure and pleasure in Nichōme As I categorise the different kinds of spaces my informants visited or used to visit, I will start with the category of “leisure and pleasure”, by which I mostly mean the gay bars and clubs of Nichōme. Most of the locations in this category were spaces of a past life for my informants. They associated them with drinking and / or using stimulants. But some of them still visited them for entertainment, and I also had some non-NA informants to which this is a very relevant category. In Chapter 3.1 I briefly mentioned the gay district of
Nichōme and proposed that its spatial qualities might very well serve as a metaphor for the place of gays in Japanese society. I will start by introducing some of these spatial properties by giving a general overview of the area and providing a short anecdote of one of my informants.
Figure 3: an abstract map of the Nichōme area with English descriptions of
the hotspots, as taken from asia-utopia.com
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As can be seen on the map in figure 1, Nichōme is a block of streets located between Yasukuni-dōri (‘Dōri’ meaning “street”) and Shinjuku-dōri. It is a 15- minute walk from the main Shinjuku station, which lies in the centre of one of
Tokyo’s most popular shopping and entertainment districts. Most of the establishments marked on these map are bars (gay bars, obviously). Hideaki, who was one of my informants and also became a friend, was an avid visitor of these bars. He confessed to me:
“I go to Nichōme every weekend. I don’t even have to make an
appointment with my friends (“yakusoku iranai”) because I know that
they will be there. My circle of friends is a group of around 10 people,
so there is always someone I know in either Arty or Dragon. And even
if there isn’t, I know the bartenders anyway.”
Me: “Are your friends all Japanese?”
“Yes, they are. But we like foreigners! (laughs). That is why we visit
these bars, because a lot of tourists go there. At the other bars it is
always the same people, but tourists come and go so it’s more
exciting.”
Me: “Do you approach boys you like?”
“Yes, I do. I usually kiss the boys I like (laughs). I have dated some
European guys in the past, but now I’m single so I go party every
weekend. I always have a hangover on Sunday, but I don’t mind.”
(It should be noted that Hideaki was one of my non-NA informants, so
he does not abstain from alcohol)
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I met Hideaki through a gay socialising app called ‘Grindr’. While often used for arranging dates or hook-ups, there is also the option to mark on your profile that your intention is networking or chatting. During my stay in Tokyo,
I specifically put in my profile that I needed Japanese informants to talk to and possibly interview for my studies. Hideaki was one of the people that responded to my request. He is a 34-year old graphic designer who works for a large company in Tokyo, where he was born and raised. He is openly and proudly gay, and probably my only informant who claimed to have never had any issues or problems being gay, which he attributed to the tolerant atmosphere of the capitol. In his words, being gay in Tokyo is ‘zenzen daijoubu’ (completely fine). I will analyse what I think and make of this statement in Chapter 4, as I will go in more detail on the interviews I had with my informants.
Nichōme’s spatial attributes as social markers
I would like to elaborate on a thought that I have mentioned several times by now, which is that Nichōme’s spatial aspects may well serve as a metaphor for the place of gays in Japanese society. So what is it that makes Nichōme such a peculiar (literally queer) place? I will try and recollect my first memory of Nichōme, which is when I first stayed in Tokyo in 2011. As I described before, Nichōme is a few minutes’ walk from the station and mainstream shopping area. Upon crossing the street that divides Sanchōme (block three, still part of the shopping area) and Nichōme (block two, the gay area), an instant change was noticeable. Whereas Sanchōme during the day was lively, filled with shoppers and restaurant-goers, Nichōme was a quiet area that seemed to be mainly composed of offices.
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Having visited other urban gay villages such as London’s Soho and
Amsterdam’s main gay streets around the Amstel area, I was expecting a lively atmosphere with coffee bars and shops. I was surprised to find the area to be empty and eerily quiet for such a central area in Tokyo. Whereas 100 meters closer to Shinjuku centre I would have to navigate between the crowds, these streets were mostly empty, let alone for a handful of lonesome office workers in suits who seemed to be in a hurry to catch the train at the adjacent Sanchōme metro station. As I walked around, trying to find some of the bars and cafes that I had looked up beforehand, I found that all of them were closed during the day, and most of them were hidden away at the second, third or fourth floors of regular office buildings. This is perhaps one of Tokyo’s main unique spatial aspects, the way in which one building can hide so many different facilities. At first I was mystified how an elevator could bring me straight into an izakaya (Japanese pub), an arcade hall or a cinema, depending on which floor button I pressed.
Figure 2: ‘Dragon Men’ in daylight. At night, this is one of the area’s busiest bars, with its crowd flowing into the street on warm nights. This picture shows the bar during the day, when it is closed and the windows are completely covered by plastic. Only the door remains visible.
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Despite its daytime dreariness, Nichōme completely transforms at night. The first bar to open is ‘Dragon Men’ at 7pm, which is a mainstream bar that is popular among tourists and the people who appreciate them. At 9pm, most people move to ‘Arty Farty’, which is the main club for the same target audience. Arty closes at 1am, after which mostly the same crowd moves to
‘Annex’, which is the final stop of this mainstream chain of tourist-friendly bars. While Dragon Men is relatively easy to identify by its colourful door (see figure 2), Arty is as good as invisible unless you know where to find it. Figure
3 below shows the entrance of the building, leading up to a staircase, of which Arty is on the first floor.
Figure 3: the entrance to the building in which Arty Farty is located. While not readable on the picture, the black-and-red signpost next to the entrance is the only sign to the bar.
