No CrossRef data available.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 May 2025
“What's wrong with being a fag? What's shameful about being a fag? Why is it wrong for a man to love a man? Why is it wrong for a woman to love a woman? What is shameful is living a lie. What is shameful is not loving others.” Tōgō Ken campaign slogan.
1 Hence the title of Tōgō's autobiography, Jōshiki o koete: okama no michi 70 nen (Overcoming commonsense: 70 years on the okama path), Tokyo: Potto shuppan, 2002.
However, Wim Lunsing, who also referenced the term joshiki (commonsense) in the title of his monograph Beyond Commonsense: Negotiating Gender and Sexuality in Japan, London: Kegan Paul, 2001, says that Tōgō actually picked up this title from him when Wim was a customer at Tōgō's bar in the mid 90s (personal communication). Tōgō had previously been using the term hijōshiki (not or non-commonsense) when Wim suggested that “overcoming common sense” sounded more positive.
2 The Japanese derivation of this term is discussed later in this article. It is slightly less aggressive than “faggot,” perhaps the closest English analogue would be something like “poofter” since it is essentially a gendered term connoting male effeminacy.
3 Alain Delfosse, Eine “Gay Liberation” in Japan? Soziale Emanzipation und politisches Programm bei Tōgō Ken und Minami Teishirō im urbanen Japan, 1950-1985.
4 Lunsing, Beyond Common Sense.
5 “Gay Life in Japan. Interview with an Activist Tōgō Ken”, January 6, 1983, Issue 359, p. 39.
6 See for example, Wim Lunsing “The Politics of Okama and Onabe: Uses and Abuses of Terminology Regarding Homosexuality and Transgender,” in Mark McLelland and Romit Dasgupta, eds, Genders, Transgenders and Sexualities in Japan, London: Routledge, 81-95.
7 Mark McLelland, Queer Japan from the Pacific War to the Internet Age, Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield.
8 Original interview by Oikawa Kenji, translated by Katsuhiko Suganuma as “Tōgō Ken, the Legendary Okama: Burning with Sexual Desire and Revolt,” in Mark McLelland, Katsuhiko Suganuma and James Welker, eds, Queer Voices from Japan: First-Person Narratives from Japan's Sexual Minorities, Lanham: Lexington Press, 2007: 263-70. An online version is available here (accessed June 8, 2012).
9 See for example an essay he co-authored with feminist writer Mizoguchi Akiko, “Homo to ribu ga mita sei to shakai (Sex and society seen from the perspectives of homosexuality and women's lib)” Shisō no kagaku, vol. 6, no. 121, August 1980, pp. 58-64 and also “Homo no sei to sabetsu o kataru (Talking about discrimination against homosexual sex),” Gendai no me, 22(10) 1981.10, pp. 86-89.
10 Mitsuhashi notes the importance of two early postwar writers Kabiya Kazuhiko and Ōgiya Afu who, as well as writing essays on the topic of male homosexuality for the so-called “perverse press” in the 1950s, also ran advice columns and organised club meetings for those interested in “research” into male-male love. See Mitsuhashi's blog entry on Japanese transgender history (accessed May 8, 2012). Fushimi Noriaki, too, notes the importance of these and other early 1950s figures in his historical overview of male homosexuality in Gei to iu keiken (the experience called gay), Tokyo: Potto shuppan, 2002, and I discuss their legacy in my Queer Japan from the Pacific War.
11 See here.
12 As was the case with a group of postgraduate scholars at Chūō University who, under the guidance of sociologist Yajima Masami, did some extremely important ethnographic work recording the life histories of gay men, lesbians and transgenders, published as Sengo Nihon josō, dōseiai kenkyu (Postwar Japan crossdressing and homosexuality research), Tokyo: Chuo Daigaku Shuppanbu, 2006. However these endeavours have not continued after the graduation of key members of the group in the mid 2000s.
13 I have written about the complicated politics of sexual minority community relations in a paper entitled “The role of the ‘tōjisha’ in current debates about sexual minority rights in Japan”, available here.
14 A variety of individuals, including myself, have large personal collections but accessing them is problematic and securing them when they meet with illness or even death even more so. i in English. See my Queer Japan from the Pacific War for a discussion of this and other terms relating to male homosexuality in Japan.
16 See Tōgō, Jōshiki o koete.
17 For a discussion of Terayama's queer flirtations see here. (accessed June 10, 2012).
18 Gei boi here designates a transgendered identity located in the club/bar world and is not equivalent to the English term gay boy.
19 Tōgō Ken, “Okama no Tōgō Ken no kacchifureezu de watashi ga hontō ni iitakatta koto soshite ‘minzoku no heya’ ni tsuite (What I really wanted to say with the catch phrase okama Tōgō Ken and also about the ‘people's room’)”, Za Gei, July, 1986: 38-49.
20 As discussed in “Tōgō Ken the legendary okama.”
21 Fushimi Noriaki, ed., Okama wa sabetsu ka? Shūkan kinyobi no sabetsu hyōgen jiken (Does okama have discriminatory connotations? The discriminatory expression case in Shūkan kinyobi), Tokyo: Potto shuppan: 2002: 53.
22 Okama wa sabetsu ka? 70.
23 Personal communication.
24 See her blog entry describing a 2002 meeting with Tōgō (accessed May 8, 2012).
25 See the notification here. (accessed June 10, 2012).
You have
Access
Open access