Why not? I don't want to be one of those glass-half-empty types, people who see the dark side of things before begrudgingly admitting there is cause for celebration and blowing out the happy candles.
At the same time, I can't deny that "a same-sex partner system (sic)" is not something I want to jump up and down over. Much less wait another year for.
The city of Tokyo has just announced that it will recognize same-sex unions, along with five other prefectures (Tokyo is a 'city-state').
And, as if to further call attention to the johnny-come-lately feature of such legislation, Tokyo's governor, Yuriko Koike explains the rationale this way: "It will help alleviate problems in daily life and promote the understanding of gender diversity in Tokyo."
Why do I feel like somebody's offering me crumbs? Why must I stand, hat in hand, like Oliver, and beg, "Please, sir, may I have some more?"
I hear you, fellow LGBT people who have fought so long and so hard to get this far. You want me to be grateful for the progress in this fundamentally socially conservative nation. You want to sing and dance, pop the champagne corks, maybe shoot off a few firecrackers. I apologize if I'm raining on your parade.
When I went to Tokyo for the first time, in 1970, I had to go back into the closet as a gay man. Had to recognize that the (relatively) gay-friendly world I had left behind in San Francisco was not the same world I was coming into. It took a bit of adjusting before I realized Japan was not all that bad. It had, like many places colonized culturally by the Christian West, taken on a homophobia not native to the islands. I remember my minister of the church I grew up in explaining to us once that when he went to Japan with the occupation forces they had a hell of a time convincing the Japanese not to strip in the aisles and get into their pajamas before climbing into bed in the sleeper trains. "They have no shame," he explained, mournfully.
And once the occupation was over, and Japan was free to go its own way again, the homophobia lingered. Today (i.e., 1970) to be openly gay was the equivalent of shouting obscenities while walking down the public streets. Not the worst thing in the world, but certainly not the kind of thing nice people do. Here too, I was faced with being a grouch for pointing that out, though, rather than recognizing that while I was able to be more open about being gay in San Francisco, in Japan I didn't have to worry that if I found myself in the wrong place at the wrong time I might be met by a bunch of thugs insecure enough about their sexuality to want to beat the daylights out of me. In fact, the fact that viewing being gay as little more than bad taste was probably the reason Japan saw no need for what we saw as gay liberation, and the reason it has taken another half century for this day to arrive, when lesbians and gays can be granted a "system" - marriage will surely come in time - for going through life with a same-sex life-partner.
So yes, I'll march in the parade. And yes, I'll toast the progress. And yes, I'm delighted to see Japan take a step closer to Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Costa Rica, Denmark, Ecuador, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Luxembourg, Malta, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, South Africa, Spain, Switzerland, Taiwan, the United Kingdom, the United States and Uruguay in recognizing the right for same-sex couples to marry. Some of these countries have less than full equal access to the institution of marriage in some parts of them, but all of them show Japan there is more they can do to give lesbians and gays a way out of second-class status as citizens of a democracy.
In the meantime, yes, I'll march in the parade. I'll carry a sign. I'll look on the bright side and stress the fact that not only are there more ways to achieve civic equality than we are currently taking advantage of, there are indications that we're on our way to getting there. And we should not surrender (I'm obviously addressing myself here) to the temptation of snarking over what isn't to the point that we miss what is.
One day in 1861 Russia was a country made up of large numbers of serfs. The next day Tsar Alexander freed them. At one point in the history of the United States people of color were slaves. Some day in the future, legislators will stop trying to remove their right to vote. Things take time.
photo credit
and P.S., while I was focusing on these small steps in Japan, a bigger story was happening across the big blue waters in Chile: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/07/world/americas/chile-gay-marriage.html
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