I think that the difference between day and night is crucial to understanding
Nichōme and Japan’s gay community in general. As I explained in Chapter 2, homosexuality in Japan is still mostly seen as an activity, not so much as a true identity. My informants mentioned that people around them often assumed that it was their ‘hobby’, something they do for fun. But in the end, society still expects them to eventually start a family through heterosexual
39 marriage (Leupp, 2007). This could explain the fact that during the day, the district is deserted and covered up. It is too bold to say that there is no gay identity in Japan, but perhaps this identity is not of the nature that its holders feel the need to create places where they can meet during the day, such as the lively coffee corners and boutiques in London’s Soho. I think it is fair to say that gays in Japan are more inclined to hide their sexuality from the public eye, which has to do with social expectations and judgement. Only a handful of my informants were openly gay in all of their social circles. Most of them reported that they were out towards their mothers (not always to their fathers), and to a handful of female and gay friends. They seemed quite reluctant to share their sexuality with co-workers, more distant family, and heterosexual male friends.
Especially in the workplace it seemed to be a taboo subject. I remember asking Noboru, one of my informants who lives together with his boyfriend, what he replies to questions such as if he has a girlfriend, or if he fancies a female co-worker. His answer was “I just say no.”. I asked if they never prodded, and he said they sometimes would, but he always kept his answers short and vague. “No, I’m single”, “No, I’m not interested”. This is direct evidence of academic theories on masculinities in Japan, which describe that being gay does not fit in with the corporate masculinity that is required of men (Dasgupta R. , 2012).
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I would argue that this adds a layer of precarity to these men’s lives. As described in Chapter 1, precarity stands for a degree of vulnerability and uncertainty. Any adult who is not in a heterosexual marriage is subjected to scrutiny in Japan, let alone gay people, who are perceived to not have any potential for social reproduction. As I discuss the next category of spaces, the extent of the secrecy and hiding that gay men in Japan (have to) do will become even clearer.
‘Hattenba’: places of sexual contacts
A category often mentioned by my informants who are recovering from substance abuse, ‘hattenba’ stands for a cruising area. This is basically any establishment that has the purpose of bringing men together for sexual contact. I already mentioned hattenba in chapter 1, as I described them as places were sex and drugs often meet. In the West, the term ‘cruising area’ is often used for public outdoor locations that are popular among men for cruising, which is the act of searching for someone to have often-anonymous sex with. Cruising areas can include parks, but also public bathrooms at stations or in shopping areas. ‘Hattenba’ are quite specific in Japan though, since they are usually inside, and actually organised for the purpose. I personally did not feel comfortable to visit any of these places, but my interviewees reported that they were usually bar-like establishments, often quite small and with private areas available.
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Figure 4: the 24-hour Kaikan gay sauna in Shinjuku, one of the largest hattenba in
Tokyo. The entrance is on the right, and the sauna occupies the entire building.
Gay Ghettoization
The status of Nichōme as a gay district is well known throughout Japan.
Certain right-wing politicians have made unfavourable claims about
Nichōme, which stems from the general lack of tolerance in society towards homosexual lifestyle that I hope to have made clear by now. This includes
Shintaro Ishihara, who functioned as the Governor of Tokyo from 1999 to
2012. He stated on public television in 2010 that he pities gay couples, and thinks they “might be missing something somehow, maybe genetic” (Human
Rights Watch, 2011). This rhetoric recalls Nazi ideologies, which saw homosexuals as one of the groups that threatened racial “purity” and thus had to be eliminated (Steakley, 1982). Through this same logic, homosexuals and many other marginalised groups have often been framed as “unclean” or “contaminated” in order to justify discrimination against and separation from them (Herek, 2000).
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In the specific case of homosexuality, the rendering of gay men’s bodies as contaminated was catapulted from symbolic to literal during and after the
HIV outbreak that started in the 1970s and continued through the 80s. Gays were blamed for the spreading of HIV, and for contaminating others through perceived reckless and perverse sexual behaviour. I would connect this to another publically issued statement by Ishihara, former Governor of Tokyo.
After confirming Tokyo’s bid to hosting the 2016 Olympics in 2006 (which was later lost to Rio de Janeiro), Ishihara described Nichōme as one of the places “damaging to the decency” of Tokyo Metropolis alongside Kabuki- chō, a district notorious for its red-light districts, sex clubs and alleged yakuza presence. According to Suganuma (2011), it is a homophobic assumption to lump in Nichōme with Kabuki-chō, rendering them as perverse places of debauchery, without touching upon any reasons as to why Nichōme fits in with that (p. 346).
As Tokyo recently won the bid for the 2020 Olympics, it will be interesting to see what politicians and plan-makers will have to say about Nichōme now that Ishihara is not in place as Governor anymore (though the current
Governor is also right-wing, but less likely to make controversial statements).
I think this should be monitored and reported on as the countdown to 2020 continues, and I hope I will have the chance to contribute to that myself, but that is not for this thesis.
