Today's feature is:
Wataru Ishizaka (石坂 わたる Ishizaka Wataru)
✿Background Info:
Ishizaka is a Japanese politician, social worker, and former school teacher for the disabled. He was elected in the April 2011 elections to the Nakano ward council in Tokyo. His first attempt at running was in April 2007, where he only scored a few votes. When asked to tell something he hopes to achieve in his four-year term in an interview with CNN, he responded, "First, something easy: find out the exact position of sexual minorities,
the socially vulnerable and the handicapped in Nakano Ward, from a
human rights standpoint."
✿Making it Over the Rainbow:
Ishizaka ran at the same time as Taiga Ishikawa in the 2011 elections (elected to the Toshima ward council) who was our Weekly Idol three Wednesdays ago (ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ Exciting, right? They were the both openly gay males to be elected in Japan. (There have been gays in politics, but they came out after already taking position.)
Ishizaka came out to his parents and close friends when he was seventeen. He says his parents had a terrible reaction, but eventually everything turned out fine. They were even supportive of him when they found out that he had planned on running in the election.
During his first running, Ishizaka and his partner formed the Tokyo Metropolitan Gay Forum where they sent out questionnaires about candidates' position on sexual orientation and sexual minorities and put the answers on their website. Ishizakaa says that something that motivated him to run was the many gay-unfriendly candidates being elected.
Ishizaka also recited accounts of killings of gays in the early 2000s. He said, "So, I wanted to help make a society where that’s not okay, and I figured
that working in schools alone was not enough. And I also want to help
improve conditions in special-needs schools, such as wages and staff
levels."
The interview ended on this note:
"You can have a legal victory; you can come out to your family, but
there are cases when your acquaintances refuse to recognize you.
We call those people your 'seken,' your 'social neighborhood,' the people between your family circle and the outside world.
It’s a typically Japanese concept. People say that even if your
parents support you, it’s meaningless if your seken refuses to
acknowledge your existence. In those cases, who do you turn to?"
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