Shibuya first to certify same-sex couples
Play
Tokyo (dpa) - Tokyo's Shibuya district became the first municipality in Japan on Tuesday to give same-sex couples official recognition.
A majority of the 31 Shibuya ward assembly members adopted an ordinance enabling the municipality to issue certificates recognising same-sex partnerships as being equivalent to marriage.
Ten assembly members, including all the members of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's Liberal Democratic Party, opposed it. The ordinance will come into force Wednesday, the first day of fiscal year 2015.
Same-sex couples in Japan face discrimination when living together or visiting partners at hospitals on the grounds that they are not seen as relatives. The municipal government calls for hospitals, real estate agents and other businesses not to discriminate against same-sex couples.
The new certificates will not be legally binding. Japan's constitution effectively limits the definition of marriage to an agreement between a man and a woman, stating that "marriage shall be based only on the mutual consent of both sexes."
Other municipalities are also moving to support the rights of sexual minorities in Japan.
"It is the state that should extend help to sexual minorities," Toshitake Kuwahara, mayor of fashionable Shibuya ward, said last week. Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga told a news conference that Shibuya's move concerns "fundamental issues about how families should be" and could "stir a national debate”.
