Mobile Discourses and Anti-genderism in Japanese | Claire Maree

by Critical Asia

by Claire Maree, June 2024】

A group gathers at the National Diet intersection on a rainy night in Tokyo. A rope cordons off parts of the sidewalk. The police monitor who enters and exits. Activists, politicians, members of the public—all here are in some way concerned about the rush to pass the Bill for promoting public understanding of the diversity in sexual orientation and gender identity[1] (Seitekishikō oyobi jendā aidentiti no tayōsei ni kansuru kokumin no rikai no zōshin ni kansuru hōritsu; hereafter Promoting Understanding of SOGI Law).

Since the announcement of the “Multiparty Caucus to Consider Issues about LGBT” (2014)[2] and formation of the Japan Alliance for Legislation to Remove Social Barriers based on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity (Japan Alliance for LGBT Legislation, J-ALL) (2015), there have been several attempts to draft legislation which would protect the rights of sexual and gender minorities in Japan. Promises were made to enact an anti-discrimination bill in the run-up to the 2020 Tokyo Olympic and Paralympics (postponed to 2021). As the G7 summit held in Hiroshima (May 2023) approached, calls for action again took hold. However, it is only in June of 2023 that politicians agreed to changes to the “promoting understanding of SOGI law,” as it has commonly been known.

At the rally and in statements issued by activists and scholars, the Promoting Understanding of SOGI Law is critiqued on several counts. The bill uses the phrase unfair discrimination, thus suggesting fair discrimination is a viable concept which could be permissible under law. The legislation also states that parents, guardians and the local community should be consulted in relation to any measure undertaken in schools. It also contains a “note” ensuring that “regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity all Japanese national citizens (kokumin) can live with peace of mind.” These sections potentially place the emphasis on maintaining the comfort of the majority at the expense of gender and sexual minorities. According to activists like Matsuoka Sōshi, changes made to the legislation in 2023 “supress” rather than promote understanding.

Another critique centers on the use of the term jendā aidentiti (ジェンダー・アイデンティティgender identity), a loan word from English which is rendered in the katakana script.[3] The phrase “sexual orientation and gender identity,” aka SOGI, appears increasing from the mid-2010s in Japanese, and is conventionally rendered as seitekishikō (性的指向; sexual orientation) and  seijinin  (性自認; gender identity). Seitekishikō was coined by activists in the early 1990s to emphasize homosexuality as an orientation (指向shikō) not a preference (嗜好shikō).

Loan words are conventionally avoided in legal statutes in Japanese, and that is one reason politicians have responded negatively to the use of jendā aidentiti in the Promoting Understanding of SOGI Law. However, to more fully understand the public debate, it is important to note the term was adopted in preference to two other expressions—seidōitsusei (性同一性; gender identity) and seijinin (性自認; gender identity).

Seidōitsusei (性同一性; gender identity) combines the kanji for sei (性; sex/gender) with dōitsusei (同一性; identity). The term was the cause of much discussion and debate within the trans communities in the late 1990s. It was adopted for use in the Special Cases for Gender Identity Disorder Act (2003) (性同一性障害者の性別の取扱いの特例に関する法律; Seidōitsuseishōgaisha no seibetsu toriatsukai no tokurei ni kansuru hōritsu). A medicalised term which labels trans modalities of gender as “disorder” (shōgai) it is not currently used outside of medical and legal contexts in contemporary Japanese.

Seijinin (性自認; gender identity) is used to refer to gender identity in both scholarship and activism, and appears in mainstream newspapers as early as 1983, and more commonly from the late 1990s.[4] It combines the kanji for sei (性; sex/gender) with jinin (自認; self- acknowledgement/ recognition). Although this term was contained in previous drafts of the Promoting Understanding of SOGI Bill, anti-trans rhetoric was mobilized in debates to caution its usage. Proponents of anti-trans discourse which falsely posits the trans body, and in particular transwomen as a threat to safety in public, took the stance that seijinin was dangerous due to its connotations of self-determination.

