“Before LGBT”: Post-War Queer Entertainment and Print Culture in Japan

Takeshi Dylan Sadachi, Writer & Content Producer

In this second piece, after exploring what it means to call a society or culture “conservative,” we will go deeper into the details to help you visualize Japanese queer culture, specifically from the post-war period’s celebrities and magazines.

Reframing Japanese Queer Culture

In the extreme binary framing of Japan as either a queer haven or a place with no queer culture and representation, the evidence for the former, and the counter-argument to the latter, often centres the historical art works that depicts traditional pederasty, especially during the Edo period.

They do provide context and perspective, but modern queer identities in Japan have ontologies more or less disconnected from these context-specific traditions. What is often overlooked is the queer entertainment scene and magazine industry of post-war Japan, which really shaped the idea of what “queer culture” is for much of the population today, including stereotypes.

While it’s not entirely accurate to draw a strict division, there is a vague distinction within queer discourses in Japan and elsewhere that shifted between the early to mid-2000s [1]. Of course, from the gay liberation movements to GLB and later LGBTQ+ discourses, Japanese queer politics have been influenced by global shifts and were never static. Japan’s pride parade began in the 90s, and the post-Stonewall politics of the 70s also had an impact [2].

However, this globally-shared understanding of queer culture, like locating Stonewall as the beginning of the genealogy of LGBTQ+ activism, using slogans like “love is love,” and buying rainbow merch, only became mainstream in Japan after the 2010s.

The most “official” way to refer to queer people became “LGBT” and its variants, instead of “homosexuals” “sexual minorities”. Around the same time, same-sex marriage became a core question in elections to determine a politician’s stance. Queer entertainment and subcultures were no exception to this shift; drag is one clear example.

In 2024, I had the privilege of interviewing Labinana, one of the prominent queens in Tokyo’s drag scene for Metropolis Japan. She explained that there is a clear divide in Tokyo’s drag culture after RuPaul’s Drag Race gained international and mainstream popularity around 2016 with its availability on Netflix. Of course, this shift wasn’t overnight, but it’s clear that expectations, styles and popularity around drag throughout the 2010s.

It’s something I’ve noticed myself. At many drag-focused events, the announcements are all in English, and the crowd often feels like an expat gathering, making me one of the few Japanese people there. Tokyo’s drag scene overall, at least among the queens featured on flyers for major events, includes many of European descent. At a drag brunch I attended, someone nearby said, “Oh, I’m glad drag culture has finally arrived in Japan.” It struck me just how unfamiliar the queer history of modern Japan remains, even among people who think they know Tokyo’s vibrant queer scene today.

Miwa Akihiro, the first Japanese drag queen?

Locating the origins of Japan’s modern queer culture is difficult. Take drag for example. Some go back to history and point to kabuki, the all-male traditional theater where actors often dedicate their lives to playing a single gender on stage.

But kabuki is largely hereditary; most major actors are born into prestigious family lineages. Takarazuka, the all-female revue-style musical company, is another reference point, though it has no official association with queerness.

You could also look at how ballroom culture influenced and inspired a Japanese “drag queen” scene in the 1980s [3], which Labinana contrasts with Japan’s current “international” drag culture. However, many Western media outlets, including Gay Times, cite Akihiro Miwa as one of Japan’s earliest “drag queens,” having debuted as an entertainer in 1952 [4].

Miwa never identified himself as a drag queen, and Japanese media rarely bother explaining who he is, he’s simply that famous. He was a prominent figure in the gei bōi (gay boy) subculture and has remained a major celebrity to this day. Following Miwa’s life does open up a story that lets us imagine the queer culture scene of Japan.

Born in Nagasaki in 1935, a city known as a trading hub for foreign merchants and as a center of Japanese Catholicism, Miwa grew up in a wealthy family that owned businesses around the yūkaku (licensed entertainment and red-light quarters).

Being in Nagasaki, his life was deeply affected by the war and the American atomic bomb. After graduating from a local Catholic mission school, he moved to Tokyo to study music, though he dropped out due to family financial issues and personal upheavals stemming from the war. By age 17, he was making ends meet singing for US military facilities occupying Tokyo after WWII.

One day, he saw a poster seeking a good-looking singer and waiter for a chanson bar in Ginza, the upscale shopping district near the Imperial Palace. He applied, and his popularity was instant. His seibetsu fushō (“gender unknown”) beauty was adored by the bar’s regulars, who included cultural giants like Kenzabur Oe and Yukio Mishima. Nearby, there was also a famous gay tea salon and bar called Ginza Brunswick (Braunschweig), which he also worked at one point. Mishima was also regular there, along with other cultural icon Akiyuki Nose, better known for his semi-autobiographical that turned into Ghibli film Graves of Fireflies.

