June is “Pride month”. Pride Parade Toronto was held in June 23, where huge number of people celebrated the rights of LGBTQs.
I’m Japanese and have never watched/ joined any kinds of parade so it was a sort of shock, of course good one, that so many people got together for gay parade, because that means such many people have some or a lot of knowledge about LGBTQs.
So now, I’d like to sum up the current state of Japan’s LGBTQs.
How many LGBTQs in Japan?
In October, 2018, DENTSU INC., a Japanese company, conducted a survey about LGBTs to 6,000 people chosen randomly. Unfortunately they used the word ‘LGBT’ not ‘LGBTQ’ in their survey. As a result, the number of people who think themselves as LGBTs was 8.9%, and the level of familiarity of the word ‘LGBT’ was 68.5%.
*the number of LGBTs in 2012 was 5.2%, in 2015 was 7.5% ( however, the way of the survey in 2012 was different from the one held in 2018)
The level of familiarity
According to DENTSU, 68.5% of people knew the word ‘LGBT’. And at the same time, they asked some questions about the attitude or feeling toward LGBTs. 76.0% of people answered they wanted to understand LGBTs properly, whereas 54.5% told they didn’t have any support systems for LGBTs in their workplace. To the question of asking their personal opinion on same-sex marriage, 78.4% agreed to it. 72.1% of the people thought Japan should develop the laws to admit it.
In conclusion…
The attitude of the people to LGBT is getting better in Japan, but we can’t say it’s an open country to them. Japan is the only nation left among G7 countries which doesn’t support LGBT(Q)s. They should reform the laws and systems to ensure the human rights to everyone.