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Places of Recovery
The places I spent most of my time in are the meeting rooms of Narcotics
Anonymous (NA), which is regarded as a safe haven by its visitors. In the rooms, we find ourselves surrounded by like-minded people who have the desire to become or remain clean from all drugs, including alcohol. NA, as its mother programme AA (Alcoholics Anonymous), has some curious properties that need to be explained before looking at its specific places. The most obvious and important one is the need for anonymity. This means that there are no means for pre-registration or enlistment, one can simply walk in and attend, or not. Newcomers are asked to introduce themselves with their first name only, but anyone is free to use a nickname, which one of my informants did. NA is never organised by professionals, it is a program by addicts for addicts. As such, it is not affiliated with any outside institution such as clinics or healthcare facilities. The word “God” is used (kami-sama in Japanese), but it is strictly not a religious program, which remains completely open to personal interpretation (The Twelve Traditions of Narcotics Anonymous,
2015). While “NA ought never be organised” (Ninth Tradition), some planning and effort (‘service work’) is necessary to keep the meeting functional. Two of my informants did service at the Friday night meeting in
Ikebukuro. Yohei was the chairman of the meeting, and Noboru was treasurer.
Since NA is never affiliated with any outside organisation, meetings are held in a variety of places. As I previously described, the Ikebukuro meeting was in a building that was called “Children’s village” and seemed like some sort of clubhouse, renting out its unoccupied space to NA on Friday nights. Another meeting in Mejiro was held at a church, which presumably rents out rooms for groups, or perhaps they support twelve-step programs by granting the
44 use of its space. The overall line is that most meeting spaces have a variety of functions at different times, of which NA is only one. This fluidity does indeed provide for a sense of anonymity, as a group can theoretically go wherever it wants.
Figure 4: A map of the Shinjuku area, including the JR Yamanote (North to South) and Chūō (West to East) train lines and stations. The markers indicate the locations of the NA LGBT group meetings.
There are dozens of NA meetings per week in Tokyo, but I will focus on the
LGBT group called the “Shinjuku Group” which consists of four meetings around the Shinjuku area. As can be seen in figure 4, all of the locations are within a fairly close distance of a train station, surely done to maximise accessibility for people who have to travel with public transport, which is pretty much all of the group’s visitors. It also provides a degree of choice for people who perhaps have negative connotations with certain parts of town.
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While it is called the ‘Shinjuku Group’, none of the meetings are near the central Shinjuku area (indicated on the map by ‘Shinjuku’ station). This might have simple reasons such as the higher price of rentable rooms, but I suspect that the meeting places are deliberately far away from Nichōme. Most people who visit NA have spent time drinking and often using drugs in
Nichōme, so now it is a place most of them want to avoid. This might be a good thing for the marginalisation of queer space as I discussed before in this chapter, since these LGBT meetings are spreading away from Nichōme, giving other gay people in recovery (or still in active use, but curious for a solution) the opportunity to meet with like-minded people in a safe environment, away from public judgement and also away from the temptations of Nichōme.
I think in this way, NA LGBT meetings contribute to a broader spectrum of queer social space in Tokyo. Not just its meetings, but also some of the things that the group organises. For example, during my stay in Tokyo, I was lucky enough to attend an ‘Open Speaker’ meeting, often called
‘Convention’ in English. This meeting was organised in the Setagaya Kumin- kaikan, which is a public theatre near Harajuku station. On the 22nd of
February, the entire theatre was rented by NA members to organise the open speaker meeting, which meant that several long-time NA members would tell their life-story in regards to their addiction and recovery on stage, in front of a room filled with about 200 people. Due to the anonymous nature of this meeting, I am not able to share anyone’s specific stories. However, some of the speakers there were actually my informants (such as Taniyama and Yohei), so I was able to get their stories in an ethically correct way, since I interviewed them and got their permission to use their stories. In the next and final chapter, I will present this interview data along with an analysis.
46
Chapter Four: Data Analysis
This final chapter will aim to tie the knots together through elaborating on my interview data, of which I have already given bits and pieces in the previous chapters, and connecting them to theories to strengthen my argument that both homosexuality and addiction add a layer of precariousness to the lives of gay men in Japan. As such, most of the quotes will be about my informants’ precarious circumstances, or anything that can be connected to that.
4.1: Interview Segments
Kazuaki (32)
I met Kazuaki through one of my earlier informants, Noboru. While he also attended NA meetings, he preferred attending non-LGBT meetings that I did not go to, so I met him when Noboru introduced him to me. I met him a few times, and in that time I got to know him as a very helpful and somewhat shy guy. But despite his shyness, he gave very open and honest answers to my questions, which he credited to the NA program, which requires honesty and open-mindedness. He had come out of a clinic after a treatment for addiction several months before I met him, and he still attended after-care several times a week. He is currently unemployed, though he would love to get to work again. His therapist strongly advises against this, because she would like to see him work on his recovery for a bit longer. He followed his therapist’s advice, but he was studying to get his driver’s license to give himself something to strive towards.
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• When did you know you were gay?
“I think I knew it in kindergarten already, when I was 4 or 5 years old. I
liked both boys and girls. It stayed that way throughout elementary
school and middle school. I thought I was bisexual, but to the outside
world I only said I liked girls.”
• Did you ever come out as gay, to anyone?
“Yes, I came out to my mother 4 years ago. But it didn’t involve the
rest of the family.”
• What about your friends?
“Well, the friends I had made at that time were mostly gay, so I didn’t
have to come out to them. I didn’t really have any straight friends to
come out to. But I was not able to build any healthy relationship with
gay friends. It was mostly for sex only.”
• What about partying?
