Articles - Japan

I thought I couldn’t trust my eyes. I had to look again. After a short question and a nod from our side he used the one remaining seat at our table. It was a small table, that we used on that Wednesday night in order to have some privacy. But all the other seats were taken. We always looked for a small table on those precious evenings when we met after university classes, Jacques and I. We were not happy, but the restaurant was filled to capacity. He ordered something from the waiter and we immersed ourselves back into discussing our plans for the evening, the new film we wanted to see. Read more

A bird outside is calling again and again. And I feel like poking my head out of the window. But I cannot move. For one hour I am not allowed to even move the tip of my toe. An awesome silence is lying over the other forty or so meditators, women strictly separated from men by an isle. The light is dim. I am not allowed to open my eyes just a little bit in order to check whether anyone has fallen asleep. Only stomachs I hear growling from time to time, especially from the women’s side. One sounds like the grumbling of an angry bear. No one giggles. Read more

"Please, tell him, I would do anything to be loved again by this man." While his guide translated these words to the witch doctor, Wulf desperately stared at Iwao`s face smiling at him from the photo as he had always smiled, half embarrassed, half flattered. Read more

In the 1760s Japan had guidebooks in circulation detailing the homosexual pleasures to be found in its famous "floating world" of geisha and kabuki courtesans. Three centuries later a bold new publication is unveiling the vibrant contemporary gay and lesbian scene, not only in Japan, but in two neighboring countries often assumed to be rigidly conservative. Read more

‘Yokoso Japan!’--Welcome to Japan--serves as the Prime Minister’s official campaign to lure tourists and perhaps lull them into thinking they are really invited guests in the land of the Rising Sun. But ‘Lost in Translation’ and Bill Murray pictured Tokyo and the rest of the country, for that m... Read more

A few years ago a US-trained psychologist marked his return home to Japan with a furious article entitled The Psychosis that is Japan. I owe him my title but save the fury. One of many commonplaces about the Japanese gay scene is that despite a veritable plethora of hardcore leathe... Read more

’I was in Tokyo for a seminar and in the elevator of my hotel I noticed a beautiful young man with pitch-black hair and alabaster-skin smiling at me. To cut a long story short, after a brief conversation in ... Read more