February 21, 2005 – An Evening in Tokyo’s Gay Subculture

February 21, 2005 – An Evening in Tokyo’s Gay Subculture

During the time the USNS Michelson was in port a couple of months before sailing to Portland for its repairs in dry dock in December 1965, I had agreed to go to Tokyo with the electrician, who had complemented me on my beautiful eyes the day I came aboard. I’ll call him “S” for lack of a better name, which I cannot recall. “S” had a partner he lived with in Tokyo and the two of them had plans to show me around a part of the city most guys like me were oblivious of. When the ship pulled into Yokosuka for our monthly re-supply in port, “S” and I boarded the train for Tokyo. I had an overnight case with me as I planned to stay a couple of nights. What manner of overnight case and exactly what I packed besides my toilet items escapes me. I want to say a change of underwear, a couple of dress shirts, some socks, and one or two ties. I was then and still am a fussy dresser and I might have had a second pair of slacks as well.

We got off the train at a stop before Shimbashi Station. I want to say at Shinagawa Station, but my recollection is imperfect at best. We walked for a good five minutes through a maze of streets and alleys. Along the way I tried to fix landmarks in my mind so I could retrace the path back to the station without having to be guided by “S”. Eventually we arrived at a small apartment-like complex. In Japan, Tokyo especially, the scale of buildings are smaller than anywhere I have ever been in the U.S. Doorways are narrower and lower than Westerners are used to. And before entering any home or living quarters, shoes are exchanged for slippers left near the entrance hall or genkan.

I entered the small building padding down a narrow corridor my stockinged feet encased in borrowed slippers. The walls within the building—typical of Japanese structures of the time were thin and made of what appeared to be paper. We entered the living room through the “fusuma” a heavy paper door. It fascinated me that in Japan this was what served to prevent someone entering your living space—no deadbolt, no lock, merely a closed door. One of the books I read while in Japan, the title of which was something like The Psychoanalysis of the Japanese Mind, observed that insane asylums in Japan contained patents simply by locking the fusuma to their room, suggesting that the taboo against breaking something as fragile as these doors is conditioned at a very early age into every Japanese.

Inside the room, the parlor or zashiki, was a small square table, tsukue, standing hardly two-feet off the tatami floor. The zashiki was the epitome of minimalist functionality, the tsukue—its only piece of furniture—would serve as dining table at meal times as well as gathering place for socializing and tea at other times. “S”’s housemate greeted me as a guest, o-kyaku. “S” took the time to explain the Japanese words to me as we went along. He was learning the language and wanted to practice the words when the opportunity presented itself. A neophyte gaijin like me was the perfect opportunity. I don’t recall “S” friends name, but I’ve concluded that “T” will serve my purposes. “T” invited us to sit for a while and take some tea. We sat crossed legged on cushions, zabutons, around the tsukue and chatted, “S” telling “T” about his naïve shipmate who has no idea of the real Japan and is content to live within the Westernized world the Japanese have created to keep outsiders at a distance.

We lingered for almost an hour conversing and drinking tea. As the conversation exhausted itself, “S” suggested we go out for dinner and then visit a couple of nightspots where the two of them would introduce me to some of their friends. The first place we entered was a bar not far from “T”’s place. It was dark outside now and the street lighting was minimal in the neighborhood of dense low-rise residential dwellings mixed in with commercial storefronts along every artery—narrow ones catering to foot traffic and wider ones accommodating small vehicles—some only wide enough to handle a single lane of traffic, others larger thoroughfares wide enough for two lanes. I was completely lost and knew I would have to find a wide street and hail a cab to get back to the train station, but I would have to retrieve my luggage from “T”’s place first.

The first place we visited was definitely not something I had ever seen in Tokyo, but I suspect it was no more a reflection of the “real Japan” as the Dai Ichi Hotel. The place was teeming with Japanese men, all of them laughing and talking together far more than in any bar I had ever frequented in Japan. It resembled a party where everyone knew one another rather than a public bar where small groups carried on among themselves. As “S” and “T” entered several of the tables shouted out greetings and as we made our way to the bar, patrons seated along the long bar turned and nodded greetings as well, some exchanging words with “T” others shouting broken English to “S”. I had just entered the bar where everyone knows your name and “S” and “T” were busy explaining to their friends that I was their straight guest in tow. I had never been hugged and kissed on the cheek by more men in my life. I took it in the good-natured spirit that it was all intended. I was the evening’s entertainment: everyone aware watching the reaction of a straight male in a room full of gay men.

We found a table and ordered drinks, male server, though I did notice one or two females waiting tables as the evening drew on. One or two men from the bar or from other tables would come over and join us for a time, those conversant in English would speak directly to me, others who weren’t would ask in Japanese and “T” would relay the question to me and translate the answer. The first question was about my ethnicity, mixed American and Filipino, some would giggle at the response, others would want to know the ethnicity of my father, white Anglo-Saxon Protestant—Southern Baptist actually though he has since converted to Catholicism, the result of my mother’s piety and close involvement with the priests of their church. Had I ever had a gay encounter? And to my answer, no, there was a general disbelief—every boy growing up has had to have had some form of gay experience followed by a list of all the activities that fell into the category.

Had I been questioned with less alcohol to drink and without the company of “S” and “T” I would have simply walked away. The questions were personal and would have been inappropriate at any other time and place. Here and now, they were acceptable. I answered each query after combing my memory to ensure a “no” was the correct response. In light of all the questions, I was amazed at how completely naïve I was about the world—that is assuming everyone asking the questions had experienced what they were inquiring about. I began to see this small colony where these men could gather and be themselves. Outside the community they had to assume a guise of normalcy that would allow them to get along day to day. And by the look of most of them, they fared well in the straight heterosexual world of Tokyo. Most appeared affluent enough to prosper in both worlds, though I’m sure they felt as estranged in the straight world as I felt in theirs.