“No, I didn’t really party. Sometimes I would have dinner or coffee
with guys that I like, but it never turned into anything serious. I have
always had trouble expressing my emotions. In high school I had one
close friend, but I couldn’t tell if I liked him as a friend or if I liked him
romantically. He was straight though. I think I realized I didn’t like girls
at all when I was 19, after high school. At that time I had a new friend
who I was in love with. He was gay but he was not interested in me, he
always got attention from many other guys. One day he said farewell
to me. I don’t know why. That really broke my heart. I started thinking
that gay love (恋愛) was like a videogame. I thought I couldn’t make a
healthy friendship with gays, so I gave up on that.”
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• So how did your contact with other gay guys progress?
“Well, because I thought I couldn’t have a healthy relationship, I
started doing drugs with other gay guys. I did not have any healthy
friendship experiences, not even with straight people really. I
remember that even in kindergarten I felt a feeling of not belonging
(‘iwakan’), I did not feel like I belonged as a human being. I had a lot
of secrets. I felt like I had to keep my sexuality a secret. It felt like I put
on different masks: for family, for friends, for work etc. I didn’t know
who I was. It was like I had an identity crisis. This is when I
unconsciously started to hide a lot of things. I didn’t have anyone to
share my feelings with.”
In this excerpt, Kazuaki talks mainly about his teens and twenties, during which he felt like he could not build healthy relationships or friendships with the people around him. He credits this to not being able to talk about his emotions, as well as a general sense of not belonging with the rest, for which he used the word ‘iwakan’, which can be translated as “feeling out of place”,
“a feeling of discomfort” or “physical unease”. While he could not point out a specific reason, we agreed that his sexuality was probably a main factor.
Interestingly, the meaning of the word iwakan shows parallels to how I have described the place of gay men in society symbolised by Nichōme as a spatial marginality in Chapter 3. It is also similar to the meaning of
‘precarious’, as described in Chapter 2. I think this is one of the threads that runs through everything I have discussed in this thesis. It shows how the marginal position of homosexuals manifests itself both spatially and physically. This is because spatially, gay spaces are hidden from the public eye of scrutiny (which they still cannot escape) and physically because through its social perception, the knowledge of one’s homosexuality can
49 create a sense of not belonging or unease. This argument can be strengthened by studies about depression and / or anxiety in gay men, who have been widely reported to be more susceptible to these and other mental illnesses (Pachankis & Goldfried, 2006), with statistics indicating a more than double prevalence rate of anxiety disorder among gay men (7.3%) when compared to straight men (3.0%) (Sandfort, deGraaf, Bijl, & Schnabel, 2001).
Higashi (30)
This person preferred not to use his real name, so by his request I will call him Higashi. Higashi is 30 years old, was born in Saitama (a city north of
Tokyo) and now lives in central Tokyo. His parents still live together in
Saitama, and he has 2 older brothers and 1 older sister. When he was 15 he spent 1 year in the US, as well as during a semester of his third year at university. When he was 23 he started living on his own in Tokyo. He’s moved around a bit, starting in Ochanomizu, then to Tamachi, and has now ended up in Shinjuku.
• When did you know you were gay?
“I probably knew as early as elementary school, but I did not tell
anyone until I was 17. Around that time I was in cram school (‘juku’). I
had met a guy I liked, so we sometimes kissed in public around the
campus. So the people I knew at that school, knew that I was gay. But
my main group of friends [who did not study there] did not find out
until I was 20. This is when I started dating an exchange student from
the US. One time, we went for Karaoke together, and he got a bit
frisky! So afterwards I took him home and we had sex. That was my
first time, and I really wanted to share it with some of the people close
to me. But I only told me female friends and my sister. Until this day I
still have not told my parents.”
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• Why did you not tell your parents?
“Well, my father does not believe in gays… That is to say, he thinks
homosexuality does not exist. I think my mother might know I’m gay,
but at the same time she does not want to know, so we do not talk
about it. It would only cause problems, especially with my father, so it
is best to remain silent. Since they still live in Saitama I live fairly close
to my parents, but not too close, so I still have some privacy in that
regard.”
• Why do you think your mother knows? Have you ever talked
about it?
“Well… When I went to the US during my third year in university, my
mother said something to me before I left. She said “if you’re gay, do
not come back to Japan, because your father will reject you from the
house”. In this way, I was put between two fires, because my mother
did not want me to anger my father.”
• Have you ever had a relationship?
“Yes, I’ve had a few. My first one lasted from when I was 20 until I was
22. After that I had a few shorter ones, and then I was single for a
while. Then when I was 23, I started a relationship with the guy who is
still my boyfriend today. He’s sort of become like close family, though.
It’s not really sexual anymore, but I love him very much and he has
met my parents as well, although they think he is just a ‘good friend’.”
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I would like to take a break here and analyse this first part of my interview with Higashi, because he has already said some important things about his relationship with and openness towards his parents. He said that his father
“does not believe” in homosexuality, rejecting its existence. This is consistent with what I described in Chapter 2.2, which is that there is a tendency in
Japan to not take homosexuality seriously, or seeing it as a hobby or a phase
(Robertson 1999, p. 22). As a result, Higashi has had to hide his sexuality from a young age. This creates a precarious situation because he would always be uncertain and secretive about himself. Besides this emotional uncertainty, his mother added a physical and spatial uncertainty when she told him to not come back from the US if he was gay because his father would kick him out of the house.
