Blue Boy Trial
ブルーボーイ事件
Storyline
The whole story, ending included.
Tokyo 1965: police prosecute the doctor who performed gender-affirming surgery on sex workers; a waitress is asked to testify.
Tokyo, 1965. After the Olympics the police are sweeping the streets for prostitution, but the blue boys, trans women who have had surgery and do sex work, are still legally men, and the anti-prostitution law cannot touch them. So the authorities go after their surgeon instead. Dr Masao Akagi is arrested under the Eugenic Protection Law, which forbids sterilising operations without lawful reason, and on a narcotics charge.
Sachi, a coffee-shop waitress, lives with her boyfriend, Atsuhiko Wakamura. When he proposes, she asks him to wait until her body is complete: she had her surgery with Akagi, and one operation remains. Akagi's lawyer, Taku Kano, asks her to testify. She refuses. She does not want to lose what she has.
Her former colleagues Mei and Ahko take the stand instead. To prove the operations were medicine, Kano presents them as mentally disordered; Ahko, furious, tells the court she is not. Soon after, Ahko is set upon by drunken men in a bar and later found dead. Shaken, and told by Kano that if Akagi loses no one will be able to have the surgery, Sachi agrees to testify. The publicity costs her the coffee-shop job and Atsuhiko his standing at work. He wants them to leave and live quietly; she tells him they must part, and goes back to court.
On the stand she tells her life: a child who never felt like a boy, bullied in the countryside, a gay bar in Tokyo where the men wanted a man and not her, the operation she chose, and a body that still does not make people see a woman. All she wants, she says in tears, is to be herself. Asked by the judge if she is happy now, she says she is, though surely not as everyone imagines. Kano argues that denying a person the right to live as themselves violates the constitution.
The court convicts Akagi but spares him prison: a suspended sentence and a fine, with conditions laid down for any such surgery in future. Some years later Kano sees Sachi running a tailor's shop of her own and Atsuhiko coming home to her from work. He does not call out. A closing title records that gender-affirming surgery would not be performed legally in Japan for decades.
Starring
Miyu Nakagawaas Sachi
A trans woman working as a waitress in a Tokyo coffee shop, one of Dr Akagi's patients, asked to testify just as her boyfriend proposes.
Sachi’s story
Sachi has made a quiet life, waiting tables and living with Atsuhiko. When he proposes, she asks him to wait until her last operation. Akagi's arrest takes that operation away, and she refuses to testify, afraid of losing what she has. She meets Ahko again and sews her a dress for the bar Ahko is opening; Ahko's humiliation in court and her death change Sachi's mind. On the stand the prosecutor tells her she will never be a woman, and a weekly magazine exposes her. She loses her job, and when Atsuhiko wants them to move away, she leaves him and goes back to court, where she says she is happy, though not as everyone imagines. Years later she runs a tailor's shop of her own, Atsuhiko comes home to her, and she smiles as Kano walks away.
Ko Maeharaas Atsuhiko Wakamura
Sachi's boyfriend, an office worker who proposes to her and loses his standing at work once the trial makes her past public.
Ataru Nakamuraas Mei
Sachi's former colleague and a leader among the blue boys, who agrees to testify at Akagi's trial.
Izumi Sexyas Ahko
Sachi's former colleague, a mother figure to the younger blue boys, who is humiliated when the defence presents her as mentally disordered.
Takashi Yamanakaas Dr Masao Akagi
The surgeon who operated on the blue boys, arrested for breaching the Eugenic Protection Law and the narcotics law.
Ryo Nishikidoas Taku Kano
Akagi's defence lawyer, who presses Sachi and the others to testify while struggling with his own prejudice.
Taku Kano’s story
Kano is the young lawyer defending Akagi, and he goes looking for the doctor's patients to stand as witnesses. To prove the operations were legitimate medicine, he tells the court that the women are mentally disordered and the surgery was their treatment. On the stand Ahko rages that she is not ill, and soon afterwards she is found dead. Kano admits he was wrong. He bows his head and asks to be told the truth, and when Sachi testifies he argues that denying a person the right to live as herself violates the constitution. Akagi is convicted all the same. Some years later Kano passes Sachi's tailor's shop, sees Atsuhiko coming home to her, and walks on without a word.
Why it matters
Blue Boy Trial returns to a case Japan had largely forgotten: in 1965 the police, unable to charge trans women under the prostitution law, prosecuted the surgeon who had operated on them. The film asks who decides what a body is for: the state, a court, a doctor, or the person living in it. The historical verdict was widely misread as a ban, and gender-affirming surgery stopped in Japan for some thirty years, until 1998. Kasho Iizuka, a trans director, cast trans performers in the trans roles through open auditions, and Miyu Nakagawa, in her first acting role, carries the testimony at the film's centre. What stays open is the question the court kept putting to the witnesses, whether they were happy, and why anyone's happiness should have to be proved to a judge.