Weddings and white dresses: Media and sexual citizenship in Japan

Abstract

Representations of gender and sexuality in mainstream media operate to both shape the contours of, and contest the limits to, sexual citizenship. The 'citational practices' of media representations mould contemporary understandings of these limits. In this article I examine mainstream and social media reports of two separate same-sex wedding ceremonies in Japan; the first at a queer community event in 2007 and the second at a major theme park in 2013. Through citations and quotations, a multitude of voices are embedded in the media texts. In the 2007 case, increased media visibility is mitigated by citational practices that clearly mark the same-sex wedding as devoid of legal standing. Whereas media reports situate the 2013 ceremony in the context of marriage equality trends internationally, an instance of possible discrimination is emphasised as being a 'misunderstanding'. Similarly, a microanalysis of a light news documentary of the ceremony uncovers citational practices that highlight the importance of 'forgiveness' or 'tolerance' for 'mutual coexistence' in society. Furthermore, the reporting confines the ceremony to a 'fairytale'-like 'foreign' domain. The process of 'othering' issues of sexual citizenship is linked to a cyclical process since the 1950s wherein representations of queerness are posited as 'new' forms of being in Japan. Discourse surrounding sexual citizenship is thereby projected into a non-domestic, non-specific future time.

Dilemmas of sexual citizenship: A critical social psychological analysis of Civil Union law representations in Greek Cypriot newspapers

“…They can help to naturalize social thinking (Höijer, 2011), but also to contest meanings around debated issues such as sexual orientation (Meyers, 1994). It is crucial to understand how media deal with contradictions of meaning (Fuchs, 2016), how they influence the ways that different aspects of sexual citizenship are understood by the public (Maree, 2017), and subsequently, how they contribute to the justification of relevant policies and practices. It is for these reasons that mainstream newspapers constitute an important social arena for the study of sexual citizenship.…”

Routledge Handbook of Japanese Media

“…The segment raises awareness of issues surrounding the legal recognition of same-sex partnerships in Japan. However, as I have argued elsewhere (Maree 2016), the use of complex citational practices common to contemporary audiovisual media -such as captioning, narration and image repetition -recontextualizes these issues to fit within a discourse of 'tolerance'. This is particularly noticeable in a segment of the broadcast in which the couple negotiates a request from a now-married wedding guest who asks that her previous relationship with one of the women is kept secret for 'the sake of her child'.…”