Another important piece of information is that when he decided to come out at the age of 20, he only entrusted people in certain social circles, such as his female friends and his sister, but not his male friends and his brothers or parents. This could indicate towards a general inclination for females to be more accepting towards homosexuality, while the mainstream construction of masculinity as described by Dasgupta and others does not facilitate the same tolerance in heterosexual men. This means that Higashi has never been able to be fully honest to certain members of his close friends and family, which I can imagine takes its emotional toll. It has been proven by research that openly gay people are less likely to develop anxiety or depression than their
(partially) closeted counterparts (Pachankis & Goldfried, 2006). I will follow with the continuation of my interview with Higashi below.
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• Have you ever felt discriminated against, for being gay?
Yes, I have. The first time was when I kissed my former boyfriend at
Shibuya station. There was this girl who was really shocked. She
seemed disgusted. That’s when I knew it’s better to hide it. Another
time I was at an onsen [hot spring] with my co-workers, and one of
them brought up the fact that I was gay. A few of the senior members
left, like three or four of them.
• How did that make you feel?
I can’t describe it exactly, but I felt really bad. It was awful. Oh, and I
remember another time at work, we were having a conversation about
Nichōme, and a senior colleague asked “so do you see yourself as a
woman?” or something like that. I felt very uncomfortable. A lot of
Japanese people seem to think that, for some reason [that gay men
want to become women]. I don’t think people mean to be offensive,
but they ask such stupid questions out of ignorance. They don’t know
the difference between transsexual and gay. So yeah, reactions like
that made me really careful whom to come out to.
• What about your friends?
I met most of my friends at university, and many of them had been to
the US or to Europe, so that had some [positive] influences on their
mind-set towards homosexuality. I now work at an international
company, so that also counts for my current colleagues, luckily! So I’m
actually out at my current job, which is really nice. I feel free.
• What if you had worked for a Japanese company?
I probably would not be out, because most people would react like
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the co-worker I talked about earlier did. I just don’t want the fact that
I’m gay come before my personality. I am not just gay. Back when I
still worked for a Japanese company, a colleague once said to me that
I was so lucky to be gay, because it’s a minority so I would not get
fired. This was during the financial crisis around 2008. I was really
shocked that he said that. That’s when I definitely felt discriminated
against, because he implied that I was only keeping my job because I
was gay.
The above fragment shows Higashi’s personal experience with some of the stereotypes and prejudices about homosexuality as I described in Chapter 2.
The first scenario he describes is when he kissed his former boyfriend at
Shibuya station (Shibuya incidentally being the only area in Japan where gay marriage is legal as of May 2015), and a girl at the station reacted with shock and seemed disgusted. This is in line with psychological research, which has shown that prejudice against homosexuals or other socially rejected groups elicits a genuine feeling of disgust (Zavala, Waldzus, & Cypryanska, 2014). This is apparently an emotional reaction to the fear of contamination, as socially rejected groups are often seen as physically impure, which I already touched upon in Chapter 3. Higashi’s reaction shows the direct consequences, as he decided at that point that it was better to hide his sexuality from the public.
Research has shown that this causes anxiety and possibly depression
(Pachankis & Goldfried, 2006), while also forcing gays out of public spaces and into their own hidden social spaces. I hope to have made clear by now that I think this contributes greatly to the precarious position of gay men.
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Yohei (31)
Yohei was born in Yokohama, but moved to the United States with his parents at a young age, for his father’s business. As a result, he attended elementary school and part of middle school in the US, before moving back to Japan at age 12. Yohei was the chairman of the NA LGBT meeting at
Ikebukuro, being a recovering drug addict with several years of clean time.
• When did you know you were gay?
“I think I knew when I was in middle school, but I didn’t come out until
the second year of high school. Or actually, I was caught! At the time I
was using my father’s computer, and my sister caught me browsing a
gay dating site, and she told my parents. My stepmother was okay
with it, but it took my father a while to accept it. In fact, he only started
acknowledging and supporting it about 5 years ago. This is when my
former boyfriend wanted to meet my parents, and my stepmother
encouraged me to introduce him to my father. They got along really
well, so my father learned to accept my sexuality.”
• What about your (biological) mother?
“My parents divorced when I was 12 years old, and after that my
mother moved back to Hokkaidō, where she came from. I have not
seen her since. She was an alcoholic. I remember that while I was in
kindergarten, she would constantly be in and out of clinics. I guess
that she still lives that way, but I don’t know for sure.”
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• When did you move out?
“I moved out of my father and stepmother’s house when I was 19, as I
moved to Chiba (city) to live on my own. I found a job there, and I
lived there for 2 years. My job changes its location every 2 years, so
after that I moved to Saitama, and after 2 years of living in Saitama I
moved to Ibaraki.”
• How did you feel about moving around like that?
“I actually liked it, because I was never able to establish deep
friendships. I was afraid that people would get to know the real me,
and I was not openly out as gay. So it was quite convenient that I
moved place every 2 years, because in that time all the friendships I
had built had ran their course.”
As is clear from the above fragment, Yohei also shared his experience with a father who would not acknowledge his sexuality, at least initially. While
Higashi’s father until this day does not recognise his son’s sexuality, Yohei’s father changed his mind when he met Yohei’s boyfriend at the time, with whom he got along well. This might show that people are literally ‘afraid of the unknown’, which is one of the aforementioned reasons for prejudice, and once they get to known someone who is part of this prejudiced group, it turns out there’s nothing scary of weird about them after all. Of course I don’t know his father’s exact political opinions, but it at least gave him acceptance and tolerance.
