A court in western Japan has approved a request by a transgender man to have his gender changed on his official record without undergoing sterilization. This is the first known ruling of its kind since Japan’s Supreme Court struck down the surgical requirement for such record changes.
The Okayama Family Court’s Tsuyama Branch ruled on Wednesday that the boy’s gender on his family register could be updated to male. Usui’s original application for revision was rejected five years ago.
At a televised press conference after the verdict was announced, he said, “I feel like I’m standing at the starting line of a new life.” “i’m so excited.”
Japan’s Supreme Court ruled in October that a 20-year-old law requiring genital mutilation as a prerequisite for legal recognition of gender reassignment is unconstitutional. However, this ruling applies only to sterilization provisions and does not address the constitutionality of requiring other procedures.
The Okayama court found that the hormone therapy Ms. Usui received qualified her for gender affirmation. Mr. Usui welcomed this recognition, saying that Japanese law may be evolving faster than the public realizes.
Many LGBTQ+ people in Japan continue to hide their sexual orientation and gender identity for fear of discrimination at work or school. The country remains the only member of the Group of Seven industrialized nations that does not recognize same-sex marriage.
Activists are calling for greater rights and protections. But change is coming slowly in a country led by a conservative government that clings to traditional paternalistic values and is reluctant to embrace gender, sexual and familial diversity.
The law addressed by the Supreme Court in its decision went into effect in 2004. It stipulated that individuals wishing to register a gender change would have to have their reproductive organs, such as testicles and ovaries, removed. They were also required to have a body that “appeared to have parts resembling genitalia” of their expressed gender.
More than 10,000 Japanese people have since had their gender officially changed, according to court documents in a separate case. A court in central Japan noted in a lawsuit last year that sterilization is not necessary in most of the 50 or so countries in Europe and Central Asia that have laws allowing people to change their gender on official documents.
