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)

--How did the media respond after your appearances?

O:
Well, it's hard to say since I spent most of my time out and about. I did make the news on the Japanese social networking site, mixi. On mixi, members can write journal entries of their own about what's in the news and, apparently on the site, I was pretty badly received. Since mixi is meant to be read among friends, people write what they're really thinking - without pretense. It was quite harsh.

M:
I remember.

--What were people specifically criticizing?

O:
As Matsunaga touched on earlier, they were a lot of attitude like, "If we allow homosexuality, then what next - S&M? What else?!" I, myself, think that there's nothing wrong with S&M. However, the problem here is that the real issue at hand was not getting across - the fact that we must build political, legal, and social structures enabling same-sex couples to live together and stay together within our society.

M:
Yes. In Japan, people have a hard time differentiating between what is homosexuality, and what is fetishism, like S & M and other purely sexual tastes. Though matters of a sexual nature do fall into what homosexuality is, the fact is that it's more than that - it's a matter of human rights. That is not yet understood.

--There is this one lesbian - apparently short and getting on in years - who said, "I think I experience more discrimination based on my height and my age than I do my sexuality. Really, it's never easy for anyone to cope with a tough hand in life, regardless of what their sexuality is." But I don't think her statement is quite fair. Problems relating to homosexuality are not confined to bullying and other forms of personal harassment. Rather, they also exist on a structural level within society. Society will allow for the marriage of two short people, or two elderly people, as long as they are of the opposite sex. But, in some countries in the world, homosexuals can be given the death penalty. People may be bullied based on their appearance, but society still grants the victim his or her human rights and, if need be, the country will protect them. And then, to put salt to the wound, when the Governor Ishihara of Tokyo said publicly, " I hate fags and namako (the name of a Japanese food)" he was not taken to task - yet if he had said the same thing about persons with disabilities, there would have been a scandal. Lesbians and gays cannot marry, and on top of that we are not protected within the context of society from bashing. That's why homosexuality is not a problem of bullying or harassment, but a problem of society as a whole.

O:
Yes. And that's something that I believe has become more visible as a result of my entering the race. How society itself sees homosexuality, that is. On the one hand, the subject is met with absolute silence, but the other side became visible through the mouths of television commentators and the like.

--What sort of response did you get from within the LGBT community?

O:
I had many volunteers- both men and women. But I had been told that, even then, I'd get some negative reactions where I'd least expect them. Like, some gay men were asking why I needed to go and make all this effort to become a politician.

M:
I felt like that was still there. I can't understand why someone would come to think like that (laughs), but one unique element of homophobia in Japan is how gay and lesbian people are more homophobic than straight people. In particular, many closeted gays in their 40s-60s have become traumatized by their homosexuality. They detest the gayness within themselves and have developed something of a spite for, or complex regarding, all things gay. So when someone else, like Otsuji is openly gay as she takes part in the political world, she becomes a target to a lot of antipathy. The ill feeling directed out at her is the same as what these folks feel internally.
It was the same for America in the 1970s. There were incidents where openly gay politicians and athletes were killed, and the killers were gay! One such incident was even made into a movie "The Front Runner". An openly gay athlete about to compete in the Olympics was killed before the event, and the man arrested and sentenced for the murder was himself gay.
Contrary to what most people would think, many lesbians and gays are themselves homophobic. They just want to hang out and have fun in their own small communities - like Nichome - and don't want that part of their lives to come out in any other places.

--They don't want anyone to make waves that would impact their day-to-day lives.

M:
That's kind of what it's like. That's why it can seem so irksome that someone like Otsuji would come out and be open about herself. How we can incorporate people who see things this way into our work is really something we ought to work on from here.

O:
Also, I felt a lack in our ability to expand during this campaign. Usually, when heterosexuals network, information is spread - somewhat easily - across to friends and family and people in the workplace, but for someone in the LGBT community to do the same, they'd have to come out first. Normally, anyone with as many passionate volunteers as I had would think that they could win. But, no matter what we did, our efforts just did not extend that far. You know, we sometimes know the same people anyway, and so on.

--Ultimately, it remained confined to the community itself.

O:
Exactly. Many people couldn't talk about it with their families, and they couldn't bring it up at work.

M:
It would be hard to go to work and say, "There's this great candidate you should vote for - she's a lesbian!" And to say the same thing at home to your parents.

O:
Also, we need to organize. There are no lists of people (interested in the LGBT cause). That would require what people protect most carefully - private information like their names and addresses.

translated by rayna