Japan takes small steps in a big change to recognizing LGBT in education

Although there is still much work to do, educational institutions in Japan are slowly starting to acknowledge and, in some cases, celebrate the LGBT community.

The first to make these changes have been some international schools and universities, which are more removed from the very slow-moving cogs of change at schools under direct government oversight.

Waseda University, a private university in Tokyo, in May 2016 held the Waseda LGBT Ally Week to demonstrate how anyone can be an ally and support the LGBT community on campus in various ways. There are no requirements to attend the event, but holding it expresses a positive attitude toward the LGBT community that helps reduce the potential for homophobia. So far, the colleges that are holding such events tend to have active LGBT communities on campus that give LGBT students a place where they can be themselves.

Acknowledging the existence of LGBT

In contrast, public schools are still at the stage of acknowledging the existence of the LGBT community. There have been some gradual changes over the last five years as the mention of LGBT has started to appear in school textbooks for various subjects.

This is an important and overdue shift, but while it has taken place, the Japanese education ministry has maintained school instruction that says that in puberty, “Young people develop an interest in the opposite sex.”

Ahead of a once-in-a-decade government review of school curriculum guidelines that took place in 2017, a movement arose to change that statement, which basically denies the very existence of homosexuality within the human experience. Regrettably, the change was not adopted. The government reportedly rejected the proposal because, it said, the public and guardians are not accepting of LGBT issues.

Human Rights Watch, a human rights organization that had urged Japan to make that amendment, noted that it was “a great missed opportunity to support LGBT students.” The change would have affected an area of mandatory school instruction.

LGBT references in textbooks increase

Meanwhile, change is occurring in a different area. The first time the concept of gender diversity was included in school textbooks here was in 2017, when it was mentioned in high school ethics and home economics texts. In 2019, four publishing companies out of eight included LGBT topics in junior-high school texts for the first time in compulsory education. In 2020, an elementary school textbook mentioned the presence of people “who do not feel romantic interest in the opposite sex.”

In March 2020, the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology (MEXT) announced the results of its annual certification of textbooks, which revealed that mentions of sexual diversity significantly increased in junior-high school textbooks adopted from spring 2021. In the junior-high school textbooks, only five companies and six textbooks mentioned LGBT before, but in the school year 2021, the number has increased to 9 companies and 17 textbooks.

On top of that, the number of subjects that they cover expanded from ethics to also include Japanese language, history, civics, home economics, art, and physical education.

The Japanese language textbook features writing by Robert Campbell, a scholar of Japanese literature, who has come out as gay. The civics text discusses the national government’s view that it is illegal to deny hotel accommodation to a same-sex couple, and states, “Efforts are also needed to enable people with diverse gender awareness to live as themselves in society.” Also featured is the move by a local government to allow all students to wear slacks in their uniform, regardless of gender. The new art book includes a student-made poster that depicts a same-sex couple.

Although Japan is still far from realizing the perfect balance of inclusion of gender and sexuality issues in school curriculum and textbooks, a revolution is slowly taking place.