Global Capital Organizes To Make Japan Gay

To Americans living under institutional endorsement of LGBTP lifestyles and disproportionate LGBTP representation in the media, it may come as a surprise that only twenty-nine countries worldwide recognize homosexual marriage. Japan isn’t one of them- yet.

Japan’s laws regulating LGBTP behavior aren’t perfect, but they’re significantly better than those in the United States, a country that legally mandates the genital mutilation of children and teaches kindergarteners to have gay sex.

For example:

• Gays in Japan are only allowed to donate blood after abstaining from gay sex for 6-12 months.
• Gays cannot adopt; single mothers and lesbian couples are prohibited from receiving IVF or other fertilization treatments.
• Transgenders can only change their legal identities after undergoing genital reassignment surgery.
• Individuals are only allowed to adopt transgender identities if they are unmarried, over the age of 22, and have no minor children.

Additionally, Japan has no national prohibition on discrimination against LGBTP individuals and does not recognize homosexual marriage. These laws, and lack thereof, have put Japan in the crosshairs of the international self-appointed human rights lobby and their corporate partners.

Japan’s Pro-Family History

International rights groups and cultural critics have attempted to retroactively interpret Japanese history through the lens of gay revisionism.

The first three generations of gods in the Shinto tradition were dudes, so they must have been gay lovers, asserts Japanese writer Ihara Saikaku:

Since there are no women for the first three generations in the genealogy of the gods found in the Nihon Shoki, the gods must have enjoyed homosexual relationships.

Of course, in the Shinto tradition, these gods are to be understood as spiritual agender beings- something even gay advocates are forced to admit.

Torii gates are one of the most well-known symbols of the Shinto faith.

Shinto’s creation myth holds that the Japanese nation, its people, spirits (kami) and the land itself were all borne out of the consummation of Izanami and Izanagi. Procreation isn’t just critical, it’s of existential importance.

The Shinto tradition stresses spiritual cleanliness. As Isaac Stone Fish wrote for Foreign Policy (emphasis added):

While Shinto doesn’t have a clear stance on homosexuality, it “advocates that it’s not natural,” as one Shinto priest told me in Tokyo’s prominent Meiji Shrine in early June, a few weeks before the U.S. Supreme Court ruling.

Shinto advocates cleanliness, as opposed to spiritual pollution. Homosexuality “is not unclean, but it’s unnatural,” the priest concluded.

Others have harkened back to the samurai practice of nanshoku (“male color”), a practice that took place in pre-modern Japan. Samurai would take young apprentices and train them in martial arts, warrior etiquette, and the bushido samurai code of honor. There is evidence suggesting that some of these relationships included sex, though there is no data showing how rare or prevalent those relationships were.

What is known, though, is that once the Japanese public became aware of sexual nanshoku relationships, they responded in 1872 by passing anti-sodomy laws.

Imperial Japanese culture viewed homosexuality even more negatively. Homosexuality was increasingly viewed as a perversion and a distraction for a civilization seeking to build an empire. Though the Japanese empire came to an end in 1947, these healthy cultural norms have largely persisted to the present day.

Chipping Away

The United States forced the former Japanese empire to adopt a Western constitution in the aftermath of World War 2. This constitution, written in part by Jewish feminist Beate Sirota Gordon, started Japan down a path of liberalization.

In the last six years, Japan has followed in America’s footsteps and adopted many LGBPT-friendly reforms:

• In 2015, Tokyo’s Shibuya ward established a same-sex partnership system to allow for recognition in hospital visitation and housing. Since then, over 100 other municipalities from Sapporo to Hiroshima have adopted similar programs.
• In 2017, the Education Ministry added sexual orientation and gender identity to its national bullying policy and developed a corresponding curriculum for teachers nationwide.
• In 2018, the Ministry of Health & Welfare developed regulations to prevent “[denying] lodging based on sexual orientation or gender identity.”

The driving force behind these efforts has been the U.S.-based Human Rights Watch.

They Like To Watch

Human Rights Watch (HRW) has pressuring Japan to liberalize its LGBTP laws for years, publishing dozens of articles lambasting the Japanese for their failure to become sufficiently gay.

Human Rights Watch was founded by Jewish publisher Robert Bernstein and George Soros associate Aryeh Neier.

HRW was founded by two American Jews, Robert L. Bernstein and Aryeh Neier. Bernstein is the former CEO of Random House Publishing, and Neier left HRW in 1993 to run George Soros’ Open Society Foundation. He helped create Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), which later became the terror group Weather Underground.

