July 5, 20251 yr Perhaps it's appropriate than some sort of 10-year milestone has been reached. it was only in 2015 that the up-scale Shibuya ward in Tokyo introduced a same-sex partnership system. Now 529 other local governments have implemented a smiliar system. Little more than 7% remain. But the benefits for Japan's gay couples remain poor compared to other countries. Japan remains the only country in the Group of 7 not to have legalised gay marriage. So far, while the current partnership certification system gives LGBT couples certain rights and access to a limited number of public services, they are still not legally valid! Yet a collaborative study by Shibuya Ward and Nijiiro Diversity, a nonprofit organization supporting the rights of LGBT people, points out that in its first survey in 2017 only six local governments had adopted the scheme. So there has been a great deal of progress particularly in the Japanese view of gay people. And with a number of law suits now under way challenging the lack of legal recognition of same-sex marriage as a violation of the right to equality under the country's Constitution, perhaps more changes might soon be on the way. On the other hand, given the tortoise-like movement of official Japan, maybe that is much too optimistic a hope. https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20250630/p2g/00m/0na/037000c
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