Kunisuke Hirano kh2mt@virginia.edu

The Shifting Boundary of Minority Identities:
The Japanese American Citizens League and Same-Sex Marriage

Introduction

Tadayuki John Ito 1 , a Sansei (third-generation) young professional JapaneseAmerican explained that LGBT issues are still touchy among LGBT individuals, but notwithin the whole Japanese American community:“I feel it is still a touchy issue. Not within the Japanese American
community as a whole, but with individuals in the Japanese American
community like myself. As a Japanese American I want to be known as such.
I don’t want to be known as gay. I am not ashamed to be gay, yet I am notproud. It is just the way I am. But I do feel a sense of pride to be Japanese. I
am Japanese 1st, Gay 2nd and American 3rd.”This paper will analyze the experience of LGBT (Lesbian Gay Bisexual
Transgender) Japanese Americans.2 The Japanese American Citizens League (JACL),
the national face of the Japanese American, appears to have long been sensitive toLGBT issues and officially affirmed the community’s diversity. Since 1994, the JACL
has been officially supporting same-sex marriage due to their view that the “same”
injustice was presented by anti-miscegenation laws as by placing a ban on same-sex
marriage; one cannot choose one’s race any more than one’s their sexual orientation.
This paper, referring to cases of mixed-race Japanese Americans and LGBT JapaneseAmericans’ positions in discourse among Japanese Americans, will analyze theinclusiveness and boundaries presented by Japanese Americans’ sense of “we” as aminority group. This paper explores whether their notion of “we” includes otherAll interviewees’ names are pseudonym.
Actually, LGBT people do not always regard each other as the same category. For example, expressions
such as “GLB” or “L/G” are also used to clarify the subject group. Especially transgender people havebeen historically excluded by the other groups since they are regarded as “sick.” For more about LGBT
politics, see Stryker (2006, 1-18). Here, I would like to use the term LGBT to describe a group of sexual
minorities.

1

2

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Kunisuke Hirano kh2mt@virginia.edu

minority groups such as LGBTs, and treats them as the same minority. Using
information obtained from 13 semi-structured interviews conducted in San Francisco
and Los Angeles in August 2008, and based on articles from The Pacific Citizen, thenewspaper of the JACL, I argue that in the eyes of many Japanese Americans being
LGBT is still regarded as being more ‘marginal’ than being from a different or unusual
race. LGBT Japanese Americans use their own inclusive notion of “we” in contrast with
the notion of “we” held by the majority of Japanese Americans.
As Asian Americans debate the increasing complexity and diversity of the
Asian American community, often (but not exclusively) discussed marginalized groups
are gay Asian American men, lesbians and bisexuals and multiracial Asian Americans(Okihiro 1994, Williams and Houston 1997, Williams-Leon 2001).3 Even during thegay movement of the 1960’s and 70’s, which took influence from the civil rights
movement, Asian American activists who were lesbian or gay often did not reveal theirsexual preferences in order not to jeopardize their efforts (Leong 1996, 6). JapaneseAmericans were by no means an exception to this.
At the same time, the absence of sexuality-related research in the area ofJapanese American Studies contributes to the relative invisibility of LGBT JapaneseAmericans. Silence among scholars about sexuality is related to a fear of being regarded
as one who conducts “incomplete and bad scholarship.”4 Robertson also contends thatthrough the title of her anthology, Same-Sex Cultures and Sexualities, she advocates “akind of ‘cultural physics’ in which sexuality operates as a vector that occasions multiple
3

Originally, Japanese Americans married only within their succinct ethnic groups due toanti-miscegenation laws and traditions of ethnic cohesiveness; this was especially true before WWII.
However, presently about half of Japanese Americans marry a person belonging to another racial/ethnic
group; this is the highest rate of intermarriage among Asian Americans according to King-O’riain (2006).
Therefore, the population of mixed-race Japanese Americans keeps increasing. On the other hand, thepresence of LGBT Japanese Americans is remarkably not as visible as mixed-race ones.
4
Robertson, who conducted research about Takarazuka in Japan states “Apparently, the threat encoded in
the insidious expression ‘It takes one to know one’ overpowered the fear of incomplete or even bad
scholarship. Unfortunately, it is still too often the case that indifference, ignorance, and prejudice prevent
researchers from considering the historical and cultural significance of gender attribution and sexual
practices even when these have been and remain part of a very public discourse. Imagine scholars fifty or
one hundred years from now writing about marriage in the late twentieth-century United States without
mentioning the enormous amount of attention, popular and legal alike, paid to the issue of same-sex
marriage.” (2004, 3)

