The Japan Society Review 95
Book, Stage, Film, Arts and Events Review

Issue 95 Volume 16 Number 5 (October 2021)

Welcome to another exciting issue of The Japan Society
Review bringing you five reviews of books, stage
productions and films about Japan. This October issue
is more eclectic than ever and we are thankful to ourreviewers for their time and expertise.
The issue opens with a review of British
Extraterritoriality in Korea, 1884-1910: A comparison withJapan, an academic publication discussing the British
experience in Japan through the lens of extraterritorial
rights and how this influenced the history of Anglo-Korean
relations. The book’s author, Christopher Roberts, gave an
online lecture about this topic a few months ago, so if thereview piques your interest, be sure to visit our YouTube
channel to watch the video recording and learn more
about this fascinating period of history.
Turning our focus to the arts, this issue’s second
review focuses on the catalogue of an exhibition held at
the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford in 2019. Plum Blossom& Green Willow, edited by curators Hanaoka Kiyoko andClare Pollard, introduces over forty surimono prints in thecollection of the museum, framing the development ofsurimono within the context of both 19th century Japanese
literati communities and Edo period material culture.
The thought-provoking work Heaven, written by
Kawakami Mieko, is at the centre of our next two reviews.
The first covers Kawakami’s novel in its English translation,
shedding light on the story, characters and topics discussed
in the book, including the problem of teenage bullying
and discrimination. The second review concentrates on
the stage adaptation of the novel, recently performed as
an immersive reading at the Southbank Centre in London.
We close the October issue with a review of the
documentary film Queer Japan, which explores the
LGBTQ+ community in Japan, offering an insightful andillustrative view of queer culture in the country.
Alejandra Armendáriz-Hernández

Contents
1)

British Extraterritoriality in Korea, 1884-1910: A
comparison with Japan by Christopher Roberts

2)

Plum Blossom & Green Willow: Japanese surimono
prints from the Ashmolean Museum by Hanaoka
Kiyoko and Clare Pollard

3)

Heaven by Kawakami Mieko

EditorAlejandra Armendáriz-Hernández
Reviewers
Fiona Collins, Laurence Green, Kimura Genki, Susan Meehan
and Jenni Schofield.

4)

Heaven by Mieko Kawakami: Live staged by Jack
McNamara

Image: Tokyo Rainbow Pride, from the film Queer Japan.

5)

Queer Japan co-written, directed and edited byGraham Kolbeins

British Extraterritoriality
in Korea, 1884-1910: A
comparison with Japanby Christopher Roberts
Renaissance Books (2021)
ISBN-13: 978-1912961276
Review by Kimura Genki
When most of Japanese people hear the word
“extraterritoriality”, or “consul jurisdiction”, it may
remind them of history classes at high school. The
narrative there is one related to an oppressive regime
compelled by the Western powers and the eventual
recovery of the Japanese nation’s sovereignty throughtwo glorious victories over Qing China and Russia.
On the other hand, Korean readers may recall thebitter history in which their nation was yoked under
the pressure and subsequent colonisation by Japan
which by itself turned to the vanguard of Westernimperialism. What is common among those narratives
is the view that extraterritoriality is an unequal andimperialistic legal regime which was imposed uponthem, ignoring their sovereignty.
Christopher Roberts, the author of British
Extraterritoriality in Korea, 1884–1910: A comparison
with Japan, does admit that British extraterritoriality
had some discriminatory and unequal aspects. For
instance, in the notorious Normanton incident, theBritish captain of a sunk ship who, though rescued
most of the British sailors failed to rescue most of theJapanese passengers, was punished unconventionallylightly in a consular court. However, the excellenceof this book is that it enables us to take a glimpse of
the complexity of the reality beyond the simple statemade narratives through extensive research on various
first and second materials, mainly from the British side.
The book roughly consists of five parts. In thefirst chapter, the author introduces the context ofBritish extraterritoriality in Korea in comparison to
the situation in Japan. Chapters 2 to 4 explain its
institutional and administrative backgrounds, andchapters 5 to 9 offer a detailed description of theprocedures for criminal, civil, and naval cases with theexamples of the Bethell case and Joly case. Chapter 10
and 11 are about the issues around extraterritoriality—
British claims against Koreans and British protection ofother foreigners and Koreans, both of which are notmatters of extraterritoriality in a strict sense. Chapters
12 to 14 illustrate how British extraterritoriality came toan end and conclude.
2