Given the historical trajectory of the term jendā in Japanese in the context of ongoing anti-gender movements, it is counter-intuitive that the term jendā-aidentiti emerged as the appropriate compromise in 2023. However, as recent linguistic and semiotic studies demonstrate, both LGBTIQA+ rights discourse and anti-trans discourses circulate transnationally and are adapted to local histories and political agendas (Comer 2022; Borba 2022). Focusing on how key terms have been mobilized in anti-gender movements provides insights into the cyclical movements of support for gender and sexual minorities in Japan in the face of ongoing discrimination and hate.

Cyclical movements of anti-genderism in Japanese

The staged panic around terms for gender in Japanese is not new. Heated debates about the use of the term jendā were mobilized in previous articulations of anti-gender backlash discourse in the late 1990s-early 2000s. In particular, the term jendā-furī (gender-free) emerged as a locus of contention. The origin of the term “gender free” can be traced back to booklets produced by the Tokyo Women’s Foundation (Yamaguchi 2014: 246).  In a move to shift gender biases in compulsory education, educators in Japan appropriated “gender free” from Barbara Houston (1985: 359).  The term “gender-free” took on a life of its own and became the locus of anti-gender mobilization around measures which were deemed to have “gone too far.” It was claimed that initiatives to eliminate gender biases from compulsory education posed a serious threat to masculinity and the traditional family. What was labelled as ikisugita seikyōiku (sex education gone too far) was targeted. Feminist books were removed from public libraries and “‘gender’ became one of the most visible and hotly contested terms in Japanese political discourse” (Kano 2011: 42).

An Expert Committee coordinated by the Gender Equality Bureau (GEB) Cabinet Office was formed to consider the phrase “‘shakaiteki/ bunkateki ni keisei sareta seibetsu’ (jendā)” (‘socially/culturally formed sex’ (gender)). In the document released by the GEB committee each expert outlines their understanding of trajectory of use of the term jendā. This spans the period from its use in the 1980s in research and advocacy, to the mainstreaming of the term in the 1990s following the 4th World Conference on Women in Beijing (1995) and then to its usage in relation to the Basic Law. Thiis suggests general support for the term, however, the GEB’s 2006 whitepaper, specifically mentions that “gender free” should not be used, and that a notice has been sent to the relevant local offices to alert them to this.

A flow chart from the 20th meeting of the GEB’s liaison committee (Document 7-3) contains a section with several examples of things that “differ to what Japanese nationals (kokumin) want from a gender equal society.”[5] These include “using the term ‘gender free’ to negate sex differences, masculinity, femininity, or aiming to eliminate the differences between men and women and make people androgenous.”[6] The document also sets out examples which are “extremely lacking in common sense,” such as sex education which is excessive for the developmental age, mixed-sex changerooms, hotel rooms and cavalry games.[7] The final example makes clear that using the same color to indicate men’s and women’s restrooms is not something guided by the objectives of the gender equality.[8] Many of these points have again be raised in the moral panic around gender-identity in relation to the Promoting Understanding of SOGI Bill.

Rather than being a disorganized and decentered collection of disparate voice, Yamaguchi, Saito and Ogiue’s fieldwork (2012) has demonstrated that the “backlash” was carefully planned and coordinated by several conservative and religious groups who operated at a “grassroots level.” At the local level members from such groups used their networks advocate for traditional family and lineage as crucial to the moral and political threads of Japanese society, culture and education. They also made use of their self-produced media which was distributed to key local and national public figures and politicians. As Yamaguchi writes, “(w)ith the combination of both local activities led by small-scale organizations and local politicians, and large-scale dissemination of information via national conservative networks, the conservatives effectively spread the movement against feminism” (2017: 75).

It wasn’t only gender to which these groups were opposed, but what they framed as “homosexuality.” Indeed, on a chapter on the mainstreaming of feminism and the 2000s backlash in Japan, Yamaguchi (2017) outlines the role that anti-LGBTQIA+ and anti-trans voices had in changing the course of a proposed ordinance in Miyakonojō. The key player here was what was then referred to as the Unification Church, (Family Federation for World Peace and Unification) and their successful aim of devoid the local ordinance of any mention of sexual orientation.

