Japan’s Pride and Their First Lady’s Endorsement

Participants at Sunday’s Tokyo Rainbow Pride parade.

 

Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

Japan’s national holidays in late April and early May are known as Golden Week, but some streets in Tokyo have been rainbow-colored instead thanks to a week of events promoting equality for lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transssexuals.

Attending Tokyo Rainbow Week‘s main parade on Sunday was Akie Abe, the wife of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. The first lady expressed her support for sexual minorities on her Facebook page afterwards, saying she wanted to “create a society where no one faces discrimination and people can spend a rich, happy life.”

Japan Real Time spoke with Shinya Yamagata, the organizer of the parade as well as the Tokyo Rainbow Week.

In its inaugural year in 2012, the parade called Tokyo Rainbow Pride attracted 4,500 people and then 12,000 in 2013.  

There were approximately 14,000 people, so the number has continued to increase for three straight years. The parade has succeeded in becoming more than an event for sexual minorities. There were many families and children joining us on Sunday. We even had to make a public service announcement for a lost child for the first time ever at our event.

There were other trends this year,

the number of corporate booths on site has more than doubled to over 60 since the inaugural year. We saw foreign embassies and visitors from overseas taking part as well, including a speech from participants who joined us from South Korea.

Q: Why have people come to embrace the events?

For one, we have many events and performances that can be enjoyed by the majority and not just the sexual minority.  We are also already in our third year, and people are becoming aware of what we do. They appear to be visiting our main site [at Yoyogi Park] to check out what’s happening and just to have a good time.

Q: One of the parade’s goals is to become the largest LGBT parade in Asia by 2016.

Yes, we are aiming for that. Currently the biggest LGBT parade in Asia is held in Taiwan, which gathers over 60,000 people.