By Peter Masheter,
Japan enacted a law to promote LGBT understanding last Friday after months of debate, but for some activists, the discussions did as much to entrench existing discrimination as encourage more open attitudes.
And while pushback against the legislation has mostly come from conservative circles raising concerns over threats to the family unit, the debate also fomented culture war arguments over entry by transgender people into sex-segregated spaces such as bathrooms and the traditional public baths frequented by much of the population.
For many activists and supporters, the issue over bathhouse entry, with critics raising the specter of men posing as transgender entering women's baths, was a mostly manufactured concern that saw the debate over the law become increasingly charged and contributed to it being watered down in critical respects.
Perhaps most problematic was that the version of the law that finally passed includes a clause, added at a late stage, pledging to "take heed that all citizens can live with peace of mind."
The clause's inclusion has been interpreted as a show of deference to the feelings of the majority in a law originally conceived to promote the understanding of sexual minorities.
Condemnation came from the Japan Alliance for LGBT Legislation, which said the clause is "capable of doing huge damage to the LGBT community" due to its potential for overriding progressive local legislation to ban discrimination.
Minori Tokieda, a transgender woman and representative of activist group Rainbow Tokyo Kita Ward, said the new law "really narrows understanding, and propagates a one-sided idea of acceptance."
"It seems to be saying, the government will allow certain kinds of understanding, but not others, and that they could be at odds with the kind sought by groups meant to represent minorities," she said.
While there may have been isolated cases of people pretending to be transgender to commit sexual crimes, "groups calling for the safety of women and children use those cases to exclude transgender people and oppose LGBT legislation," she argued.
Among the groups to welcome the clause is Save Women's Space jp, an organization that has voiced concerns that the promotion of transgender rights could compromise the rights of women.
The group says it has compiled 53 cases from 2004 through March 2023 of incidents caused by men posing as women in gendered spaces including bathrooms and bathhouses.
In its statement, the group, which is calling for the LGBT understanding law to be scrapped and a law passed to protect women's spaces instead, also praised legal provisions accompanying the clause that it said were "equivalent to stating women and children's safety is also important."
But for Tokieda, the issue of transgender people using bathhouses "isn't really in keeping with reality" in the first place.
"I can't go to a women's or a men's bath, so I've given up on going to those kinds of public baths," she said, arguing that many transgender people are unlikely to want to show their bodies in such public spaces because they "may feel uncomfortable in some ways."
But regardless of the number of actual cases of transgender women using public baths, debate over the law has already had an effect on the Japanese bathing industry.
Onsen hot springs and sento bathhouses are a mainstay of Japanese culture, and though historically mixed-sex bathing was not uncommon, the vast majority now segregate the sexes.
Among those feeling compelled to respond is the southwestern Japan city of Beppu, which boasts the largest number of onsen hot springs in the country with a 2014 estimate showing it had 2,217 within city limits.
In early June, Mayor Yasuhiro Nagano revealed the city government has started a working group to discuss sexual minorities entering baths in response to the law's debate and passage through parliament.
Its onsen section includes one local transgender person, two university students who represent groups supporting sexual minorities, the tourism association and local onsen.
A city official said the government hopes to reduce anxiety through its findings. "We decided to start the group after receiving about 50 messages across different departments from people telling us they were concerned about transgender people entering the baths or bathrooms."
The industry body Japan Onsen Association said it, too, has received "many opinions asking us to oppose the LGBT understanding law" over what it described as "concerns that people with men's bodies who identify as women could enter the women's bathing area."
And while it conceded that it had investigated whether to draw up a response, the association ultimately chose not to, noting that it is not a political organization.
"A conclusion was reached that we will not put forward views on support or opposition to the formulation of specific laws," said Yutaka Seki, an association official.
Changing one's gender in Japan is not simple and comes with five conditions. Anyone wishing to do so must be over 18, unmarried, have no children below the age of majority, have no reproductive system or the inability to reproduce, and ensure their outer organs resemble those of the sex they intend to change to.
Fulfilling the final two conditions requires expensive surgeries. With the exception of the United States, where rules differ by state, other G-7 countries do not require surgery to change gender.
But while voices in Japan's transgender community maintain that public bathing facilities are effectively inaccessible to them, rising acceptance of transgender people in other countries and Japan's gradual lifting of coronavirus border rules to inbound tourism and other foreign nationals could yet complicate matters.
A mid-April incident at a Tokyo bathhouse underlined the risks. There, a Japanese woman in her 30s complained to staff that a foreign pre-operative transgender woman had entered the same outdoor bath as her with two other women.
The bathhouse then called the police, a measure it said it takes as a matter of process when problems arise. The transgender woman was taken to a police station, where police eventually decided not to arrest her because her ID showed she was female and she had come with two others, according to the Japanese woman who complained.
While the transgender woman at the center of the case could not be reached for comment, the woman who reported her said she had never been interested in gender issues before the incident. She also blamed both the bathhouse's approach and the government's lack of clarity on gender issues for allowing the situation to arise.
"If this is okay in the future, then there could be more women like me who have to see things they don't want to...I love going to bathhouses but this incident has made it so that I don't want to go to any at all," she said.
The bathhouse, whose rules do not allow customers to wear bathing suits in its facilities, said it was "sorry to everyone involved in the case" and that if the government were to set down "clear rules or laws on transgender people, then we would formulate our response based on those."
Related coverage:
Japan's Diet enacts legislation to promote LGBT understanding
Japan's lack of same-sex marriage "in unconstitutional state": court
