Ways of speaking about queer space in Tokyo: disorientated knowledge and counter-public space

The city of Tokyo has been a space where numerous forms of sexual subcultures and their histories have been born. This paper discusses one possible way of understanding queer space in Tokyo. Examining the discourses concerning Shinjuku Ni-cho¯me, a queer neighbourhood in Tokyo, I argue that this queer space functions as a discursive site of containment as well as resistance to hetero-normative narratives of the metropolis. Drawing on queer theories that focus on the notion of space, in this paper I demonstrate that queer space is often marginalised by mainstream society, but at the same time it can be a critical site through which to investigate hetero-normativity. I suggest that queers themselves sometimes deploy their own delegitimised status to construct a queer counter-public space that intervenes in and disorients the linear narrative of hetero-normative views.