Written by a British lawyer who resided in Tokyoand Hong Kong, this book offers valuable descriptions
both for historians and legal scholars. For historians, arich description of the correspondence among British
consuls and diplomats from the national archive offersa great perspective on the reality of British colonial
bureaucracy. Especially, as personnel management
is always the keystone to comprehend the work of
bureaucracy, deep analysis on the careers of thepeople involved in British diplomacy in Korea is very
attractive. For example, readers may find it interestingthat as the Minister to Korea actually never resided in
Korea and concurrently served as either the Minister
to Japan or China, it was a natural consequence that
British Korean policy was influenced by which Minister
was serving as Korean Minister. Consuls also had theircolours either of Japan or of China — and Britain
never tried to bring up their own “Korean experts”.
Rather surprisingly, the British Foreign Ministry evenrejected the proposal from one official fluent in Korean
language, vice-consul Scott, to create an EnglishKorean dictionary. Scott was promoted to vice-consulof Shanghai soon and never came back to Korea. As
the author iterates, it is certainly true that Korea had
not been important for the trade strategy of the British
Empire. All the same, the number of British ships whichcalled at Korean ports were strikingly so small that one
may assume that this extreme indifference to Korea by
the central government may have accelerated British
merchants’ avoidance of Korean ports, and thereby
might have resulted in further growth of Japanese
economic influence there.
From a legal perspective, extraterritoriality is byitself a very unique invention of international law. As
globalisation encompasses the imbalance of power
and wealth among states in reality, it is sometimes
inevitable that an “advanced” legal system and“indigenous” one virtually coexist within one territory— and we still do not know the right answer to deal
with the situation. Extraterritoriality was the answer ofthe British Empire, which is apparently different fromthe currently widespread “Washington-consensus”
type answer to force other countries to change theirlegal systems themselves. Before supposing that thesystem of extraterritoriality contradicts the sovereignty
of states and was destined to fail, it might be worthwhileobserving British efforts to keep it working and thedifferent responses to it by Asian countries.
Indeed, trials and errors of British diplomacy
depicted in this book tell us how it is difficult to draw
a boundary between two coexisting jurisdictions.
Issue 95 Volume 16 Number 5 (October 2021)

