This is great! Which bridge is this and what was the celebration?
Anonymous said…
These are incredible photos. Note the young man playing with his buddy's ass in the top photo and the kid on the far right sporting an incredible hardon in the second. Thank you for publishing these.
Anonymous said…
Japanese Gay Men Coming Out
Noriaki Fushimi, editor of Queer Japan returns, holds a copy of the magazine, which is aimed at supporting gay men.
Young gay men stepping out of closet opened by others Japan Times/Kyodo News March 11, 2006
Is homosexuality more accepted in Japan than it was 40 years ago? Some people think that baby boomers have paved the way for gay men to live more openly.
Noriaki Fushimi believes gay men are a part of mainstream society and publishes a lifestyle magazine that targets men living an openly gay lifestyle.
The 42-year-old writer and leader of Japan's gay movement is well-known for his book "Private Gay Life," published in 1991, and "Majo no Musuko" ("A Witch's Son"), a novel that won him the Bungei Prize for fiction.
The editor of Queer Japan returns (QJr) said his magazine is not like Bara Zoku (Rose Tribe), a gay magazine, which began in 1971, about the time when gay cabaret-style singer Akihiro Miwa's autobiography "Murasaki no Rirekisho" ("Purple Life Story") was released.
"Bara Zoku expressed the (social and sexual) desires of gays," Fushimi said. "But (I want) QJr to be a lifestyle magazine for gay people. In other words, there are many (people in Japan) who have grown up in a generation of people who have chosen (to live) a gay lifestyle. . . . I'd like to be (involved with) them to assist them in what they choose to do and to create in the future."
Actor Kira Aoyama, 56, a baby boomer, felt that Japan was too conservative to accept his homosexuality when he was growing up and starting his career.
As he worked built his career in the second half of the 1960s, he felt that revealing his sexual orientation would have ruined him.
"It was impossible for me to come out, because (that) would have been nothing but a scandal," he said.
He kept his sexuality a secret until he was in his 40s.
"When I was in kindergarten, I didn't like children to tease me as 'a sissy' and I confronted them every time they said it," the actor said.
"But when I entered an upper grades in elementary school and realized I was gay, I thought I was different from others and I'd have to live a lonely life."
He hid his sexual orientation from other actors until the early 1990s, when he got some advice from a "wonderful drunken man" at a bar in Tokyo's gay district in Shinjuku Ward.
"I had been entrusted with the job of producing a drama for the stage at the time," he said. "I went to the bar for the first time after I had found out about it in a book. I was not a drinker. I didn't want to appear like a man who was looking for something."
However, a drunk man at the bar saw him and called out: "In truth, something nice rarely happens in this place, but everyone comes here hoping to come across a marvelous man. That's nothing you should be ashamed of."
The man's words "sounded to me like a message that I should admit (who I am)," Aoyama said. "My coming out started after that."
He has been praised for his performance as an old gay man in a home for the elderly in the 2005 movie "La Maison de Himiko," directed by Isshin Inudo.
Takahisa Tanabe, 24, is half out of the closet.
A writer for QJr, he came up with the idea of having AIDS as the topic for the next issue. He pitched the idea at an editorial meeting, saying, "My friend tested HIV positive last year and I began to feel it concerned not only him but others as well."
However, Tanabe is also a typical salaryman, working at a company in Tokyo. He has not told any there he is gay.
He told his parents and brothers several years ago. When he revealed his secret, he got relatively little reaction.
"They were surprised at first but accepted me rather cheerfully," Tanabe said.
"My generation does not have such a lighthearted" attitude, said QJr publisher Fushimi. He could not tell his late father he was gay.
"That's a distinctive characteristic of the sons of postwar baby boomers," he said.
He said those born between 1971 and 1974 are the most socially secure and vigorous group.
Baby boomers declared their desires publicly and said no to social norms, according to Aoyama. Perhaps, he said, that is why young gay men do not feel as restrained by society.
The movement to end discrimination against gay people swung into full force during the 1990s.
Fushimi called it "the only social movement that the baby boomer generation did not launch."
"I worried alone about (my being gay) for a long time, but I feel that being gay and (having worried about it) is connected to my personal enrichment," baby boomer Aoyama said. "If I were not gay, I would not have been able to meet other people -- as well as myself -- face to face. However, it would be nice if the day came when there was no such phrase as 'coming out of the closet.' "
Katsuaki Sugiura, or Peeco as the 61-year-old TV commentator on fashion is called, believes discrimination against gay people remains unchanged in Japan.
"I think homosexuality is a lifestyle. The discrimination itself may never cease to exist, but it would be nice if the number of people who say they do not understand gays' way of life but accept it would grow."
Anonymous said…
These photos were all taken about two years ago on the Dotombori Bridge in Shinsaibashi, Osaka.
They show young Jguys getting wild after the Hanshin Tigers baseball team won the national title that year. A ritual know locally as the dotombori jump. You will see the little yellow and black baseball bats in the last pic. It is not a festival thing or a gay thing either.
The river itself is quite polluted and full of trash though. And as the Tigers nearly won again this past year, the city gov't erected huge metal fences around the area to head off any similar carryings on, all in the name of health and safety of course!
