The Lobster Dance

I Want to Be a Man! My Boyfriend Used to Be a Woman (『男になりタイ！私の彼氏は元女』)
By Sachiko TAKEUCHI (竹内佐千子)
Published by Media Factory (メディアファクトリー）
Color; black and white
2008
1100 yen
Amazon.co.jp

[Please note: this manga was published prior to a major shift in terms regarding trans experiences. “Born a woman” would now be “assigned female at birth,” etc.]

Hello, my name is Sachiko. I’m a woman.
Up until now, I’ve dated women. I’m a lesbian.
Recently, I’ve taken a new lover. His name is Kai, and he’s a man.
But Kai was born a girl. Kai’s body is female, but his heart is male. (p. 5)

The title of Takeuchi Sachiko’s third volume of autobiographical manga contains one of the best untranslatable puns I’ve seen in Japanese. 『男になりタイ！』 literally means “I want to be/become a man!”; however, Takeuchi has written the verb ending for “to want” (~たい, ~tai) as the katakanaタイ. In this case, the katakana refers to Thailand (Tai), the setting of most of the manga.

(This review contains spoilers for honey & honey, honey & honey deluxe, Otoko ni Naritai, and Straying Love Game.)

p. 10 “Hello, I’m Sachiko. This is Kai. We’re lovers.”
p. 11 “As a Kansai native and a Kanto native, our tastes don’t suit each other at all.”
Getting okonomiyaki:
Kai: Let’s get a squid okonomiyaki aaand a pork one, aaand rice and kimchi.
Sachiko: Why are you getting rice?*
“As for what we have in common, we both like cats and we’re both female.”

In honey & honey deluxe, Takeuchi continues her autobiographical manga about her life as a sexual minority in Japan and her relationship with her girlfriend Masako. At the end of the book, the two break up, and Otoko ni Naritai picks up from there. After the breakup, Sachiko’s friend Kai asks her out. Kai, whom we met briefly in the first honey & honey, is a trans man; he works as a salaryman in an office job. 

[Kai asks Sachiko to date him several times.]
1: “At the time, I was worried. Kai is FtM…”
2: “and I’m a lesbian.” [♀_♀]
3: “If I were to diagram Kai and me, it would look like this:”
Sexual Minorities
Kai: FtM. Soul [心] is male. Body is female. I like women as a man.
Kai’s Graph: FtM, MtF, MtX, FtX. There are bi and gay trans* people, too.
Sachiko: Lesbian. I like women as a woman. Both my body and soul are female.
Sachiko’s Graph: Lesbian, gay.
We’re in different fields.
4: “In my case, I became aware of my sexuality when I fell for a girl in junior high.”
Likes girls who like girls.
“Up until now, everyone I’ve dated has been a girl.”
Has never dated a man.

At first, Sachiko is very confused by her attraction to Kai–am I still a lesbian? Do I only like women? Is it rude for me to be torn over this?–but eventually decides that she likes Kai and that’s what matters most to her.**

Kai invites Sachiko somewhat out of the blue to come with him on a two-week trip to Thailand, where he plans to have gender affirming surgery [then called sex reassignment surgery (SRS)]: a mastectomy and hysterectomy. Many Japanese people who elect to have surgery go to Thailand– Kai states that his reasons are that it’s “cheap, good, and fast.” Sachiko has reservations–“what, like gyûdon [beef bowl]?” she retorts (p. 20). She’s afraid the surgeries will be dangerous, and she tells Kai that she likes him and his body the way he is, but Kai simply says, “This is an issue with my identity and my body. I’m not going to change my mind no matter what you say.” Sachiko agrees to go with Kai, and the rest of the manga covers the surgery and their (mis)adventures in Thailand.

