Nobuto Hosaka, director of Setagaya Ward On June 22nd, the Congress of Setagaya Ward, Tokyo unanimously passed a reform bill to revise its municipal ordinance so that same-sex couples can live in municipal housing. Setagaya Ward will accept applications for municipal housing starting from this November. Setagaya Ward, well-known for its active campaign of introducing same- sex partnership system, tried to pass a reform bill to change the requirements where applicants must live in municipal housing with family members only. Same-sex couples are not regarded as family in Japan, so the requirements denied same-sex couples the use of municipal housing
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AERA, one of the most popular weekly magazines in Japan, features LGBT this month. The magazine picked LGBT as the cover story two years ago, putting a rainbow decoration on its logo and Tiffany’s advertisement with a couple of gay models on it. This time, the cover story has a richer content than the last one. One thing which is very different from other LGBT featured magazines is that AERA does not blindly believe today’s LGBT-friendly trend, spurred by big companies in Japan. The cover story begins with the title, “Illusion of LGBT trend. What’s behind the shiny rainbow? What
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  Keito has worked as wedding model, too. On July 1st, Asakura Kate, a male-to- female (MtF) transgender singer and fashion model, told her fans about her new career as a Hollywood star. Asakura Kate is a MtF transgender woman living with gender identity disorder (GID) in the city of Osaka. When she was a kid, she strongly believed that her male body would change into a female body as she grew up, but it didn’t. She was constantly told to “act like a real man” by many people and she started hiding her true feelings. After graduating from high
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On June 1st, Sapporo City, Hokkaido launched “Sapporo City Same-Sex Partnership Declaration System” to officially recognize same-sex couples living in the city. Under the new partnership system, the city issues a copy of the partnership certificate to same-sex coupes who have submitted a written oath of their partnership. Anyone, who is twenty or older and living in the city, or planning to do so, can apply for the certificate. Although it is not legally- binding, the city has set the guidelines and will allow same-sex couples to receive life insurance payouts, visit their partner in hospital, and make a lease
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