Striving to de-exoticize Japanese marriage avoiders

Journal of Sex Research, Feb, 2003 by Stephen O. Murray

Beyond Common Sense: Sexuality and Gender in Contemporary Japan. By Wire Lunsing. London: Kegan Paul, 2001, 411 pages. Hardcover, $127.50.

During his first visit to Japan in 1986, when he was 25, Wim Lunsing found disagreeable questions about a wife or girlfriend he did not have: "Since I was openly gay in the Netherlands, such questions were as good as new to me and I had difficulty dealing with them" (p. 1). Like many others who have conducted research on gender and sexuality, he set out to analyze what made him uncomfortable. After graduating, he returned to Japan in 1988, contacting feminist, lesbian, and gay people. The assumption that all adults must be married was problematic to feminists, lesbians, and gay men he met and he decided to study those "whose ideas, feelings or lifestyles are at variance with Japanese constructions of marriage" (p.2). The pressure to wed is so great that, as Lunsing detailed, gay male magazines include advertisements for wives. Most want something like a traditional marriage (in which males spend few waking hours at home).

In addition to (genuine) participant observation in homosexuality and in Japanese feminism, Lunsing interviewed 56 females (21 of whom he categorized as lesbian) and 53 males (38 of whom he categorized as gay, writing, "some interviewees who said that they were not gay have been counted as gay because they were clearly attracted to men or because, although they identified themselves as heterosexual, it became apparent that they had no sexual interest in their wives whatsoever," p. 49).

Although many Japanese and not a few foreign observers build models of Japanese uniqueness, Lunsing's book is vigorously anti-exoticizing. He found it "not hard to find Japanese who act and react in ways similar to me" (p. 64) and challenged the notion, advanced particularly influentially by the Japanese-American anthropologist Dorinne Kondo (1990), that Japanese lack a sense of self.

   I believe that Kondo's idea of multiple selves is rather
   superficial. She seems to discuss not selves but presentations of
   selves, which is not all that surprising because her research took
   place with people in the contexts of work and the family, contexts
   where people may not show their inner selves. Japanese, indeed,
   seem to be relatively sophisticated in dealing with varying
   presentations of themselves in a variety of contexts and do not
   allow themselves to be led astray by the idea that they have to
   present unchangeable selves regardless of contexts. Their inner
   selves appear rather to be stronger precisely because they feel
   less of a need for confirmation by others, unlike for instance
   Americans. (p. 331)

There is a concept of real feelings (honne) that contrasts with public presentation (tatema). In particular, "informants who were closeted felt that their tatemae behaviour was not their real self and that even what some people perceived as expressions of their honne was not either. Their view is that homosexuality is an inalienable part of themselves" (p. 332). The informants also seemed to have what Lunsing characterizes as a very essentialist view of gays and lesbians rather than "multiple selves." They were concerned about being ostracized, but did not confuse the need to keep up (heterosexual) appearances with their sense of self. From gay Japanes writing (see Ito & Yanase, 2001, and Summerhawk, McMahill, & McDonald, 1998) and my own unsystematic--and perhaps biased in ways similar to that of McLelland (2000)--sample of gay Japanese, I suspect that typical ethnographer identification with and advocacy for subjects leads one to underestimate the painfulness of having to go along (awaseru) with heterosexist assumptions, having to evade questions (gomakasu) about an important part of the self (who one loves), and having to endure the self-obliterating silence that may follow attempts by feminists, lesbians, and gay men to speak about not wanting to undertake heterosexual marriage. Still, Lunsing acknowledges that "most people feel that much stress is put upon them by the continual questioning about their marital status" (p. 229).

Lunsing does not deny that "coming out" about not planning to marry is difficult, in part because serious discussion of sexuality of any kind is very rare in Japan. Survey data show that reactions to coming-out revelations are generally positive, but this probably says more about the care with which lesbians and gay men choose recipients of personal information than about general acceptance of homosexuality in Japan. The typical reaction may be "next to nothing" (p. 236), but trying to look away from embarrassing personal information is part of what I consider a "will not to know" rather than evidence of acceptance of being gay and/or unmarried. Moreover, those thought incapable of understanding (rikai dekinai) and kept in ignorance are very many, especially bosses and also fathers, although many seek to shield mothers as well from the burden of worrying about deviant offspring. Fear of encountering homophobia in others seems to Lunsing "to play a lesser role than internalized homophobia or the fear of being different which is then attributed to an environment that is supposed to be hostile towards homosexuality" (p. 335). Still, rejection of lesbian or gay couples by landlords is a real problem: