The boys from Melbourne band, The Hondas like to wear dresses. Lead singer, Taka Honda, says he just looks better as a woman.
If you follow Australian music, you might recognise Honda as the drummer in successful Melbourne rock band, Little Red. While Little Red’s Rock It came in second for the Triple J Hottest 100 for 2010, his side band has been busy frocking up.
The Hondas recently released their first single, I am a Homosexual and has raised eyebrows (including ours).
For Honda, the song is not so much about homosexuals but about difference and diversion from the mainstream. Honda took some time out from touring in the US to speak to OUTinPerth about his penchant for pretty dresses.
‘Well it is my idea to cross-dress. For me, aesthetically I look beautiful,’ Honda said.
‘I think I look beautiful, you know it’s so funny, people think that if someone dresses up as a woman, they stereotype those people as gay.
‘For me, that’s kind of silly because I like girls so much and I want to be one.
‘Maybe I’m sick in the head but that’s my kind of logic.
‘I think I look better as a woman than a man.’
While all four members identify as straight, Honda said people had assumed he was gay because of his cross-dressing tendencies.
‘When I first put my dress on [sic] was in high school back in Japan when I went through my mother’s wardrobe and found these cute ’60s dresses,’ he said.
‘She used to be a really hot chick, [sic] hot hippy chick growing up in the ’60s in Japan.’
‘So she had a great collection of dresses, like polka dots and stuff like that and I used to wear them.’
‘It seems very natural for me to wear a dress and put make-up on.’
Honda was born and raised in Japan. In the 1990’s, a rock music movement called Visual Kei was taking off throughout Japan. Visual Kei means ‘visual style’ and involved a lot of costuming and make-up to create an androgynous style. The movement was uniquely Japanese and men would often wear women’s clothing and make-up. In 2006, author Josephine Yun published a book examining Japanese rock music culture. On Visual Kei, she said: ‘A lot of times “Visual Kei†musicians are mistaken for women, when in fact they are men. It’s not really testosterone driven either, it’s very poetic and effeminate.’
Honda recalled growing up in the ’90s when cross-dressing crossed over into Japanese mainstream culture.
‘In the ’90s in Japan, Japan always had a subculture of dressing up as a girl but that subculture crossed over into the mainstream because a lot of bands started playing that kind of hard rock music and dressing up as girls.,’ he said.
‘It happened in America as well, a lot of hard rock bands they have mascara and shit like that but Japanese hard rock bands pushed it a step further, just to look like girls.
‘Asian men look great when they dress up as girls; we’re a bit more androgenic.’
‘Right now, it’s died down and they have gone back underground but I was growing up in Japan in the ’90s so I was influenced by the subculture as well so it wasn’t that weird.’
‘Before I started this band, I sometimes went to warehouse parties in drag.’
As for the single, I am a Homosexual, it’s important to remember that the band is not mocking gay culture. The single is meant to be a jibe directed at homophobic people, Honda said, and was aimed at diversity in general, having taken inspiration from the rise of media attention on homosexual issues.
‘I don’t think the single is about homosexuals, it’s about being different, different from the mainstream society,’ Honda said.
‘I’m not sure… the funny thing is that I never thought of what people would think when I made that song and I realised some people [were] taking offence and some people felt nothing and they all had different interpretations from what I originally intended.’
The Hondas will not be coming to Perth to play anytime soon, unfortunately. But the lead singer did say that the band was looking at releasing an album next year. Watch this space.
Benn Dorrington
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