The principle of extraterritoriality — the defendant’s
nationality determines the jurisdiction — seems simple,
but examples in this book show that there were lots ofgrey-zone cases. However, as Britain noticed that thesuccess of their “informal empire” was dependent upon
the success of the extraterritorial system, they treatedespecially careful the issues around extraterritoriality,
such as protection of other foreign nationals or of
British-related Koreans, to neither expand nor concede
their rights too much. It is rather symbolic that the age
when the last extraterritoriality disappeared in China,
1943, was almost simultaneous to the cessation of the
British Empire.
One of the fundamental issues of extraterritoriality
is whether consular jurisdiction applies to the casesof administrative regulations — especially when
Westerners allegedly violated local administrative
regulations such as quarantine rules. As the Treatyof Yedo (Ansei Treaty) with Japan did not clarify thispoint, Meiji Japan asserted that consular jurisdiction
only applied to civil and criminal cases, insisting that
it would become impossible to execute administrative
regulations properly if the Japanese government
needed to explain all such regulations to foreign
consuls. As the author points out, learning from thisdispute, Britain clarified with the Korean governmentthat local administrative rules were not applicable to
British subjects and premises unless agreed otherwise
when concluding their treaty. However, this seemed tohave revealed another problem: as British jurisdiction
enlarged, native Koreans rushed to seek its protection
from local authorities by leveraging their connection to
British subjects and entities, such as British employers
or missionaries. The present author attributes thisdifference between Korea and Japan — that is,Japanese were eager to erase extraterritoriality while
Koreans rather leveraged it — to cultural factors andadministrative capacities, but does not give satisfactory
explanations. It is certainly a matter of further researchwhat factors drove Japanese, Korean, (and Chinese)
responses to the inherent matter of extraterritoriality
to draw a boundary between coexisting jurisdictions.
[1]
The only thing regrettable about this meticulous
research is that there is still room for further
investigation of Japanese or Korean-side materials.
Although the author seemed to think it did not create
any problems, this research sometimes falls short in
explaining motives and backgrounds of Japanese or
Korean governments’ policies in comparison to thegreat explanation on British policies, perhaps becauseof the author’s overdependence on the newspapers
written in English. In addition, if I may point out a trivial
mistake for the benefit of readers and for the honourof the best-known Japanese admiral, the name of
Admiral Togo was misspelled in p. 105 — although thereaders familiar with Japanese history will immediately
notice.

Plum Blossom & Green Willow:
Japanese surimono prints fromthe Ashmolean Museum

for mass consumption; rather, they were privately
commissioned by wealthy patrons or a part of a limited
edition (of about 50 to 500). Given their purpose andaudience, surimono were often made with the finest
materials, and artists’ portrayed every aspect of thedesign in painstaking detail.
The vibrant imagery and lush colors have long
made these prints desirable among collectors in
the West, their visual appeal often superseding theirinformational value within the world of commercial
art. However, by taking this approach surimono, likeukiyo-e, have often been framed as art historicalobjects as opposed to a visual framing device for richliterary resources (for those who are unfamiliar withJapanese print culture, it may be helpful to think of it

by Hanaoka Kiyoko and Clare Pollard
Ashmolean Museum (2018)
ISBN-13: 978-1910807262
Review by Fiona Collins
The Ashmolean Museum in Oxford is home toa number of beautifully printed, well preserved
surimono prints from the Edo period (1603-1868).
While they often depicted images of popular culture,scenes from well-known literature, or figures fromtraditional Japanese legends, they were not produced
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Notes[1] See for example, Par Kristoffer Cassel, Groundsof Judgment: Extraterritoriality and Imperial Powerin Nineteenth-Century China and Japan (Oxford
University Press, 2012)§

Watch the recording of our online lecture with author
Chris Roberts about this publication on our YouTube
channel.

3like a western picture book). Plum Blossom & Green
Willow: Japanese surimono prints from the Ashmolean
Museum, the catalogue of an exhibition held at themuseum in 2019, discusses the relationship of text
and image at length, and frames the development ofsurimono within the context of 19th century Japanese
literati communities and Edo period material culture.
The collection of surimono in the Ashmolean
museum was developed in the 20th century, a majorityof the objects donated by the founders of the Spalding
Trust, an organization dedicated to promoting thestudy of transregional comparative religion. After
providing and overview of the general purpose of
the prints, and how the imagery relates to the poetry,the main body of this catalogue is split into sevencategories: ‘Picture Calendars’, ‘Zodiac Animals’, ‘New
Year’s Symbols and Activities’, ‘History, Legend andLiterature’, ‘Kabuki’, ‘Still Lifes’, and ‘The Shijoo Style’and “Haikai Surimono’. Each of these sections focus
on the type of imagery featured and the reason they
were commissioned, but always cognizant of how
the artists/designers were deferential to the poems’
contents.
Within these categories, each featured surimono
has two pages dedicated to it, most often one
containing a photograph with object information,
the other an in-depth catalogue entry. At first glance,
it may seem like some of the prints could fall into
several categories. For instance, even though one
section of them is dedicated entirely to still lifes, others
include still life surimono. It only becomes clear after
reading several that the authors chose to organize theprints by the context clues (found in text and image)that suggest the general impetus for their beingcommissioned.
So, to continue with the example of still lifes, one
print entitled Still life with hair ornaments falls under‘Picture Calendars’ because the cosmetics depicted
and the accompanying poems all allude to how awoman would be done up for New Years festivities.
It is not in ‘Still Lifes’ or ‘New Year’s Symbols andActivities’ because the references to major holidays or
annual events are very subtle, and the covertness wascharacteristic of calendar pictures as they were strictly
regulated (and in some cases, prohibited) by the ruling
government.
A feature that makes Plum Blossom & Green
Willow an excellent introduction into the subject ofsurimono, as well as a reference resource for one morewell versed in Japanese literature or art history, arethe detailed diagrams and lists of terms developed by
4

