Whenever it’s announced that a bona fide drag celebrity will be visiting Japan, the community here starts buzzing.
“Manila Luzon? You know that she is the G.O.A.T.,” one drag devotee, using an acronym that spells out “greatest of all time,” told me three months ago when Luzon's arrival was announced. “I am actually so shaken and excited they are bringing her to Japan.”
Dec. 1 saw the third and most successful installment of Tokyo’s preeminent drag show Opulence, combining some of Japan’s best local drag talent with three of the celebrity drag queens from the hit TV show “RuPaul’s Drag Race”: Luzon, Trinity the Tuck and Kylie Sonique Love. All three queens were immensely popular casting choices, but Luzon — one of drag’s first internationally recognized Filipina American celebrities and the award-winning host of the “Drag Den” television series from the Philippines — was the name that seemed to send Shinjuku Ni-chōme (Tokyo’s traditionally LGBTQ-friendly neighborhood) into a spin. And now, the G.O.A.T. herself had arrived.
Asian representation
One of the earliest drag queens to achieve international success in the “Drag Race” era, Luzon, 42, has been turning heads since her 2011 debut in the show’s third season. A comedian, recording artist and queer rights activist, Luzon is best known for her Cruella de Vil-looking wigs, campy food-themed custom gowns (including pineapple and pork adobo dresses), and — as her name implies — her strong connection to her Filipino heritage. Together with fellow founding “Drag Race” pantheon members Jujubee, Ongina, Jiggly Caliente and Raja Gemini (who took part in the previous edition of Opulence), Luzon was a queen who defined Asian American drag excellence for a generation of queer kids, both in Asia and among the diaspora. They became the touchstone names by which queens of Asian descent like myself could say, “Look, I can do drag, too! I can be open and gay and fabulous, too!”
“I always knew I was different,” Luzon, whose real name is Karl Westerberg, tells me as we sit down in the lobby of her hotel in Shinjuku. “My mother is from the Philippines, my father is white, born and raised in Minnesota. From an early age I knew what it was like to be raised as a person of mixed ethnicity ... knowing how to live in the in-between. When I came out (as gay), it was another realization of how I was different.”
She continues, discussing the situation in American media when she started her television career.
“We didn’t have much inspiration or many role models growing up for Asian characters, let alone gay Asian characters, so it’s cool to go on a reality show and meet people being themselves, and to see how that has influenced a lot more people to be out and proud about their identities as Asians and gay Americans.”
Queer Asians, even in Asian countries like Japan but especially in the diaspora, often suffer double marginalization within gay spaces. Particularly within the gay male scene where racial “preferences” are a frequent staple of online dating profiles, many LGBTQ people of Asian descent feel invisible and second-rate, or worse, fetishized. And with the COVID pandemic, incidents of anti-Asian sentiment have only increased, both within the queer community and in the mainstream.
Luzon was fortunate to avoid most racial discrimination in her early days as a drag queen — rather, “Being a gay Asian man had less of an effect than being a crossdresser!” she laughs. “Especially before ‘Drag Race’ — now (drag queens) are celebrated, but before being a drag queen was one of the lowest steps on the ladder as far as attractiveness in the nightclub. The scene was very masculine-centric, toxic energy, ‘no femmes.’ It’s changed since.
“So many gay Asians are more reserved about being in the scene, so seeing Asian drag queens pop the lid off is fantastic,” she continues. “I think a lot of Asian Americans are overlooked in America, (but I want them) to showcase the beauty in these Asian features, to put themselves out there and showcase themselves proudly so our community can be seen.”
Across her 20-year career in drag, comedy and television, Luzon has continued to be a spokesperson and advocate for queer minority rights, raising awareness for both AIDS and discrimination against the Asian American communities.
Into the ‘Den’
“Drag Den,” which is streaming on Amazon Prime Japan, was a full-circle moment for Luzon. After waiting for years for a “Drag Race: Philippines” spinoff to be announced, Luzon jumped at the invitation in 2021 to host, judge and serve as executive producer for an independent Philippines-based reality competition show, featuring all local queens. “Drag Den” eventually aired in late 2022, with a second season announced Dec. 1 (the same day Luzon took the stage in Tokyo), and Luzon would go on to win Best Host for her role on the show at the Asian Academy Creative Awards.