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Kunisuke Hirano kh2mt@virginia.edu

interactions among groups of humans, and that transmits through manifold media
different kinds of energy among humans.” (Robertson 2004, 2) The notion of “cultural
physics,” the interactions of power, is applicable when thinking about the participationof people (both straight and LGBT) in associations such as Japanese Americanorganizations, as the relationships people build in these organizations are the subject of“cultural physics.” Here, by examining the relationship between ethnic organizations
and ethnic LGBT individuals, this paper can elucidate one aspect of cultural physics.
When considering the issues at play with mixed-race and LGBT JapaneseAmericans, a key term and concept we must employ is that of passing, which Teresa
Williams repeatedly illustrates (Williams and Houston 1997, Williams 2001). Somemixed-race Japanese Americans try to pass as members of what they feel to be a moreprestigious ethnic group and may or may not show interest in Japanese Americanorganizations. Others might fail to pass as Japanese or another race, and then reconsider
their identity. Of course, there are people who can pass themselves off as Caucasian, forexample, but feel a strong sense of identity as a Japanese American. Similarly, LGBT
Japanese Americans can pass themselves off as straight so as not to be excluded or feelashamed. The role of passing is one of the clear similarities between multiracial andLGBT people (Williams-Leon 2001) amongst Asian Americans, and, therefore, it can beapplied to the case of Japanese Americans. Through passing, mixed-race and LGBT
individuals do not visibly present their reality and therefore, monoracial andheterosexual individuals recognize them as being part of their notion of “we.”At the same time, much of the racial discourse, be it monoracial or multiracial,while acknowledging and even celebrating multiple racial and ethnic identities, isframed within the contexts of compulsory heterosexuality and institutionalized
heterosexism (Williams-Leon 2001, 149). In this regard, Eng and Hom advocate for aqueer perspective in Asian American Studies. They argue that:“From a queer studies point of view, to insert questions of sexuality, sexual3

Kunisuke Hirano kh2mt@virginia.edu

identification, and sexual orientation into our concept of Asian American
identity would immediately help to dislodge a static, outdated, and exclusively
racial notion of who “we” are. Queer identity does not fit comfortably in the
broadlypolarized(andheterosexist)
nationalist/nativist
orassimilationist/feminist debate that has shaped Asian American studies andpropelled analyses of Asian American racial formation during the 1980s and1990s.”(Eng and Hom 1998, 3)
Likewise, presenting queer experiences and perspectives would further facilitate
Japanese American studies in terms of providing an alternative paradigm of who “they”
are. Minorities who lack in numbers have to present a more inclusive notion to convinceothers that they are the “same” as the majority. For example, sexuality will be regarded
as a “less significant” category when compared to race and ethnicity. Therefore, LGBT
Japanese Americans use a broad notion such as the “civil rights movement” to describe
an issue or project their minority experience, utilizing their experiences at theintersection of ethnicity and sexuality, rather than sexuality alone. In the next section, I
will overview the discourse trajectory of the Japanese American Citizen’s league(JACL), the nationwide Japanese American civil rights organization. This paper does
not focus only on JACL and JACL statements do not always represent the ultimate
consensus of all Japanese Americans. However, since the JACL is the one of the mostsensitive organizations concerned with Japanese American ethnicity and rights in the
United States, their discourse should be suitable to examine Japanese American opinion
leaders’ general political stance.

The JACL overview: the changing field of the organization

The JACL is the only nationwide Japanese American Civil Rights organization.
Historically the JACL has helped abolish racially discriminative laws directly affecting
Japanese Americans, such as the laws banning naturalization of Issei (first-generation
Japanese American) and anti-miscegenation laws. The JACL has also functioned as theofficial representative of Japanese American interests when government agencies have4

Kunisuke Hirano kh2mt@virginia.edu

sought a cohesive Japanese American voice in regards to various policies and issues.5
From the first stages of its formation in 1928 to the early 1950’s, the JACL’s
aim was to improve the social status of Japanese Americans and to make the majority ofAmericans understand that Japanese Americans were loyal citizens, often negotiating
within an anti-Japanese atmosphere. Hence, the JACL’s main focus was concerned
exclusively with Japanese American interests. In other words, the political and social
situation in America from the 1920’s to the 1950’s did not afford the JACL the leisure of
considering the interests of other minority groups (ethnic or otherwise).6
During the 1960s, the JACL was affected by the civil rights movement thatemerged from African American communities. Besides dealing with issues of racial
identity and the socio-economic welfare of their communities, Japanese American youth
questioned and challenged the legitimacy of their community leaders as well as theauthority of American social institution (Takahashi 1997, 155). This stance was partly
enabled by the upward social mobility of Japanese Americans after World War II(Takahashi 1997, 158; Kurashige 2002, 127-34).

In the post-war era, the JACL’s

expanding ‘frame of reference’ is prominently displayed in its interactions with otherethnic minority groups such as other Asian, African American and Latino groups. Morespecifically, groups that only a few years before would have been deemed external
radicals began to work cooperatively with the JACL. The JACL, to some degree,
incorporated the more radically progressive thoughts of a new generation of JapaneseAmericans, yet it still remained moderate in its stance towards wider social issues.
According to the 2007 Chapter President’s Handbook, the organization boasted
over 20,000 members in 113 chapters located in 26 states and in Japan (JACL 2007,
17).7 Especially after the success of the Redress Movement, in which the government
apologized for the internment camps of WWII and paid $20,000 USD in compensation

5

Such as the time of internment, abolishing anti-miscegenation law, establishing the G.I. Fiancées Act.
For more information about JACL’s historical achievement, see Chuman (1976) and Hosokawa (1982).
6
For the early stage of the JACL, see Chuman (1976:252) and Hosokawa (1982:27-32)
7
For the organizational structure of the JACL, see figure 1.