One of the issues Sachiko addresses in this manga and its sequel Straying Love Game (『迷走ラブゲーム』) is the idea of straight privilege. Sachiko, an only child is not out to her parents and, as such, has never introduced them to any of her past girlfriends. Sachiko now finds herself “passing” for straight, even bringing Kai home to meet her parents.*** Furthermore, thanks to the Gender Identity Disorder Act of 2004, Kai is able to change his legal sex to male in the koseki (the Japanese conservative’s greatest tool for suffocating sex-and-gender equality). While she and Masako half-joked about who would enter whose family registry if they got married (homogamous marriage is still illegal in Japan), Kai and Sachiko could actually get married.

1: Kai: So…
2: Kai: Now that I’ve officially changed my sex to male in the family registry, I was thinking of getting married. What do you think?
3: [Kai expects her to say “I’d be happy” and blush.]
4:　…
5: Kai: You don’t love me….
Sachiko: N-No!! It’s not like that! Come on! What was I supposed to do? I panicked!
“Even after we got back from Thailand, we went back to our slapstick ways.”

In the sequel, Kai asks her time and time again to marry him as their relationship deteriorates due to personal issues. Sachiko makes it very clear that Kai’s being a trans man is not the reason for their break-up; rather, it is their incompatible personalities and hobbies, mismatch in sex drives, and frequent arguments that leads her to break up with him.

What I like most about Takeuchi is that she is perfectly clear that her books are not meant to be The Definitive Guide to Being Queer in Japan but to tell her story and to give others the resources to understand a portion of the life of those under the rainbow umbrella. Takeuchi also writes in the epilogue of Straying Love Game, “Not all trans men are like Kai. Not all lesbians are like me.” She writes honestly about her experiences, but she clearly states that these four volumes of manga are about her relationships with two individuals; her romantic incompatibility with Kai and Masako (who is a bi cis woman) are not a product of their sexualities, gender expressions, or sex, but of individual personality. (Happily, she and Masako have a good relationship as friends after their breakup, and she and Kai eventually get back on better terms.)

Like honey & honey, Otoko ni Naritai‘s strength comes from Takeuchi’s ability write queer slice of life narratives. She shows that the general aspects of romantic relationships like stressing out about travel, worrying over a partner’s surgery, and being supportive of a partner are universal, but at the same time, she highlights what is is like living as a sexual minority: legal procedures after surgery, questioning your sexuality, legal discrimination, and the idea of “passing.” For those not well-versed in trans*-related vocabulary, Takeuchi has included explanations about gender-related surgeries, hormones, and more.

As for the art, I wish the whole book could have been in color! The combination of the really colorful and sometimes intricate drawings of Thailand are a wonderful contrast to her otherwise simple but still expressive style.

On the sequel: I liked Straying Love Game, the continuation of her relationship with Kai, less as it lacks the feeling of fun of the first three books and gets repetitive. One has to remember, though, that the volume essentially documents the implosion of a relationship and when art is autobiographical, it’s not always going to be pleasant. It seems like her other manga return to the tone of the first few, so I am really looking forward to reading about her further adventures and interests in『花より女子』(Girls Over Flowers), 『午後のハレンチ　ティータイム』(Shameless Afternoon Teatime),『くされ女子!』(Spoiled Girl!), 『おっかけ!』(Fangirl!).

“E-elephants? It was a very Thai-specific warning.”

Notes
*People from the Kansai area tend to eat rice and miso soup with their okonomiyaki, whereas people from the Kanto region eat okonomiyaki as a meal in and of itself.

**For a similar story of love and identity crisis, see Erika Moen’s “Dyke with a Boyfriend” and her series DAR.

*** Koseki, Japan’s family registry, is used as the excuse for preventing a married couple from legally retaining both spouses’ last names; was for preventing trans* persons with children or previous marriages from changing their legal sex, though Takeuchi points out this was relaxed in 2008 if the child was not of legal age; for allowing employers and prospective marriage partners/matchmakers to discover if a people is dôwa (同和). With the modern census (in which I participated in 2010!) as a viable way to keep track of individuals, the koseki is an archaic system that needs to adapt to the contemporary world instead of being used as an excuse to oppress citizens.