Reconceptualizing “backlash”

The (re)mobilization of anti-gender discourse in relation to the Promoting Understanding of SOGI Law causes us to pause to consider if backlash is indeed the best framework through which approach the cyclical movements of anti-gender, anti-LGBT, anti-trans rhetoric. “Backlash” movements have been conceptualized as time bound (Piscopo and Walsh, 2020) moments of “counterassault” Faludi (1991) that occur in localized or “concrete” (Paternotte and Kuhar 2018) contexts, in relation to policies, rules and guidelines that are perceived as excessive in their reach. Furthermore, as moments where conservatives join reactionaries “in a shared agenda of rolling back feminist gains” (Piscopo and Walsh 2020: 268).  In this sense, the late 1990s-early 2000s backlash could be interpreted as a reaction to mainstream feminism’s attempting to make inroads into national policy and education.

Indeed, the backlash period falls just after a media generated “gay boom” which led to the hypervisibility of gay culture in the mainstream press in the 1990s. It is in part a response to the passing of the Basic Law for a Gender Equal Society (男女共同参画基本法danjo kyōdō sankaku kihon hō) in 1999 and the mainstreaming of the concept of gender equality within national and local politics.  It is also punctuated by the Special Cases for Gender Identity Disorder Act (性同一性障害者の性別の取扱いの特例に関する法律, Seidōitsuseishōgaisha no seibetsu toriatsukai no tokurei ni kansuru hōritsu) in 2003 which .

Different terms for gender are used in each of these laws. In the first 男女共同参画 (danjo kyōdō sankaku)—literally, “mutual participation by men and women”—refers to “gender equality.” In the second, 性同一性障害 (seidōitsuseishōgai) refers to “gender identity disorder.” Neither of the laws make use of jendā, the transliteration of the word “gender” in the katakana script. Indeed, there is a well-known preference to avoid loanwords in legalese, and within Japanese writing on issues related to gender, it was common for terms such as seisa (性差, literally sex/gender difference)and danjo (男女; men and women) to be used as late as the 2000s.

When mainstream feminism was pushed to respond to criticism that its hidden agenda was to eliminate gender, anti-backlash discourses emerged that re-centered the heteronormative gender binary (Kawasaka 2015; 2023; Maree 2008; Shimizu 2007; 2017; 2020b). The privileging of cisheteronormative feminism in this context suggests that we can turn to recent scholarships that advocates we need to move away from considering “backlash” as time-bound reactionary movements and rather that we look to questions of relative privilege and intersectionality which normalize “the exclusion and condemnation of certain groups” (Murib 2020: 299). A focus on time bounded-ness can also conflate regional differences if global discourses are construed to operate in a uniform way across geographical space. Positing backlash as time bound can mask the ongoing experiences of members of marginalized groups situated as “outsiders” or “threats to the polity” (Murib 2020: 299). This is key to theorizing the movement of anti-gender, anti-trans and anti-LGBT discourse which continues to circulate globally.

Anti-gender rhetoric that travels

According to the UN Reports on Gender (2021), anti-gender movements “overwhelmingly appear to rely on anecdotal evidence” and their claims are based in “deeply discriminatory stereotype(s).” And, as sociolinguist & applied linguist Borba’s work on the emergence of anti-genderism in Europe notes, anti-genderism works as a register, and anti-gender rhetoric can be adapted to local contexts yet “circulate translationally with little to no variation” (Borba 2022:  60). Focus on the sanctity of family, therefore, can be adopted to accommodate many different configurations and ideals about the family in different sociocultural contexts. Since the 1990s, “dangerous coalitions” between conservative forces and grassroots organizations (Borba 2022) have been formed through the use of anti-genderism.

This presents a specific local problem for Japan which experiences both cyclical booms of popularity for all things queer (Maree 2020a) and waves of “backlash” which seem to preempt meaningful legislative change (Kano 2011; 2017; Maree 2008; Shimizu 2007; 2020a; 2020b; Yamaguchi 2014; 2017). Both booms and backlashes pivot on “excessiveness.” Within recurrent media generated booms—the 1990’s gay boom, the mid-2000’s queerqueen boom, the late 2010’s LGBT boom—the excess of the queerqueen style, including fashion, language, compartment, is celebrated for its excessive exuberance and capacity for gender play, and while being critiqued for its very excess (Maree, 2020a). For example, the characterological figure of the queerqueen is mobilised to demonstrate the neoliberal imperative of ongoing transformation and as a warning to all who deviate from acceptable cisheteronormative modes of being a woman and/or a man.