“I have been such a fan of drag in the Philippines,” Luzon says. “It makes me proud as a Filipino American to see how excellent the queens are... how they put on the most elaborate costumes and production numbers with very little. So getting to go there and use my platform to give a spotlight to these drag queens brings me so much pride. And I got to have a front row seat, too!”
The Philippines drag community was doubly blessed these past years, with both “Drag Race: Philippines” and “Drag Den” launching and bringing local queens greater fame and opportunities. Luzon herself is excited to have both shows airing and promoting different sides of the country’s drag.
“What the ‘Drag Den’ creators and I tried to do was let Filipino drag steer the direction of the show, rather than adapt a United States equation and formula,” Luzon explains. She goes on to describe the unique energy she’s seen in the Philippines’ drag — pageantry and high-end productions at night clubs — but also street shows — gay kids in whatever wigs and costumes they could find, battling on the sidewalk in front of screaming crowds.
“It has similarities to the ballroom and voguing scenes,” she says. “It’s not about who has the best look or dance moves, but who can win over the crowd. Queens climbing up flag poles and jumping off, jumping off the stage. I got to judge one of these Barangayan shows where one of the queens picked up the judge’s table, dragged it up on stage, and then jumped off that, too — straight into the splits. We got to infuse some of that into the show. It was great to see queens (on ‘Drag Den’) losing their wigs and their costumes in order to entertain the crowd.”
In a particularly relatable moment for me as a Vietnamese American who’d had limited contact with my heritage growing up, Luzon also shared how she felt a little left out at times working on the “Drag Den” set due to language and cultural barriers as someone who hadn’t grown up in the Philippines herself.
“I’m so behind in the pop culture references,” she says. “America has this cultural firewall and we don’t let anyone else’s culture really influence, so I feel a little stunted in that manner. But I take that as a chance to learn about it and sit back and let the contestants tell their story. It was a place where I learned about Filipino culture, regions, different festivals, superstitions.
“I sometimes wish I had those experiences (and spoke more Tagalog), but I remember my mom worked so hard to get good grades and come to the U.S. and live her dream. I appreciate everything she accomplished.”
Japan in the spotlight
It’s not hard to see the similarities between “Drag Den” and what Opulence is trying to do for drag in Japan: showcase our queens’ talents on our own terms, with love and references for our own subculture and drag scene that you find in the streets and gay bars of Kanto, Chubu and Kansai.
Trooping backstage before the show, I saw a familiar arrangement: three private changing rooms for the Ru-girls, one massive communal room for the Tokyo queens and backup dancers. But the energy was relaxed and friendly, with the three overseas queens — Luzon, Trinity and Kylie Sonique — bouncing out of their rooms and running into the communal dressing room to raise morale.
“Oh my god, I got a picture with Kylie,” Bomba Sachiko, a Filipino Japanese queen and one of the greeters for the evenings, gushes and flicks through her phone to show me. “She is so perfect and flawless. And Manila is such an inspiration. All three were so nice and so professional.”
Out in the main hall, the crowd screams itself absolutely hoarse as each of the Opulence cast appears. We each have our own unique parasocial relationship with the celebrity guest stars, and many of us have actual friendships with the local girls — co-organizer Vera Strondh, Victoria Strondh, Labianna Joroe, Sera Tonin, Kosmic Sans, MC Miss Leading and DJ Maxim. Watching Luzon grin and laugh and flounce around stage in her signature pineapple dress, Kylie Sonique turn cartwheels, and Trinity shaking her assets, I’m reminded of the spell early “Drag Race” once cast on me, many years ago — and how that magic still graces the stage, in the flesh.
The roar of the crowd. A flood of joy. It all belongs to us.
With your current subscription plan you can comment on stories. However, before writing your first comment, please create a display name in the Profile section of your subscriber account page.