Religious right influencing gay rights in Japan
TOKYO>> To millions of Japanese, the Shinto faith is not so much a spiritual practice as a cultural one. Every January, crowds gather at shrines to pray for good fortune for the new year. Families take their children to celebrate rites of passage, and many seek blessings for luck in romance, school entrance exams or job interviews.
Few regard these rituals as being tethered to any fixed doctrine — Shintoism, an indigenous religion, has no official dogma or scripture. But unknown to most in largely secular Japan, a national Shinto association has tried to spread a conservative ideological message among lawmakers, including on gay and transgender rights.
Japan is the only nation in the Group of 7 that has not legalized same- sex unions, and foreign ambassadors have pushed the country to support equality more forcefully in the run-up to a summit in Hiroshima starting later this week. Polls show overwhelming support for same-sex marriage in Japan; one of the country’s most influential business leaders recently called it “embarrassing” that Japan has not sanctioned the unions.
Lawmakers, under pressure from the Shinto group and other traditionalist forces, have lagged behind public opinion, struggling to agree on even limited expressions of support for the rights of gay and transgender people.
Last summer, the Shinto organization distributed a 94-page pamphlet at a large meeting for affiliated members of Parliament, mostly from the governing Liberal Democratic Party, that included a transcript of a lecture describing homosexuality as “an acquired mental disorder, an addiction” that could be fixed with “restorative therapy.”
Another transcribed lecture opposed passage of an LGBTQ rights bill, claiming that “there is no systemic discrimination” in Japan and warning that “left-wing activists will use this as their weapon” and that there would be “an outburst of lawsuits.”
This week, a Liberal Democratic parliamentary committee approved a modestly worded bill stating that there “should be no unfair discrimination” against LGBTQ people. Activists and opposition party leaders say the bill, which may come before the full Parliament as the G-7 convenes, is weaker than one that failed two years ago.
Scholars say that behind-thescenes efforts by the Shinto group — the Shinto Association of Spiritual Leadership, the political arm of an organization that oversees 80,000 shrines — are one reason for the disconnect between the broader society and the political sphere.
Many shrine workers and visitorsmay not necessarily know of, or agree with, the Shinto association’s efforts to influence government policy.
But conservatives in the governing party “really rely on the religious right for their election campaigns,” said Kazuyoshi Kawasaka, a lecturer in modern Japanese studies at Heinrich Heine University in Dusseldorf, Germany. The influence of such groups “is much more important than the public supporting samesex marriage,” Kawasaka said.
Naofumi Ogawa, a lawyer for the Shinto group, said in an email that the pamphlet does “not directly represent the views of the organization.”
But the group has posted documents on its own website describing calls “for an excessive protection of rights” or for legalizing same- sex marriage as “movements to dismantle the family structure.”
During an interview with foreign media last month, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida explained why Japan had not yet legalized same-sex marriage.
“The situation surrounding each country is different,” he said in a prepared answer to a question from The New York Times. “Careful, thorough discussion is needed.”
The influence of the religious right on conservative politicians in Japan remained largely hidden until the assassination last year of Shinzo Abe, the former prime minister who was gunned down by amanwho held a grudge against the Unification Church, the fringe religious movement.
After Abe’s death, the Japanese media uncovered connections between the church and more than 100 members of Parliament, including the former prime minister, the vast majority of them in the governing party.
Affiliates of the Unification Church also have campaigned against gay and transgender rights in Japan. An editorial in the World Daily, a newspaper with ties to the church, recently declared that the current LGBTQ bill “may trigger crime” and that “transwomenmight invadewomen’s spaces.”