the authors. Some effectively delineate how to “read”
a print, delineating ways to identify seals, poems,
signatures, and print titles.
There are also in-depth descriptions of thedifferent formats available with superimposedgraphics to make clear how they could be folded orfor scale reference to other images. They, in addition
to key vocabulary and definitions, are largely placedin the introduction of the text (unlike many othercatalogues of this nature, where they are in the back),
so the reader is exposed to them early on, and canalways refer back if they are unclear on this information
when considering the entries about featured objects
later on.
Unlike many art historical publications, theimages and catalogue information (i.e. author, artist,
date, etc.) featured in Plum Blossom & Green Willow
are accompanied by the textual contents of the print,
a transliteration from phonetic Japanese to English
characters, as well as the English translation. By doing
this, it forces the reader to engage with both the print’s
design, and text, and reconsider their dynamic.
For example, in the catalogue entry for the printfeatured on the cover, called Ono no Tofu, the author
points out how the poems included make reference tothe subjects claim to fame as the founder of Japanesestyle calligraphy (and later the subject of famous kabuki
play Ono no Tofu aoyagi suzuri or The green willow
ink stone of Ono no Tofu) through a variety of subtle
poetic epithets and play on words. The authors walkthe reader through the original text and its English
counterpart, which would have likely been overlooked
by non-Japanese speakers otherwise. Understanding
this relationship also clarifies some of the designer’s
choices in his or her portrayal of the subject, such as
the script having the same brushstroke quality as thewillow tree limbs that it is situated again, creating an
intentional balance between text and image.
In short, Plum Blossom & Green Willow is a joy
to read. The wealth of information is communicatedclearly and effectively, and can be read easily by
those with an academic background in the history ofJapanese culture, art, and literature, as well as those
who know very little about the subject. Interestingly,
the ways the editors Hanaoka Kiyoko and Clare Pollard
conveyed the key themes of the publication throughinnovative, strategic arrangement of text and image
suggest they took a number from the surimono theystudied.§Issue 95 Volume 16 Number 5 (October 2021)

Heavenby Kawakami Mieko
translated by Sam Bett and David
Boyd
Europa Editions (2021)
ISBN-13: 978-1609456214
Review by Susan Meehan

