On 1 November, Tokyo made a symbolic gesture to same-sex couples by granting them the ability to register their partnerships with authorities.
Following a constitutional ruling and subsequent legislative act in 2019, Taiwan is still the only country on the eastern side of the Asian continent to legalise proper same-sex marriage. Taiwan also hosted Asia's largest Pride parade this past weekend.
Israel, technically part of Asia, is the only other nation with full legal rights for all couples, except for the UK sovereign base areas of Akrotiri and Dhekelia and the British Indian Ocean Territory.
Japan has fallen behind its peers in embracing diversity. It is the only G7 country not to allow marriage or civil unions between same-sex partners.
According to Soshi Matsuoka, the head of Fair, an LGBTQ rights organization in Tokyo, “the introduction of the system in Tokyo is extremely positive. But partnership is not enough. We basically want legal marriage.”
Soyoka Yamamoto, Representative of Partnership Act for Tokyo, says, “without the framework of marriage, same-sex couples often face housing discrimination as well as difficulties with decisions on medical care and they don't have inheritance rights.”
Attempts to pursue the matter through the courts have achieved mixed results. “A Sapporo District Court found last year that same-sex couples' lack of access to some of the rights afforded by marriage amounted to discrimination, while an Osaka court this year ruled against marriage equality,” Yamamoto said in a press release. “The government has shown no sign of budging, despite opinion polls showing the public is increasingly in favour of equal marriage.”
According to Japan Times, with its own population aging and rapidly shrinking, the lack of such rights could damage Japan’s ability to compete for talent against the dozens of countries that have legalised marriage equality, industry bodies have warned.
Some other cities in Japan issue certificates of partnership for same-sex couples; Tokyo isn’t the first. They too are entirely symbolic. Elsewhere in the region, several cities in Cambodia provide same-sex couples with some limited rights and benefits, including hospital visitation rights, and in Hong Kong same-sex partners of residents can receive spousal visas and spousal benefits.
