Japan's 'love hotels' acced of anti-gay discrimatn | Japan | The Guardian

Contents:

• JAPAN'S 'LOVE HOTELS' ACCED OF ANTI-GAY DISCRIMATN
• GAY MEN AND HIV JAPAN
• HOW DO JAPAN TREAT GAY PEOPLE?
• 10 COUNTRI WH THE BIGGT GAY POPULATNS THE WORLD
• JAPANE MALE GAY AND BISEXUAL INTY

JAPAN'S 'LOVE HOTELS' ACCED OF ANTI-GAY DISCRIMATN

In May this year, at the height of the ronavis’s first wave, two gay men livg together Amagasaki, wtern Japan, thought they would ease the boredom of the untry’s soft lockdown wh a vis to a love hotel, where upl pay for short stays to have rather than the reee time they had anticipated, the uple, their mid-30s, did not even get as far as the door to their room.

Dpe risg awarens of LGBT rights, Japan is the only G7 untry that do not regnise same-sex marriag, and much of the untry’s multibilln-dollar love hotel dtry accepts only heterosexual Ishikawa, Japan’s first openly gay MP, timated that of 143 love hotels Tokyo’s Toshima ward, where he began his reer as an assembly member, 30 refed entry to same-sex expectatn that they will be rejected means many gay men have e to regard love hotels as off-lims, acrdg to one member of Tokyo’s LGBT muny, who told the Guardian: “Nothg dampens the prospect of a romantic eveng out more than a homophobic hotel policy. ”Akira Nishiyama, assistant executive director of the Japan Alliance for LGBT Legislatn, said hotel rejectns of same-sex upl were mon, even though is illegal unr a 2018 revisn to the hotel bs law, which stat that hotels “should not reject guts on the basis of their sexual orientatn or genr inty” the rare ocsns that ctomers report a hotel for homophobia, thori simply offer the proprietors “admistrative guidance” – a measure mpaigners say lacks legal love hotels, so named after the first of their kd – Hotel Love – opened Osaka the late 1960s, origally tered to upl sperate to pe their extend fai, who tradnally lived unr one roof, for a few hours of a cle the young populatn, the rise sgle hoeholds, and the pre-panmic boost ternatnal tourism have prompted many to unrgo image makeovers to appeal to travellers, cludg sgle guts lookg for paratively cheap and fortable a rult, the number of hotels wh an overtly sexual theme has dwdled to ls than 10, 000 recent years, pared wh around 30, 000 two s ago. ”Although some webs have started listg “gay-iendly” love hotels, Matsunaka said Japan’s refal to fully accept the LGBT muny, exemplified by the ban on same-sex marriag, ma homophobia socially acceptable.

GAY MEN AND HIV JAPAN

A Japane urt led on Wednday that the ernment's ban on gay marriage is unnstutnal, a landmark cisn that supporters hope will pave the way for marriage equaly the only G-7 natn to not fully regnize same-sex partnerships. " Sce 2015, certa Japane municipali have issued "partnership certifit" to gay and lbian upl, which do not nfer legal stat equivalent to marriage but allow for shared rental agreements and hospal visatn rights.

HOW DO JAPAN TREAT GAY PEOPLE?

" Kanako Otsuji, an opposn party member and one of Japan's few openly gay policians, said a tweet reported by The Guardian that she was "tly, tly happy" about the verdict, and urged the legislature to "liberate a proposed amendment to the civil to make same-sex marriage possible. While there is no relig proscriptn Japan for LGBTQ life, the fger-waggers and tutters bludgeon people wh the word tradn—this spe the well-documented tradn of homosexual relatnships Japane culture, pre-Meiji perd.

For some this might e as a surprise as Cha is not known as a untry that supports or promot topics like gay, lbian or bisexual but sce is the biggt populatn on Earth also has the hight number of gay people. Though Japan has unique cultural aspects that are different om Wtern untri, n be shown that Wtern ncepts or mols of homosexual inty are applible to a nsirable extent to Japane gay and bisexual men.

The term “homosexualy, ” while sometim nsired anachronistic the current era, is the most applible and easily translatable term to e when askg this qutn across societi and languag and has been ed other cross-natnal studi, cludg the World Valu Survey. Dpe major chang laws and norms surroundg the issue of same-sex marriage and the rights of LGBT people around the world, public opn on the acceptance of homosexualy society remas sharply divid by untry, regn and enomic velopment. The study is a follow-up to a 2013 report that found many of the same patterns as seen today, although there has been an crease acceptance of homosexualy across many of the untri surveyed both years.

10 COUNTRI WH THE BIGGT GAY POPULATNS THE WORLD

However, while took nearly 15 years for acceptance to rise 13 pots om 2000 to jt before the feral legalizatn of gay marriage June 2015, there was a near equal rise acceptance jt the four years sce legalizatn. This staggerg 56-pot difference exceeds the next largt difference Japan by 20 pots, where 92% and 56% of those ag 18 to 29 and 50 and olr, rpectively, say homosexualy should be accepted by society.

In South Korea, for example, those who classify themselv on the iologil left are more than twice as likely to say homosexualy is acceptable than those on the iologil right (a 39-percentage-pot difference). In Spa, people wh a favorable opn of the Vox party, which recently has begun to oppose some gay rights, are much ls likely to say that homosexualy is acceptable than those who do not support the party. And Poland, supporters of the erng PiS (Law and Jtice), which has explicly targeted gay rights as anathema to tradnal Polish valu, are 23 percentage pots ls likely to say that homosexualy should be accepted by society than those who do not support the erng party.

But even untri like France and Germany where acceptance of homosexualy is high, there are differenc between supporters and non-supporters of key right-wg populist parti such as Natnal Rally France and Alternative for Germany (AfD).

JAPANE MALE GAY AND BISEXUAL INTY

In 25 of the 34 untri surveyed, those who say relign is “somewhat, ” “not too” or “not at all” important their liv are more likely to say that homosexualy should be accepted than those who say relign is “very” important. Though the opns of religly unaffiliated people n vary wily, virtually every untry surveyed wh a sufficient number of unaffiliated rponnts, “non” are more acceptg of homosexualy than the affiliated. There has recently been much discsn the field of lbian and gay studi about Dennis Altman's theory of 'global queerg'[1] which outl the fluence of the Civil Rights' Movement the US and Europe on the velopment of lbian and gay 'inti' which then, through the 'globalisg' fluence of post-dtrial wage-based enomi, nsumerism, the mass media and tourism, turn beg to affect digeno unrstandgs of homosexualy societi where tradnally there has been no notn of a personal inty found on the genr of sexual object choice.

In this theory, the US is often assumed to be somehow advance of the rt of the world and the mols pneered that untry for creasg the social space acrd to lbian and gay liv are generalised as suable mols for lbians and gay men other untri to adopt. Until recently, was impossible to answer this qutn for, even five years ago, there was practilly no rmatn available English about homosexualy morn Japan and there was only one book and a handful of amic papers ncerng Japan's well-attted historil tradn of male homosexualy.