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Last Friends , beyond friends – articulating non-normative gender and sexuality on mainstream Japanese television

2011; Routledge; Volume: 12; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/14649373.2011.578796

1469-8447

Yuen Shu Min,

Media, Gender, and Advertising

Abstract With the official recognition of sex-reassignment surgery in 1996, the concept of Gender Identity Disorder (GID), i.e. a disjuncture between one's biological sex and gender identity, became accepted as medically correct in Japan. Since then, media representations and popular perceptions of gender/sexual variants have tended to revolve around notions of ‘illness’ or ‘disorder’, where they are often perceived as souls ‘trapped’ in the wrong bodies. While some people have benefitted from the medical discourse and are happily settled in their new identities across the gender border, there certainly are gender/sexual non-normative people who do not fit into the pathological category of GID. Using award-winning drama Last Friends as its main text of analysis, this paper seeks to highlight the difficulty, if not impossibility, of classifying one's gender and sexuality into clear-cut polarized categories of male/female, heterosexual/homosexual and homosexual/transsexual. Once the basis of the male/female dichotomy is ruptured, other categories that have this divide as their foundation will also start to destabilize. Coming more than a decade after the re-legalization of sex-reassignment surgery, I argue that Last Friends plays an important role in questioning the gender status-quo and opening up a new path for articulating gender diversity on Japanese mainstream television. Keywords: Japanese dramagender and sexualityFTMgender identity disordertransgenderhomosexualityfamily Acknowledgements I would like to express my gratitude to Dr Lim Beng Choo and anonymous reviewers for their critical comments on an early draft of this paper. I am also indebted to Wong Wan Hui and colleagues at the NUS Department of Japanese Studies for their invaluable feedback and suggestions. Notes The surgery was banned in 1969 following the Blue Boy Trial. For more, see McLelland Citation(2005). Onabe is commonly used as an occupational term to refer to biological women who cross-dress as men (with or without hormonal injections) and work in onabe clubs as hosts. For more on the onabe, see McLelland (Citation2005: 116–122), Sugiura Citation(2006), and Toyama Citation(1999). Nyūhāfu (Newhalf) generally refers to Male-To-Female (MTF) transsexuals who work in the sex and entertainment industry. Many of them have breast implants but retain their male genitals (McLelland Citation2005: 198). For more on the post-war history of gender/sexual variance, see McLelland (Citation2004, Citation2005), and Mitsuhashi (2003). Featuring transvestite celebrity Peter (then gei bōi in a Roppongi show bar), Bara no Sōretsu is a semi-documentary, avant-garde film that offers a snapshot of Tokyo's gei bā (bars where cross-dressed effeminate young men, known as gei bōi, work as ‘hostesses’) scene in the late 1960s. Namba Kinyūden Minami no teiō: Nageki no nyūhāfu also tells the story of a MTF transgender who works in a nyūhāfu pub with much focus on the trans-character's struggles – in coming out to his/her family about his/her gender identity, and in raising money for the sex-change operation. The Nikkei Entertainment ‘2008 Top 50 Hits’ is an annual ranking of entertainment products (such as celebrities, music, films, books, television programs, games software) by the Nikkei Entertainment editorial board, determined through evaluation of sales, viewership/listenership, proliferation in the mass media, and degree of the products' social influence, for example. Ueno Juri, Nishikido Ryō and Eita were ranked 28th, 32nd, and 40th respectively (Nikkei Entertainment 2009: 30–33). I am adopting the deconstructive and transgressive meanings of the term ‘queer’ here. Examples include the lawsuits that prominent post-operative FTM Torai Masae and his committee filed (in 2001) to allow transsexuals to amend their family register after undergoing sex-reassignment surgery. See Torai (2003: 218–220) for a summary of important events related to GID; McLelland Citation(2004) and Ishida and Murakami Citation(2006) for post-war discourse and media representations of transgender; Taniguchi Citation(2006) for legal developments related to GID transsexuals. NHK's documentary series Kurosu appu gendai (Close-up Modern) and Hāto wo tsunagō (Heart TV) ran several episodes on LGBT issues. For more discussion on Kinpachi Sensei 6, see Torai (2003: 161–163), Sugiyama (2006: 71–73, 134), Yonezawa (2003: 77–83) and Yuen Citation(forthcoming). For more on Watashi, see Mackie Citation(2010). For examples on non-GID transgenders, see McLelland (Citation2005: 216). As a shorthand, and unless otherwise stated, I use ‘FTM’ to broadly refer to female-bodied persons who identify and live as men (or have desires to do so, with or without hormonal treatment or surgery). It is not my main intention in this paper to problematize the definition(s) of ‘FTM’, and neither am I attempting to prescribe a ‘correct’ definition of the term as, following Cromwell (Citation1999: 25), ‘individuals have every right to use whatever terms they wish’. Instead, part of my focus here is to identify how ‘FTM’ has been defined and conceptualized in contemporary Japan, and highlight the limitations of such construction(s) of the FTM (and other gender/sexual categories). In Japan, one needs to be diagnosed with GID before being able to undergo sex-reassignment surgery, and therefore, ‘FTM’ here also encompasses GID-diagnosed FTM (although it need not always be so). I am largely focusing on the FTM in this paper because much has been researched and written about the MTF in Anglophone studies of gender/sexual minorities in Japan, but such efforts have not been matched in the study of FTM. It is hoped that this study will contribute to research on female gender diversity in present-day Japan. For an example of the shaping of the female body in contemporary Japan, see Spielvogel's Citation(2003) research on women working out at fitness clubs in Tokyo. In one episode, Ruka jumps in front of Michiru (despite being injured herself) and shouts, ‘Don't touch my Michiru!’ in an attempt to protect Michiru from Sōsuke's attack. In another episode when Michiru seeks help from Ruka and her housemates after being beaten up by Sōsuke, Takeru says (in the form of voiceover), ‘Ruka, at that moment, I know you have decided in your heart that you will do anything, even sacrifice your life, to protect Michiru’. In an interview of Asano Taeko, scriptwriter of Last Friends, by lesbian webzine Tokyo Wrestling, Asano says that prior to shooting, she showed the drama-script to some ‘FtM no kata’ (FTM people) for feedback. The FTM viewers, according to Asano, all intend to undergo sex-reassignment surgery, and therefore presumably, their definition of ‘FTM’ (or ‘FtM’ as it is used in the interview) is heavily shaped by the desire (and intention) to pursue a male body through surgery. In the interview transcript, ‘FtM’ is defined as male-identified female-bodied persons with GID, and an abbreviation of ‘Female To Male’ (Keiser 2008). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSXJMw3gOc0, accessed 15 June 2009. Sōsuke writes letters to Ruka's parents, posts notes at her workplace and sends articles to a magazine publisher to expose her ‘secret’. For example, in the note that he posts at Ruka's workplace, he writes, ‘Kishimoto Ruka is a monster with the heart of a man in the body of a woman. She looks at her female friends with the perverted eyes of a man. She is someone with a distorted soul. If you think this is a lie, check with her in person’. For more discussion on tachi/neko and other Japanese terms for expressing female same-sex desires, see Chalmers (Citation2002: 18–43) and Robertson (Citation1998: 68–70). The term ‘butch’ has often been used as an English equivalent of ‘tachi rezubian’ in Anglophone academic studies of female homosexuality in Japan, and although I am also using both terms interchangeably in this paper, I am by no means suggesting that both terms are the same as each has its own histories (and complexities), and emerged/evolved from rather different contexts. However, both terms often evoke similar images of the masculine-lesbian figure that is popularly perceived to be distinct from the FTM (I am questioning this very perception in this paper), and it is on this basis that I am using ‘butch-lesbian’ and ‘tachi rezubian’ interchangeably here. Tōjisha literally means persons directly involved, and is commonly used to refer to people suffering from some form of discrimination in Japan. Who is, or can be, considered a ‘tōjisha’ is still a much debated issue in Japan, and as McLelland (Citation2009: 204) argues, even among the tōjisha, there exist a ‘plurality of tōjisha viewpoints on any given topic [that] tends to work against the development of fixed group identities’. In the context of this paper, I use ‘tōjisha’ to generally refer to self-identified LGBT persons (although ‘tōjisha’ does not solely refer to gender/sexual minorities) and ‘tōjisha discourse’ to refer to narratives written by such people. For more on current debates on ‘tōjisha-ness’, see McLelland Citation(2009). See Ishida and Murakami Citation(2006) for an illustration of this three-dimensional rigid model of gender/sexuality. The onabe interviewed here uses the ‘masculine’ personal pronoun ore as a self-reference term. Because they were unable to change their sex in the official documents, they were not able to vote, as entry into voting centers is subject to a check of their identity documents, which would reveal the disparity between their sex and gender presentation. The change of sex recorded in the family register was approved in 2004, albeit with several conditions attached. As Abe Hideko's (Citation2006 [2004]: 134–135) interviews with lesbian employees at lesbian bars in Shinjuku also show, ‘lesbian’ is defined in terms of a woman's self-identification (as a woman) and her sexual desire for another woman. The book is a compilation of 49 frequently asked questions on GID published by GID ‘experts’ and tōjisha as part of the Problem Q&A (puroburemu Q&A) series. Harima's answers here are directed at the question, ‘Is GID different from homosexuality?’ The Joker card is the only card that does not have a matching pair and the player who is left with the Joker card loses the game. The Special Episode is a one-hour condensed version of the serial, coupled with ‘updates’ of the characters, set one year after the series of events that led to the death of Sōsuke and the birth of Rumi (Michiru and Sōsuke's daughter). It was broadcast on 28 June 2008, one week after the last episode. Takeru tells Michiru that he is defective, although he does not explicitly explain what he means. It may refer to his inability to sexually desire women, and therefore his un-reproductivity. The documentary criticizes the common stereotype of transgenders as people who cannot decide whether they are male or female and waver between the two genders as and when they feel like it. The program interviews GID transsexual Yamamoto Ran and GID medical ‘expert’ Harima Katsuki who both conform to the heteronormative, gender-binary model that sees the transgender as drifting between ‘normal’ (men and women) and GID, and is therefore a problem for society. For more, see Bornstein Citation(1994). http://www.fujitv.co.jp/lastfriends/index.html, accessed 19 September 2009.