Tokyo Pride Week supported by big name professional services firms

Set to kick off this weekend, Tokyo Pride Week is back after missing out last year, with big name professional services firms among the event participants and sponsors.

While the Tokyo Olympics may be once again in doubt, the show will go on for this year’s Tokyo Rainbow Pride Week, with a series of live and online events over twelve days to promote inclusiveness and celebrate the LGBT+ community. A number of large professional services firms will feature among event supporters, including PwC, KPMG, Accenture and Deloitte, the latter two which will host online booths.

Following last year’s disruptions due to the coronavirus pandemic, this year’s event – one of the largest of its kind in Asia – will kick off with the colourful but socially-distanced Pride Festival and Parade over the weekend of 24th and 25th of April, with more than sixty events scheduled to take place over the following week under the theme ‘our voices, our rights’, with people of all backgrounds and orientations encouraged to take part.

As part of its online booth, Deloitte will host a free seminar on how to be an LGBT+ ally, with Deloitte Japan CEO Takashi Nagata in attendance. The hour-long seminar (which is open to everyone including companies and doesn’t require registration) will offer insight into Deloitte’s in-house inclusivity training, with case studies and examples and advice for organisations starting out, followed by a period for questions and answers.

“At Deloitte, we have been making various initiatives to achieve an inclusive work environment, and our support on LGBT+ is one of them,” said Nagata. “We do not accept any discrimination. We understand the diversity in sexual orientation and gender identity and to respect each other and have been striving to achieve a work environment where all our partners and members can proudly work and keep being their good selves.”

A Bronze Sponsor for the event alongside KPMG (rival PwC has this year stepped up to Silver Sponsorship), the local branch of Accenture will likewise be hosting an online booth, having been a long time supporter of Pride Week and other LGBT+ advocacy initiatives. Recently, the professional services giant helped devise the operating structure of ‘Pride House Tokyo Legacy’ – Japan’s first permanent large-scale comprehensive LGBTQ centre.

“We believe that if everyone can work in their own way, they can increase the productivity of talented individuals and teams and bring creative ideas to life in the business arena. Through the activities of Inclusion & Diversity and the LGBTQ Ally Committee, we hope to become a company, society, and era in which such a work environment is commonplace,” said Accenture Japan managing director Atsushi Shinohara.