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Kunisuke Hirano kh2mt@virginia.edu

to each individual who had been sent to an internment camp, the JACL positively
committed itself to issues not only directly related to Japanese Americans, but also more
broadly associated with Asian American issues. Moreover, in 1992, Lillian Chiyeko
Kimura was inaugurated as the first female president of the JACL and passed
resolutions condemning sexual harassment, supporting family leave legislation andaffirming women’s abortion rights (Yang Murray 1998, 286). Finally, in 1994 the JACL
began openly advocating the right of same-sex marriage. More recently, there have evenbeen suggestions to remove the word “Japanese” from the organization’s name (Pacific
Citizen, February 15-March 6, 2008). The JACL is no longer an organization
exclusively for those of Japanese ancestry. According to their advocacy, one of theirobjectives is to “Challenge bigotry and discrimination and promote equality for all
Americans and others who reside in this country regardless of race, creed, gender,
religion, or sexual orientation” (2007-2008 JACL Program for Action, adopted by the
National Council, June 2006, Chandler, Arizona). 8 The JACL now also says that
“Today, with inter-racial and multi-ethnic marriages changing the face of the JapaneseAmerican community, the JACL faces additional challenges in looking to its future andto the future of the Japanese American community.”9 This statement illustrates the
JACL’s sensitivity to the diversity of the Japanese Americans’ community.

The boundary of the issue: what is “our” issue and what is “their” issue?

However, even if radical JACLers try to broaden their frame of action, they still
have to negotiate its boundary. Gamson (1983) argues that “to sustain collective action,
the targets identified by the frame must successfully bridge abstract and concrete. By
connecting broader socio-cultural forces with human agents who are appropriate targets
8

JACL website: http://timothytest.net/jacl/jacl_v2/about/program-for-action.htm; accessed November 16,
2008
9“JACL Today in Organizational Background”, http://www.jacl.org/about/about.htm accessed November
16, 2008. In addition, the phrase “We are also affected by the changing demographics of race, ethnicity
and age” implies the aging problem of Japanese American community (“About the Japanese American
Citizens League” http://www.jacl.org/about/about.htm Accessed June 5, 2011).

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of collective action, one can get the heat into cognition.” (Gamson 1992, 33). Radical
constructivism, as presented by Melucci, often runs a risk of losing the members ofcollective action: “Action is an interactive, constructive process within the field of
possibilities and limits recognized by the actors. The accent on the limits to the processof construction, which always take place within the boundaries of a given field, avoids
the risk of a radical constructivism that would be difficult to sustain” (Melucci 1995,
61).
Similarly, when the JACL was in disputes about same-sex marriage, somemembers thought it was too radical and not “our issue” (Iiyama 2002, 5). Also, someNisei (second-generation Japanese Americans) thought the expression “API” or “Asianand Pacific Islander”, was inappropriate to describe “our” group (Murakami 1997,
171-2). However, if non-Japanese Asians and Pacific Islanders were excluded frommembership and their issues dealt with elsewhere, the JACL’s role and influence in the
United States would be significantly smaller. Therefore, it would be difficult to keep theorganization going given the fact that there has been little new Japanese immigrationcompared to immigration from other Asian countries such as China, Korea, Vietnam and
the Philippines. The total population of Asian Americans cannot be ignored.10 Melucci
again:“Nevertheless, without the capability of perceiving and making sense of its
boundaries, action would not be possible. In fact, radical constructivism finishes
by destroying the relational dimension of social action and presents itself as theultimate version, perhaps more sophisticated, of a voluntaristic paradigm”(Melucci 1995, 61).

By presenting alternatives, the JACL has changed both membership and the area ofaction.
Indeed, the history of the JACL can be regarded as the construction of a
10

Asians make up about 4.38 percent of the U.S. population (U.S. Census Bureau
http://factfinder.census.gov/servlet/DTTable?_bm=y&-geo_id=01000US&-ds_name=ACS_2009_5YR_G
00_&-redoLog=false&-mt_name=ACS_2009_5YR_G2000_B02001 accessed June 30, 2011)

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collective identity among Japanese Americans. However, do Japanese Americans inthese organizations really even have a collective identity? The following section will
analyze the trajectory of the JACL to include same-sex marriage as an issue belonging
to “we” – a “we” opposed to a conservative “they,” who are reluctant to learn from thepast and to change.