Heaven was originally published in Japan in 2009,
winning the 2010 Murasaki Prize for Literature. It
was translated into English by Sam Bett and David
Boyd in 2021. It predates Breasts and Eggs as wellas Ms Ice Sandwich. In Heaven graphic and extreme
teenage bullying takes centre stage which makes foruncomfortable reading at times. The book is set in theearly 1990s, before the advent of the internet and online
bullying or trolling.. The novel is also an exploration offriendship and its limits, victimisation, morals, religion
and ethics. It is undoubtedly a thought-provoking book,which I continue to digest months after having read it.
A shared experience of torment and harassment
brings together two 14-year-old classmates. Kojima
is bullied by the girls while the unnamed narrator,
nicknamed Eyes for his lazy eye, is mercilessly bulliedby the boys. He is, amongst other things, made toswallow pond water, toilet water, a goldfish, and scrapsof vegetable from the rabbit cage. The bullying gets
far worse. The girls pick on Kojima “for being poor anddirty”. They don’t realise that Kojima is intentionallyunclean. It is her way of connecting with or evoking
her impoverished beloved father who was divorced
by Kojima’s mother. The bullied teenagers bond when
Kojima begins leaving anonymous notes for Eyes.
Initially he thinks one of the bullies is tricking him, butplucks up the courage to meet the correspondent.
Eyes and Kojima secretly meet from time to time
while hiding their friendship at school. They derive
enormous strength from meeting and talking, while
ignoring each other at school.
It makes utter sense that Kojima would want totake Eyes to visit “Heaven” to find respite from therelentless bullying which they are subjected to atschool. They don’t quite make it there, but we get avivid impression of what Heaven is and what it means
to Kojima. (I will leave it up to the readers to find out
more about this Heaven.) In the same way that Kojima
tries to rationalise why and how her father ended up
living by himself after all the hard work he did for his
family, she wants to attribute some kind of meaning to
the bullying which she stoically withstands. “I have tobelieve there’s some kind of god, who sees everything
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that happens and understands the meaning of
everything we’ve been through when everything isover.” Eyes listens to Kojima and tries to make senseof what she says while also trying to work out his own
stance. Though their views begin to diverge, Eyes will
always treasure Kojima: “I never had another friend likeher. She was the only one.”
In an interview with Izzy Smith, Kawakami Mieko
reveals that she took inspiration for the book fromNietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra in exploring thecallousness of youth and how the meek survive in asociety that favours the strong. Kawakami says that
‘we have a tendency to categorise people as strong orweak” whereas “weakness is really what’s at the coreof, or a fundamental part of humanity’. ‘Everyone isborn as a powerless infant, and then they pass away ina similar position of vulnerability’.[1]Though bullying and discrimination remain
intractable societal issues, which need to be discussed,
Kawakami does so in an unremitting manner which
can be exhausting. Nothing is left to the imagination.
Perhaps that was Kawakami’s intent so that readers
can really begin to understand the true horror andbanality of bullying. There are times when Kojima’s
stoicism, veering on the masochistic feels rather
extreme, yet Kawakami’s characters are, at the sametime, believable, young, complex, still developing and,at times, rather toxic.
Despite finding the novel a little adolescent inplaces, particularly in its attempts at philosophicaldiscourse, it provides many positive moments ofreflection and I admire Kawakami for making us thinkwith empathy about the vulnerability of our infant andelderly selves. As with Breasts and Eggs, and in a similarly
redeeming way, this novel ends with hope and humanagency. Eyes continues to ponder the meaning ofexistence while actively embracing light and knowledge.
He decides to talk with his stepmother about
the bullying and makes a potentially life-changing
decision the immediate results of which lead him tosay, ‘Everything that I could see was beautiful. I criedand cried, standing there, surrounded by that beauty,
even though I wasn’t standing anywhere. Everything
was beautiful. Not that there was anyone to share it
with, anyone to tell. Just the beauty’.
Notes[1] Smith, Izzy (2021), ‘10 Questions for novelist Mieko
Kawakami: Assaying ‘Heaven’ – the Japanese writer onchildhood, vulnerability, and violence as a complement
to beauty’, The Arts Desk, Tuesday, 27 July 2021.§
5