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Another interesting quote is that Yohei has been quite content moving around for all his life, first between countries and later between cities every 2 years. The reason he gives is that he does not seem capable to build deep friendships that last for longer than a few years. This difficulty in opening up to others is something that Kazuaki also expressed, and is likely connected to their sexuality, which often turns into secrecy and social anxiety. It might also be credited partially to addiction, which is often seen as a hereditary disease
(Yohei’s mother also suffers from it) that expresses itself in poor coping skills, leading the addict with a need to escape from reality, often found in drugs. I asked him some further questions about this topic, as written out below.
• When did you start using drugs?
“That must have been around the time that I lived in Saitama. I lived
together with my boyfriend at the time, and through him I got in touch
with MDMA (or ‘XTC’). I liked it a lot, so I started exploring other
drugs, while my boyfriend stuck to MDMA. This is how I discovered
crystal meth, which I started using heavily when I moved to Ibaraki. I
split up with my boyfriend, who was against it, in order to smoke meth
whenever I wanted. Since I was single again, I started using online
dating sites and visiting ‘hattenba’ to meet guys for sex.
I got involved in ‘PnP’1 (drug and sex) parties. At these parties I started
injecting the drug (instead of smoking it), which made it even harder
to quit. Since these parties were usually at someone’s place, I stopped
going to clubs. In this way, I basically surrounded myself with people
who were shooting meth.”
1 ‘PnP’ stands for ‘Party and Play’, a term used in gay slang which refers to a group of men hanging out at someone’s house while using drugs (typically) meth and / or other stimulants), while having intercourse. Simply put, it’s “shorthand for drugs and sex” (Carey & O'Connor, 2005).
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• Was it becoming a problem?
“Yes, absolutely. My health was very bad, and due to the effects of the
drug I was only able to be happy for a short time after taking a dose of
meth. Afterwards I felt miserable and depressed. It’s really crazy what
the drug does to you. It became the only thing that mattered.”
• Did you think about getting any help?
“Eventually I did, yeah. My health declined to a point where I had to
reach out for professional help. This is how I ended up in a clinic in
2012. I stayed there for 9 months, after which I moved into a share
house2 in Tokyo. This is where I met Noboru, who was working as a
therapist for the clinic at the time. I felt lucky that I was accepted into
that clinic, because the first clinic I tried had rejected me because I
had HIV, which was considered a health risk for others. But I’m glad
because in the end, I ended up in a great clinic that also taught me a
lot about NA, through which I stay clean today.”
Yohei illustrates how drug use is often directly connected to sex in the gay community, as I already theorised in Chapter 2, making the user vulnerable to an unhealthy lifestyle of drug addiction and exposure to HIV through unsafe sex and drug injecting. Luckily Yohei was eventually able to reach out for help, though it is pertinent to note that he initially was rejected by the first clinic he applied at due to having HIV, a “health risk”. I was shocked to hear thus, but upon further research I found out that it is not uncommon for medical health providers to reject HIV patients, though this is seen as old-
2 A ‘share house’ in this case stands for a living unit that is inhabited by recovering addicts who have just come out of a clinic, often with some form of professional guidance.
58 fashioned and discriminatory (Benjamin, 2012). This connects to the fear of contamination that I discussed earlier, which in this case is a literal fear of contracting the virus, not just a mental fear of a stigmatised group. Those two go hand in hand in this case, as HIV is often seen as a gay disease and therefore its contagiousness is thought to be higher than it really is. It is scientifically known that HIV in men can only be transferred through direct contact with blood or semen, which are both easily avoided in a clinic when adhering to standard hygiene procedures when taking blood or doing other bodily tests. This shows again how marginal and precarious the position of gay men is, especially when it is supplemented with addiction and HIV status.
Taniyama (44)
Taniyama was born in Kyūshū, Japan’s southernmost main island, with his parents and little brother. He moved to Tokyo to attend cram school when he was 18 years old. My interview with Taniyama went deeper than those with my other informants. I got to hear a lot of his life history and experiences, and I think those are valuable and relevant, because Taniyama has been through all the things that my thesis has centred around. He experienced coming out as gay, working for a gay magazine, getting addicted to drugs and alcohol, getting into a clinic and now being a recovering addict. While I will not show the entire interview (I have already summed up his answers to my first few questions in this paragraph), I will show some of the relevant passages, taking a few stops in between to analyse the fragments and connect it to the data and to my argument. One thing that is worth mentioning is that his mother committed suicide 12 years ago, which is a traumatic experience that he is still struggling to cope with, but he preferred not to be ask any further questions about that.
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• Can you tell me about the time you were in cram school in
Tokyo?
“Yes of course. It was in Kōenji, Tokyo [to the West of Shinjuku]. I
didn’t study much, though. I went to Nichōme a lot to go have fun in
bars. I would go 4 or 5 times a week, and I would always drink loads! I
hardly studied at all. I somehow managed to pass the university’s
entrance exam. Six months into my first year, I moved from Kōenji to
Ikebukuro. I moved in together with a friend.”
• Was he gay?
“No, he was straight.”
• Did he know you were gay?
“Well… At first he didn’t. When I came out to him, he didn’t take it
too well. He was really surprised. He moved out shortly after.”
• Do you think that was because you were gay?
“I don’t know. It might have played a part. I never spoke to him again
after that. After one year of living there, I moved to Kawasaki because
it was closer to university. But my studies still didn’t go well, so I
dropped out in the 4th year.”
• So you did not graduate?
“No, I don’t have a university diploma until this day.”
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• So what was your next move?
