Queer Japan
Co-written, directed and edited by Graham Kolbeins
Official website (2019)
Screened at the Queer East Film Festival in London (2021)
Review by Jenni Schofield
Queer Japan, directed by Graham Kolbeins in 2019, is a documentary which explores the LGBTQ+ community in Japan, from Shinjuku Ni-chome to Osaka and beyond. There is a core cast of individuals that the film focuses on interviews as an illustrative view of queer culture in Japan, notably featuring a well-known drag queen called Sato Vivienne, co-founder of G-Men and manga artist Tagame Gengoro, and butoh performer Matsuda Atsushi, among many other well-known and lesser-known artists, activists, performers, and individuals.
As a part of the showing at Queer East Film Festival 2021, there was a Q&A session with director Graham Kolbeins via video call after the screening of the film in London. This proved an exciting opportunity to explore Queer Japan, and the background which inspired the project in the first place. Kolbeins was extremely kind and passionate about the project and understanding of the limitations of the film - namely, that certain communities within the LGBTQ+ culture were limited, or omitted entirely, due to time restrictions. After all, there are an infinite number of denominations and identities, and it would be truly impossible to showcase and explore them all within a two-hour film.
Kolbeins features a multitude of scenes and demographics within the queer umbrella, in terms of representing the present-day businesses and physical spaces for queer folks to exist, while also examining a brief history of queerness in Japan. In Tokyo, the majority of these queer spaces and businesses are in Shinjuku’s Ni-chome in the Shinjuku ward, comprising of a few streets packed to bursting with hundreds of queer-owned snack bars and nightclubs, as well as a multitude of shops, boutiques, and love hotels. Most of the bars and nightclubs are insular, with very few windows or street level floors, providing a level of security for those who are unable or unwilling to publicly come out. These bars often are highly specialised for a subsection or subculture of queer folks, for example, okama bars mostly for gay men, BDSM and kink-friendly nightclubs, and bars for lesbian women only. Queer Japan stars some of these establishments, such as Goldfinger, a bar which is technically open to all gender identities and sexualities, but reserves Saturdays for lesbian (and importantly, cisgender) women only. As the description implies, Goldfinger does not allow transgender women on its “women only” nights, highlighting the issue of transphobia even within the queer community.
As a disabled member of the queer community, as well as a researcher of disability in Japan, it was refreshing for me personally to see deaf and disabled queer folks featured in Queer Japan. In one segment, the audience are introduced to a couple who work as Japanese Sign Language (JSL) interpreters for queer people, a distinction made necessary by the fact that the signs for LGBTQ+, queer, trans, and other vocabulary associated with non-cisgender and non-heterosexual identities are not well known by many JSL interpreters. As a result, deaf and disabled queer folk who use JSL to communicate are left without access to events, spaces, and perhaps most crucially, adequate medical care, as they are unable to access queer-specific healthcare, such as medical transitions for non-cisgender deaf folks. Queer Japan raises awareness for this organisation as one part of the fight for proper access to medical care for deaf and disabled queer people in Japan, and does so beautifully, integrating the struggles of one part of the LGBTQ+ community, rather than segregating these concerns and treating them as irrelevant for hearing and abled queer audiences.
Queer Japan takes a different approach than would be expected in a documentary about queerness and the LGBTQ+ community, opting to omit historical representations and strict retellings of socio-political history and events by a narrator in favour of passing the microphone, so to speak, to the community themselves. In other words, Kolbeins removes himself from the film as much as possible, allowing the members of the queer community in Japan to tell their stories and share that which is important to them. The documentary serves as a miniature ethnography of the queer identities in Japan, and as a collaboration between filmmaker and participants, forming a sort of autoethnography of a community through a variety of voices from that group of people, as opposed to an outside researcher making “the strange familiar, and the familiar strange”, as the saying in anthropology goes.[1]
Kolbeins’ work is not limited to this one film; he has collaborated with queer voices from across the world, as well as in a documentary web series titled Rad Queers, which sought to explore the world of queer activists, artists, and “those working to make the world a better place”.[2] He also co-edited both the first anthology of gay manga in English titled Massive: Gay Erotic Manga and the Men Who Make It, and The Passion of Gengoroh Tagame: The Master of Gay Erotic Manga, alongside Anne Ishii and Chip Kidd. Kolbeins and Ishii also co-founded a fashion brand called Massive Goods in 2013, which in their own words “creates and agents queer and feminist art, comics and fashion, by artists from Japan”, featuring artists such as Gengoroh Tagame, Rokudenashiko, and Jiraya in their clothing.[3]
Watching Queer Japan feels like attending a pride event; a celebration of everything LGBTQ+ within Japanese culture and beyond, while acknowledging the socio-political hurdles and injustices that still affect the community today. Voices from throughout the queer spectrum shared their lives and stories with us, the audience, to both raise awareness and rejoice in their queerness and self-love. Kolbeins does a remarkable job of moving himself as a director from the piece, allowing the participants to speak for themselves and tell the stories they wish to tell. Although the documentary arguably avoids topics of transphobia within the LGBTQ+ community itself, the inclusion of non-abled and non-hearing voices within the film creates a true representation of how diverse the queer community is, focusing instead on the positives that make the community great, rather than the negatives, sub-divisions, and in-fighting. In summary, Queer Japan is a depiction of queer joy, and one I highly recommend you watch.
Queer Japan is available as a DVD, Blu-Ray and as a VOD from various streaming services in certain regions.
[1] To read more about the “familiar strange” in anthropology, check out Robert Myers (2011) “The Familiar Strange and the Strange Familiar in Anthropology and Beyond", Bulletin of the General Anthropology Division, 18:2.
[2] Graham Kolbeins’ work portfolio: https://grahamkolbeins.com/work (accessed 22/10/2021).
[3] Massive Goods’ About page: https://massive-goods.com/pages/about (accessed 22/10/2021).