Mirei Aikawa is bisexual, does it matter (in 2020)?

The main story of today’s post is simple enough.  Mirei Aikawa  藍川みれい declare herself bisexual in this tweet:

The tweet itself got only 8 retweets, 56 likes and 4 replies (as of this writing).  Partly it reflects that Mirei Aikawa is relatively a light weight debutant, her 3000+ follower number is pretty average for a newbie.  But more so I think it’s reflecting the rapidly changing altitude of the fandom towards sexual orientation of JAV idols.  

First let’s get the background, ahem, straight: Mirei Aikawa debuted only last month with Maxing.  Her backstory is very straight forward: active university student with nice figure and who were interested in porn.  There’s nothing about her alternative sexuality.  Her coming out of the closet happened actually at a rather random time point of her sprouting career: it’s three days after the release of her debut vid, totally late if her intention were to generate buzz for her all important debut  sales result.  So I am inclined to believe this was a sincere personal declaration, not a self-interested promotional ploy.  

Only a few years ago in 2016, Sora Shiina (find her titles on R18) declared herself a lesbian and even publicly share her monogamy relation with another self-claimed lesbian JAV idol Eririka Katagiri 片桐えりりか and later Aya Miyazaki 宮崎あや, generated a lot of discussion, some of it rather passionate, on both English and Japanese forums.  The industry exploited the affair rather shamelessly, even staging a wedding ceremony in a lesbian JAV title.  To this day many of Sora’s fans still blur the line between her private affairs and on-screen intercourse with female co-stars.   

So there’s a lot to take apart.  First the big big big picture is that Japanese celebrities (including JAV) are not supposed to have a private life.  In reality, they often (but not always!) do have a private life, but if their public persona admit openly to have a romantic relationship, their career will suffer precipitously.  So even if it’s a semi-open secret that a minority of JAV idols do have male partners, publicly no one admits it.  This is of course entirely different from the Western porn industry.  

Secondly homosexuality is nothing to take pride of, in Japan.  Now I am not saying Japanese are homophobic, far from it.  I think traditional Japanese values are very tolerant of both gays and lesbians, as long as one keeps it hidden from public decorum.  Many historical artists and poets made mention of their alternative sexuality using not-too-subtle allegories. A gay man or lesbian woman can have a happy fulfilled sex life as long as s/he take care of his/er duty to the family and community.  Say, a man has a taste for dicks, no problem.  He still has to marry a woman, have at least one child with her, which only means he has to somehow get his sperm into her womb, once at least.  (unless he’s so revolted by a woman’s body he has to find another man to donate the sperm)  And he will provide for her materially, and the baby, as head of a family should.  Other than that, he’s free to find love and sex with one or more men.  In every major town there are “fine entertainment establishment” able to satisfy queer customers.  For less commercial encounters, there are public bathhouses.  

Making a slight twist on tradition, the bride picks up the groom.

It doesn’t even matter if his preference is an OPEN secret, as long as it remains an open SECRET.  It’s a parallel with celebrity personas not supposed to have a normal romantic relation and family life.  

Now I want to step onto some thin ice.  Taking risk that I will get a lot of hate mail, I think it’s useful to think about (traditional) Western view of homosexuality and how orientals (in particular Japanese) think about it.  A fundamental difference between Eastern and Western values is the religious tradition.  In the West, sex goes way deep into the religious Good and Evil, right from the beginning of the holy book.  But in Japan, sex is only two things, both derived from biology and only slightly related to each other: pleasure and pregnancy.  In the narrowest sense, any activity not potentially leading to pregnancy isn’t even sex.  So in Japanese view, hand job isn’t sex, blow job isn’t sex (in fact that's how Japanese laws are written for the sex business: a male customers can pay for any kind of service leading to ejaculation as long as his penis doesn't insert into the service provider's vagina).  And most interestingly, homosexual sex isn’t sex.  So if a person, let’s say a woman, due to today’s main character, prefer to achieve her orgasm with a woman, that’s not a big deal.  It especially doesn’t make her a different category of person.  Like in the West we never would categorize a man differently from a straight man if his sexual preference is to ejaculate in a mouth (as long as it’s a woman’s mouth).  The typical Japanese view doesn’t categorize a person based on his/her preference for physical pleasure.  Sex is only about pregnancy (potential) and so we have only two categories: men and women.  

After several titles together, Sora and Eririka's relationship hits a wall as their careers drift in different directions, concluding in a farewell lesborgy and a teary separation.

So finally perhaps that’s why Miss Aikawa’s bisexuality isn’t causing much wave in 2020.  Looking back perhaps Sora Shiina’s lesbainism generated so much interest because (1) the industry (and herselves and her “lovers”) were actively pumping the conversation and (2) it was a deliberate blurring of public (as co-stars on JAV) and private affair (as off-screen lovers) between known idols.  The fact that it was homosexual rather than heterosexual was at the same time incidental (no one was particularly disturbed that Sora Shiina likes to lick pussies and her cock-sucking and -fucking were only a performance) and inevitable (any private relationship between a JAV stud and idol is unthinkable).  

Phew that’s it.  If this article doesn’t condemn me to hell, maybe you can give some comments if some similar topics would be interesting for the future.