Profile: Kanako Otsuji
Born in 1974 in Nara, Kanako Otsuji was elected to serve as a representative for Sakai city in the Osaka Prefectural Assembly on April 13, 2003. The August 2005 publication of her autobiography Coming Out: A Journey to Find My True Self marked the start of her new life as Japan's first out politician. In May of 2007, Otsuji was officially recognized by the Democratic Party of Japan as their representative candidate for the Upper House election. Ultimately, Otsuji did not secure a win, but she did became the first ever openly gay district assembly member to run for Parliament endorsed by a major political party. www.otsuji-k.com
【Link】 Interview with Kanako Otsuji
【Link】 Press Conference

Profile: Naomi Matsunaga
Naomi Matsunaga graduated from Keio University's Graduate School of Letters with a Master of Arts in Literature. Currently, he lectures at the University of Geneva in Switzerland while publishing his plays and short stories. In 1999, Naomi Matsunaga's contemporary drama, Les ténèbres éternelles (The Eternal Darkness), was awarded an Honorable Mention to the Special Encouragement Prize for Fiction in Performing Arts by Japan's Agency for Cultural Affairs.
www.matsunaganaomi.com (Japanese text only)

In May of 2007, the Democratic Party of Japan officially recognized Kanako Otsuji, a former district assembly member from Osaka prefecture, as their representative candidate for the July Upper House election. She was unable to secure a win this time around but her run for the national Diet - the first ever embarked on by an openly gay district assembly member, endorsed by a major political party to boot - was a landmark event. Kanako Otsuji and author Naomi Matsunaga, a supporter of Otsuji and himself knowledgeable in LGBT affairs in Europe, engage in a deeper analysis of conditions unique to Japanese society and the LGBT community, and how these compare with what is seen in other countries around the world. What did Otsuji gain from taking her first shot at a national seat? What issues are at hand? Tokyo Wrestling brings you to Otsuji's office in the gay district of Nichome, Tokyo for the pair's frank and open discussion.

--First of all, could you both please briefly explain to our readers how the two of you became acquainted?

Matsunaga:
Last year, there was an international meeting of sexual minorities (held by the International Lesbian and Gay Association, ILGA) in Geneva, and Otsuji and Aya Kamikawa (Japan's first and currently only transsexual MtF politician) were there participating as representatives for Japan. One of my friends, the Municipal Councilor for the City of Geneva - Yves de Mattheis, was in this one group in Geneva called G.I.G. (Gay International Group) and also organizing for ILGA when he told me he wanted to have Otsuji attend, so I got in touch with her. That was how we came to meet.

-- Could tell us more about campaigning in the election? For one, what was the sequence of events that led up to the election?

Otsuji:
To begin with, the end of the term for district assembly members is April, so in my case I had finished my service by April 2007. At that time, I had a real sense that my first term in the assembly enabled me to contribute a lot to society and was extremely worthwhile. However, I also felt that within local politics, being an out lesbian effectively hindered my ability to achieve some things. Thus, I had begun to think that I'd like to get involved in making law from a position in the national Diet. Well, I knew that soon enough, in July, elections for the Upper House would be held, so I decided to take that as my opportunity to enter national politics. Then, since at that time I was without a party, I was considering what party would not hamper my own work and bring me the closest to a victory. With all those factors in mind, it seemed like the Democratic Party of Japan was the right choice. I submitted my name to their rolls in April 2006. In truth, I had been told that most likely I would know whether I was selected or not early in the new year - but then there were numerous incidents (such as a controversy involving both Livedoor and the DPJ, the stepping down of DPJ leader Maehara, etc) that complicated matters - not to mention, when you get down to it, NEVER before had a national party endorsed a gay person as their candidate - so it was May 2007 before I ultimately got the party's approval. From there, I spent two months preparing myself for the July election.

M:
It took a long time to get the green light, then. After being notified, you only had two months in which to prepare.