Heaven by Mieko Kawakami:
Live
Staged by Jack McNamara
Southbank Centre (23 October 2021)
Review by Laurence Green
Distilled to its purest essence, Mieko
Kawakami’s Heaven is a work about bullying. Whatit means to bully, and to be bullied. But it is also acharacter study - a sometimes charming, sometimes
uneasy unfurling of friendship between two middleschoolers. There is the unnamed male narrator (played
here by Nino Furuhata) - cruelly dubbed ‘Eyes’ by hisbullying tormentors due to his lazy eye. And thenthere is Kojima (Grace Akatsu) - the mysteriously
quirky girl who offers him a glimmer of hope amidst
his seemingly unending torments. Responding to her
proposition that ‘we should be friends’, the two misfits
strike up a correspondence with one-another, letterspassed back and forth between school classes, and ournarrator quickly discovers that Kojima faces troubles allof her own.
Presented at the Southbank Centre as part of thisyear’s London Literature Festival, this staging by Jack
McNamara, Artistic Director of Live Theatre Newcastle,is billed as a kind of live reading, but in truth is every
bit a kind of fully realised theatrical two-hander, and
it is testament to the skill of the actors playing thetwo protagonists that the central relationship at theheart of the narrative is drawn into even tighter focus.
Reading Heaven in book form, we - of course - flesh
out the characters in our minds’ eye with a specificlook, sound and feel. What is most striking about thisperformance is how utterly and completely the two
actors resembled that mental image in both look andvoice - springing almost fully formed from the page tothe stage.
As the narrator, Furuhata has the lion’s shareof the work to do, building a character that is both
vulnerable, but also with the requisite drive to point
the narrative where it needs to go. He also has thetricky task of flipping into the roles of the tormentors
themselves - switching back and forth between thebullied and the bullies in a lightning quick act of role
reversal. Here, the narrator is placed in stark contrast
to the explosive delivery of the bullies, who bothverbally and in physical gesture, dominate his onstage presence. If anything, this makes their actions all
the more reprehensible - conveyed by one actor, we
realise the interchangeability of the uniformed middleschool students, and the harsher implications of the6

power dynamics at work here. The narrator could beanyone, lazy eye or not - but through ill chance or asimple whim, it is he who ends up on the receiving endof the kicks and beatings of the other boys, instead of
the other way around.
Kojima, as played by Akatsu, initially comes acrossas cheery and energetic - the natural counterpoint to
the more vulnerable, subdued narrator. It is only as
things progress that we begin to see the complexities
and nuances of her individual quirks open up intoa gaping void of barely concealed agonies. In rare
moments, these bubble to the surface - Akatsu bringing
near-tears to Kojima’s face, or looking questioningly
out into the darkness of the auditorium for answers
that never come. We are never told quite what haunts
Kojima, though we know the class bullies taunt her forher ‘dirtiness’. Her idiosyncrasies, what she calls her‘signs’, mark her out as different from the others, andfor all that she finds in common with the narrator, sheremains, to a degree, at a remove from us in a way henever is. In a particularly powerful moment toward theend of the performance, Kojima herself becomes thenarrator, delivering a few lines about herself in the third
person as she is forced to confront the bullies and theirmost awful conceit yet. This makes for a compelling
moment of dissonance, while also introducing athought-provoking element about the ownership ofKojima’s body, her physical presence, that is perhaps
more understated in the original novel.
With the actors seated behind lecterns and mics,
the set-up is minimal in the extreme, the lighting
similarly stark. Behind them, on a raised pedestal,
the third element in this intriguing staging - gluing
everything together. This comes in the form ofJapanese musician and vocal performer Hatis Noit.
Tipped by The Guardian as a one-to-watch and witha debut album in the works, her style is a perfect fit
for the uneasiness of Heaven itself, sliding gracefully
between skeletal ambient soundscapes conjured into
being through loop pedals and samplers to mournful
vocal plaintiffs that draw inspiration from bothclassical Japanese gagaku music as well as operaticstyles, Bulgarian and Gregorian chanting. The effect piecing together snippets of vocal elements - createsa kind of collage-like art-music that at times rises tothe fore as interludes, momentary breathers between
the intensity of the actorial dialogue, before fallingaway again; the sound of the breeze through leaves
underscoring the poignancy of the work’s final lines.
Just as in Kawakami’s previous work in English
translation - the monumentally successful Breasts
Issue 95 Volume 16 Number 5 (October 2021)

