Want to avoid Pride month? Bit tired of the, almost literally, in your face, carnival of uninhibited sexual freedom we see on our streets throughout June? Then come to Japan. It’s not that Pride doesn’t happen here at all, just that the Japanese for various cultural and historic reasons, don’t make a song and dance – or a borderline street cabaret – out of it.
Japan’s version ‘Rainbow Pride’ is held in April and lasts just two days. It was back on this year for the first time since 2019 and was apparently reasonably well-attended. I say ‘apparently’ because I saw no sign of it, nor watched or read a single report in the media. It was, to use an old-fashioned term, discreet.
But for how much longer? Sexual politics, so long not much of an issue here, is threatening to become as shrill and contentious as in the UK and US.
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