Tom Hutt-Dixon

Japan has taken a landmark step towards non-binary legal recognition. The Osaka High Court ruled on 8 May that the country’s family registration system, the koseki, a mandatory national record-keeping system tracking births, deaths and marriages, violates Japan’s constitutional equality protections by only offering “male” and “female” as gender options. The case was brought by a 50-year-old non-binary resident of Kyoto Prefecture, who petitioned to change their designation of “eldest daughter” to a gender-neutral term in the koseki. While the court stopped short of granting the individual request immediately, it ruled that the absence of a nonbinary gender marker option should be […]