Since 1993, HRW has been led by Kenneth Roth, a former federal prosecutor. Conservatives have criticized HRW for being anti-Israel, but as Muhammed Shehada writes in Newsweek, HRW’s commentary actually serves to help Israel stay apprised of potential public relations disasters.

The report is an alarm bell, a wake-up call that the injustice being done is a terrible thing—not just for Palestinians but for Israel as well. Its message is that occupation and discrimination corrupt the soul of the oppressor as much as they ruin the lives of the oppressed. And in a way, that’s a pro-Israel message.

Maximum Pressure

HRW and other gay advocates have sought to use the 2021 Tokyo Olympics as an inflection point for advancing gay issues in Japan. A review of HRW’s 2021 publications shows their narrative- and threats- being built out in real-time.

At first, HRW framed the issue as an opportunity for Japan to be on the right side of history, while also vaguely suggesting that Japan’s stance on LGBTP issues should make them ineligible to host the Olympics.

Japan is an established democracy with rule of law and an active civil society, yet Olympic athletes and visitors may be surprised to learn that there are no national anti-discrimination laws on sexual orientation and gender identity, or race and ethnicity.

Recent surveys show that 3 to 10 percent of people in Japan identify as LGBT. Yet LGBT people in Japan face stigma and discrimination. Japan does not recognize same-sex marriage, and as Human Rights Watch documented in a 2019 report, transgender people are forced to be surgically sterilized if they want legal recognition of their gender identity.

The International Olympic Committee has announced its expectation that Olympic hosts will “prohibit any form of discrimination with regard to a country or a person on grounds of race, colour, sex, sexual orientation, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status.” It is also significant that global sponsors of the Olympics have adopted their own inclusive policies and back legislation to uphold LGBT rights in Japan.

Regardless of how Tokyo 2020 plays out in 2021 — with some or no fans, major restrictions or minor ones — passing landmark legislation to protect LGBT people and workers would ensure that those words become a reality. And it would become part of Japan’s permanent Olympic legacy.

HRW’s pressure campaign failed to gain traction. Japan’s ruling Conservative Party refused to introduce legislation banning “discrimination” against the LGBTP. A month later, HRW leaned on their connections in Japan to attempt to manufacture artificial “public sentiment” for the legislation within Japan, claiming “Experts Urge Tokyo Organizing Committee to Support Anti-Discrimination Law.”

A 2020 study by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) ranks Japan next to last for laws on LGBT Inclusiveness for developed countries. It says that: “LGBTI-inclusive laws are particularly critical for creating a culture of equal treatment of LGBTI individuals. One cannot expect to improve the situation of sexual and gender minorities if, to begin with, the law does not protect them against abuses or excludes them from social institutions.

Although the Tokyo Metropolitan Government adopted an ordinance that protects LGBT people from discrimination in line with the Olympic Charter in October 2018, many Tokyo Olympic competitions, including the marathon, race walk, golf, fencing, and surfing, will take place outside of Tokyo…Foreign and Japanese LGBT athletes, officials, workers, and fans will expect to be protected from discrimination.

Finally, on May 31, HRW intensified their demands, enlisting their corporate partners in the Partnership for Global LGBTI Equality to demand Japan change its laws.

The Partnership for Global LGBTI Equality is a joint venture between the United Nations, the World Economic Forum, and some of the world’s most powerful corporations, including Accenture, CISCO, Coca-Cola, Deloitte, Deutsche Bank, Johnson & Johnson, Mastercard, Proctor & Gamble, PepsiCo, Salesforce, and Scotiabank, among others.

These companies comprise some of the world’s most powerful accounting, technology, consumer services, and financial institutions. If these companies were to leverage their power and threaten to boycott or divest from Japan, the economic ramifications would be significant.

Things Fall Apart (For Now)

The Japanese government responded to the pressure campaign by introducing an “Equality Act” that would nominally prohibit discrimination against LGBTP individuals. The bill was criticized by conservatives and HRW alike; conservatives opposed it on principle, and gay advocates opposed it for being toothless and not going far enough.

The bill failed in the Japanese Diet after lawmakers failed to reach a consensus.

While this recent effort to bludgeon Japan into full-throated gay acceptance may have failed, there are likely more on the horizon. The Partnership for Global LGBTI Equality has vowed to “operationalize, leverage, and organize” their corporate power against countries- including Japan- in order to bring them into compliance with the global LGBTP agenda. And, if corporate collusion fails, President Biden has promised to continue the Trump administration policy of using U.S. diplomatic power to force countries into gay compliance.

The Japanese people deserve credit for resisting the global pressure campaign designed to divorce them from their traditions- and hopefully their fortitude will endure against the mounting forces of global capital and LGBTP ideologues.