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LGBTQ stars grabbed spotlight at Olympics, but Japanese athletes remained hidden

If LGBTQ athletes at the Tokyo Olympics were their own country, they would have ranked seventh in the world, but no Japanese athletes would have been among them.

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Japan Failed to Improve LGBTQ Rights Ahead of the Olympics. Japanese Athletes Are Coming Out Anyway

Japan Failed to Improve LGBTQ Rights Ahead of the Olympics. Japanese Athletes Are Coming Out Anyway
Time
13 hrs ago
© Shiho Fukada—The New York Times/Redux
Shiho Shimoyamada, a soccer player and one of a tiny handful of professional athletes in Japan who have publicly come out as gay, in Tokyo, May 31, 2021.
Shiho Shimoyamada had just moved from Japan to Germany to play soccer professionally in 2017 when German lawmakers voted to legalize same-sex marriage. She and her teammates were on the bus home from a match, and the news brought animated conversations from LGBTQ players about how the decision would improve their lives.

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Gay top rugby player hopes to serve as catalyst for change : The Asahi Shimbun

Airi Murakami (Photo by Shinichi Chubachi)
A top female rugby player, who has earned a cap on the national team, has made it publicly known that she has a same-sex partner.
“There was a time when I kept my sexual orientation to myself,” said Airi Murakami, who plays for the Yokogawa Musashino Artemi-Stars. “But after I met with people who embrace me for who I am, I came to want to behave as my true self and have others know me for who I am.
“I hope to be a catalyst, the next time around, for other troubled athletes, female or male.”

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Olympics gave hope to Japan's LGBTQ activists. But old prejudices die hard.

Jun 6, 2021
When Fumino Sugiyama, then a fencer for the Japan women’s national team, decided to come out to one of his coaches as a transgender man, he was not sure what to expect.
What followed shocked him in its brutality.
“You’ve just never had sex with a real man,” the coach responded, and then offered to perform the deed himself, according to a letter that Sugiyama wrote last fall to Thomas Bach, president of the International Olympic Committee.
Sugiyama, 39, who is now an activist, wanted to give Bach an unvarnished picture of the deeply entrenched discrimination in Japan, particularly in the rigid world of sports. He also hoped Bach would lobby the Japanese government on a bill protecting gay and transgender rights. Doing so, Sugiyama wrote, could shield “the next generation of athletes from what I experienced.”

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Olympics Gave Hope to Japan's L.G.B.T.Q. Activists. But Old Prejudices Die Hard.

Legislation labeling discrimination “unacceptable” has been blocked by conservative lawmakers, showing how far the country has to go to fulfill the goal of equality enshrined in the Olympic charter.

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