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)

--Could you share with us one of your fonder memories from this election?

O:
One thing I was very happy about was how not just LGBT people but all these guys from the baby boomer generation also joined to help as core members - they really gave all that they had.

M:
Is that so?!

O:
Remember that one man who came in here earlier? He was very personally involved in helping with our campaign. So, in fact, this was not a campaign strictly of, by, and for the LGBT community - heterosexual folks were right there working with us doing their part. The baby-boomer guys would comment, "This is the last human rights issue yet unresolved in Japan."

M:
It's encouraging to hear that they really understood that. I hope to see more people like that.

O:
They'd be talking about how we could not, as a country, say that we've settled our accounts without securing these rights. These guys are the ones who actually took on activist struggles in the 60s (laughs), and it was like they were determined to nail this last bit - the one area which they had never before set themselves to. I also think that the 2500 votes in Kagoshima had something to do with this, since the number of LGBT people alone doesn't seem to account for the votes I got. So when I was thinking about how so many non-LGBT members of the public were casting votes for me, I came to this realization that minority groups are so terribly afraid of getting hurt, we often put up barriers. From the beginning, it's easy for us to categorize things - like we do when we say, "It's useless to try here in this conservative town" - and this election has helped me to see that it may be us who are ostracizing others. Even among heterosexuals, many people understand who we are and are rooting for us in what we do. Even people in Kagoshima came out en force to support us. All we have to do is continue to honestly and accurately let people know when we're in trouble. A DPJ member from the Lower House stood with me to speak on my microphone in Kagoshima - his own district. Now, that was indeed a bold move on his part. The more I encountered individuals like that, the more I realized that it's OK for me to put my trust in a greater diversity of people.

M:
Certainly. I do think we can have more faith in straight people, contrary to what some may believe. Once during the campaign, I submitted a register of names for use that a friend of mine had - one with addresses. Information [on Otsuji] was sent out to people on the register by my introduction. Later, only one person called me asking to have their name removed from the list. Guess what? She was a lesbian (laughs).

O:
Since straight people tend to be less homophobic, they rarely hesitate in consenting to being included in registers (laughs).

M:
Right (laughs). So the question is, how can we bring in more of our straight, non-homophobic counterparts? How can we get the attention of some of our straight friends in a way that could spur them into wanting to see us in office? I think that will be a key point in the next election.

O:
Yes. Most people don't know the issues, so they don't know what all this is about. But if we put the information out there then I believe that people inclined to understand will give us their full understanding. Of course, solidarity within the community is also important, but I'm talking about our community building what could be called a rainbow bridge of unity linking us to our heterosexual friends.

M:
What a wonderful way to put it!

O:
This election gave us a keen lesson on the value of nurturing links as we move ahead.

M:
Exactly! Every year when I go to Gay Pride I invite both gay friends and straight friends to join, but it's always only my straight friends who walk with me. My gay friends won't walk by me (laughs) - they say that someone might see them, or that they don't want to be discovered by anyone from work. So for the most part, it's only my straight married women friends who come (laughs).

O:
I know what you're talking about (laughs). That's why this election really helped me to see once again how tightly confined we are by what we think of as our own protective armor.

--How do you think you could appeal to individuals that harbor their own inner homophobia, since they are not yet ready for solidarity in a sense?

M:
That's a tough question. I'm not sure about lesbians, but I know it would be hard to appeal to such gay men.

O:
In the end, if we make a society where it's easier to come out, then ultimately these folks will find that their lives become easier too. Once we see that LGBT persons exist in all our families and workplaces, then there will be no need for LGBT people to try to hide themselves.

M:
We don't need to have marriages of convenience. I mean, almost all gay seniors are married. Which means they have children. So these men and women are actually living under false pretenses, under what must be an incredible strain, but they have to guard that truth for the sake of their family. Someone like Otsuji is necessary in order for our society to become one where people would not have to live in that way. But many LGBT people still have trouble understanding that.

O:
For that reason though, I think that if we have more LGBT persons in politics then gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and all queer folks would themselves increasingly come to understand how that would benefit them as well. The same goes for when you see what's going on overseas. Similarly, it's also crucial that we don't criticize how anyone has chosen to live their life. I'm also gay, but some people have chosen to live their lives married and straight right on into their 50s or 60s. There's no way they could change the past so I think it would be incredibly hard for them to be criticized for the life choices they made. I'm certainly not one who could pass judgment. There's no need to attack part of someone's life that way. Yet, if we do work on advancing the number of people who understand LGBT issues, and we work to guide our LGBT youth, then the world in which we live will continue to change. Our environment will be one in which more people can come out and that would in the end create a society easier for more reluctant individuals to live in too.

M:
Indeed.

O:
Since each of us is coming to the table with our own lifetime of experiences, I can't say much over what others have done.

--I also wanted to ask, about the DPJ, what was their reaction to you within the party?

O:
I've wondered myself. Though getting endorsed was a laborious process, when I went to the DPJ campaign headquarters after the election, the HQ Chair - Diet representative Yoshio Hachiro - told me that he had hoped I'd get elected. He also said that it's difficult to win without having registers of names. And we can't exactly make an LGBT roll. It's too bad, but in the political world, unless you get elected, it's impossible to affect any sort of political presence.

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