Just as conceptualizing backlash as time-bound occurrences, positing “booms” as discrete moments which expose “never-before-discussed” issues experienced by marginalized social groups elides histories of activism, scholarship and civic action. It also renders invisible the historical cycles of booms driven by consumerism. In the case of the so-called LGBT boom, it posits specific individuals and/or groups as tokens of the politics of diversity and inclusion. Those individuals and/or groups then are invoked as symbols of change thus obfuscating stagnation in policy, education and/or patterns of discrimination in society and those who supposedly do not fit within specific forms of consumerism, internationalism and globalized diversity (Kawasaka 2015; Shimizu 2015; 2017).

When new terms are adopted into Japanese public discourse, there is a process of defining and demarcating their meanings. Annual almanacs pay a large role in this process, and the National Broadcaster, NHK, produces updates on loanwords, including how they are to be rendered in katakana. In the case of “LGBT,” the term was circulated in relation to the “LGBT market,” and as part of the rhetoric of Diversity & Inclusion aspirations of the 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Games (postponed to 2021).  “LGBT” was introduced as a term new to Japanese public discourse in a variety of short news and info-documentaries on mainstream television circa 2015. As I have argued elsewhere (2018) media technologies, such as infographics and impact captioning and collaborative writing practices, such as transcription, editing and layout, were manipulated during this time to mould the ideological parameters discourses pertaining to LGBTQIA+ individuals as something never before seen in Japan.

A search of the databases for the major Japanese language newspapers indicates that the acronym “LGBT” has been used in mainstream newspapers since the early 2000s. Here too, it is glossed and explained. An Asahi Newspaper (23 Jan 2004) article on the US elections glosses LGBT as “homosexual, bisexual and transexuals (dōseiaisha, ryōseiaisha, seitenkansha)” (Maree, forthcoming). This terminology flattens the gendered aspects of lesbian and gay which the acronym attempted to highlight and conflates transsexual with transgender. In what appears to be the earliest mention in the Yomiuri Newspaper (3 September 2008), LGBT is glossed as: L is lesbian, G is gay, B is sexual orientation towards both men and women, T means transgender (people) whose gender identity does not match their biological sex (L wa rezubian, G wa gei, B wa seiteki shikō ga danjo dochira ni mo mukau baisekushuaru, T wa kokoro to karada no sei ga icchi shinai toransujendā o imisuru). Here again the flattening of transmen and transwomen’s experiences can be noted.

When debate on the SOGI laws came to the fore in Japanese social media, not only it was anti-gender discourse from the 2000s (re)activated, but it was (re)activated against a backdrop of queer hypervisibility, and the (re)introduction and (re)definition of terms such as “LGBT,” and “gender.” The appearance of queer queen personalities on mainstream television and in magazines and so on, was used as “evidence” that no further “understanding” was necessary—as evidence for the very reason why no such law was necessary.

Global flows

Transnational LGBTIQA+ advocacy, Comer (2022) argues, occurs within a global semioscape (Thurlow and Aiello 2007). The semioscape refers to the “non-mediatized but globalizing circulation of symbols, sign systems and meaning-making practices” (Thurlow and Aiello 2007: 308) which is situated between Appadurai’s “ideoscape” and “mediascape.” Within the global semioscape the image of “love,” written on a rainbow colour sticker comes to symbolize same-sex/gender relationships.

