ABSTRACT
This chapter examines how the term ‘LGBT’ is inscribed onto the screen in mainstream news and current affairs programming in Japan. Analysis of captioning and flip-cards illustrates how the term ‘LGBT’ is visualized to augment the hyper-visibility of ‘sexual minorities’. Mediatized hyper-visibility, however, is produced alongside corporate expansion into lucrative ‘rainbow markets’ and a proliferation of political discourses pertaining to LGBT rights. Histories of representations and advocacy for LGBT issues and rights are rendered invisible within this process. The chapter illustrates how a critical examination of text in the media offers one way to analyze complex citational practices in which discourses of tolerance/acceptance and in/visibility become entangled.
