On June 3, an anonymous person or persons posted 15 defamatory messages, including death threats, on the home page of Osaka attorney Shun Nakaoka. The poster accused Nakaoka of being a “man pretending to be a woman” and for that reason she should die. During a press conference on June 5, Nakaoka said the posts constituted a hate crime that targeted transgender people and that she had reported the posts to the police.

In a June 23 opinion piece published by the Asahi Shimbun, Nakaoka characterized the kind of transphobia exhibited in the posts as a “monster” that has run amok. Though she doesn’t specifically mention the recent bill passed by the Diet to promote “understanding” of LGBTQ+ persons, which sexual minority activists have labeled dangerous to their cause, she says that the “trend to provoke discrimination and bias toward transgender individuals has spread at an alarming rate” recently, and that some of this provocation has been carried out through political means. 

The aim of hardcore transphobes is to make people who otherwise “have no idea” about transgender people uneasy at the prospect that transgenders will be at large in society. The typical way to do this is to claim that greater rights for transgenders will mean that “men claiming to be women” will be able to access women-only spaces, such as public restrooms, the implication being that men would only do this to molest or take advantage of women in these spaces. Nakaoka says this idea is “preposterous.”

She goes on to explain the definition of the English word transgender. The morpheme “trans-” means to “cross over,” and that the process of someone assigned as being, say, male at birth transitioning to female is ongoing and involves changing one’s appearance and possibly physiology through medical treatment, not to mention changing their relationships with others and their lifestyles. It does not mean simply “saying that one is a woman.” It takes time. A transgender person is in a constant state of becoming. Consequently, each transgender person decides for themself how they interface with society, which means their use of public facilities, such as restrooms, will be measured accordingly. It is wrong to assume every transgender person will act in the same way, but it is safe to assume that, in addressing their own circumstances, they will develop an attitude that causes as little friction as possible with society. The point is to be oneself in the real world, to live with others. There is no reason to be afraid of transgender people.

A recent series of articles, also in the Asahi, illustrate Nagaoka’s concept of how a person’s sexual identity can be in flux, though not necessarily with regard to transgenders. Written in memoir form, the series highlights how the journalist Haruto Hiraoka has always felt more comfortable wearing women’s clothing and their decision to finally do so in public. Hiraoka, who lives and works in Sapporo covering mainly court cases, states up front that they are not clear about their own sexual orientation, but feels uncomfortable when people peg them as male, even if that is the designation on their family register. They still wear male-identified clothing when they work, but earlier this year they started going out in public on weekends and weeknights wearing female-identified clothing. 

Hiraoka has felt this way for as long as they can remember, and had wondered if they should “seek treatment” to alleviate their discomfort at having to act and look the way society believes men should act and look. They browsed home pages of hospitals in Hokkaido that treat so-called gender identity disorders and found that diagnosis alone tends to take at least six months. Only if they are diagnosed with GID and approved by an “expert” after examination can they then qualify for hormone treatment. However, even the prospect of seeking a diagnosis takes time, since the main hospital that treats GID chooses candidates by lot. Moreover, transitioning treatment can end up costing more than ¥1 million. So both diagnosis and treatment are difficult to access, and for sure many transgender people will not be able to afford such procedures, in terms of either money or time. 

Japan puts up further barriers. A family court must decide whether a person can transition after two physicians reach a diagnosis of GID. Furthermore, the applicant must be over 18, unmarried, and have no children who are minors. In order to have their gender changed officially, they must have their reproductive organs removed and new genitals constructed that fit their new gender assignment. Some transgender people have gone to court, saying that all these obligatory conditions are unconstitutional. So far, no court has struck down these rules as being unconstitutional, but last December the Supreme Court referred the case of a male-assigned individual who wanted to transition to female without surgery to a higher bench in the court, which obviously means the judges couldn’t decide.

Hiraoka is not interested in transitioning to a woman, saying they would prefer not being pigeonholed as either male or female. They don’t even want to change their male designation in their family register. What bothers them is the way people make certain assumptions through language: “You have the figure of a man,” “You only enjoy being a woman on the outside.” Though Hiraoka doesn’t identify as transgender, they still feel like a sexual minority. “Society hasn’t even contemplated someone like me,” they write.

In earlier installments, Hiraoka described in detail their first experience shopping for a dress, which they did with a female friend. They were very tense when they entered the store. “I almost threw up,” they wrote, and indeed the clerk seemed confused by Hiraoka’s request to try on one particular dress but didn’t display any resistance. In the end they bought the dress and after they took it home and put it on felt a “keen sense of satisfaction,” and wondered why it had taken them 25 years to do something they always wanted to do. Three days later they and another female friend went out together, with Hiraoka wearing the dress in public for the first time. At first they felt tense again, the feeling of everyone’s gaze palpable. The tension was broken when they saw their friend, whom they hadn’t informed beforehand that they would be wearing a dress. The friend simply said the dress was “cute” and then they just started talking about other things. Hiraoka admitted that the general disinterest made them feel “slightly deflated.” 

Hiraoka is not from Sapporo, which is one reason they could wear the dress in public. Revealing their preference to a hometown male friend and, especially, to their mother was difficult and didn’t go smoothly (the friend initially asked if wearing dresses was “a hobby”), but they believe that after some time both have come to accept their choices because they understand not only that it’s what Hiraoka wants, but also that, in the end, it’s vital to their well-being. “Society places a firm line between men and women,” Hiraoka writes, “meaning [my friend thought] there was a line between him and me. But now he’s erased that line in an effort to understand me.”