Homophobia in Japan

6 November 2022

As I work on revisions to my memoir, I recall how often I was surprised by the level of homophobia I encountered in Japan (and which remains there today).

Why was I surprised? Japan avoided (forcibly, yes) Christianity’s influences. Having grown up in the United States, the correlation between Christian hate and homophobia is strong. (I’m speaking from my experience. I wasn’t aware of communities like Universalist Unitarians or the Metropolitan Community Church during my teen years.)

Without a strong connection to Christianity, I assumed, Japan would be free of the scourge of homophobia. But that was not true.

I can’t remember when I read Gore Vidal’s Creation. The novel’s central conceit is that one person, the protagonist named Cyrus Spitama, could visit all of the world’s pre-eminent philosophers, Socrates, Zoroaster, the Buddha, Mahavira, Anaxagoras, Lao Tsu, and Confucius during a grand tour within the late sixth and early fifth centuries BCE.

Of all the philosophers, Cyrus found Confucius (孔子, kōshi in Japanese, kong zi in Mandarin) the most relatable, perhaps because unlike the Buddha, who sought a withdrawal from the world (in Vidal’s eyes), Confucius sought to rectify the world.

Confucius was a reactionary. Born into a disparate China, where feudal lords warred one against the next, Confucius longed for the good old days and promulgated what I consider to be two contrasting viewpoints. The first of those is known as the Silver Rule (a negatively conjugated form of the Golden Rule): 己所不欲、勿施於人 (jǐ suǒ bù yù, wù shī yú rén, in Mandarin: never impose on others what you would not choose for yourself).

The second comprises his Five Relationships, and this is where trouble (for queer people in Japan) begins. Confucius saw the value in the social hierarchies and relationships of yore (i.e., more than 2500 years ago), and used the Five Relationships to push that nostalgia.

What were they? Lord and vassal, father and son, husband and wife, elder brother and younger brother, and friend and friend. One of the important aspects, originally, of the Five Relationships, was the reciprocity inherent in them. Confucius was big on interdependence and although four of the five relationships imply a hierarchy (in his way of thinking), he made it very clear that the person of higher status, the lord, father, husband, or older brother, had as much of an obligation to the person of lower status as the lower had to the higher. 

Confucianism was imported to Japan alongside Buddhism (and, to a lesser extent, Taoism) during the middle of the first millennium, CE. In the intervening fifteen centuries, however, the interdependent nature of the relationships gradually waned, replaced by the equally powerful social constructs of obedience and subservience. Part of that was to be expected. For more than a thousand years, a system of militant feudalism, supported by a caste system, endured in Japan and both obedience and subservience are critical values for such systems.

Many in Japan still expect that subservience. To a boss, to a father, to a husband, to an older brother (or older classmate). And to own a rainbow identity (gay, queer, trans, ace, whichever) within these constructs, where subservience and obedience are constraints against authentic identity, is therefore revolutionary.

And yes, the notion of sexual identities, of sexualities, is a modern one that Confucius would not have conceived of. Same-sex attractions existed then, as now, however, and Confucius would have likely considered such attractions within the friend-friend relationship rubric. As long as the other four relationships were maintained.

And here is where the lasting echoes of Confucianism fuel homophobia in many places within East Asia, and Japan in particular. The power of queerness is such that only our relationships with our chosen families, our friends, offer the succor and support we need. All other relationships can be abandoned.

Do we owe subservience to a boss who won’t tolerate us, to a parent who will abandon us, to a spouse we never wanted, and to an elder who fails us? No. And that change in hierarchical dynamics is frightening (perhaps because it offers the hope of liberation to more than just rainbow-dwellers—I can’t imagine that there are many spouses who wish their partner to dominate them (in psychological or non-consensual ways)).

This, therefore, is why I believe that queer liberation is so slow to progress in Japan. The struggle is pitted against a powerful Confucian resistance to change.

But it is not without hope. Taiwan, now considered to be the friendliest nation in East Asian for my rainbow-dwelling siblings, manages to embrace diversity without jettisoning Confucianism. I believe that one reason for this is that the original reciprocity and interdependence within Confucianism were not watered down or subsumed to cults of obedience. Parents of queer people can honor and respect their offspring, as they are, thereby earning the respect of their offspring for their parents.

Maybe that reciprocity that Confucius vaunted was simply love. The queerest of emotions. As even Saul of Tarsus knew when he wrote to the residents of Corinth.

Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.