The JACL and same-sex marriage in 1994: from Honolulu chapter to national
board

When the Hawaiian legislature banned same-sex marriages, the Honolulu
Chapter of the JACL initiated a resolution supporting same-sex marriage at the February
28, 1994 Southwest Pacific District meeting (Iiyama 2002, 4). Ruth Mizobe, presidentof the Southwest Pacific District pointed out, “This is an issue of social equality. Our
position is not an endorsement of homosexuality but to denounce discrimination…thegovernment should not deny gays and lesbians equal benefits and privileges andsanctions that are accorded to all married couples. We are advocating for equal
treatment, not for special or extra privilege.” She also said that “Historically, a parallel
to same sex marriages is marriages of mixed races.” (Pacific Citizen, May 6-12, 1994)
On May 21 the JACL National Board dealt with this issue. Some felt same-sex
marriage was “not a civil right issue but a moral one;” or “that it was outside of theprovince of JACL;” “not really relevant” to our organization (Iiyama 2002, 4). In
response to these opinions, some people pointed out that when Issei immigrated to the
U.S., interracial marriage was banned by state laws as it was considered “morally
repugnant” and “unnatural”. Others argued that the JACL was extending their definitionof civil rights and following a natural progression by extending civil rights to all.
(Iiyama 2002, 4)
Although the argument that anti-same-sex marriage laws were similar toanti-miscegenation laws of the past persuaded many members of the JACL that8

Kunisuke Hirano kh2mt@virginia.edu

extending the notion of “civil rights” may be a logically reasonable thing to do, many
Japanese Americans had a tough time accepting gay issues and even gay people. In
Chizu Iiyama’s article, there are two further statements made by JACLers which reflect
the general sentiment of the day of those who supported minority rights in general,
including LGBT rights. The first one is by Lia Sigemura, former staff member of the
National JACL who declared that:“It’s no wonder that many of you might believe that the issues of
lesbians and gays are not real Japanese American issues, because
many people like me, when we come out are forced to leaveorganizations like the JACL who simply do not welcome us and do
not address our issues of concern as issues serious to JapaneseAmericans. Sometimes we have to leave our communities, andsometimes we even have to leave our families. But times arechanging and many of us who’ve learned our lessons from the Nisei
generation are here to stand up and to be counted.” (Iiyama 2002:5)
Sigemura’s statement clearly shows that at that time, Japanese American communities
were not friendly to gay people and, by referring specifically to the Nisei experience,
she tries to connect Japanese American history as an oppressed, excluded minority
group with that of gay people’s current experiences.
In addition, Congressman Norman Mineta, one of the leaders of the Redress
Bill 442, appealed:“When we fought for redress, we won. We could not have won thatbattle if we had stood alone. If organizations had taken the position
that redress is a Japanese American issue and had nothing to do with
African Americans, Hispanic Americans, Jewish Americans, or withgay and lesbian Americans…they joined with us because they
understood and believed in our argument that a threat to anybody’s
civil rights is a threat to the civil rights of all Americans. And they
acted.”

Mineta also spoke of Congressman Barney Frank who was openly gay and made redress
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one of his top priorities (Iiyama 2002, 5).
Both Mineta and Frank broaden the frame from a sexual minority issue to alarger civil rights issue, a frame that can include an array of differences, from a variety
of different categories. Specifically, Mineta’s statement connecting the redress
movement and the experience of homosexual individuals was effective in persuading
JACL national conference attendees to vote “no” on Resolution 6, which would havebanned same-sex marriage. Claire Omura, a delegate at the convention, had been
instructed by her chapter to vote against the resolution but she changed her mind after
hearing Mineta’s speech and decided to vote in favor of same sex marriage (AsiaWeek
March24, 1995).
At the 1994 convention, there were 30 votes for on resolution 6 and 50 against,
4 split votes and 11 abstentions (Iiyama 2002, 5). From that moment forward, the JACL
officially supported same sex marriage. In 1998, the JACL National Convention in
Seattle decided to officially acknowledge in the JACL constitution the rights of all its
members regardless of sexual orientation (Iiyama 2002, 5).

Debates in the Pacific Citizen: civil rights or moral issues?

Before and after the JACL National Board meeting, there were big debates
among JACL members. In the Pacific Citizen, the official newspaper of the JACL, theopinions of both sides, both for and against same sex marriage were presented. One
Christian woman who felt strongly opposed to the decision to support same sex
marriage wrote:“The term ‘same-sex’ is euphemism for sodomy. Sodomy is not a civil rights
issue. It is a spiritual condition of fallen man’s sinful nature…In closing, may I
respectfully and lovingly urge the National Board to rescind its decision. God
loves the sinner but hates the sin. For this cause did He send Jesus to die on the
cross for us, to die a substitutionary death.” (Pacific Citizen, June 24-30, 1994)

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Mountain Plains District Council Governor Sharon Ishii Jordan said the JACL should
not take positions on same-sex marriage because it “doesn’t affect a majority ofmembers.” (Pacific Citizen, April 1-7, 1994) Likewise, Jeff Itami, the governor of The
Intermountain District wrote “I would like to see this go not as a National Board
decision but brought as a resolution to the National Council……I don’t understand why
it is here before us.” (Pacific Citizen, May 27-June 2, 1994) Reid Tateoka, Mt. Olympus
Chapter member, was concerned that “Many people think it is not a civil rights issue;
many think it will have repercussions on our organization generally……the membershipand leadership of the chapter.” The negative effect on membership was demonstrated bysome JACL members quitting.11 At that time, the JACL was not financially well-off.
Fred Y Hirasuna’s comment in the “Letters from Readers” section represents anothernegative response toward supporting same sex marriage:“We need more young members. We still need the financial support of the older
generation. We need to strengthen the entire organization by paying more
attention to the problems of weaker chapters. We need more regard for chaptersand members in setting policies for the entire organization. We do not need a
mud hunt for taking positions on civil rights issues which at least for the present,
have remote concern with the organizational problems of JACL. We are not the
ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union).” (Pacific Citizen, June24-30, 1994)

