Sexual and gender minority in Japan

Molly
2019.11.06
1,092 views

LGBT/LGBTQ /LGBTI (an acronym for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender queer or questioning and interest, some use different acronyms but in this article, LGBTQ is used )movement is getting stronger every year worldwide; it started in 1994 in New York City. However, sexual and gender minority have been existed from the ancient time.

Once religions were formed and many people and counties started to follow them; relationships between sexual and gender minority were forbidden and targeted for hate crimes.

How is like in Japan?

Here is some information.

sexual and gender minority in Japanese society

Two religions in Japan: Shinto and Buddhism did not forbid relationships between people who identified as sexual monitory; so they were not targeted for discrimination in Japan as bad as western countries. Thus LGBTQ movement is not so active as western countries. However, there are some movements such as parades and marches taking places in Japan every year.

However, Japanese society is not so open about their own sexual orientation; people are often do not think about or talk about this matter culturally. This might be resulted that Japan is not the most forward country for sexual and gender minority community. Japanese government is still deciding about the same sex marriage. (more about the same sex marriage visit →link)

Generally, Japanese sexual and gender minority people have been accepted for a long time. Transgender talents were often seen in TV programs; their entertaining acts were hugely popular. They would give their own opinions on talk shows and audience would take their opinions as another point of view. Obviously, they surely have experienced their own difficulties in the business but there were no huge discrimination scandals based on their sexual and gender identify.

Some Japanese politicians came out as sexual minority; they are small parentages but they are still working as elected officials.

Amongst children, bulling towards sexual minority is not unheard of in Japan. Japanese education authority just renew their policy about sexual minorities in 2017. There are also some reports saying that sexual minority children were accepted by others in Japanese school; some teachers were able to educate their students in this matter thus those reports must came from those able educators in Japan. Recently, single sex universities in Japan started to open their admissions to sexual and gender minority.

Japanese companies are started to review their policy about sexual and gender minority community. Some are offering recruitment seminars specializing for them and having seminars for their employees about them as well.

Sexual and gender minority community in Japan

There are a lot of LGBTQ organizations in Japan. They would organize their own support systems and run their events. They would support solving discrimination issues in society and give out correct information.

8% of Japanese population is considered themselves as sexual and gender minority. Slowly bad surely, people’s mind towards the community is changing in Japan as well as around the world. It is the most important thing that each individual needs to learn about each other, before judge or discriminate one another, there are many information available online.]