Monthly Archives March 2018

LGBT to be included in Junior High School Moral Education Textbooks.

Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology announced its newly approved textbooks for junior high schools. It turned out that the four textbooks companies out of eight include descriptions of LGBT people in their moral education textbooks. The descriptions of LGBT people have been included in some high school textbooks, but not in the ones for junior high school students. The textbook published by Gakko Tosho (meaning school books in Japanese) says “there are three personal senses of our own’s gender: Body, Identity, and Orientation. In most cases, gender identity can be the same as the sex assigned at
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The Rainbow Diet to Embrace Sexual Diversity in the Tokyo 2020

The 2nd Rainbow Diet (Raibow Kokkai in Japanese) was held at First Member’s Office Building of the House Representatives on March 13th, Tuesday. It was filled with as many as twenty two Diet members and they discussed the discrimination against LGBT professional sports players. The Rainbow Diet started with discussion among five guest speakers, Kanae Doi, the representative of Human Rights Watch Japan, Hiroshi Hase, the chairperson of LGBT all- party parliament group, Kyoko Raita, a professor of Chukyo University, Yuki Arata, a member of Tokyo 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Preparation committee, and Fumino Sugiyama, a FtM transgender man who
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Osaka City Under Consideration for Same-sex Partnership

Mayor Sakaki of Yodogawa Ward speaking at Kansai rainbow pride. “Same-sex couples need to be recognized and embraced in our society. Same-sex partnership will possibly be a great chance for the local businesses to recognize and support same-sex couples,” Mayor Yoshimura said in response to the question asked by a city council. The mayor showed a positive attitude toward same-sex partnership. On March 9th, the mayor announced that the city would recognize same-sex partnership from next September and make guidelines regarding LGBT policies and family services including same-sex partners for the local businesses. Osaka City will be the 3rd city
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