In the 1960s, homosexuality was as visible in Tokyo as it was in San Francisco. After all, one of Japan’s greatest novelist of that era, Yukio Mishima, pseudonym for Hiraoka Kimitake, was gay. His first major work Confessions of a Mask, which appeared in 1949, dealt with discovering his homosexuality. The work’s narrator concluded, that he would have to wear a mask of 'normality' before other people to protect himself from social scorn. His last work, The Moon Like a Drawn Bow, was performed in 1969 at the National Theatre. The play ended with a scene of a seppuku—the Japanese formal term for ritual suicide, something Mishima would carry out poorly on himself in 1970. Mishima’s seppuku had less to do with his sexual preference than with his masochistic fantasies and to his failed attempt to seize control of a military headquarters in Tokyo. He sought to redeem his lost face in the manner of the Bushido, the samurai knightly code of honor he had sought to reestablish in Japan.

It was getting close to 10:00 PM by the time we left the bar. Outside after we began walking we happened to pass another lively place, which had the word “Rathskeller” in its name. Coming toward us from the opposite direction was a tall blond haired young man about my age but a few inches taller than my five foot, six inch height. He was dressed in the school uniform of a Japanese high-school student, black, possibly dark blue—hard to tell in the limited light—trousers and jacket buttoned to the neck with stiff collar. On either arm were two young blond haired girls dressed smartly in autumn colored skirt and white blouse covered with a light-colored sweater. “S” and the young man exchanged glances and the two exchanged greetings, the two young women walking on toward the entrance of the Rathskeller. The young man, I’ll call “X” invited us to join him and his friends for drinks and we followed the threesome down into the cellar. It was a noisy place with long communal style wooden tables I would recognize years later in the beer halls of Munich.

The sight of two attractive women suddenly pulled me out of the testosterone-rich world I had been in for the past several hours. However, they were oblivious of the rest of us, talking between themselves, politely answering the couple of questions I asked them once we had been seated then turning into themselves as I was drawn into conversation with my three male companions. The dialog was a repeat of the ones I engaged in earlier in the evening, though it was more of a tennis match as I asked as many questions of “X” as he asked of me. He was a student in a Japanese high school; his father in U.S. Government service, which department I forget now. He spoke Japanese with hardly an accent and spoke English without a discernible dialect.

My ninth-grade high school English teacher in El Paso, a lovely, white-haired fifty-ish matron, who I adored and instilled in me a great love of literature, was also intent on getting all of her class to speak proper American English. Her ideal of someone speaking proper American English was Edward Everett Horton, the voice actor narrating “Fractured Fairytales” from the Rocky & Bullwinkle cartoon show. I never asked but always wanted to know if that’s where she had known him. Her reply would more likely be the many films he had appeared in during the 1940s notable the role of Mr. Witherspoon in the Frank Capra's 1944 version of Arsenic and Old Lace, with Gary Grant in the lead. The way “X” enunciated English would have passed my ninth-grade English teacher’s test. She would have loved the way he spoke and I mentioned as much to him as we spoke, recounting the story, though it must have sounded so much like something someone with too much to drink would say.

As it got close to midnight, we exhausted the conversation and I was getting tired and a tipsy. The two parties left together and we said our good byes at the spot near the Rathskeller’s entrance were we cross paths earlier in the evening. I was telling “S” and “T” how much I had enjoyed the evening and asked if they could help me find a cab after I picked up my suitcase from their place so I could get a ride to the Dai Ichi—I had no heart to lug my suitcase onto a train and then lug it the distance from Shimbashi Station to the Dai Ichi. They protested insisting that I should spend the night with them but I politely but firmly declined. They understood but suggested that I stay at a Japanese hotel nearby their place. It was much cheaper than the Dai Ichi and I would get a chance to experience a night as a real Japanese would experience it. I was so tired that I accepted the suggestion just to be on my way to my bed.

As we were about to leave, “X” returned explaining that he had put the girls into a cab and decided to join us if that was okay. “S” and “T” were overjoyed. For them the evening was still young. The three began discussing places to go and after they had decided I reminded them that I was going to bid them all good night once I collected by luggage. At this point, “X” expressed surprise that I was giving up so early. Then “X” asked if I would like some company for the evening and I said no that I wasn’t gay, a fact that “S” and “T” confirmed. The four of us returned to “T”’s place. Along the way, “X” asked if I had found his two female companions attractive. I admitted that I had but realized that I was appealing to neither of them. He said I should not take it as rejection since the two were together.

That explained a great deal about the evening. I should have realized that “S” and “T” had settled in a gay enclave and that here the straight person was the outsider. I asked “X” if his parents were aware of him being gay. He said he suspected they knew but he played his role as the dutiful straight son and they allowed him to live his life without trying to change him. I told him he was a very handsome young man and must have broken many young women’s heart, when he had not reciprocated their interest. At this he blushed and I bade them all a good evening of revelry. I exchanged my shoes for the hotel slippers and followed Mama-San to my room, made myself a pot of green tea, and once I had finished it settled into my bedding, which had been turned down and awaiting my arrival: a thin feather mattress, sparkling clean sheets, and a down comforter. I crawled between the sheets, rested my head on the small firm pillow and was asleep almost instantly.