Abstract

This chapter explores how LGBTQ activisms have challenged and negotiated with heteronormativity embedded in nationalism in postwar Japan. In the history of Japanese queer politics, nationalism has been one of the central forces for both inclusion and exclusion of sexual minorities. It aims to examine how Japanese ethnonationalism has transformed Japanese queer activisms as well as how it has set the limitation for their political effectiveness. First, the chapter discusses how male homosexual political discourses utilised Japanese nationalism to join political struggles and points out that male homosexual and feminist discourses had a different approach to Japanese nationalism before the AIDS crisis. Second, it explores how the AIDS crisis changed the social gaze towards homosexuality and analyses political impacts of the emergence of sexual identity based on sexual orientation. Third, it considers how nationalist anti-gender movements influenced not only gender equality policy in Japan but also LGBTQ politics. Finally, the chapter discusses the limitation of LGBTQ activisms relied on by Japanese nationalism through analysing the Japanese long-ruling Liberal Democratic Party’s discourses on diversity and LGBTQ rights for the Tokyo 2020 Olympics and Paralympics. As a conclusion, this chapter will point out that the limitation of postwar Japan’s LGBTQ activisms was attributed to the incapability of nationalism as a universal reason for social inclusion.