Pride 09 | NULL Canvas

NULL Canvas

always from scratch

09 Toronto Pride Parade proceeded strongly despite the rain early in the morning.

It has grown into one of the largest in North America over years now attracts over a million people from all over the world. Canada known for great acceptance for homosexual communities is proud to present their greatly diversed culture to all other cities of countries. I greatly enjoyed watching the live on TV to see people taking part in the event, all spectators. Their energy and happiness must have sent meaningful messages to people who witnessed today.

As a Japanese, this was something made me realize huge gap between Japan and Canada in terms of diversity in culture and people within the two nations.

Gay and lesbians, those terms are not largely recognized in Japan, as myself lived in Tokyo never had a conversation about homosexuality while I was there. According to the Japanese law, homosexual couples are recognizable in Japan, there is no punishment on being one of them. However, there is no law prohibiting discrimination against homosexuals, marriage between same sex is not allowed. So obviously we are not encouraging them....

In Canada, there is law for everything to protect homosexuals. They are protected from any form of discriminations based on their sexual orientation. Same sex marriage is allowed in entire nation from 2005. They are even eligible to apply for child adoption. There are only a few other countries allow same sex marriage and Canada is one of the first countries allowed the marriage.

So Canada supports them, treat them as much same as any other people here. In today's event, I saw whole city supported the communities, city mayor, police services, TV broadcast companies, and many local businesses. It's just incredible that so many people are supportive for them, and understand eachother. Those people seemed so happy. I thought it's just something I don't think I can witness this kind of support for them in Japan. I don't know if it will ever be.

Both countries are developed, certain level of life standard has been established many years, but certain things like this Japan is so behind, and people are poorly understood. Japan maybe rich country, but never rich in understanding multiculturalism. It won't attract as many people. I think this is something that Japan needs to work on in order to be rich in culturally and recognized by the other nations. So many forthcoming issues such as aging population might be prevented