Kim might be compared to Alfred Kinsey, the highly controversial U.S. sex
researcher. Like the late Indiana University professor, the 54-year-old Kim has
dedicated most of his life to examining human sexuality-a subject that has, to
some degree, remained off-limits in Japan to this day.
Later this month, a movie based on the life of Kinsey-a zoologist and
biologist, whose project involved research on more than 18,000 Americans-is
scheduled to open in Japan.
Kim has been hired as a lecturer for a string of events promoting the movie.
Since opening his counseling center in 1999, Kim has treated hundreds of
people. Of about 200 patients who visited his office last year, 5 percent were
virgin females, and 5 percent were males. The rest were homemakers in their 30s
to 60s suffering from sexless marriages.
"About a third of my clients have gone to psychiatrists for help," says Kim,
explaining that the depth of the problem has robbed so many women of their
dignity and confidence.
"The problem is that once a couple gets married, that often turns out to be the
end of the story for husbands. They soon lose sexual interest and deal with
their wives as they would their mothers," Kim says.
This problem extends beyond sex, he says. "These husbands won't even hold hands
with their wives. Kindness and understanding are beyond them. Eventually there
is no real contact at all-the wives just become their personal servants.
In a recent case, a woman arrived on the verge of tears. Her husband had
shamelessly admitted he had a mistress, and to make matters worse, told her he
had no sexual interest in her whatsoever. She did what she could, including
plastic surgery, to reignite his passion, but nothing worked.
Instead of prescribing medication, the first resort of psychiatrists, Kim talks
at length with his clients about their lives. Then, if he considers it
appropriate, he prescribes another, controversial form of therapy. This can
take place in the back room with the incense and the blue-draped skylight,
although normally the couple meet at a pre-arranged location.
The women learn to regain confidence in themselves and their femininity through
the most pragmatic means possible: sexual intercourse. Their partners are all
volunteers selected by Kim.
"It's like a massage, or rather, a rehabilitation process," Kim says.
Kim grew up in the port town of Kobe. From an early age, he was no stranger to
sex. A relative owned a strip club; noisy upstairs neighbors seemed to be
having sex at all hours of the day, and lovers parked in the darkness were a
common sight.
Fascinated, the boy wanted to know why people-both men and women-changed their
attitudes before and after sex.
"Even a couple who were cursing and shouting at each other would completely
change after doing the `thing'," he recalls.
He says he was intrigued by this activity that ultimately brought life into the
world. The flip side of the coin was death, and his town, a melting pot of
Koreans, buraku people and yakuza gangsters, had its share of untimely deaths.
He says residents often died at home or on the streets.
Many of his neighbors would go to a fortune teller instead of seeing a doctor.
Like sex, death seemed to surround Kim. He recalls seeing carbonized human
bodies after a major fire in the neighborhood.
He says it was this accumulation of childhood experiences, the mix of birth,
life and death, that ultimately led him to study why humans are so consumed by
sex. He says his interest in the subject was different from other little boys,
whose main interest was in acquiring practical experience.
"I was more intrigued, rather than excited, by those acts. It's like a child
wondering why adults enjoy drinking alcohol after he has a sip of beer and
finds the taste horrible."
When he was 17, he spent his entire summer vacation in Tokyo visiting
universities looking for an institution where he could study human sexuality.
The professors just laughed when confronted by the teenager's enthusiasm.
Kim recalls a visit to Korea University in Tokyo's Kodaira that summer. The
topic was so awkward that a university staffer requested Kim clarify his
question, asking, "Are you talking about the thing that couples do after they
turn off the lights at night?"
When Kim acknowledged that was exactly the field of study he was interested in
pursuing, he was physically removed from the campus.
In the end, he enrolled in the English department at Kyoto Seika
University-then a two-year college-only to quit after three months. He says the
classes were not what he expected.
Instead he embarked on a self-education program, sneaking into universities,
checking libraries and bookstores to find reference materials on human
sexuality. He says he sometimes spent up to eight hours a day standing in front
of shelves scribbling down book titles and anecdotes about sex.
Despite dropping out of the university, he was hired when he was 25 by Kyoto
Seika University as a temporary lecturer in Korean language courses and
anthropology. At around the same time, he became active in the effort to
improve the status of Korean residents in Japan.
"We are born and raised in Japan, we are not aliens," he says. But his
political ideas were far from mainstream at the time. Only five people attended
his study group on family registration of foreigners, including three students
from his class at the university. Even some Koreans objected to Kim's activism,
saying keeping a low profile was a better way to survive in Japan.
Dealing with sex-related issues and working to improve the status of Koreans
made Kim an easy target for the authorities, he says.
He recalls that every year, around the end of June, his bag containing his
wallet, memo pad and lunch box would disappear from his office. Exactly two
weeks later, it would reappear in exactly the same place with everything
intact.
Since then, he has worn a fisherman's vest with many pockets, "so that I can
carry my valuables with me all the time," he says. "What was rough was I didn't
know who to trust."
In addition to the missing items, Kim says there were anonymous calls to his
university smearing his reputation. During the 14 years he taught there, he
remained a temporary lecturer, watching as his colleagues were promoted.
Kim now sees it as inevitable. "I was involved in the two biggest taboos in
Japanese society-the issue of Korean residents and sex."
Nevertheless, his classes were popular among students. He once took his
students on a field trip to a gay bar to foster greater understanding of
alternative lifestyles.
"At that time, homosexuals were thought to be either transvestites or scary
guys who would attack other men," he says.
In July 1983, he was arrested after refusing to be fingerprinted as part of the
registration procedure for foreign residents.
His case went to court. After he lost at both the district and high courts, his
case reached the Supreme Court. The six-year case was ultimately dismissed
after the death of Emperor Hirohito under an amnesty program.
The case may have been dropped, but Kim lost his job at the university. He
moved from Kyoto to Tokyo. In 1990, he began producing an essay series about
love and sex for the men's comic magazine Big Comic Spirits.
The media exposure slowly established him as an expert on human sexual
behavior, something he had sought for decades.
On a personal level, Kim met and fell in love with Satoru Makimura, one of the
most successful girls' comic writers. They married in 1999, though the marriage
was not officially registered.
This, too, was a big change for Kim. He had always believed his political
activities had placed him under too much scrutiny to allow him to marry.
The happiness this relationship has brought him can be seen in his office. A
picture of his wife, smiling broadly, hangs on the wall; her comics line his
bookshelf.
When asked if anything has changed, however, Kim simply says, "I don't have to
worry about paying the bills anymore at the end of the month."
IHT/Asahi