On the other hand, those who supported same-sex marriage emphasized theissue as being one ofcivil rights, arguing that anti-same-sex marriage laws weresimilar to the anti-miscegenation laws in effect in the United States until 1967, which
had had a profound effect on the lives of Japanese Americans. William Kaneko, JACL
vice president for public affairs notes:“Some have confused the same-sex marriage issue as a moral rather than civilrights issue, asserting that gay marriages are ‘unnatural’ and ‘unhealthy’ tosociety. Bear in mind that the same type of ‘morality’ justified the prohibition of
11

Esther Taylor, a female Caucasian, long-standing supporter of the JACL withdrew her membershipbecause of JACL’s approval of same-sex marriage (Pacific Citizen, July 8-14, 1994).

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inter-racial marriages up until 1967. In total, thirty-eight states at one timeprohibited whites from marrying American Indians, Africans, Chinese, Japanese,
Hindus, Koreans, and Malayans. Inter-racial marriages were deemed as having‘harmful social effects resulting in the production of a delegate and bastard
offspring’ which would populate the states with a ‘delegated and ignoble
population, incapable of moral, and intellectual development.’ How soon weforget.” (Pacific Citizen, June24-30, 1994)

Moreover, Neal Taniguchi, JACL vice president of general operations says, inaccordance with Mizobe, that:“The concept of same-sex marriage does not promote of legitimate
homosexuality; it merely extends certain basic rights and privileges to couples
who do not fit the “traditional” definition of a married couple. Historically,
marriage is a religious institution, but in this country, it has become a civil
institution, as well……a person in this country does not have the right toimpose one’s morals on another, much like we cannot impose one form of
religion on everyone.” (Pacific Citizen, June24-30, 1994)

Both Kaneko and Taniguchi place primary focus on marriage rights rather thanhomosexuality, buttressing their arguments by connecting with anti-miscegenation lawsthat deprived Japanese Americans of the right to marry regardless of race.
Usually, the division of opinions among JACL members was mainly
generational (Takahashi 1997; Hosokawa 1992). However, this issue also revealed
regional differences. Almost all the chapters that reacted positively to this issue werein coastal regions. When I conducted the interviews in San Francisco asking about theirnotion of “being minority”, many referred to the regional character there. 12 The
headquarters of the JACL are in San Francisco and about 70 percent of JACL members
reside in California. Therefore, the JACL stance is strongly influenced by the politicalcharacter of California residents. Bill Hosokawa noted this in his column:

12

The author conducted interviews with the people of the various Japanese American organizations
including the staff of the elderly care facility Kimochi, Inc. in San Francisco and during Nisei Week, thebiggest Japanese American festival in Los Angeles.

12

Kunisuke Hirano kh2mt@virginia.edu“The voting pattern among the district governors is curious. The
three Pacific Coastal districts endorsed support of same-sex marriage.
Central California and The Midwest and Eastern districts abstained.
Is there a geographical influence on ideology? I don’t know. Will
there be resentment in the hinterland that the organization is being
dominated by coastal liberals? There is evidence to support fears thatthe rift will widen and eventually JACL will disintegrate.” (Pacific
Citizen 1994, June 10-16)

This “geographical influence of ideology” is similar to the issue that arose in mymaster’s thesis (Hirano 2009), concerning the fact that people in San Francisco have amore inclusive sense of “we.” In San Francisco, the “they” were people and situations
apart from San Francisco and outside its general realm. In contrast, “we” and “they”
could be interpreted as a conflict between what might be called “coastal liberals” and“hinterland conservatives.”
On the other hand, in the discursive space of the Pacific Citizen newspaper, I
rarely encountered the opinions of Japanese American Lesbians and/or Gay men inconcerned with the 1994 JACL debate. An exception was Mr. and Mrs. Nakatani,
parents who lost their three sons: one from racial hatred, and the other two from AIDS.
In 2005, Nisei actor George Takei officially ‘came out’13 publicly becoming the “face”
of gay Japanese Americans. For example, there was a widely circulated article about
Takei having wedded his long-time male partner at the Japanese American National
Museum (Pacific Citizen September 19-October 2, 2008). Besides Takei and Lia
Sigemura, however, people who can be assumed to have been strongly connected to thisissue did not appear to have a voice in The Pacific Citizen. In regard to this point,
Timothy Wright, an HIV activist and scholar gives us a hint by highlighting times whensexuality tends to be featured: He explains that male sexuality is a “safe” topic
providing references to it are made in “tones of indignation, repulsion, anger, or purity”
or in the form of degrading jokes and tabloid articles about immorality and crime;
however, the more personal the connection to homosexuality, the more often the subject
13

The term “come out” means “Clarifying one’s sexual orientation.”

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is shrouded in silence (Wright 2003, 280, cited by Robertson 2003, 5).
These theories might explain why even the Pacific Citizen, shines a positive
light on LGBT issues, as there are few “visible” LGBT Japanese Americans in thearticles presented in its pages. In essence, Pacific Citizen writers and editors feel free tospeak in the abstract about LGBT issues, but are still not comfortable providing directcoverage of or naming the LGBT people in their midst.