O:
Yes, that's exactly it. I mean, candidates coming from the labor unions, for instance, spend years preparing. Not having enough time was one thing but, more than anything, it was difficult to face the election without the backing of any organized force of my own. I did not know how to figure out ways to solidify votes or where I could find them. So when thinking of what I could then do within two months...I came to the conclusion that my only option was to utilize the mass media.

--Do you think that the mass media handled the issues well?

O:
They weren't bad. The Asahi Shimbun newspaper printed several favorable articles in their national edition. The sports papers kind of have their own unique take on events and would joke around a little with the news, but they never wrote about my campaign in such a way that would put it down. Even weekly journals [known for being sensational] wrote very serious articles. It seems that this almost proves that you can't make fun of a lesbian who's out. Also, since I was an official candidate for the DPJ - more than anything else - there was no ill-willed negative campaigning.

M:
I think this is a very big deal as far as Japanese society is concerned. It's monumental that, for the first time, a gay individual could come forth to speak as a public personality and get media coverage in the major papers, not in a mocking way, but in an earnest tone.

O:
Furthermore, as far as responsible coverage is concerned, the international media took theirs a notch higher. I was asked by the Foreign Correspondents' Club to come and give a speech - and they rarely ever ask political candidates to speak! In a sense, that contributed to a change in my image inside the DPJ itself. They sculpted how the public would take me. Associated Press, Reuters, CNN - all the leading news agencies came to cover the campaign and, what's more, major newspapers from around the world - Le Monde, The Guardian, and the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera - came as well. You know, it happened that way because the foreign press -especially the press from countries where LGBT rights are already set as guaranteed - deal with these issues as a matter of human rights, not unexpectedly more often than the Japanese press does. In Japan, Asahi was quite good about stepping in and covering the campaign but other sources were not quite so forthright. Most of the journalists are not aware of LGBT issues in Japan. But the other day an editorialist from the Associated Press lauded in print the fact that the DPJ had backed so many candidates from marginalized backgrounds - a cancer patient, someone differently-abled, and then myself, a sexual minority, among them. Even so, the international media really did an outstanding job.

M:
As only press from Europe and other industrial nations could do, right?

O:
Sure, I've experienced that in the past as well. And so, really, I got the feeling that the foreign media had come to find some sort of meaning behind the entry of a gay candidate in politics - an extremely conservative realm - within a country known for its conservatism!

--As you were campaigning, how did the general public react to you in the streets and when you met people face-to-face?

O:
First, people are generally bothered by the election campaign, so (laughs) - they think it's all so annoying with all the noise from the speeches in the streets. Since Japan is not a Christian nation, we don't have people throwing stones or telling us we're damned to Hell for being gay. Therefore, even though at times I encountered people muttering under their breath as they walked by, I experienced nothing truly harmful or negative.

M:
That is one huge difference between us and Europe.

O:
Rather than violence, we're walled in by silence.

--Did anybody show particular interest?

O:
Well, it seems like a lot of people were stuck on hearing the word lesbian. I mean, really, when a word like that - one normally never heard during political public speaking engagements - suddenly reaches a crowd from our PA system, a lot of people turn to see what's going on.

--You'd have everyone turning to look right at you (laughs)?

O:
Pretty much (laughs).They'd turn around, and we'd have people that would say they didn't understand the reason behind so purposefully broadcasting one's sexuality in a political forum -they'd say they didn't see at all what the relation between that and politics is.

M:
That's the tough part. When it comes to homosexuality, people tend to think of homosexual acts, actually as if they were nothing more than one way of enjoying sex and - on the same level as having a hobby. Japan may be a democracy, but humanism and human rights have not yet taken root.

--In Japan, homosexuality is usually seen as just something done in bed.

M:
Yes, before anything human rights-related comes to mind, people just think of all these sexual images. For this reason, we need everybody in Japan to work on their consciousness and give some more thought to what human rights really are, and what is this that really makes one person love another - gay folks alone cannot change the prejudice out there. All these elements remind me from time to time how different from Europe things in Japan truly are.

translated by rayna rusenko