Of course, Mishima is someone who cannot be ignored when discussing Japan and queerness. He was a highly acclaimed writer, who spoke of his homoerotic desires, though he never identified as “gay” or “bi”.

Overall, he was a major figure in every cultural field as well as the queer scene, and also a leader in the ultranationalist movement who ended his life with samurai-style ritual suicide after an attempted coup d'état. Yes, his life was as dramatic as it sounds (We will return to him in a later piece discussing queerness, masculinity, and nationalism in Japan.)

Miwa made his nation-wide record debut in 1957 with a cover of Gilbert Bécaud’s “Méqué méqué” and publicly acknowledged his homosexuality shortly after. His style was iconic: flamboyant lace shirts, elegant dresses, and sometimes outfits inspired by samurai pageboys, who often also provided sexual service to lords.

Mishima famously praised him as a “heavenly beauty.” The media called him “the most beautiful boy since the mythical age of Emperor Jimmu” and admiringly referred to him as a “shisutā bōi (sister boy).”

(*It’s worth noting that “boy” was used as a fashionable loanword with Western flair in Japan, similar to bishonen (beautiful young man), describing young adult men with feminine or androgynous aesthetics.)

While his homosexuality and gender nonconformity certainly brought challenges, he remained hugely successful. Miwa also built an acclaimed acting career, playing both male and female roles, often mysterious femme fatale characters. He portrayed Mata Hari in her biopic stage production, Marguerite in The Lady of the Camellias, and most notably starred as the alluring bandit in Black Lizard, a play (and later film) of the same name. Mishima wrote the original play and insisted on making a cameo in the film, playing a silent role, just for a scene where Lady Black Lizard kisses him. Mishima once told Miwa, “Your only flaw is that you refuse to fall in love with me.”

So, was Miwa Japan’s first drag queen? That depends entirely on how you define drag. Those who specifically identified as “drag queens” began to appear more in the 1980s. I argue that Miwa was seen more as an androgynous actor and singer on major national platforms coming from the wider “gei bōi” subculture, which was differentiated from just being homosexual. It was often used in the nightlife or entertainment scene to describe androgynous young AMAB individuals, often dressed in flamboyant clothes but with varying degrees of “femininity” [5], from full flowing dresses and long hair to frilled shirts, jabots, and eyeliner. It was like how Japan has “gyaru”-type subcultures that are both fashion and identity categories, but with the understanding that these bōis were into men.

Today, the Japanese word “gei” aligns with English LGBT categorization and is no longer associated with this post-war subculture. Those considered gei bōis at the time could, in today’s labels in English, be equated to a diverse range of AMAB queer folks with feminine presentation [6]. Similarly, later terms like nyūhāfu (“new half”) encompassed identities that English categories might describe as trans women or occasionally, feminine-presenting gay men and non-binary people, but generally implied a more “passing” presentation than the aforementioned gei bōi [7]. The term was also often used for those working in nightlife, catering mainly to straight male clientele, often alongside establishments with cisgender women. All of this raises questions about how “drag” is understood in Western contexts, particularly regarding how quotidian and consistent someone’s gendered presentation is, and where to draw the line between performance and identity.

It’s difficult to pinpoint a single “first” queer icon in the modern sense, but his life surely offers a glimpse into what post-war queer culture looked like in Japan.

Queer Networks: Bars and Print Culture

Queer establishments like gay bars served as community hubs, just as Miwa and others found connections. Traditionally, Japanese gay bars were not like typical Western ones with lively music and dance floors; instead, they were more intimate spaces.

They created family-like atmospheres of regulars centred around the mama (owner), who was often the main attraction, facilitating conversation and socialising. Mamas were often, though not exclusively, in josō (dress like/as women). These bars were where people met romantic partners, shared vital information about healthcare, or found help securing apartments for same-sex couples. Different bars had their own categories and targeted demographics. Some focused on supporting individuals assigned male at birth who wished to live as women, for instance. These places weren’t just nightlife spots—they were lifelines.

While the style of nightlife venues in Nichome have changed, queer establishments and gender-nonconforming entertainers have always been there, forming a vibrant scene since post-war times—and they still exist alongside this new wave. But this lifeline of connection and information wasn’t limited to nightlife; it was also facilitated by magazines, particularly for queer AMAB individuals. Japan’s print culture was vibrant and played a key role in facilitating many cultural and political movements, including those of Japanese suffragettes in the early 1900s.

In the 1920s, there was the ero guro nansensu (“erotic, grotesque, nonsense”) era, a flourishing of literature, music, and art that explored raw sexuality, taboo fetishes, and more. However, as Japan entered wartime, authoritarian media censorship drove such content underground.

