Fridae

Two thousand eight hundred LGBT persons and supporters marched down the streets of Tokyo on Saturday afternoon in the blistering summer heat, as the city celebrated its sixth Tokyo Pride Parade. A rare sight in the normally conservative business capital of Asia - the streets of Shibuya and Harajuku were lined with hundreds of supporters hoisting rainbow flags and other LGBT symbols, cheering on the participants of the 12 floats who took this annual opportunity to celebrate their liberation and joy as sexual minority members.

Launched on August 27, 2000 as the Tokyo Lesbian & Gay Parade, the event changed its name this year to the Tokyo Pride Parade in an effort to more realistically reflect the evolution of the queer community in Japan, now openly embracing a variety of minority groups, specifically the transgender, transsexual, and intersexual communities. For the first time in Japanese history, 1,850 LGBT participants marched through the streets of Tokyo. Since then, the parade has undergone its own evolution, and after a 2-year hiatus in 2003 and 2004, the event has garnered increased support and recognition from the LGBT community and LGBT supporters. A total of 4,300 people took time out of their busy city lives to brave the 35 degree heat and enjoy Saturday's proceedings.

"Tokyo Pride serves two purposes," outlines parade head Takashi Nakada. "First, to raise visibility: There are many LGBT persons in Japan who are not out, and are therefore invisible to society. A parade shows the general public that many LGBT people do live in society. That's why we chose to parade during the daytime in Shibuya amongst the general public. Second, by gathering many sexual minority people together, this encourages minority members themselves to affirm their identity, to no longer see their way of life as a negative thing, but to positively accept their sexual identity."

Although Tokyo Pride still remains small-scale in comparison to its Western siblings, particularly considering the 12 million plus population of Tokyo, it is still the largest parade in Japan, with three times the number of participants as the Sapporo parade. Supported by a team of almost 300 staff, many of them long-term parade members, Nakada has high hopes for the future of the Tokyo Pride Parade.

"I'd like Tokyo Pride Parade to lead the parade movement in Japan. We received this year for the first time public backup from Tokyo Governor Shintaro Ishihara, as well as words of support from the mayors of Shibuya and Shinjuku Wards, and various political parties including the LDP (Liberal Democratic Party), DPJ (Democratic Party of Japan), SDP (Social Democratic Party) and the JCP (Japanese Communist Party)." Nakada said.

Saturday's march was notably attended by the head of the Social Democratic Party Mizuho Fukushima, upper house member Ryuhei Kawada, transgender Setagaya ward assembly member Aya Kamikawa, and Japan's first out lesbian politician Kanako Otsuji.

Despite such support from the political arena, the parade organisers believe that lack of participation and open support by queer Japanese celebrities who tend to stay in the closet has hampered efforts to raise the public profile of the event. Another obstacle faced by the organisers is that the Japanese media is reluctant to cover the parade, as Aki Nomiya, in charge of press relations, points out, "We have had lot of local and foreign press this time, but in general the Japanese media doesn't cover this event."

Her colleague Mami Fukunaga agrees saying "It's not that the Japanese media writes negative articles, they simply don't cover the event. They ignore it. For the first parade, a lot of media came, but after that they just lost interest." A further frustration is that parade participants and floats are unable to march in one solid stream, but must negotiate the busy Saturday afternoon traffic.

As Nomiya explains, "Marches are divided into two categories: festivals and demonstrations. For festivals, traffic can be diverted, but since the parade is treated as a demonstration, we have to march among traffic, and so we need to comply with strict safety regulations." They also agree that the event name change could in fact pose problems for the event given that the Japanese general public is not yet familiar with the term "Pride" as being associated with LGBT concerns.

More significantly, one particular challenge strongly prevails for the organisers. The parade still suffers from low attendance by women. The event this year boasted participation by a variety of women's groups including bilingual lesbian activist group TOKYO AMAZONS, international dyke bar C&S, performance art feminist association PA/F Space, women's sex toy shop Love Piece Club, lesbian association Tokyo Regumi Studio and women's club event Diamond Cutter. However, with only two floats dedicated to women and the remaining 10 floats dominated by men, and with average annual female participation of 20 percent of total participants and a similar proportion of parade staff, women are still very much in the minority and this figure does not seem to be rising. Even by just scanning the masses of people gathered in Yoyogi Park on Saturday, it was evident that proceedings were primarily male-dominated.

Asked why this might be, Fukunaga comments, "Many women are so worried about how they handle their own lives that few of them actually want to be visible in society and become activist." Nomiya agrees, "Women are subject to economic restrictions." Furthermore, it seems that the parade committee is still not clear on its policy on how to approach women's issues for the event.

"The disparity in salary between men and women in Japan means that in the LGBT world, gay men do find it easier than women to come out publicly. We now offer funding through the parade steering committee to enable women and students to rent floats which were once very expensive. Also, I believe that Kanako Otsuji's openness about her sexuality in her recent national election campaign will be a huge help in encouraging more women to come out. However, although we understand that lesbianism and feminism are overlapping issues, we are still not decided on how relevant feminist issues are to the parade." Nakada reveals.

While aware of low female visibility at the parade, the women who did attend understand the importance of their contribution to public activism in inspiring other women to come out, and several voiced their sense of personal achievement and self-empowerment from marching. In a country which still has a long way to go in terms of acknowledging the human rights of LGBT persons and where women are still subject to widespread gender discrimination, some participants took this rare opportunity to publicly come out to their family members.

Japanese lesbian Hiro, whose placard read "Mum. I'm a lesbian! - Hiro" and whose hand-painted t-shirt read "There are lesbians in Japan too," emotionally announced after the parade: "I now feel that I can tell my mum about my sexuality sometime. It's not easy because my family live far away in Hokkaido, but this event has given me the courage to consider coming out to my parents one day. It's all thanks to the parade and the support of my friends!"