I thought they would have been better spending the untold millions of yen on cleaning up the river, than worrying about the exposing of a bit more feverish Jguy ass. I am sure you would all agree!
Comments
Noriaki Fushimi, editor of Queer Japan returns, holds a copy of the magazine, which is aimed at supporting gay men.
Young gay men stepping out of closet opened by others
Japan Times/Kyodo News
March 11, 2006
http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20060311f1.html
Is homosexuality more accepted in Japan than it was 40 years ago? Some people think that baby boomers have paved the way for gay men to live more openly.
Noriaki Fushimi believes gay men are a part of mainstream society and publishes a lifestyle magazine that targets men living an openly gay lifestyle.
The 42-year-old writer and leader of Japan's gay movement is well-known for his book "Private Gay Life," published in 1991, and "Majo no Musuko" ("A Witch's Son"), a novel that won him the Bungei Prize for fiction.
The editor of Queer Japan returns (QJr) said his magazine is not like Bara Zoku (Rose Tribe), a gay magazine, which began in 1971, about the time when gay cabaret-style singer Akihiro Miwa's autobiography "Murasaki no Rirekisho" ("Purple Life Story") was released.
"Bara Zoku expressed the (social and sexual) desires of gays," Fushimi said. "But (I want) QJr to be a lifestyle magazine for gay people. In other words, there are many (people in Japan) who have grown up in a generation of people who have chosen (to live) a gay lifestyle. . . . I'd like to be (involved with) them to assist them in what they choose to do and to create in the future."
Actor Kira Aoyama, 56, a baby boomer, felt that Japan was too conservative to accept his homosexuality when he was growing up and starting his career.
As he worked built his career in the second half of the 1960s, he felt that revealing his sexual orientation would have ruined him.
"It was impossible for me to come out, because (that) would have been nothing but a scandal," he said.
He kept his sexuality a secret until he was in his 40s.
"When I was in kindergarten, I didn't like children to tease me as 'a sissy' and I confronted them every time they said it," the actor said.
"But when I entered an upper grades in elementary school and realized I was gay, I thought I was different from others and I'd have to live a lonely life."
He hid his sexual orientation from other actors until the early 1990s, when he got some advice from a "wonderful drunken man" at a bar in Tokyo's gay district in Shinjuku Ward.
"I had been entrusted with the job of producing a drama for the stage at the time," he said. "I went to the bar for the first time after I had found out about it in a book. I was not a drinker. I didn't want to appear like a man who was looking for something."
However, a drunk man at the bar saw him and called out: "In truth, something nice rarely happens in this place, but everyone comes here hoping to come across a marvelous man. That's nothing you should be ashamed of."
The man's words "sounded to me like a message that I should admit (who I am)," Aoyama said. "My coming out started after that."
He has been praised for his performance as an old gay man in a home for the elderly in the 2005 movie "La Maison de Himiko," directed by Isshin Inudo.
Takahisa Tanabe, 24, is half out of the closet.
A writer for QJr, he came up with the idea of having AIDS as the topic for the next issue. He pitched the idea at an editorial meeting, saying, "My friend tested HIV positive last year and I began to feel it concerned not only him but others as well."
However, Tanabe is also a typical salaryman, working at a company in Tokyo. He has not told any there he is gay.
He told his parents and brothers several years ago. When he revealed his secret, he got relatively little reaction.
"They were surprised at first but accepted me rather cheerfully," Tanabe said.
"My generation does not have such a lighthearted" attitude, said QJr publisher Fushimi. He could not tell his late father he was gay.
"That's a distinctive characteristic of the sons of postwar baby boomers," he said.
He said those born between 1971 and 1974 are the most socially secure and vigorous group.
Baby boomers declared their desires publicly and said no to social norms, according to Aoyama. Perhaps, he said, that is why young gay men do not feel as restrained by society.
The movement to end discrimination against gay people swung into full force during the 1990s.
Fushimi called it "the only social movement that the baby boomer generation did not launch."
"I worried alone about (my being gay) for a long time, but I feel that being gay and (having worried about it) is connected to my personal enrichment," baby boomer Aoyama said. "If I were not gay, I would not have been able to meet other people -- as well as myself -- face to face. However, it would be nice if the day came when there was no such phrase as 'coming out of the closet.' "
Katsuaki Sugiura, or Peeco as the 61-year-old TV commentator on fashion is called, believes discrimination against gay people remains unchanged in Japan.
"I think homosexuality is a lifestyle. The discrimination itself may never cease to exist, but it would be nice if the number of people who say they do not understand gays' way of life but accept it would grow."
They show young Jguys getting wild after the Hanshin Tigers baseball team won the national title that year. A ritual know locally as the dotombori jump. You will see the little yellow and black baseball bats in the last pic. It is not a festival thing or a gay thing either.
The river itself is quite polluted and full of trash though. And as the Tigers nearly won again this past year, the city gov't erected huge metal fences around the area to head off any similar carryings on, all in the name of health and safety of course!
I thought they would have been better spending the untold millions of yen on cleaning up the river, than worrying about the exposing of a bit more feverish Jguy ass. I am sure you would all agree!