The Netherlands is a country that is flexible in its approach not only to ‘LGBTQIA+’, but also to other topics that can have pros and cons, such as ‘euthanasia’ and ‘cannabis’.

On such topics, I feel that there is often a clash of opinions in Japan, where the ‘pro’ side seems to be trying to persuade the ‘anti’ side (and vice versa). In this respect, one of the characteristics that I have sensed through my regular visits to the Netherlands is an ‘unforced consensus of opinion’.

In the Netherlands (of course, living in the Netherlands all year round and looking at various aspects, there may be many situations where this cannot be said), I feel that there is a good balance between ‘respecting each other's ideas to the extent that they do not cause problems for others’ and ‘not forcing (even implicitly) agreement between one's own opinion and that of others’. We feel that this is the basis for ‘diversity’, which also influences our company's culture.

SWANOIR is a company that operates mainly in the IT and IoT domains, but we try to operate and develop our business in consideration of social issues as much as possible.

We encourage diversity-friendly initiatives in the digital domain, for example in UI design, and in the physical domain, for example in the development of IoT devices and various events.

As an example, in application development based on smartphones used in schools, we focus on a broad and deep view of stakeholders for each of our products and services, such as designing services so that students who cannot use smartphones or mobile phones for various reasons can use them, etc.

This approach is based on the premise that when a social system causes people to be disadvantaged, although there is no direct or specific perpetrator, people living on the social system have a certain responsibility.

With this our thoughts, we thought we had given minimal consideration to the theme of LGBTQIA+.

However, when preparing an air ticket for an artist (we don't know what actually happened, but we had heard indirectly that the artist's sexuality was a minority), ‘How do we ask about gender in a case like this?’ was discussed internally.

In the past, when designing questionnaires, for example, we had done things like not asking gender in the dark and, if necessary, offering a third option instead of just two choices of ‘male/female’, but this experience made us realise that we had fallen into the trap of thinking that it was enough to just do that.

Given this background, when the Dutch Trading Post approached us about this project, I viewed the exhibited works.

I am embarrassed to admit that I had no knowledge of how weighty this theme becomes when crossing national and cultural boundaries, or about what was happening just a few decades ago. I believe this was because I had implicitly viewed it simply as a matter of individual orientation, rather than as a social issue.

The winning PRIDE PHOTO works being exhibited this time provided an opportunity to expand my imagination about this theme both temporally and spatially, and recognizing the importance of this theme became the impetus for implementing this project.

We are conducting this as "Round 0" - positioning it as a beginning for potentially continuing this project in the future. Additionally, wanting to proceed with careful consideration, we are keeping the PR limited.

I've heard from the organizing body that currently there are few entries from Japan in "PRIDE PHOTO". We would be especially grateful if those involved in photography and art would take an interest.

Furthermore, as it goes against SWANOIR's policy to generate economic profit from themes like this, even incidentally, if we conduct events with admission fees in the future, we will make donations based on highly transparent financial management.