Next month, the annual G7 summit will be held in Hiroshima, Japan. Last week, in preparation for the G7 meeting taking place May 19-21, a group of LGBTQI+ activists, diplomats, business leaders, and government officials from the G7 countries gathered in Tokyo. Our Co-Chair, Mark Bromley, represented CGE at this inaugural Pride 7 Summit — the P7, for short — as it called on the wealthiest and most powerful democracies in the G7 to do more to support their own LGBTQI+ citizens as well as LGBTQI+ people around the world.
The call was particularly targeted at Japan, which is the only G7 member without any national legal protection for LGBTQI+ persons and the only G7 country that does not recognize same-sex marriage equality. As recently as last year, courts in both Tokyo and Osaka upheld the constitutionality of Japan’s ban on same-sex marriage; these two rulings came after a Sapporo court in 2021 found the lack of marriage equality to be a constitutional violation. More marriage cases are in the legal pipeline.
On the surface, Japan might not seem like a particularly oppressive country for LGBTQI+ people: after all, Tokyo will host a large Pride celebration later this month, anti-LGBTQI+ violence is rare, and homosexuality is not criminalized. But as an Amnesty International report documented, discrimination against LGBTQI+ citizens in Japan is pervasive.
As Human Rights Watch recently noted, “Japan lacks nondiscrimination protections for LGBT people, despite strong support for a national “Equality Act”. Japan also forces trans people who want to legally change their gender to appeal to a family court, undergo a psychiatric evaluation, and be surgically sterilized.”
A leaked private letter sent to Prime Minister Fumio Kishida by ambassadors from the other G6 countries plus the European Union has called on the Japanese government to enact nondiscrimination protections for sexual orientation, gender identity, and sex characteristics. For a generally cautious diplomatic group to express such frustration with a very close ally is a remarkable statement.
Japan stands out among its G7 peers. It is the only G7 member that hasn’t joined the Equal Rights Coalition, the intergovernmental coalition dedicated to promoting the human rights of LGBTQI+ people and strengthening LGBTQI+ civil society around the world. Moreover, Japan does not provide any dedicated development assistance funding to LGBTQI+ issues or civil society — in stark contrast to the $50 million that the United States Congress earmarked this year for support to global LGBTQI+ concerns through USAID and the State Department.
We know that Japan is hardly the only democracy failing to fully promote LGBTQI+ human rights. Few countries scored particularly well on the recent LGBTQI+ Report Cards released by the Council for Global Equality and F&M Global Barometers ahead of the Biden Administration’s Summit for Democracy last week. Of the G7 members, Italy and the United States join Japan in receiving failing grades, while Canada was the only member to receive an A. Certainly, all G7 members can do far better by their LGBTQI+ citizens, but Japan in particular owes its LGBTQI+ citizens more.
At the P7 Summit, LGBTQI+ activists, business and labor leaders, diplomats, and other participants spoke of their experiences with discrimination and called on Tokyo to endorse marriage equality and pass anti-discrimination legislation swiftly ahead of next month’s G7. The group also called out the conservatism of Prime Minister Kishida’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party, which continues to resist growing support for LGBTQI+ rights among both the general public and the business community. Dozens of members of Japan’s Diet — including several LDP members — participated in the event and endorsed the call for an LGBTQI+ nondiscrimination law.
All G7 countries can do better by their LGBTQI+ citizens. But this is the ideal time for the Japanese government to act — and not only because of the recent scandal where Kishida dismissed a close aide following the aide’s homophobic remarks. In doing so, the Prime Minister declared such remarks “totally inconsistent with government policy.” Now, before the May heads of state G7 meeting in Hiroshima, is the time for Tokyo to back up Kishida’s words with action.
Moving forward, as the G7 presidency rotates to Italy next year, CGE joins the U.S. Embassy in calling for the P7 to become permanent. The U.S. embassy tweeted its support for the event and called for Pride 7 to become an “official engagement group” attached to the G7 process on a permanent basis. We will need to push Rome to pick this up next year, but promisingly, the Italian Embassy to Japan participated in the Tokyo launch of P7 and offered its diplomatic support.
Global Equality Today 