After WWII, the US-led occupation imposed strict censorship through SCAPIN-33 until 1952, which banned criticism of the Allied Forces, any mention of the atomic bomb, or discussions of “negotiation” between Allied military men and Japanese women [10]. However, it left “non-normative” content largely untouched, a significant difference from the general Japanese censorship on nudity that would come later. This created a renaissance of “kasutori” media: post-war pulp publications filled with kink, fetish, and anything deemed “abnormal,” as long as it wasn’t political.

Starting in 1947, Kitan Club (“Strange Story Club”), a monthly pulp magazine, published literature, essays, and art covering fetishes such as sadomasochism, including male homoerotic themes. Other magazines followed, such as Fuzoku Kagaku (1953), blending academic sexology and fetish culture, Amatoria, and Uramado (“Back Window”), which combined history and erotic art, often featuring male homosexuality framed as kink or historical curiosity.

In 1952, the Adonis Society, a male homosexual culture circle, was formed by founding members including an editor from Amatoria, a duke and literature scholar Tomohide Iwakura from a prominent aristocratic family, with contributors like Mishima himself. They published Adonis and the anthology Apollo.

By the 1960s, Fuzoku Kitan, a successor to Kitan Club, included monthly pages dedicated to male homosexuality. Academic anthologies such as Chi to Bara (“Blood and Roses”) in the 1960s featured writings on fetish, homoeroticism, and male nudes, again with contributions by Mishima.

Editors behind these pages eventually launched Barazoku (“The Rose Tribe”) in 1971. Initially a porn magazine, it also included subculture columns, STI information, matchmaking, and consultation services, as well as real-life events. It occasionally addressed topics like how to “dress as a woman”, while remaining “masc” for the most part. Sabu, which began as an extra issue of a non-gay S&M magazine, emerged as a more “masc” and “hardcore” gay publication. Adon had a strong community focus, frequently discussing gay liberation movements, HIV information, and global gay lifestyles. This wave fueled more commercial gay magazines through the 70s and 80s, like The Ken and The Gay by Ken Togo, MLMW, The Super Monkey, and others.

In the 90s, publications shifted towards lifestyle magazines like Badi and G-men. Unlike earlier Barazoku, which often treated homosexuality as a “sexual preference”, these newer magazines framed it as a lifestyle, identity and community. Later in the 90s, Parade and Fabulous emerged with less sexual content, focusing on broader queer life. Many editors of these magazines remain prominent figures in Japan’s queer scene today. For example, Margaret (Toh Ogura), a drag queen who runs a queer book salon in Nichome, whom I had the privilege of meeting; and Matsuko Deluxe, one of Japan’s most successful TV hosts, who identifies as a “cross-dressed gay man” (These figures deserve deeper exploration in later pieces about contemporary queer representation).

Today, with the rise of the internet, much of this magazine culture has faded, with only Barazoku returning sporadically. This is similar in North America or Europe, where many prominent print periodicals have disappeared. However, when you think about major outlets like Gay Times, PinkNews, or Them, which are active online, it’s hard to say the same about Japan’s queer media landscape.

While online queer media outlets do exist here, at least from my perspective as a 27-year-old, they don’t feel nearly as influential or large-scale.

This long list of name-dropped publications shows just how vibrant queer publishing once was in Japan, though it primarily focused on male homoeroticism and homosexuality. The chronology reveals how queerness was historically framed more as one way to enjoy sexual pleasure rather than as an identity. This understanding echoed older histories, such as pederasty, where same-sex relations were not anchored to an identity category. In post-war Japan, framing queerness within fetish and kink allowed certain forms of queerness to exist publicly, especially within artistic and intellectual circles that embraced the “abnormal” and the “absurd”. Over time, these discourses gradually shifted towards seeing queerness as a lifestyle and identity.

This is not to say the post-war era was free of challenges, censorship, financial struggles, and pressure from authorities led to the closure of many publications. Still, the very existence of such a thriving queer culture counters any impression that pre-LGBT-discourse Japan was a place of total queer invisibility.

It is also important to note that those assigned female at birth were rarely represented in these publications. Yet despite such exclusions, it is impressive to see the scale of cultural networks spanning literature, art, porn, entertainment, and activism that were woven together through these magazines.

Legacies and Dilemmas

Part of this long list of queer celebrities and magazines is to show the complexity and non-monolithic nature of Japan’s queer landscape. It was far more dynamic and multifaceted than those who dismiss its existence assume.

While I focused mainly on Tokyo, queer media and entertainment cultures were never confined to the capital. Many celebrities began their careers or networks outside Tokyo, and there were publications centered in Osaka. Virtually all regional cities had their own queer establishments.

The ways different individuals, subcultures, and publications related to each other, sometimes favorably, sometimes not, and how they interacted with people outside the queer community, reveal the sheer scale and influence of Japanese queer culture. However, homonormativity and other issues aside, acceptance and acknowledgment of queer lives generally remained confined to entertainment, subculture, or a limited circle of cultural socialites. It was unexpectedly rich, yet full of contradictions.

