Acceptance of gay in America and Japan

I thought gays are still very minority in Japan compared to America. However, I found statistic numbers about this. The percentage of American adults LGBT is about 3.8% in 2011, and thepercentage of Japanese adults LGBT is about 4% in 2007 (I’m sorry Japanese data is written in Japanese). These numbers don’t look very different, which is surprising to me. But still I don’t feel it is as common to recognize LGBT people in Japan as in America. The reason for this, that I suppose, is those people are less acceptable in Japan than in America. Even if people are LGBT, most of them may not be able to come out.

I learned America is based on individualism culture and Japan is based on collectivism culture. I guess many parts of Japanese system or thoughts are originated from this culture. If one’s parent find out their son or daughter is gay, I guess they tend prevent to reveal it to others, like neighbors relatives. I guess people can feel shame about it. I don’t mean that this doesn’t happen in America. I think, of course, this kind of problem can happen in America too, like Ellen has with her parent, but I think situation is a bit different and it’s more likely to happen in Japan. I wonder this situation causes the difference of my feeling about gay people between America and Japan.

Even though the article’s author indicates that “Ellen” deals with problem about gay as “personal” problem rather than “politics”, I think “Ellen” can be effective to spread the image of family accepting their gay daughter. Many people might just be afraid of those people who they are not used to see, just like blog or jazz.