Nozomu Kawashima - LGBT Activism and Media Coverage

Research overview

The environment for LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people) in Japan is difficult. There is no gay marriage law and little LGBT activism, and even though there are LGBT parades, the mainstream media doesn’t report them and most straight people don’t know about them. This situation, and my interest in becoming a journalist, raised questions for me about how Mardi Gras in Australia became a national event, how media coverage affected the growth of Mardi Gras and if it contributed to the advancement of gay people’s rights, or had turned Mardi Gras from politics into entertainment. In my fieldwork in Sydney, I investigated Mardi Gras’s influence on the marriage equality debate in Australia, new media coverage of LGBT communities, and NGO activities for marriage equality. I attended the Mardi Gras parade and also interviewed LGBT activists and journalists, as well as CPACS Director, Jake Lynch. 

One interesting discovery is that Mardi Gras is still a political protest. In the parade, I saw many “marriage equality” placards or banners, and I could feel the passion for equality from many people there. According to Andrew Potts, of Gay Star News  many school kids participate in the parade, which helps sweep away their stereotypes of LGBT people. 

Another discovery is that the political situation for marriage equality in Australia is still difficult. According to Rodney Croome of Australian Marriage Equality,  ‘understanding’ gay people and ‘taking action’ for them are different. Although 60% of people in Australia support marriage equality, same-sex marriage doesn’t directly affect the majority of (straight) people, so they focus on other problems. That’s why Prime Minister, Tony Abbott can avoid dialogue on marriage equality. 

The process of our research was really fruitful because we could experience book-based research in advance in Japan and then practical learning when we conducted interviews and fieldwork in Australia. The learning in Japan is important, but experiencing for myself is more important because I could make the interesting discoveries above. So fieldwork research helped me understand the issues from diverse perspectives.