GE and HOMO BARS IN JAPAN

Kagoshima, like all Japanese cities, is both ugly and beautiful at the same time.  It lies along the eastern shores of a superb harbor in the far south of the southern island Kyushu.  Sakurajima (‘Cherry Island’) squats down just offshore in the center of the bay.  This is a massive, hulking volcano, 3500 feet tall, that erupts continuously sending plumes of ash and smoke skywards into the stratosphere.  With every west wind, a sprinkling of black, crystalline volcanic ash covers everything in town.  Kagoshima bay itself was once the crater of a huge, prehistoric volcano, one wall of which collapsed to let in the sea.  Whenever I was depressed, I could always look up at Sakurajima and imagine the city laid ruin, smoking under twenty feet of burning, creeping lava.

            In 1995, I went to live in Kagoshima for seven months.  I moved into a gaijin shukusha (foreign-style lodging) built on the rim of the old caldera.  From here, I could walk downtown in about an hour or take one of the many passing buses or streetcars.  Kagoshima, as is typical of Japanese cities, has a concentrated entertainment district.  Tenmonkan is about 10 square blocks of hundreds of tiny bars, clubs, movie theaters, restaurants, food stands, and pachinko (Japanese pinball) parlors.  The Americans bombed Kagoshima flat during the Pacific War and most buildings in town are ugly cement mid-rises thrown up in the 1950s.  Drinking establishments of all sorts squeeze into every corner of these five and six story buildings.

My first two weeks in town, nearly every night I went bar-hopping.  Here was my challenge:  Could I find a gay bar?  In a city of 500,000, so I figured, there had to be one or two.  I hardly spoke any Japanese, although I had diligently practiced some useful words and sentence structures.   Worse, my knowledge of the three orthographies that Japanese use was nil so I couldn’t read any of the thousands of neon signs that lit the night.  Japanese urban streetscape is a confusing riot of color and sound.  And, although all Japanese take at least six years of English in school, hardly anyone--in Kagoshima at least--would admit to knowing any Eigo.

And I was a bit hesitant to ask.  Who might I shock or insult by inquiring, “uh, do you know any gay bars?”  And I’m enough of an American to have absorbed our masculine cultural imperative:  NEVER ASK DIRECTIONS.  So I walked around.  I checked out the environs of the train and bus stations.  I consulted the Spartacus guide (no Kagoshima).  I telephoned a bar listed therein in the larger city, Fukuoka, across the island and had an unhappy conversation in pidgin Japanese.  I followed (surreptitiously, I hoped) guys around who looked gay.  But could I tell?  What was the gay-look in Japan anyway?.  Still, I hoped they would lead me somewhere.

I gave up.  After two weeks I went into a place named, I hoped propitiously, The Down Under.  (Many Japanese establishments favor English names.)  It turned out that this specialized in Australian beers, the proprietor having lived several years in Queensland.  He was there tending bar and, since it was early for local drinkers, he had only a few customers.  After the usual small talk about why I was in Kagoshima, I nervously asked the question:

“Uh, are there any gay bars in town?”

“Why of course,” he replied quickly grabbing a napkin to sketch a map that would lead me through the unnamed streets of the city.  

"Well, that was easy," I thought with some relief.  I managed to find the building indicated on the map, locating the bar up on the 4th floor by comparing signs with the kanji characters he had drawn on my napkin.  It was 9:00 pm, the indicated opening hour, so I opened the door and edged inside.  The place was empty except for a group of guys dressed as waiters lounging at a table. They all jumped up and one, who spoke some English, came over to me. 

"Did I know where I was?" he asked.

"Yes," I said, "Isn't this a gay bar?"  I showed him my map.

"Well, yes," he replied, "but did I really want a gay bar?  What exactly did I like?  Men, or men dressed as woman?"

It dawned on me that a ge ba ('gay bar'), at least in Kagoshima, is a bar where straight businessmen, the hip, and the adventurous come to be entertained by guys in drag--mostly dressed in exquisite kimono.  Tables begin at about $100 which buys part of a bottle of whiskey and a beautiful boy-girl in silk kimono and classical wig who fills your glass with ice and tops it off with whiskey after every sip.  I should have been asking for homo ba ('homo bar') since this is where the guys hang out.  The waiter, who admitted to being a student at the university I was visiting, very kindly took me by the arm and led me around the block to where three poky homo ba were located, stacked one above the other in a tall, narrow building.

There are five homo ba in Kagoshima, all of which are similar.  All are snaku--the sort of establishment whose standard cover charge ($10-$15) includes a small plate of snacks that accompanies one's drinks.  Each boasts powerful karaoke machines and clienteles of eager but very indifferent singers.  These homo ba do not sort thematically in the American way (into country, or disco, or techno, or drag, and so on).  Rather, locals claim only that they are age-graded:  one is for the younger crowd, one is "mixed," and one toshi yuri--older gentlemen only.  They all looked mixed to me.  I felt sorry for Kagoshima's lesbians.  If they want to drink they probably have to go to Tokyo.

Until I left Kagoshima, I watched everyday at the university for that student-waiter who led me to the city's hidden homo ba.  I wanted to thank him but I never met him again.