Japan deems religion as child abuse

[Belacqua]

Interesting news article.  I receive the daily news feeds from The Japan Times, Japan's largest English news outlet, and they did not mention these new guidelines.  They do have a story on a Tokyo court ruling that a prohibition against same-sex marriage is constitutional, and so, all is not well in Japan.

It's interesting to read the memoirs of the Americans who came to Japan as translators after the war, and then stayed on to make a career here. Edward Seidensticker, Donald Keene, and several others were the main intermediaries showing Japanese culture to the rest of the world. 

Of this group of people, the most famous were gay. 

They decided not to return to the US in large part because the gay scene in Tokyo was as active and far more safe than that in the US at the time. A network of gay bars and gay porn theaters were well known to those with such tastes. (There are still plenty of gay bars, but the porn theaters have been put out of business by home video. Keene laments this in one of his books, since there was a lot of social activity at the theaters.) Seidensticker tells a funny story about how the Nobel Prize banquet for Kawabata was long and boring, so he and several others left the event early and went around the corner to a gay SM club.

While gay marriage is not yet legal, gay sex between consenting adults has never been illegal -- except for about 7 years in the 19th century. 

The book The Hare with Amber Eyes describes one Vienna-born businessman who arrived immediately after the war and stayed for the rest of his life. He was unable to marry his partner, so for reasons of inheritance adopted him as a son. It's a touching love story. 

It wasn't ideal, in that it was still a "Don't ask don't tell" type situation. You wouldn't announce it to your co-workers at Mitsubishi, for instance. But among those who knew, everybody knew.