Tokyo, the capital city of Japan, has begun issuing certificates to same-sex partners to make sure they are recognized as married couples. This comes during a time when the Japanese government still does not recognize same-sex relationships. The certificates, however, do not give LGBTQ partners the same legal rights as other married couples.

The certificates state that LGBTQ partners have to be treated as married couples when it comes to public services like welfare, medicine, and housing.

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Despite the Japanese government’s reluctance, a number of local governing bodies in the country have been making moves to recognize same-sex relationships. The first such local body to do so was the Shibuya district in Tokyo in 2015. Around 200 local bodies have since followed suit.

Although LGBTQ relationships have been legal in Japan since 1880, the government does not recognise such relationships. The country had, in 2013, passed a law to allow transgender people to go through gender-reassignment surgeries. Since 2012, members of the LGBTQ community have been attending the Tokyo Rainbow Pride en masse.

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In 2015, a Yale University professor called Karen Nakamura said, “Japanese transgender activists present their gender identity as a disability in order to achieve more social and legal change in Japanese society”. She further explained that this seems to be the case because Japan has a number of laws in place to protect disabled people.

AFP spoke to a same-sex couple in Tokyo, who said regarding the current status of LGBTQ partners in Japan, “My biggest fear has been that we would be treated as strangers in an emergency”.

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The individual further said that they kept details of their partner in the wallet in case of an emergency. However, they continued that “…these were insubstantial, and we felt official documents certified by the local government would be more effective”.