The experience of gay and lesbian Japanese Americans

Next, this paper will examine how people who are familiar with JapaneseAmerican organizations interpret the existence of LGBT issues, especially when they
connect their experiences as an ethnic minority with those of sexual minorities.
While conducting fieldwork interviews San Francisco and Los Angeles, I asked
my informants whether or not their experiences in their communities ever made themthink about the issues faced by other minorities, such as sexual minorities. The answers
I received varied from individual to individual. Some said “definitely(yes),” some said“no,” while others did not refer to sexual minorities at all and instead talked about other
Asian American communities.
One Yonsei (fourth-generation Japanese Americans) college student Mike
Takano told me that LBGT issues are still “touchy” within the Los Angeles based
Japanese American community:

MT: …and (in addition to how to continue involvement in theJapanese American community), I think one more big thing toaddress is gays and lesbians…that is overlapping the JapaneseAmerican community. In general, sexuality is a really touchy issue
among Asian American communities, especially Japanese.
KH: Do you think sexuality is still taboo in the Japanese American
community compared to other Asian American communities such as
the Chinese American community?
MT: In JA, I think so because we don’t actually have a space for14

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LGBT people. We have a position14 but we haven’t done anything
last year and other organizations, compared to the Filipino
community, where LGBT people are more welcomed and people
embrace who they are as well, and I think that should be really
included in the Japanese American community as well. In (JapaneseAmerican) student Union, I don’t know any people who are open
about their sexuality.
KH: Which do you think are touchier? Hapa (mixed-race Asian)issues or LGBT issues?
MT: I think definitely LGBT. I think Hapa communities are
becoming embraced. If it was 20 years ago, it was a big issue. There
was Hapa organization but it kinda disappeared. I think it’s a goodthing, in terms of that Hapa people are more embraced, it’s becoming
a lot better. You know, in the Japanese American National Museum
they had an exhibition on Hapa, I think that is a good example of theawareness of this issue, this part of the community.

Takano also explained that even within the JACL, the issue of Proposition 815 still“divides” members. In Takano’s own words, it appears that racially “pure” LGBT
Japanese Americans are less welcomed into the community than mixed-race JapaneseAmericans who define their sexual orientation as straight. That is, sexuality functions as
a stronger boundary in the Japanese American community than race does. On the other
hand, one Korean-Chinese who self identifies “as a queer, HIV-positive, Asian
American; as a first-generation college student; as a child of immigrant parents; as a
student; as an activist,” told me that:“Japanese Americans have a long history in the U.S. and I feel as eachsuccessive generation becomes more and more Americanized, they are more
open to the idea of homosexuality. I find that immigrants are less receptive andsometimes, downright hostile -- but that is just my personal experience.”16

14

The JACL established the LGBT sections and is becoming a truly pan-Asian organization which
instantly gained 60 LGBT members within a year of its formation (Murakami 1997, 226).
15
Prop 8 changes the California Constitution to eliminate the right of same-sex couples to marry and waspassed by California voters in November 2008. Currently (June 30, 2011), only marriage between a man
and a woman will be valid or recognized in California.
16
E-mail with the author (2008, September 17).

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Therefore, Japanese American attitudes towards LGBT individuals can be regarded asmoderate within the wider Asian American community.17
On the national level, the JACL has been supportive of LGBT people’s rights,
especially marriage rights. The JACL has officially approved of same-sex marriage
since 1994, the second non-gay organization to adopt such a policy, after the American
Civil Liberties Union. Though, seemingly, Japanese American issues are not directly
connected to gay issues, when Japanese Americans use the “civil rights” frame, it
enables them to include gay issues as part of “our” agenda. The JACL political attitude,
shared by people who are sensitive to their ethnicity, can be viewed as one
representation of the Japanese American point of view. However, this was a very
controversial issue in the JACL, and, considering the fact that there are a great numberof Japanese American organizations, the JACL’s official statements on LGBT marriage
might not represent the actual opinions prevalent within the community itself, or the
point of view of Japanese Americans in general as many may feel quite differently about
the issues raised here. (Incidentally, some Japanese Americans do not even know that
the JACL exists.) Therefore, this paper also attempts to deal with “gay” experiences andstraight people’s attitudes toward them within Japanese American organizations in San
Francisco and Los Angeles. Similar to mixed-race Japanese Americans, LGBT JapaneseAmericans were invisible in Japanese American discourses but through the efforts ofactivists and some progressive JACLers, LGBT issues are now officially regarded as acivil rights issue which strongly relates to the experiences of Japanese Americans as an
ethnic minority group. However, LGBT issues still seem to be touchy and are still
regarded as distant issues by many Japanese Americans.
From Lia Sigemura’s statement, it is obvious that differences of sexuality serve
as boundaries within the Japanese American community, boundaries that include and/or
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51 percent of Asian Americans saw Prop 8 as a civil rights issue, while the other 49 percent saw it as amoral one. Russel Jeung, an associate professor of Asian American Studies at San Francisco State
University says that “Given this group’s diversity, one should expect the Asian American population to
hold a corresponding range of political viewpoints. But for those holding the stereotype of Asian
Americans as morally and politically conservative, the community’s majority support of gay marriage
comes as quite a revelation.” (AsiaWeek December 2, 2008)16