“Well, I started working at a gay magazine called ‘Badi’. It was just in
its early stages at the time, and I had some friends who helped setting
it up so that’s how I managed to get the job. I started out low, just
copying documents and bringing around coffee. Sort of like a male
OL3, haha! I worked there until I was 25. I had the same boyfriend
from when I was 20 years old, but he broke up with me when I was 25,
which definitely came as a shock.”
• Could you tell me some more about your time working for
‘Badi’ magazine?
“Sure! I had a lot of fun there, and I felt really connected with gay
issues and gay rights, etc. I sort of became an equal right activist. We
would gather in groups and walk the streets and stand in front of the
city office building, shouting and showing rainbow banners for gay
rights.”
• Really! Sort of like a rally?
“Yeah sort of like a rally, I guess! I also participated in the first gay
pride in Japan. It’s called the Tokyo Rainbow pride, I’m sure you’ve
heard of it. I was there for its first edition in 1994! But I had a bit of a
hangover so I didn’t go all day, haha.”
3 “Office Lady” (OL) is a term often given to female administrative workers who also do small chores like making coffee and copy documents.
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• What was your motivation for rallying and participating in
the pride?
“In Japan, society pretends that gays don't exist. So the rallies and
pride are to show that ‘we are here!’ Many people think that it’s not
serious, or that it’s just a weekend activity. So that’s why I worked for
Badi and did all those things, because I wanted to end those
stereotypes.”
This first fragment shows that Taniyama experienced a feeling of being judged for being gay. This is when he came out to his housemate, who then moved out shortly after. I asked Taniyama about it later, and he says that while he does not have specific proof, he felt like it was because of his sexuality, since there were no other big issues between them. It’s a funny coincidence that he went on to work for Badi magazine, which is a gay magazine that still exists today, since some of my other informants specifically credited Badi for finding a lover through the personal ads section.
He also mentioned being an active gay rights supporter, because in Japan it is like “gays don’t exist”. This confirms what I have already stated several times before, which is that homosexuality is often denied or not taken seriously, leaving gays in a marginal and scrutinised position.
• How long would you continue to work at Badi?
“I worked there until I was 25. That’s when my boyfriend broke up with
me. I was so heartbroken that I just wanted to go away, so I moved to
Osaka. I started working in a gay bar because I thought that would be
a good way to make new friends and meet cute guys. I started living
quite a wild lifestyle. I had many one-night stands and I didn’t care for
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myself, having reckless and often unprotected sex. It was around this
time that I was introduced to crystal meth. My usage of the drug soon
went out of control. It was because of this that I lost my job at the bar I
worked at, but I sound found a job as a graphic designer through
friends and networking. I lived in Osaka until 2000. In 1999 I was
arrested for drug possession. They took me to the police station where
I was placed in a cell for 20 days awaiting my judgment. Then my
parents came to pay my bail, so I got to wait for my sentence outside
of prison. In the end I was put on probation with a heavy warning,
since it was my first time coming into contact with that police. They
told me if it happened again, they would send me to prison.”
• Did you have to quit your job?
“Actually, no! It was part of my rehabilitation into society that I got to
keep my job, and my co-workers were actually very supportive. I did
have to work hard to redeem myself, though. There were weeks I
worked 60 hours. That’s why I quit in 2002. This was also around the
time that I was having issues with my boyfriend at the time. We lived
together but there was a lot of domestic abuse. We would hit each
other to the point that we were covered in bruises, and we even broke
a few bones. It was a very intense relationship.”
• How long were you together?
“For 4 years. Yeah, I know! But we did love each other. It was like we
were addicted to each other. He threatened to commit suicide if I left
him, and I cared for him so that’s why we were together for such a
long time. But in the end I had to end the relationship. Soon
afterwards, I found a new boyfriend who lived in Hokkaidō, so we met
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halfway and moved in together in Tokyo, where I was able to get my
old job back at Badi. I felt like a bad person for moving on so soon.
Also my drinking problem advanced, so 2 years later that boyfriend
left me. This really broke my heart and threw me into a depression, so
I went to a clinic for the first time. While that helped me to quit crystal
meth and other drugs, I couldn’t stop drinking. All of my friends were
practically drinking buddies.”
“In 2003, I lost my job because I just couldn’t work properly anymore.
When I was unemployed I started drinking every day. It was a bad
situation. This was also around the time my mother committed suicide,
which didn’t exactly slow down my drinking. I am ashamed to admit it
but I even drank on her funeral. After a while I started feeling an
intense pain in my abdomen. I went to the hospital and it turned out
my pancreas was only functioning at 20% of its regular functioning.
This is very severe, so they kept me in the hospital for 3 months while
having me on IV to stay alive.”
“At first my situation was critical, but when I began feeling better I
started to read a lot of magazines. It was during this time that I was
reading a gay magazine and I read the life story of an alcoholic. I was
moved because I could recognize myself in his story.”
• In what way did you identify with him?
“Well, he was gay and he described a lot of the same lifestyle choices.
He also wrote about AA (Alcoholics Anonymous), which was the first
time I had heard about that. This made me curious enough to go visit
an AA meeting, but I didn't really want to stop drinking yet at the
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time. I was jealous of the people I saw there because they were so
much healthier and happier, but I had difficulties with some of the
aspects of AA (higher power), and my drinking friends kept telling me
it must be like a weird place. Like a cult! Haha. Of course it is nothing
like that, but I used it as an excuse to continue drinking 24/7. I was
living on welfare at the time, and the floor of my apartment was
completely covered with empty cans of beer and chūhai4. But I started
getting really severe abdominal pains again, so I had no choice but to
become sober.”
