About | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline
LOG IN
LOG IN

14 Austl. J. Asian L. 1 (2013)

handle is hein.journals/ajal14 and id is 1 raw text is: Australian Journal of Asian Law, 2013, Vol 14 No 1, Article 1: 1-18 Genders and Genetics: The Legal and Medical Regulation of Family Forms in Contemporary Japan Vera Mackie* After a hiatus of some decades, gender transition was recognised and regulated by the legal and medical professions in Japan from the mid-1990s. Since the first of these gender reassignment procedures were carried out, the courts and the legislature have repeatedly had to come to terms with new situations. Decisions have been made on such matters as changing an individual's gender on their family register and other official documents, recognition of a transgendered person's marriage and, most recently, how to register the child of a marriage involving a transgendered parent. Assisted reproductive technologies have complicated this picture. Although there are gaps between the legal and medical discourses on gender transition, both the medical and legal professions operate according to assumptions about what constitutes a proper family. There are eer-idiilening gtaps belieen lhe acll forms and praclices of families in Japan. the cullinil represenltions of alternatliv famtn ily fo/rns. and the official policies of lte lega l an nedictl esltlislnents. Since the mitl-lo-late twentieth century dlevelopments in medlical science have broughI into qluest ion cultural anI social understandings of maIlers like gener ilentity.' .At Ihe sme t ime. new repductive technologies have raised questions about reproIuction,. parenting anI family relationshipIs. The changes in these areas are incremenial. with each new development leading to new questions. The medical and legal establishments often deal with these changes in a piecemeal. ad( hoc and even conruaiciory flshion. In this article I look at how these melical developments ;re being (dealI with in the legal arena in early twenty-flirst century JIpan. anl how this has affected Ihe lives of indiviluals grapling with these changes. Seemingly disparate developments in the use of(gender reassignment prelures antIhe use of new reproductive technologies have collile in a recent court case. In late 2012. the Tokyo I amily (Court rulel on a transgendered parent's attempts to regisIer a child as his legitimale child in the family regisIer. The plaintiff had been diagnose with genler identity lisorler in 2001. changed his name. unlergone gender reassignment l'rom lmale to male, changed his official gen ler to male. andi marriedI a woman in .April 2008. Their new family register was crealel witlh the husbandI as the hitt6sh( (the indexical 'headl) anl his Iariner shown as 'wife' (tsuma). His wif became preg n by (lonor insemination and Ihe Iarens,. Ihe sperm (lonor andi Ihe medlical pracitioner prepared a written agreemen. The wifl gave birth to a son in November 2009. When the marriel coule triel to register the birih. Ihe local warl office in lygo prefeclure lefl Ihe column fir inlicating the father blank. andl registerel Ihe child as the illegitimate child of his mother.2 The couple moved their family register to Shinjuku Ward in Tokyo and attempted to register the child there as their legitimate son. The Shinjuku Ward Office also refused to include the husband as father in the family register. The couple took this to the Tokyo Family Court on 21 March 2012, requesting that the Court order the Shinjuku Ward Office to register the husband as father and the child as legitimate. Article 113 of the Koseki-ho (Family Registry Law, Law No 224, 1947) allows a person to request the local Family Court to order the local government office to amend the family register only where it has made an error or omission or where it has recorded Vera Mackie is Australian Research Council Future Fellow and Professor of Asian Studies at the Institute for Social Transformation Research in the Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts at the University of Wollongong. 1 This article draws on research supported by an Australian Research Council Future Fellowship Project, 'From Human Rights to Human Security: Changing Paradigms for Dealing with Inequality in the Asia-Pacific Region' (Grant No FT00992328). I would like to express my thanks to Mayuko Itoh for research assistance, and to David Chapman, Romit Dasgupta, Karl Jakob Krogness and Carolyn Stevens for advice and support. I have benefited from the constructive comments of the editors of this journal and the anonymous referees. 2 It is often preferable to use gender-neutral language such as 'spouse' or 'partner' rather than 'husband' or 'wife', or 'parent' rather than 'father' or 'mother'. The interpretation of this case, however, depends on assumptions about biological sex and social gender, so it is necessary to use the gendered terms in order to explain the court's logic.

What Is HeinOnline?

HeinOnline is a subscription-based resource containing thousands of academic and legal journals from inception; complete coverage of government documents such as U.S. Statutes at Large, U.S. Code, Federal Register, Code of Federal Regulations, U.S. Reports, and much more. Documents are image-based, fully searchable PDFs with the authority of print combined with the accessibility of a user-friendly and powerful database. For more information, request a quote or trial for your organization below.



Short-term subscription options include 24 hours, 48 hours, or 1 week to HeinOnline.

Purchase Access

Contact us for annual subscription options:

Contact Us

Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?

Log In

profiles profiles most