& Eggs – Heaven raises difficult questions about therole of parenthood and the positionality of the female
body and is similarly unflinching in the manner inwhich it confronts its central thesis. At times coming
on more like a philosophy primer than a work offiction, the performance reaches its fever pitch in a
stirring showdown between the narrator and one of
the boys bullying him. The narrator remains convincedthat he is picked on because of his lazy eye, while thebully offers up the devastating riposte that they doso simply because they want to, because they feellike it, because - perhaps - the narrator simply lets it
happen to him. To reveal what happens next would beto spoil the climactic resolution between the narrator,
Kojima and the bullies - but suffice to say, in a typically
Kawakami-esque way, it invariably raises as manyquestions as it offers answers.
This constant questioning, this picking away atwhat we come to perceive as normal or abnormal,

is Kawakami at her most thought provoking. The
unique charm of this staging of Heaven is the intensityof characterisation it places on its central duo - thenarrator and Kojima. Their relationship, fumbling
between friendship and exasperation in the face ofincomprehensible hardships, is the beating heart ofhumanity and depth of feeling in a world that in allother ways seems cold and cruel. Breathing life into
the characters, Furuhata and Akatsu offer up a stirringtake on Kawakami’s novel, perfectly underscored by
Noit’s embracing soundscapes. The sharp intensity of
Heaven’s central theme of bullying remains as icy as
ever, but in this brief moment, in the spotlights of aSouthbank stage, the prospect of hope offered up in
the novel shines stronger than ever too.§Queer Japan

impossible to showcase and explore them all within a
two-hour film.

Co-written, directed and edited by Graham Kolbeins

Join us on Monday 13 December 2021 for a informal
online discussion of Heaven in our monthly book club.
Visit our website for more information and to book.

Screened at the Queer East Film Festival in London(2021)
Review by Jenni Schofield

Queer Japan, directed by Graham Kolbeins in 2019, is adocumentary which explores the LGBTQ+ community
in Japan, from Shinjuku Ni-chome to Osaka andbeyond. There is a core cast of individuals that the film
focuses on interviews as an illustrative view of queer
culture in Japan, notably featuring a well-known dragqueen called Sato Vivienne, co-founder of G-Men andmanga artist Tagame Gengoro, and butoh performer
Matsuda Atsushi, among many other well-known
and lesser-known artists, activists, performers, andindividuals.
As a part of the showing at Queer East Film
Festival 2021, there was a Q&A session with director
Graham Kolbeins via video call after the screening of
the film in London. This proved an exciting opportunity
to explore Queer Japan, and the background which
inspired the project in the first place. Kolbeins was
extremely kind and passionate about the projectand understanding of the limitations of the film namely, that certain communities within the LGBTQ+
culture were limited, or omitted entirely, due to time
restrictions. After all, there are an infinite number ofdenominations and identities, and it would be truly
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Kolbeins features a multitude of scenes anddemographics within the queer umbrella, in terms ofrepresenting the present-day businesses and physicalspaces for queer folks to exist, while also examininga brief history of queerness in Japan. In Tokyo, themajority of these queer spaces and businesses are in
Shinjuku’s Ni-chome in the Shinjuku ward, comprisingof a few streets packed to bursting with hundredsof queer-owned snack bars and nightclubs, as well
as a multitude of shops, boutiques, and love hotels.
Most of the bars and nightclubs are insular, with very
few windows or street level floors, providing a levelof security for those who are unable or unwillingto publicly come out. These bars often are highly
specialised for a subsection or subculture of queer folks,
for example, okama bars mostly for gay men, BDSM and7

