On June 16, 2026, Japan’s cabinet approved the first basic plan under the 2023 LGBT Understanding Promotion Act. However, experts say three years of postponement on marriage equality in Japan leaves a country where a same-sex couple’s rights depend almost entirely on which city line they fall on.
Japan still lacks a national anti-discrimination law, and partnership certificates carry no legal force. As a result, the protections a queer couple can count on shift from one municipality to the next.
“Understanding” but not “anti-discrimination”
The 2023 LGBT Understanding Promotion Act (LGBT理解増進法 rikaizōshinhō) instructs local and national governments to push for awareness (普及啓発 fukyūkeihatsu) through leaflets and training videos, as well as to build out consultation services (相談体制 sōdantaisei).
However, the plan has no enforcement mechanism, meaning there’s nothing to stop the governments from doing nothing.
While the law pushes to “promote understanding,” it says nothing of any anti-discrimination measures. This means that there are no penalties for governments and companies that ignore the law completely. This is a move that greatly frustrates advocates of the LGBTQIA+ community.
This isn’t an accident. The original draft of the law included language softened by the Liberal Democratic Party. The phrase “national understanding has not progressed sufficiently” was struck out and replaced with “awareness is expanding”.
The three-year gap between passing and the first plan
Specialists who spoke to The Mainichi say that the nearly three-year gap meant that since the central government put out no specific plan, efforts to help the queer community have diverged across municipalities. The effect of this is the current patchwork system that is in place, which any new plan will have to correct.
This not only wastes resources and time. It fails the people whom the law is supposed to help.
Experts have even called the three-year delay “government negligence” (政府の怠慢 seifunotaiman). Commentator Matsuoka Soshi (松岡宗嗣) points out some of the many issues with the plan.
First, the law put in place a review process to take place every three years. Yet it’s been almost three years since the law was passed. Secondly, while the law explicitly mentions training for various government employees – from police officers to legal affairs bureau offices – the law does nothing to provide mandated education for schools. This is in spite of the fact that a whopping 81.7% of the public supports teaching about LGBTQ issues in schools.
The plan also mentions that “the majority’s safety” is placed alongside minority protection, which seems to be putting things in the wrong order. The threat here is from the lack of protections for the LGBTQIA+ community, not from some vague assumed issues that supposedly arise if minorities were to get equal protection from the law.
Just as frustrating is that the plan’s course of action on anti-transgender disinformation is specifically limited to deletion request advice.
Partnership systems cover the majority – but still not all
The municipal partnership oath system (パートナーシップ制度 pātonāshippuseido) began in Tokyo’s Shibuya and Setagaya wards in November 2015. As of May 31, 2025, 530 municipalities had adopted it, covering 92.5% of Japan’s population, with 9,836 couples registered. This is according to a joint survey by Shibuya City and the NPO Nijiiro Diversity (虹色ダイバーシティ nijiirodaibāshiti).
They have become so commonplace that every prefectural capital and designated city in the country now has such a system. However, this count might be patchwork, as Marriage For All Japan has a different tally. A January 2024 snapshot shows that 563 municipalities (93.71% of the population) are covered under such systems. This discrepancy only further displays how varied the system is.
The biggest issue: the system has no legal force
The partnership certificates don’t confer the same legal weight as marriage (婚姻 kon’in), as it’s simply a request for the partners to be treated like family. It is at each institution’s discretion whether to acquiesce to the request.
Unsurprisingly, this causes an enormous number of issues.
Some places, like Iwate Prefecture, let partnership holders apply for prefectural housing (県営住宅 ken’eijūtaku) and use the certificate for visitation and medical explanations at prefectural hospitals (県立病院 kenritsubyōin). Sakai City explicitly says partners can request hospital visitation and surgery consent; Funabashi City flags near-family treatment for hospital accompaniment.
However, large gaps exist, especially in medical care. According to PRIDE JAPAN, the problems became acute during the COVID era. Same-sex couples were denied access to a hospitalized partner because they were “not legal family”. They were prohibited from entering ICUs and even riding ambulances.
Benefits differ from city to city. Many private services aren’t covered at all. A lesbian couple were even denied access to maternity services at two Tokyo-area hospitals due to a lack of any legal framework around such cases. That’s despite Tokyo launching its LGBT Partnership system in 2022.
Increasingly, queer couples try to fill the gaps with private medical consent and partnership contracts. Some, however, give up and leave Japan altogether.
One same-sex couple, Hana and Eri, won asylum in Canada. Canadian courts agreed with them that “moving elsewhere in Japan wouldn’t resolve the social discrimination they faced.”
The courts are moving faster than the government
Five of the eight High Courts (Sapporo, Nagoya, Tokyo, Fukuoka, Osaka) have already ruled that the lack of marriage equality, or the dearth of progress towards it, is unconstitutional.
Ultimately, the decision seems to be coming to a head at the Supreme Court, with the courts seeming to have to force the country’s government to do what is in the best interests of its people. Until then, the peaks and valleys of legal rights for queer people remain.
Keep reading
Sources
Gender：LGBT取り組みに自治体でばらつき 計画遅れは「政府の怠慢」 毎日新聞
Gender：「不作為を問われても…」 LGBT基本計画、策定に3年の背景 毎日新聞
3年放置して不十分。LGBT理解増進「基本計画」が閣議決定（松岡宗嗣） Yahoo!ニュース エキスパート
ＬＧＢＴ「重層的に知識普及」 政府、今月にも基本計画策定 時事ドットコム（時事通信）
パートナーシップ制度：25年5月時点で人口カバー率9割超す 発足10年で530自治体が導入 nippon.com
【6月27日】全国に広がるパートナーシップ制度を渋谷区とNPOが共同調査 渋谷区ポータル
「法律上の家族ではないから」とパートナーの入院先を教えてもらえなかった…コロナ禍で顕在化する同性カップルの不安 PRIDE JAPAN（OUT JAPAN）
パートナーシップ制度導入自治体（情報データベース） Marriage for All Japan ー 結婚の自由をすべての人に
パートナーシップ制度（県営住宅・県立病院での面会等で活用） 岩手県
LGBTQ summit calls on Japan to enact anti-discrimination law The Asahi Shimbun
堺市パートナーシップ宣誓制度 堺市
ふなばしパートナーシップ宣誓制度 船橋市