Musuta Kusaka's Everyday Journey with Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Japan

This year, my daughter dumped me. With a bang.

Every year, I go to Tokyo Rainbow Pride with my daughter. Tokyo Rainbow Pride is an event held every year in Shibuya. It is a festival to spread awareness and understanding of sexual minorities and to appeal for the rights of those involved, but it is serious, flashy, and just huge. Officially, it is one of the largest in Asia.

It is about gender and sexuality. It is about a society with many different people. It is about human rights. It is about the law. It has become a regular event in the Kusaka family as an opportunity for parents and children to go out of the house and school and see and hear.

This year, the name was changed to Tokyo Pride, and I said we would go together, but she rejected me on the morning of the day. “I’m going to do my homework with Fumi today.” She seems to finish her kanji writing and division practice problems with her friends.

I tried to persuade her by saying , “There are more important things to study than homework,” and even tried to win her over with sweets from Shibuya and Harajuku, but my daughter was refreshingly cold-hearted and started preparing her notebooks and drills.

Apparently, I was the only one who thought she would go with me. Children grow up quickly. They are at an age where they want to spend time with their friends rather than with their parents. It must be her strategy to keep Dad quiet by saying he has to study. Every time the number of parent-child events decreases, I feel a pang of my child’s growth.

I want her to understand a lot of things before she finds out about love, I thought as I trudged to Shibuya, where the parade had already begun. No matter how many people I saw off, the procession never let up.

And that’s because it was. According to the official announcement, there were about 15,000 participants in the parade. There were 60 groups that marched through Shibuya and Harajuku. It’s no wonder, it’s one of the largest in Asia.

When we finally arrived at the main gate, the crowd was so large that it was still too crowded. The parade team about to depart, the people who were seeing them off, and the people trying to enter the festival venue were all stuck in a pile.

The number of visitors was about 273,000 people, the highest ever, on the second day of the event. This is equivalent to the population of Aomori City.

If it were a normal festival or fireworks display, there would have been some angry shouts, but the venue was very peaceful, and smiles everywhere you looked.

Speeches could be heard on the wind. The smell of grilled meat and lime cocktails, and the shouts of “Happy Pride!” People confessing, people in wheelchairs, children riding on shoulders. There was also a scene where everyone made way for an old woman trying to pass through the crowd on her bicycle. It reminded me of Moses parting the sea.

Such a scene seemed unique to that event, where various couples, various friends, various families, and people who were all or nothing of the above, each shouted out, “There is love here.”

When I got home to talk about this, my daughter was playing a game with Fumi in the living room. She said she had already finished her homework. “Hey, hey. I just went to Tokyo Pride. ” “I know!” “I don’t know!” They sounded like opposites but actually meant the same thing: they were both “not interested.” Both my daughter and Fumi were focused on the screen and didn’t look at me.

“Don’t you talk about the girls you like at school?” I wanted to talk to them about the event, so I tried to force a conversation starter, but they said, “I don’t do it because I don’t want to be exposed,” and “Some girls don’t have a crush on anyone.” It was ridiculous.
The two exchanged a brief eye contact, stopped playing the game, and retreated to their rooms. I’m sorry. I was forcing my feelings on them as an adult. I regretted having interrupted them.

A few hours later, the door to the children’s room opened.
“Excuse me,” Fumi said, heading for the entrance, and my daughter followed behind her. I followed the two of them with my eyes, checking to see if they had left anything behind.

Beyond that.

Fumi put her lips on my daughter’s cheek. My daughter had her cheek pressed out and her eyes closed. It was a kiss that confirmed each other’s softness.

I didn’t go near the entrance and just sat down on a chair at the dining table.

Their “love” was ahead of my “study”. It doesn’t matter what kind of “love” they have now. Just as it is. I wanted them to shake off all the people who were pushy and got in their way like me and just go for their “love” as it is. However, I put aside for the moment my parental feelings that kissing a third grader is a bit too fast.

At the front door , there was an inflation of love and affection. “I love you!” “I love you too!” “You are the best in Japan!” “You are the best in the world!” Even though we live just a 30-second walk away.

Next year, I’ll go to the parade with my daughter, and if possible, with Fumi. The world is full of all kinds of kisses. That’s what I want you to know first.

When my daughter came back from seeing Fmi off, she was angrily saying, “You were watching it just now, weren’t you?”

(fin)