Entering the lesbian world in Japan: debut stories

Conceiving of a "lesbian community" as the process and/or the end product of a lesbian's going outside herself or her intimate relationship to connect with other lesbians, this paper explores the experiences of lesbians in entering the community in Tokyo, Japan, which lesbians refer to as "community debut." Based on the personal accounts gathered through interviewing 24 women in 2002 in the Tokyo area, this paper examines the personal contexts in which the women entered a lesbian community, which included searching for and defining themselves, accepting themselves, and acting out the new identity to make changes in their lives. Some of the women interviewed were prompted by a need to understand themselves as lesbians. Others with a lesbian identity searched for further affirmation through connecting with "the world of lesbians" beyond their immediate contexts. For some other women interviewed, entering the community was a way to help them start their lives anew by getting out of their previous (married) lives. The paper also specifically touches on the significance of the Internet as a source of information for individual women and as a way of creating a lesbian community, identifying both positive and negative aspects. Although the research reported in this paper leaves for further exploration how boundaries of the communities are negotiated and drawn, the norms of the communities, and conflicts and negotiations among individuals and groups, it has provided one piece of the mosaic of lesbian communities in Japan. The communities, while still largely invisible in the mainstream society, are nonetheless an important part of life, albeit in different ways, of many lesbians. The research process leads the author to anticipate greater visibility of lesbians and lesbian communities in Japan in the not too distant future.