It is not only the capacity for meaning-making practices to travel, but also the ways in which they are adapted to local contexts that is key, precisely because, as Comer demonstrates, through the mediatization and commodification (Agha 2011) of LGBTIQA+ rights discourses, the world is scaled as “one” and equality is scaled as being not only “possible and incremental” but “nearby” (Comer 2022: 198). Within studies of language ideology, the notion of fractal recursivity (Gal and Irvine 1995; Irvine and Gal 2000; Gal 2005; 2016) points to the ways in which dichotomies are reproduced at ever smaller scales. As Gal argues, the ideology of public/private, for example, “divides spaces, moralities, types of people, activities, and linguistic practices into opposed categories” (2005: 24). Furthermore, “the process of fractal recursion allows and indeed invites erasures. In general, erasures are forms of forgetting, denying, ignoring, or forcibly eliminating those distinctions or social facts that fail to fit the picture of the world presented by an ideology” (2005: 27). In this way, the movement of ideologies onto which binary notions are pinned is a key component to the study at hand.

Along with the acronym “LGBT”, terms used in transnational rights discourses such as “LGBTQ,” “SOGI” and “ally” are increasingly used locally in Japan.  This perhaps may appear to symbolize alignment with global LGBTIQA+ rights advocacy (Comer 2022). However, as the anti-gender movement, and in particular anti-trans advocacy has also gained traction activists, advocates and scholars must navigate the tensions which emerge between LGBTIQA+ advocacy discourse and localised anti-genderism. Understanding the process of (re)defining, (re)mobilising, and (re)activating terms as they appear as if anew in public discourse can be a key to working against backdrop of celebratory booms and hate-motivated backlash which appear together which make use fo global discourses couched in local concerns.


AUTHOR
Claire Maree, Professor, Asia Institute, University of Melbourne, Australia

Claire Maree (PhD) (_/her/_) is a Professor in Japanese at the Asia Institute, University of Melbourne.

Claire’s work mobilises queer, linguistic and cultural studies methodologies and has been foundational to establishment of language, gender and sexuality studies in relation to Japanese linguistics and Japanese language education. Claire’s third monograph queerqueen: Linguistic Excess in Japanese Media (2020, OUP) examines the editing and writing of queer excess into Japanese popular culture through mediatization of queerqueen styles. Claire leads the Gender, the Environment and Migration (GEM) Research Cluster and facilitates the Gender, Sexuality and Language Studies Research Group at the Asia Institute, University of Melbourne. Claire is a core member of the Queering the Curriculum Working Group within the Faculty of Arts at the University of Melbourne, and co-founder of the International Network of Gender, Sexuality in Japanese Language Education (INGS-J).


NOTES

[1] In Japanese: 性的指向及びジェンダーアイデンティティの多様性に関する国民の理解の増進に関する法律。

[2] In Japanese: 「LGBTに関する課題を考える議員連盟」超党派議員連盟。

[3] Japanese is written in a combination of three scripts, kanji (logograms often referred to as “Chinese characters”), two sets of kanahiragana (phonograms often referred to as the “cursive syllabary”) and katakana (phonograms often referred to as the “boxed syllabary”), as well as Roman letters and numerals.

[4] A search of the left leaning Asahi Newspaper indicates the term seijininshō (gender identity disorder) was used in an entry to explain seitenkanshō (sex change disorder) in a 2 July 1996 article on the decision by the ethics committee at Saitama Medical University to permit, what was then referred to as sex reassignment surgery, now gender affirmation. A search of the right leaning Yomiuri Newspaper’s database indicates that seijinin was used in an article on sex education in 18 May 1983 and then not again until a review article of Fushimi Norikaki’ book Sei no Misuterī (Mystery of sex/gender) (5 May 1997) and after that not until 18 May 2005 in a glossary on “gender identity disorder.”

[5] In Japanese: 国民が求める男女共同参画社会はと異なる。

[6] In Japanese: 「ジェンダー・フリー」という用語を使用して、性差を否定したり、男らしさ、 女らしさや男女の区別をなくして人間の中性化を目指すこと、また、家族やひな 祭り等の伝統文化を否定することは、国民が求める男女共同参画社会とは異なる。

[7] In Japanese: 例えば、発達段階を踏まえない行き過ぎた性教育、男女同室着替え、 男女同室宿泊、男女混合騎馬戦等の事例は極めて非常識である。

[8] In Japanese: また、公共の施設におけるトイレの男女別色表示を同色にすることは、男女共 同参画の趣旨から導き出されるものではない。

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