Delayed by about a year, and held wholly online, Okaeri Los Angeles held its fourth conference to connect lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer Nikkei and their allies from across the country. The two-day conference, held over Zoom meetings, featured presentations on mental health, the state of the campaign for marriage equality in Japan, and […]
Creating Space For Queer Nikkei: Okaeri holds online conference to educate and form community
December 9, 2021 by Leave a Comment
Japan court says same-sex marriage should be allowed
March 18, 2021 by Leave a Comment
TOKYO — A Japanese court for the first time ruled March 17 that same-sex marriage should be allowed under the country’s constitution, a moral victory that does not have any immediate legal consequence but could bolster efforts for legalization. The Sapporo District Court said sexuality, like race and gender, is not a matter of individual […]
The Great Unknown and the Unknown Great: The origins of the JACL’s advocacy for gay and lesbian rights
June 18, 2020 by Leave a Comment
This year marks the 14th year that I have commemorated LGBT History Month with a reflection on the important but oft-unremarked presence of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer people in the history of Japanese Americans. It is with great pleasure that I devote this year’s queer history column to looking back at the latter […]
L.A. ministers criticize anti-gay policy of United Methodist Churches
April 11, 2019 by Leave a Comment
LOS ANGELES — Disturbed by the United Methodist Church’s continuing anti-gay stance, Revs. Mark Nakagawa and Sunyoung Lee, two local ministers with connections to Little Tokyo’s Centenary United Methodist Church, publicly criticized that decision and declared their continued support for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer persons. The controversy followed the United Methodist Church’s Special […]
Queering the inquiry of Asian American art
July 19, 2018 by Leave a Comment
QUEERING CONTEMPORARY ASIAN AMERICAN ART Edited By Laura Kina and Jan Christian Bernabe (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2017, 296 pp., $90 hardcover; $40 paperback) This anthology grows out of a National Endowment for the Humanities-sponsored Summer Institute held at New York University in 2012, co-directed by Margo Machida and Alexandra Chang and entitled, “Re-Envisioning […]
Japanese American becomes majority owner of LGBTQ newspaper
January 4, 2018 by Leave a Comment
Michael Yamashita, 51, publisher of the Bay Area Reporter, a San Francisco-based LGBTQ newspaper, became the newspaper’s majority owner, the publication announced Dec. 21, 2017. According to the B.A.R., Yamashita becomes the nation’s first gay Asian American publisher and owner of a lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer newspaper. Yamashita, who previously owned 31 percent […]
Secret ingredient to spice up drama
July 20, 2017 by Leave a Comment
IT’S NOT LIKE IT’S A SECRET By Misa Sugiura (New York: HarperCollins, 2017, 400 pp., $17.99, hard cover) Secrets are hard to discuss in the open, especially when layered deep in teenage drama. For Sana Kiyohara, those secrets come in the form of her sexual orientation, her suspicion of her father having a mistress and […]
Recognizing Japanese American lesbians’ activism, then and now
June 22, 2017 by Leave a Comment
The season for gay pride is upon us. This year, there is extra cause for celebration with the selection of professor Amy Sueyoshi, a community activist and leading historian of queer Asian Americans, as a grand marshal of the San Francisco Pride parade. In addition to Sueyoshi’s own considerable qualities, the choice is gratifying on […]
ENTERTAINMENT RE-ORIENTED: #Thiswas2016
January 1, 2017 by Leave a Comment
“When the house is going up in flames, does what’s on the TV matter?” That’s the question I kept asking myself as I sat down to write this year-end column. In October, Michael Luo, then an editor for The New York Times, was accosted on the street by a woman yelling, “Go back to China!” […]
Trying to regain hope in a time of fear and uncertainty
As the election polls started closing on Nov. 8, most of America was in a state of utter shock, as a presidential candidate who so easily stoked the flames of racism, sexism, xenophobia and misogyny was suddenly trust into the office of the presidency. A mere eight years after a movement for hope and change […]