Laying out this base is essential to discussing queer politics in Japan today. When analyzing the varying opinions on topics such as trans rights and healthcare, marriage equality, legal protections, hate speech, and even terminology, these histories become crucial. Debates over terms like nyūhāfu, okama, and one’e remain active and often contentious, with questions around what they mean, whether they are appropriate, and how they coexist with the LGBT categorization. There are also fundamental differences of opinion on the effectiveness, necessity, and form of activism.

Many magazines mentioned here, until the 90s, did not discuss marriage equality, for example. The editor-in-chief of Barazoku, who was heterosexual, supposedly dismissed its need at the time, though he later clarified his position in the 2000s, expressing support for the idea [11] [12]. Direct activism, demanding rights or confronting the legal system, was largely absent from these spaces. Osugi and Peeco, for example, kept their distance from Ken Togo, and were also critical of recent LGBT activism, even as recently as 201913. It echoes how today, some individuals boldly claim that recent activism is ruining queer lives, which is a discussion of queer right-wing politics in Japan. In fact, many queer icons who emerged from these realms of queer entertainment scene, often do not fully endorse today’s movements.

Of course, the source of dismissal might come from expectations shaped by realities. As the chronology of magazines showed, homosexuality was often accepted as one of “kinky” ways to engage in sex, then as a “discreet lifestyle”, and only later as an identity.

And throughout this, a few individuals under the spotlight gained recognition and accepted as entertainers. People’s expectations in the post-war period (and for some, even now) were adjusted to what felt realistic. They might not have thought their sexuality could become a permanent identity. They might not have believed being openly queer was a possibility.

For celebrities who earned success as cultural figures, from Miwa to Matsuko, their lives remain within an elite entertainment-industry enclave. For those who were lucky enough to have been at the center of that scene, loud activism can feel unnecessary, especially later in life.

Added to this is the oversimplified divide between native and imported queerness. Japan is clearly not a progressive country when it comes to queer politics, but it also does not rank at the bottom of global LGBTQ+ indices. This results in a rejection of queer activism from both directions: dismissing more progressive countries as “too woke,” while simultaneously adopting a condescending stance toward other countries (such as those in the Middle East) by claiming, “we’re doing fine.” This dynamic is similar to ongoing discussions around feminism here as well.

Understanding Japan’s complex and ambivalent queer history, particularly of the post-war era, helps us see how the current status quo was formed and how Japan locates itself in global culture and politics. Those who believe that Japan had no queer culture before the recent LGBT boom are wrong, of course. Yet, there is something unsettling about how many who lived through late 20th-century Japan now reject efforts toward progress. Those who simply admired these icons, or the icons themselves, rarely seem to contribute to today’s queer politics. To understand their perspectives, we had to dive into this rich and contradictory post-war queer culture — so deep and layered that it could never be fully covered in a single article.

Tre’vell Anderson, “A decade of LGBTQ pop culture visibility stalled political progress,” NBC News, December 22, 2019 (https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/decade-lgbtq-pop-culture-visibility-stalled-political-progress-ncna1108786)
Tokyo Rainbow Pride, “Pride Parade”, accessed July 11, 2025 (https://pride.tokyo/en/parade/)
Kat Joplin, “Tokyo is Burning: Falling in Love with Japan’s Drag Scene,” AJET Connect, April 11, 2020 (https://connect.ajet.net/2020/04/11/tokyo-is-burning-falling-in-love-with-japans-drag-scene/)
Kat Joplin, “Drag Domination: Japan’s drag scene is bursting at the seams,” Gay Times Originals, June 23, 2023 (https://www.gaytimes.com/originals/drag-domination-japans-drag-scene-is-bursting-at-the-seams/)
Mark McLelland, “Japan’s Original Gay Boom,” University of Wollongong, October 2006
Mark McLelland, Is There a Japanese 'Gay Identity'?, Culture, Health & Sexuality, Vol. 2, No. 4, pp. 459–472, October–December 2000
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Kenji Hisaoka, “The Influence of Censorship and Promotional Work by Occupation GHQ and Modern Japan,” The Hikone Ronso, No. 423, pp. 98–111, February 2020
Barazoku, “From the Editorial Office,” January 2000 issue, January 2000
Shii Udagawa, edited by Kaori Sasagawa, “The Merits and Demerits of Barazoku, Japan’s First Commercial Gay Magazine: Asking Former Editor Bungaku Ito Amid Today’s ‘LGBT Boom’,” HuffPost Japan, July 3, 2017 (https://www.huffingtonpost.jp/2017/07/03/barazoku-bungaku-ito_n_17380720.html)
Fuji TV, “Gay twins rose to fame… Peeco says ‘LGBT is not something to force recognition for,’” June 2, 2019 (https://www.fujitv.co.jp/muscat/20195371.html)