I grew up in a family full of love: My father who has a non-interference policy, my mother who has an education-focused mindset, and a talented sister.
When I was in primary school, I got along with everyone and I enjoyed those days. But when I reached junior high school, it changed completely because we began being conscious of our own “sex” at that time. Because I was feminine and had a charming manner, my classmates began bullying me and calling me “Okama”(A ladyboy in Japanese), then I stopped going to school. I started playing online games all the time and confined myself to an internet cafe. Around that time I realized I’m not interested in girls like my classmates, and I sometimes felt thumping in my heart when boys were kind to me. Finally, one day I learned the word “Gay” at an internet cafe, then I thought to myself that I’m probably gay.
Those days were not all bad, I was getting closer to my friends whom I play games with online who are older than me through devising a strategy. We started talking about ourselves and I told them “I prefer boys”. It was my first time saying this to others, they just said, “Sounds good”. I was surprised that they accepted that, it was a bad thing at my school and I was feeling lonely there, my friends encouraged me.
I was in the LGBT club when I was at university and met others who have a sexual minority. I became a club president and learned lots of things. It was chaotic but very comfortable for us. There were people who got hurt by others for saying their thoughts unconsciously, people who were not accepted by their families, and people suffering from poverty. There was even a person who was told “We don’t need people like you” while job hunting. I didn’t know that my situation was so much better than theirs. I could go to an internet cafe if I needed to and was going to university without worrying about my tuition fees. How did things turn out like this? Finally, I started thinking about how to solve many of the problems that members of the LGBT club were facing at that time.
In Japan, the working-age population is decreasing more and more every year. If diverse human resources cannot play an active role, it will be a big loss to society. One day I was doing an Internship for job hunting and we had to think about “What type of business we could make to solve the negatives of society if we had 100 billion yen”. I spoke about LGBT social issues, and surprisingly, some talented software engineer agreed with me, however, I wasn’t selected for this internship but gained self-confidence.
After half a year, I won a business competition and established a company called ”Job Rainbow”, a business that matches companies and diverse human resources through “diversity hiring media”. Everyone is a minority in something, you don’t have to think that’s your weakness. I’d like to make a society where people can have confidence regardless of their faults. I will feel alive while pursuing to be number one and doing things that only I can do surrounded with the support of many people.