kink-friendly nightclubs, and bars for lesbian women
only. Queer Japan stars some of these establishments,
such as Goldfinger, a bar which is technically open
to all gender identities and sexualities, but reserves
Saturdays for lesbian (and importantly, cisgender)
women only. As the description implies, Goldfinger
does not allow transgender women on its “women
only” nights, highlighting the issue of transphobia
even within the queer community.
As a disabled member of the queer community,
as well as a researcher of disability in Japan, it wasrefreshing for me personally to see deaf and disabledqueer folks featured in Queer Japan. In one segment,
the audience are introduced to a couple who work as
Japanese Sign Language (JSL) interpreters for queer
people, a distinction made necessary by the factthat the signs for LGBTQ+, queer, trans, and othervocabulary associated with non-cisgender and nonheterosexual identities are not well known by many
JSL interpreters. As a result, deaf and disabled queer
folk who use JSL to communicate are left without
access to events, spaces, and perhaps most crucially,adequate medical care, as they are unable to accessqueer-specific healthcare, such as medical transitions
for non-cisgender deaf folks. Queer Japan raises
awareness for this organisation as one part of the fightfor proper access to medical care for deaf and disabledqueer people in Japan, and does so beautifully,
integrating the struggles of one part of the LGBTQ+
community, rather than segregating these concerns
and treating them as irrelevant for hearing and abledqueer audiences.
Queer Japan takes a different approach thanwould be expected in a documentary about queerness
and the LGBTQ+ community, opting to omit historicalrepresentations and strict retellings of socio-political
history and events by a narrator in favour of passing
the microphone, so to speak, to the community
themselves. In other words, Kolbeins removes himself
from the film as much as possible, allowing themembers of the queer community in Japan to tell theirstories and share that which is important to them. The
documentary serves as a miniature ethnography ofthe queer identities in Japan, and as a collaboration
between filmmaker and participants, forming a sort ofautoethnography of a community through a variety ofvoices from that group of people, as opposed to an
outside researcher making “the strange familiar, andthe familiar strange”, as the saying in anthropology
goes.[1]Kolbeins’ work is not limited to this one film; hehas collaborated with queer voices from across theworld, as well as in a documentary web series titled
Rad Queers, which sought to explore the world ofqueer activists, artists, and “those working to make theworld a better place”.[2] He also co-edited both thefirst anthology of gay manga in English titled Massive:
Gay Erotic Manga and the Men Who Make It, and The
Passion of Gengoroh Tagame: The Master of Gay Erotic
Manga, alongside Anne Ishii and Chip Kidd. Kolbeins
and Ishii also co-founded a fashion brand called
Massive Goods in 2013, which in their own words“creates and agents queer and feminist art, comics andfashion, by artists from Japan”, featuring artists such as
Gengoroh Tagame, Rokudenashiko, and Jiraya in theirclothing.[3]Watching Queer Japan feels like attending a pride
event; a celebration of everything LGBTQ+ within
Japanese culture and beyond, while acknowledging
the socio-political hurdles and injustices that stillaffect the community today. Voices from throughout
the queer spectrum shared their lives and stories
with us, the audience, to both raise awareness andrejoice in their queerness and self-love. Kolbeins doesa remarkable job of moving himself as a director
from the piece, allowing the participants to speak
for themselves and tell the stories they wish to tell.
Although the documentary arguably avoids topics
of transphobia within the LGBTQ+ community itself,
the inclusion of non-abled and non-hearing voices
within the film creates a true representation of how
diverse the queer community is, focusing instead on
the positives that make the community great, rather
than the negatives, sub-divisions, and in-fighting. In
summary, Queer Japan is a depiction of queer joy, andone I highly recommend you watch.
Queer Japan is available as a DVD, Blu-Ray andas a VOD from various streaming services in certain
regions.
Notes[1] To read more about the “familiar strange” inanthropology, check out Robert Myers (2011)“The Familiar Strange and the Strange Familiar in
Anthropology and Beyond”, Bulletin of the General
Anthropology Division, 18:2.
[2] Graham Kolbeins’ work portfolio: https://grahamkolbeins.com/work (accessed 22/10/2021).
[3] Massive Goods’ About page: https://massive-goods.
com/pages/about (accessed 22/10/2021).§