Japan hotel and temple join forces to offer gay and lesbian weddings

Draped in wedding kimonos, standing in a Zen temple built in the 1590s, gay and lesbian couples have a new option for a commitment ceremony in Japan

According to the deputy head priest at Shunkoin Temple, Japanese buddhism doesn’t have anything against homosexuality (source: Mainichi Shimbun(in Japanese))  - cool :)

More Details at:
Japan National Tourism Organization
GAY STAR NEWS

So the past week my Heroines Blog has gotten a lot of hits from Japan, interestingly. Curious, I traced it back to a Japanese forum for Total War: Rome 2. I pulled up an online translator to get an idea of the context, wherein I figured out enough to know that the poster was confirming that the above painting from the game isn’t actually Queen Artemesia, but instead Queen Teuta, linking to my discussion about Teuta on the Heroines Blog to confirm. Interesting and kind of unexpected.

Even before this, however, Teuta was my second-most viewed write up on the blog with over 600 views so far.

“We fled to the Philippines, which was under American occupation at the time. But it wasn’t long before the Japanese took over the islands. We were living in Manila, and when the Japanese occupied the city, they began to teach us to read and write Japanese. When the Americans came to retake the city, they invaded from the north, and the Japanese blew up the bridges and barricaded themselves in the southern part of the city where we lived. Shells were falling all around us, because the Japanese had stationed a gun encampment across from our house. One morning, we decided to make a run for the hospital, so that we could put ourselves under the protection of the Red Cross. Our neighbors were running in front of us, pushing their belongings on a pushcart, when they stepped on a land mine and the whole family was killed. We kept running, but when we got to the main street, there was a checkpoint and we weren’t allowed to cross. So we hid beneath a house, and soon we were discovered by Japanese soldiers. They lined us all up against the wall to be executed. We begged and begged and begged for our lives. They finally allowed my mother and the children to step aside, but they told my father to stay. My mother dropped to her knees and asked the Japanese commander to imagine it was his family. And he finally let all of us go.”