Daily Times

TOKYO: A transgender former fencer hailed a “massive change” in Japan’s LGBTQ awareness after being appointed to the Japanese Olympic Committee’s board of directors just weeks before the Tokyo Games. Fumino Sugiyama, who was a member of Japan’s fencing team until retiring at the age of 25 and coming out, became the JOC’s first openly transgender board member on Friday. “There’s been a massive change if you compare it to 10 years ago,” Sugiyama, 36, said. “The biggest thing that has changed is awareness. A lot of people had never even heard of the phrase LGBTQ just a few years ago, but it’s commonly used nowadays.” Sugiyama’s appointment comes less than a week after Japanese Women’s World Cup star footballer Kumi Yokoyama came out as a transgender man. It also follows a furore over sexist remarks by former Tokyo 2020 chief Yoshiro Mori, who stepped down after claiming at a JOC event that women speak too much in meetings. The resignation sparked a new push to improve gender equality across Olympic bodies in Japan, with Mori being replaced by female former Olympian Seiko Hashimoto. Local media reported that the JOC approved 30 new board members on Friday, with the ratio of female board members jumping to over 40 percent from a previous 25 percent. But Sugiyama warned that Japan, which ranked 120th in the World Economic Forum’s 2021 Global Gender Gap Report published in March, must continue to improve its awareness of gender and LGBTQ issues. Japan is the only G7 nation that does not legally recognise same-sex marriage. Campaigners also last month failed to convince Japan’s ruling party to introduce an anti-discrimination bill that would protect LGBTQ rights.