One of the best directors for LGBTQ+ movies from Japan is Ryosuke Hashiguchi. I have watched some of his movies and I was blown away by the beautiful story telling. Hashiguchi made his directing debut in 1981 with the movie 'Lala...' and has continued to release masterpiece after masterpiece. What made him special is his approach towards the queer community in the beginning of the 90s. That was very unusual at the time, because the LGBTQ+ community was still very looked down upon and movies with such topics were either stereotypical or didn't exist at all. Most of the queer themed movie from the 90s never made it big (and in my opinion weren't really representative for the queer community). But since the 90s, LGBTQ+ themed movies and shows have had a huge increase in quantity. Movies with a high budget production are still quite rare but the drama's are really filling the void. Japanese BL (Boys Love) is a huge genre within Japanese media and loved by a big audience. I personally really really love Japanese BL so I would love to write about that if there's anyone interested.
I really want to highlight two movies by Hashiguchi that really left a great impact on
me and I think they are extremely underrated.
A Touch of Fever was released back in 1993. The story follows Tatsuru and Shinichiro, they both work as hustlers and they are mainly booked by older men. Throughout the movie, we see both of them struggling with identity, acceptance and their work. What I really liked about it was the fact that we saw two characters in pretty much the same situation but dealing with it so differently. The older one (Tatsuru) pushes his feelings away to make his job bearable, however, the younger one (Shinchiro) feels a growing discomfort with his job after he falls in love with Tatsuru. Altough there isn't that much of a plot, it's still very interesting and both their dynamic and the one with their friends are very well-written. I also really like the colors and camerawork that the movie has.
The other movie I want to talk about is in my opinion even better than the one I just discussed. Like Grains of Sand (yes, I referenced it in the title of my blog) was released two years after A Touch of Fever and actually has quite some similarities, but is still significantly different. The movie is about love, longing, acceptance and so much more. The main characters have trouble being themselves and throughout two-third of the movie they were hiding their true selves to avoid being mistreated by others. The last part of the movie is a perfect ending that will give you a great sense of satisfaction because they finally open up and face themselves. The characters are all written so beautifully and the visuals were stunning.
It's so fascinating to see such good understanding of queer people in the 90s and both of these movies really show what LGBTQ+ people have to deal with, which is great to get people to think more open-minded. I really hope that these movies will receive more love and that it will make people in similar situations feel seen and heard.
Some other movies with similar topics that I would highly recommend:
- 10Dance (2025, Yoshida Tomoko)
- Kira Kira Hikaru (1992, Matsuko Joji)
- Kokoro (2025, Nakagawa Ryutaro)
- Monster (2023, Koreeda Hirokazu)
- Your Name Engraved Herein (2020, Chu Yu Ning) (not Japanese but really worth mentioning)
Please let me know if there are any other LGBTQ+ Japanese movies, because it's been a really tough search to find movies with such topics that I haven't watched yet (please check my
watchlist to see which ones I have watched).
Until next time,
MoLiHua
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