Private Acts/Public Spaces: The Impact of the Internet on Gay Cruising Practices in Japan.

Mark McLelland, Centre for Critical and Cultural Studies, University of Queensland

m.mclelland@mailbox.uq.edu.au

The Japanese term for a 'beat' or 'cruise spot' is hattenba, literally a 'development place.' Such places have a long (even literary) tradition in Japan, perhaps the most famous being the banks of the River Kamo in Kyoto where, in the Edo-period, itinerant monks and samurai would solicit the favours of unemployed kabuki actors. The arrival of the Internet has had a big impact upon Japanese homosexual practice, resulting in a general 'queering' of heterosexual spaces such as the crowded train, the shopping centre, the park and, of course, the beach. The Internet not only disperses information about existing beats more widely, but also advertises and creates new ones. Large-scale inran or orgies can also be organised in advance in apartments or at night in parks, car parks and beaches. The fact that homosexuality is not mentioned in Japan's criminal code has meant that homosexual content on Japan's Internet is largely unregulated and the police adopt a hands-off approach to discrete homosexual sex in public. However, increased access to information about cruising spots has been paralleled by an increase in incidents of gay bashing. This paper examines one Internet site dedicated to information about cruise spots in the Tokyo area which, in its two years on line, has been visited more than 140,000 times. It outlines how the Internet is leading to the development of an interactive cruising subculture with a distinct ethos and etiquette of its own and how it is galvanising gay men to respond to the threat of gay bashing and claim the right to the use of public space for sexual acts.