Japanese love hotels accused of discrimination against gay couples

We read a report in the UK’s Guardian newspaper about the story of two gay men in Amagasaki, just west of Osaka, who were turned away from love hotels.

The male receptionist at one politely informed the couple that men were not allowed.

Not to be deterred from their tryst, the men tried another love hotel in the area, only to encounter an overtly homophobic attitude.

“Gay men don’t use the facilities properly,” they were told by the female receptionist without explanation.

The two men are in a civil partnership of the kind given de facto legal recognition by local governments in Japan.

In some ways, this is old news. We have heard reports of same-sex couples being turned away from love hotels for years. It is one of the reasons that Nichome — Tokyo’s main gay district — has its own small love hotels.

This is in spite of a 2018 revision to the hotel business law, which makes prevents hotels from rejecting guests for reasons of sexual orientation or gender.

Hotels that break the law can be reported, though all authorities can do is give hotel proprietors “administrative guidance,” whatever that means.

In this case, a complaint was made about the two hotels in Amagasaki and the local government reprimanded them.

There are an estimated 10,000 love hotels in Japan, visited by 1.4 million people each year.

There has been progress on LGBTQ+ rights at the local level, such as the civil partnership legislation and openly gay politicians, but — in spite of Japan’s very rich queer history — shocking attitudes still do occasionally rear their head. A member of the the Adachi ward assembly in Tokyo, for instance, recently sparked a backlash when he claimed his district would become extinct due to depopulation if the rights of sexual minorities were protected by law.

“If all Japanese women were lesbian or all Japanese men were gay, then do you think the next generation of people will be born?” he asked in the assembly.

The man, who is admittedly 79 years of age, eventually apologized and retracted his statement.