Kunisuke Hirano kh2mt@virginia.edu

exclude individuals. In a national context, the major Japanese American organization
regards gay issues as “ours” in the name of civil rights. However, other than the JACL,
there are various Japanese American organizations in every state which have differing
opinions on the topic. In addition, the official statements of the JACL and the realities ofeveryday life sometimes disagree..
Ito, a Sansei young professional cited in the introduction, is gay and waspreviously active in community activities. However, he had lost interest in community
activities. Ito did not mention the relationship between his sexuality and the causes hewas previously passionate about. Interestingly, though he was very active in one of theflourishing Japanese American youth organizations in San Francisco, Ito was not awareof the existence of the JACL. This also indicates the disconnect between the nationwide
JACL and the regional grass roots organizations. Ito illustrates his point of view: “Notwithin the Japanese American community as a whole, but with individuals in theJapanese American community like myself” speaks to Lia Shigemura’s view, sayingthat once JACLers “do not address our issues of concern as issues serious to JapaneseAmericans.” This quote is really confusing; is something missing? However, racial andsexual identities are indeed strongly intertwined for many LGBT Asian Americans.
Based on these comments, this paper concludes that minorities whose numbers
are decreasing have to present more inclusive frames to convince other minorities thatthey are in fact facing the “same” experiences as together they become majorities. For
example, according to this context, LGBT Japanese Americans sometimes identify asJapanese Americans using historical experiences of the entire Japanese American
community, such as the internment camps and redress movement. They then connect
those experiences with “their” experiences as LGBT Japanese Americans. By adopting
strategies that relate strongly with the entire Japanese American community, LGBT
Japanese Americans try to present a notion of “we” which convinces the majority ofJapanese Americans that LGBT Japanese Americans are the “same” as other JapaneseAmericans.

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Kunisuke Hirano kh2mt@virginia.edu

Next, Asian Americans (including LGBTs) oftentimes have to prove to other
Americans that they themselves are Americans. The very word Asian American triggers
in the minds of other (non-Asian) Americans the image of something foreign, an“other,” even if Japanese Americans, for example, have been in the United States forwell over 100 years. In this way, smaller minority groups must go through amulti-stepped process for gaining membership first in large minority groups, and,eventually, into general society. One Chinese/Korean American gay youth discussed
his situation and experiences among Asian Americans and the LGBT community:

The greater AA (Asian American) community is not very open tohomosexuality. And LGBT-identified Asians face racism within thelarger gay community. Personally, I feel that I have to wage a battle
for both minds and hearts on multiple fronts. I do not only have toconvince mainstream America that I am indeed as American as
anyone else, but I also have to convince the AA community thathomosexuality is something people shouldn’t feel ashamed of.

As pointed out, minorities who are “essentially within another minority,” have tonegotiate with society around them to be included in the same “we.” LGBT JapaneseAmericans, who are excluded from the Japanese American community, again are
discriminated against in the greater LGBT society. In this situation, LGBT JapaneseAmericans have to present a varied and inclusive notion of “we” to convince others of
the sameness between majority and minority.

The possibility and limitation of imagination

Here, the notion of “prophecy” by Melluci is useful. It is “the act ofannouncing, based on personal experiences, that alternative frameworks of meaning are
possible, and that the operational logic of power apparatuses is not the only possible‘rationality’.” (Melucci 1989, 75-6) LGBT Japanese Americans present an alternative18

Kunisuke Hirano kh2mt@virginia.edu

logical framework, saying that their experience as a sexual minority cannot be separated
as they assert their identity within the Japanese American community, which generally
still regards LGBT issues as relatively unrelated to those of Japanese Americans.
However, prophecy contains an insurmountable contradiction. Prophets
proclaim something other than themselves, while at the same time holding themselves
up as a model (Melucci 1989, 75-6). Therefore, one always has to base on one’s
experience when presenting the alternative notion of “we”. This point can be applied tothe discourse about LGBT Japanese Americans. From their point of view, their sexuality
has a strong impact on their lives in their ethnic community. Japanese American gay
activist Paul Akio Kawata says “It’s as much a part of who I am as being JapaneseAmerican. I can’t separate the two.” (Kerrita McClaughlyn 2002, 15) Furthermore, gay
Japanese American Kenji Yoshino, who is a legal scholar at New York University
School of Law states “I do not think we can move forward by focusing on old fashioned
group-based identity politics. We must instead build a new civil rights paradigm onwhat draws us together rather than on what drives us apart.” (Kenji Yoshino 2006, xii)
These gay Japanese Americans are able to present their new alternative notion of “we”
based on their own experience. On the other hand, while straight Japanese American
people might be a racial minority in their daily lives, they maintain the majority position
within the Japanese American community, having no first-hand experience of being asexual minority. In their daily lives, it turns out to be difficult to transcend the boundary
between ethnicity and sexuality in the name of “minority rights” or “civil rights.”
Here we can see the majority-minority politics within the Japanese American
community.

