Queer Japan (Japanese) (Documentary)

As the title suggests, 'Queer Japan' is a documentary that celebrates the country's diversity of queer experience. Trailblazing artists, activists, and everyday people from across the spectrum of gender and sexuality defy social norms and dare to live unconventional lives in this kaleidoscopic view of LGBTQ+ culture in contemporary Japan. The most eye-opening aspect of this documentary is how beautifully outspoken everyone is.

The makers talk to a plethora of people in this 100 minute film. Each represents a different aspect of the hentai life — in the Japanese sense of the word, roughly denoting unconventional sexual desires or practices. We meet a butoh dancer who questions the need to classify everyone, a trans activist who writes video-game strategy books, a gay man who’s the MC of Department H, a fashion-runway party for the latex-and-rubber set, a gay erotic artist whose unapologetically sexy and explicit body-fetish drawings have made him a kind of Tom of Tokyo, a deaf lesbian who went to court with her fiancé, who was petitioning to change his legal status from female to male, and had to pioneer new sign-language characters simply to communicate to the judge some of the things they were talking about. As you can see the diversity here is crazy.

The people we meet in “Queer Japan” represent a powerful cross-section of LGBTQ life, and they make a vivid case for how wrong it is to assume that members of that community are all in the same box, or five boxes, or 50 boxes. The message of the movie isn’t merely “tolerance.” It’s more demanding and exacting: Each and every one of us - gay and straight, trans and cisgender, wild and traditional, whatever — are who we are. The movie is a plea not simply for respect but for a recognition of the existential reality of each of our identities. This documentary was very different from what I was expecting to be honest. The kind of broad spectrum that we got to see here was not something I imagined. It felt we had everyone covered except the cisgender gay male. Some of the identities were even a bit scandalous even to me. What Iw as very excite to see what the animation creator and drawings done for 'My Husband's brother, a famous manga and one of my favorite series based on the book. I can see how and why this documentary is a very important step in understanding many aspects and semantic issues of “gay” or “queer” becoming “LGBTQIA+”. But for some odd reason, it failed to keep my attention focussed on the proceedings, as much as I wanted to watch it. (4/10)