by JACKIE HOFFART
One of a kind: Transgender politician Aya Kamikawa talks to The Japan Times. PHOTO/Jackie Hoffart
Transgender people are popping up everywhere in the current Japanese media landscape. Whether it’s appearing on variety shows or hawking soft drinks or makeup in TV ads, the current crop of “new-half” celebrities have established themselves in the mainstream in a way that has surprised many onlookers.
One milestone on the road to this prime-time exposure was NTV’s variety show “Onee-Mans” (which roughly, and unofficially, translates as “Girly Men”). The show, which featured the supposed “ultra-feminine powers” of onee tarento (girly-men TV celebs) to help straight women attract straight men, held on to a coveted evening slot for some 2½ years from October 2006.
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I put that question to a third-term member of Setagaya Ward Council in central Tokyo, Aya Kamikawa, who is Japan’s only transgender politician to have “come out.”
At our meeting in Setagaya City Hall this month, Kamikawa responded, saying: “I would never want to get in the way of someone using their gender to express who they are in the media. But I question the motivations of the people who are simply laughing at them, without any second thought.
“I do feel like there are too many people who are innocently laughing at these people without considering the position of people who might be in a sexual minority within their own family, among their colleagues or in their circle of friends. (People who belong to sexual minority groups) can be anywhere.”
Asked whether those TV programs might be misrepresenting a level of acceptance in society that isn’t really there, Kamikawa paused for a moment, her head tilted slightly to the side, before saying: “There is a huge gap between what people see in the media and what they hear from actual people. … I don’t really think those programs help to promote understanding of the diversity of sexuality.”
The Japan Times for more