In a nationwide context, Japanese Americans are an ethnic minority, lessthan 0.5 percent of the total U.S. population.18 Therefore, both straight and LGBT
Japanese Americans are categorized as an ethnic minority at the national level and areviewed as one group. However, once monoracial Japanese Americans form an ethnic

18

There are 796,700 monoracial and 1,148,932 (including mixed-race) Japanese Americans (US census
of Bureau http://www.census.gov/prod/2002pubs/c2kbr01-16.pdf, accessed June 5, 2011)

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Kunisuke Hirano kh2mt@virginia.edu

group, the issue of ethnicity does not matter since it is the common element that binds
these individuals together.19 Here, mixed-race people face a first boundary, but they
have gained acceptance to some degree partly due to their increasing numbers. In turn,sexuality functions as the next criteria to distinguish majority-minority within the group.
Within the frame of civil rights, while ethnic minority issues and sexual minority issues
can be regarded as identical in terms of marriage, the interpretation varies fromindividual to individual, although the JACLers’ same-sex supporters’ discourse ismainly focused on marriage rights, not “homosexual lifestyles.”Conclusion: broader notion of “we” among marginalized people

The JACL, the national face of the Japanese American community, has been
sensitive to LGBT issues and officially affirmed the community’s diversity. However,some of its chapters and individual members’ attitudes do not reflect the shift in thegeneral atmosphere. There is a long list of various elements to examine and analyze
when one researches the history of Japanese Americans. Therefore, one must makedecisions about which part to highlight according to their specific organizational
mission. In this paper, I focused on their sense of “we,” its historical shift of topics at
discourse level, and individual variations of interpretation about their positions as
minority.
Sexuality still and will continue to functions as an internal boundary within theJapanese American community. Logically correct statements do not always mean thatevery member of the group agrees with them. Moreover, though Williams-Leonconcludes that “GLB and multiracial activism and visibility have increased,”(Williams-Leon 2001, 159) compared to heterosexual mixed-race people, LGBT

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However, mixed-race Japanese American pageant candidates have to show their Japaneseness withsuch things as language, name, or talent. At the same time, monoracial Japanese Americans who do nothave any familiarity with Japanese American culture are disdained as “cultural imposters” (King-O’riain
2006).

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Kunisuke Hirano kh2mt@virginia.edu

Japanese Americans do not have the chance to increase their numbers in the ethnic
group by way of reproduction. Therefore, their position within the Japanese Americangroup will remain minority and always on the verge of being excluded. In this case,LGBT people must resist discrimination by presenting an alternative framework of
meaning for the interpretation of one’s experience, trying to make “majorities”
remember their less-than-fortunate past when they themselves (the majority) were verymuch part of an affected minority. Williams-Leon casts the critical question:

Are GLB Asian-descent biracials being embraced more by the Asian/PacificIslander GLB community than by the Hapa and/or multiracial community atlarge? If so, why? Although both groups are marginalized, do Asian/PacificIslander GLBs have a more expansive and flexible understandings of theirpoly-marginalized status that allows them to include Hapas in ways that theheterosexual multiracial/Hapa community have yet to? (Williams-Leon 2001,
157)

To answer this question, the author concludes that having different sexualities
is still regarded as more deviant than being of different or ambiguous races. JapaneseAmerican historical understandings and notions of civil rights have a long way to go ifthey are to fill in the gap between race and sexuality. Therefore, to this day LGBT
people are in weaker positions in the hierarchy of race and sexuality among JapaneseAmericans. In the future, more and more mixed-race Japanese Americans will
participate in Japanese American associations and it can be assumed that there will
always be at least a handful of LGBT people amongst them. Within these groups, thehierarchy will probably go as follows: 1. Monoracial heterosexual Japanese Americans
2. Mixed-race heterosexual Japanese Americans 3. LGBT monoracial JapaneseAmericans 4. LGBT mixed-race Japanese Americans. The notion of “we” would be themost inclusive in group 4 and narrowest among group 1, which would tend to show fullrespect to only the people who are the “same” as themselves. This is because people inweaker positions, usually minorities, attempt to present more inclusive frames than

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Kunisuke Hirano kh2mt@virginia.edu

currently accepted, as an alternative with which progress can be made. Usually these
expanded frames fail, at first. However, with perseverance and nearly ceaseless tries anddefeats, minorities have always pioneered the path to a more equal society with a “nopassing zone” (Williams-Houston 1997) where no one has to hide one’s peculiarity forpassing. Yet within organizations established for minorities, the politics ofmajority-minority still persist, and it can be assumed, will continue to persist.

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Kunisuke Hirano kh2mt@virginia.edu

Figure 1
The Organizational Structure of the JACL
(Made from JACL Chapter President’s Handbook 2007 pp8-16)

At National Council, delegates decide the following board members:
・President
・Vice President of General Operations
・Vice President of Public Affairs
・Vice President of Planning and Development
・Vice President of Membership Service
・Secretary/Treasurer
・National Youth Chair
・National Youth Representative23

Kunisuke Hirano kh2mt@virginia.edu

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Periodicals
AsiaWeek
Pacific Citizen

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