Toward a history of ‘lesbian history’ in Japan

Abstract

In this essay, I examine the mobilisation of lesbian history in the construction and support of the idea of a Japanese lesbian community. I begin in postwar Japan, when we can find evidence for a sense of community among women who link their identities to their desire for other women, and when we see the first generation of women who identify as and generate a discourse about being ‘lesbian’ (resubian or rezubian). Specifically, I look at several key moments in lesbian discourse to identify shifts in the way lesbian history has been mobilised. I first examine writing on lesbianism in the popular press leading up to and overlapping with the putative start of the lesbian community in 1971, discourse wherein, reflecting sexological tradition, references to ancient Greece and other cultures remained common. I then consider popular writing produced within the lesbian community during what I label the long 1990s, a decade sometimes referred to as having experienced a ‘gay boom’ in the mass media and which witnessed an increase in visibility of what was then called the ‘lesbian and gay community’. During this period we can see a clear turn toward mapping out a modern and contemporary Japanese lesbian history, a process that has entailed overt acts of reclamation as well as omission. Finally, by way of a coda, I look at recent academic works that might be located in the gradually expanding field of lesbian studies, in which the past that has been mobilised as Japanese lesbian history has sometimes been repurposed and reconsidered, or challenged by the individuals whose stories are being retold.

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