Here, Taniyama details some of the harsher circumstances that he has gone through. The lifestyle he describes while working for a gay bar in Ōsaka looks like some of the risky behaviour that I described in previous chapters. This includes a lot of drinking, drug use, and unprotected sex. The abusive relationship he describes with his former boyfriend might be tied to his drug problem, since addiction often manifests as co-dependency on another person, even if the relationship is unhealthy. Interesting to note is that at first, he had some doubts about AA since it might seem a bit like a sect. Perhaps this is because the meeting places are often at churches, as I described in
Chapter 3. This is one spatial aspect that may slightly work against the purpose, as neither AA nor NA is a religious program.
So far we have talked mostly about Taniyama’s relatively distant past. In the next segment I would like to jump to more recent times, starting with an anecdote on the Tōhoku earthquake of March 11.
“At the time [2011] I was still drinking and using drugs regularly,
though I was out of deep trouble for a while. Then of course, the
4 Chūhai is soda with alcohol, and comes in cans with many different flavours.
65
earthquake happened… In the aftermath, I went to Fukushima [the
most heavily afflicted area] to hand out HIV medication. People with
HIV were running out of medication, so a gay rights group in Tokyo
organised an operation to bring medication to the afflicted area. That
experience definitely made me see things in a different light. While I
did not stop using immediately, I think the seeds for my current
recovery were planted there. It was humbling to help others, and
realise that I might have been in that situation, because I am HIV-
positive myself. Even in Tokyo there was a slight shortage of retroviral
medication, but it was nothing compared to that in Fukushima. The
year after that I decided to fully commit myself to the Twelve Step
programs of NA and AA. I am now 3 years clean, which still seems like
a miracle to me.”
After this anecdote about his help at Fukushima, we started talking about the future.
• Do you ever think about the future?
“Not really, to be honest. I have been coping with Post Traumatic
Stress Disorder (PTSD) after the death of my mother, so I am mostly
concerned with getting myself in a better place right now. I am still
under professional care, and lately I have had the assignment to write
a letter to my mother, so I am mostly thinking about the past. Also, as
you know the [NA] program tells us, “just for today”! So I do that, I
keep it simple. I used to be afraid of the future, but now I know that I
am not alone. However, I do have some plans to start living together
with my boyfriend, but we will probably wait one more year or so
before we do that.”
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• Would you want to have children?
“In Japan I have not seen a lot of gay couples raising children. And I
have met a lot of gay people! Usually they just live together, and even
that is a challenge because they often still want to keep it a secret for
their colleagues. The common excuse is that they ‘live with a friend’.”
• Is it possible for gays in Japan to have children?
“I guess so, but in very roundabout ways. I have seen one lesbian
woman marry a guy, have children with him, and then get a divorce
and continue to live her own lifestyle. Her ex-husband still does not
know she lied to him, and that she is actually a lesbian.”
• My aunt in the Netherlands is a lesbian, and she is raising
her son with her girlfriend. They both have parental rights
over him. Is that not possible here?
“I don’t think so, because gays cannot have a legal partnership, so a
gay couple cannot get any rights as a unit. I do not think they could
get shared custody. And even if they did, that kid would probably be
bullied at school because society would not accept a child being
raised by two same-sex parents.”
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68
4.2: Concluding Remarks Taniyama’s story, as well as my other informants’ experiences neatly sum up all the arguments that I have tried to make in this thesis. Homosexuality is generally not accepted in Japan, even though some legal changes are slowly taking place (such as gay partnership in Shibuya). But still, gay couples wanting children have no realistic option to do so, or would have to find a roundabout way to do so. This sheds light on the complicated situation that gay people find themselves in. Their position in society is precarious because they are marginalised, as I have discussed and highlighted many times by now. They do not just face the economic precarity that everyone in Japan faces (some more than others, of course), but they also experience a unique layer of precarity because of their sexuality. They live on the margins of an already precarious society.
For most of my informants, this is supplement by their struggles with substance abuse and recovery, often being HIV-positive through sharing needles or having unprotected sex. This marginalises them even more, as they often want to avoid the established queer spaces in which destructive behaviour such as drinking and drug using still take place, but instead have to create their own, which I have seen at the NA LGBT meetings.
I hope that through establishing a framework of theories and concepts, and applying my own data through it, I have strengthened my argument that gay men in Japan have to deal with an additional dose of precarity, as they struggle to be socially accepted, which is mirrored by the nature of the spaces that they use. Also, I hope to have shown that addiction is a component of this that might not go hand-in-hand with being gay, but has heavy correlations due to the specifics of drug use among gay communities
69 and the risks and hazards that they face because of that. In the end, I think all of these elements not only correlate but also strengthen and deepen each other. Growing up being gay has often left its emotional scars as my informants struggled to express their true thoughts and desires. Having a somewhat troubled background facilitates losing oneself in drinking and drug use, which is for this reason additionally prevalent in gay communities. I deeply admire my informants for staying afloat despite these circumstances and the hardships that they have been through. Through their experiences, I have seen a dark side of Japanese society that is often obscured or ignored, as these men are marginalised for being gay, and being a (former) addict. I hope that anyone reading this thesis will be aware of the full background that these men share. Advances in law and acceptance should rightfully be celebrated, but we are not there just yet. The world is a precarious place, and
I hope to have illustrated the unique precarious position of gay recovering addicts in Japan.
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