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Paper short abstract

This study explores how community-based performers in Kyoto, Japan, promote social understanding through artistic practices linked to visual and performing arts, focusing on drag queens and presenting archiving case studies through documentation and preservation.

Paper long abstract

This study examines how community-based performers in Japan have promoted social understanding through artistic practices that intersect with visual art and performing arts. With a particular focus on the Kyoto area, it centers on the activities of drag queens as a form of locally rooted cultural practice and situates these performances within broader social and historical contexts. The study focuses on a stage performance organized by drag queens that began in the Kansai region in 1989 and continues to the present. Featuring performances by drag queens and DJs, the event is notable for the participation of individuals from diverse backgrounds, including sexual minorities, heterosexual women and men, and drag queens of foreign nationality. This diversity has played a crucial role in shaping a distinctly Japanese drag culture characterized by intersectionality and multilayered social relations. As one of the longest-running drag queen –organized stage performances still active in Japan, this event holds significant cultural and historical importance within Japanese performance history. By presenting drag as an open and accessible form of stage art rather than one confined to nightlife spaces, the event has continuously expanded the social reach and cultural meaning of drag performance. Since the 2000s, these artistic practices have extended beyond live venues into museums and cultural institutions through exhibitions of archival materials and staged performances. However, despite growing public visibility, there has been little systematic effort to comprehensively document, organize, and preserve these activities as an archive. From the perspective of a practitioner who has been engaged in drag performance as a heterosexual female drag queen since 2004, this study documents and organizes materials related to these artistic practices. In doing so, it seeks to make visible cultural expressions that have often been marginalized. Furthermore, the study examines how this community-based performance context has fostered stage performers regardless of gender or sexuality and how participants have formed and articulated their identities through these practices. Ultimately, the study offers practical insights into how archiving community-based art can contribute to the development of a society in which diverse values and identities coexist.