“It’s a great, great coming out,” said Gon Matsunaka, head of the Pride House Tokyo consortium of nonprofit groups, sponsoring corporation and supportive embassies. “The sports arena in Japan is a very, very closed and conservative. I don’t see a lot of athletes coming out here in Japan. So even if they are in the U.S., there is a big message to Japanese athletes living in Japan, playing in Japan: You can be yourself and you can play as yourself.”
