Omi woody arch tour

[imomus]

Spent the weekend amongst delicious wooden architecture in Osaka, Nara and Omi Hachiman, where Henri de Charpentier (a Japanese homosexual dandy with pocketwatch and lorgnette) and Phirip (glitch bracken cake maker and performance artist) conducted their warabimochi sukiya tour, pointing out traditional Japanese wooden buildings as well as colonial-style wooden constructions by anti-property missionary architect William Merrell Vories, who believed that Omi was the centre of the world. The town has certainly become the centre of my August, and I'm becoming convinced that we should all live in wooden houses, make wooden instruments, and soak all day in wooden baths in public bathhouses. A bath made just for one, even a nice deep spilly cedar box-bath, is a prim bourgeois error.

Comments

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Charpentier (which appropriately means 'carpenter'), Phirip dressed as a warabimochi seller, and the handsome 'catamite', Omi Hachiman, yesterday.

[lord-whimsy.livejournal.com]

Is the gay subculture aesthetic in the Japans differ greatly from the Western equivalent--or is 'subculture' a misnomer in this case?

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I don't know, is the short answer. I've read Mishima, who describes gay sex in Tokyo parks not unlike the kind associated with, say, Hampstead Heath in London. In the Tsutenkaku district of Osaka there are streets with transvestite prostitutes just like there are in Montmartre, Paris. There are gay and very camp comedians on Japanese TV just as there are on British TV. Tokyo has gay-friendly districts like Shinjuku Ni-Chome and Shimbashi. And so on. Here things are somewhat more discreet. The law makes no specific provision for homosexual behaviour. Nobody is 'in-your-face-out', but also nobody is out to condemn or vilify or induce guilt or 'convert' the gay. Discretion is the watchword.

Here's a history of homosexuality in Japan:

http://www.geocities.co.jp/Berkeley/3508/japanesehistory.html