Happy Friday.
It’s Pride weekend in Seattle, with the annual Pride parade scheduled for Sunday along 4th Avenue, downtown. Time flies, and it’s been ten years since same-sex marriage became legal nationwide in the United States (on June 26, 2015).
The artwork below is from an art exhibition— one of the main events of Tokyo Pride 2025— on the third floor of Tokyu Plaza Harajuku shopping mall’s Harakado space.
Erik Augustin Palm writes in The Japan Times about it: Among the more resonant pieces is “Ordinary” by moriuo, a painting drawing lightly on comic-book style, depicting a young male couple hand-in-hand by the ocean as a train passes in the background — perhaps in Kamakura. The image is seen through the eyes of an older gay man, who never had the freedom to express love so openly. “I wish you could see this view … this time that has finally come,” reads the artist’s quietly devastating caption. It’s a moment of tenderness across generations — a reckoning with what was once impossible.