Let’s start with the good news. The news is more middling than good, but a net positive, regardless.
A link to this Japan Times article arrived in my inbox Wednesday morning. The gist is that the Japanese government is quite literally inching toward marriage equality, while maintaining a separate-and-not-at-all-equal arrangement. Since January of 2025, government bureaucrats—not lawmakers, mind you—in Japan, have been working on a common-law spouse system, granting partners in a same-sex relationship some of the rights associated with marriage.
This paltry extension of benefits, affecting only 33 out of a total of more than 150 laws benefitting married partners, nevertheless prompted this very strange post on social media.
a. It wasn’t a huge step by any means.
b. The couple pictured are Thai, not Japanese, and they broke up last year.
One of Japan’s ruling parties, the one with the Orwellian name, the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), selected a new party president last night. Sanae Takaichi, poised to potentially become Japan’s first female Prime Minister, is a lawmaker from Nara Prefecture who is so far-right reactionary that members of her own party nicknamed her Taliban a few years back.
Riding a wave of increasing xenophobia within Japan, Takaichi’s stump speeches made frequent references to “foreigners” who kicked the deer in Nara Park. The only problem is that, according to Nara City’s mayor, the kicking never happened. Shades of “they’re eating the dogs,” anyone?
Not only is Takaichi staunchly opposed to the foreign population in Japan (and good luck with that—Japan’s aging and dwindling population already means that there aren’t enough people to fill jobs there), she’s predictably opposed to marriage equality.
There are a few possible problems on the horizon, however. The other party in the current ruling coalition is the Kōmeitō. A political arm of one of Japan’s new religions, the Sōka Gakkai (founded by Daisaku Ikeda, one of Japan’s most infamous post-war black-marketeers), Kōmeitō has signalled that they won’t remain in the coalition if Takaichi is to be Prime Minister. Takaichi’s decisions to elevate party members involved in the Abe-era slush fund scandals have made it clear that the LDP is yet again fine with corruption within its ranks. Given that the slush fund scandals led to major defeats for the LDP just a few years ago, Kōmeitō can’t be blamed for wanting out.
Takaichi, for her part, has signalled that a coalition with far-right parties like Sanseitō and the Conservative Party of Japan, both of which mirror her xenophobia, is on the table, but that might be a bridge too far for most members of the LDP. (The LDP includes a wide range of political ideologies, from Takaichi’s reactionary stances to the centrist politics of former Prime Minister Ishiba.)
Some observers within Japan suggest Takaichi’s time as PM will be brief. That’d be ideal, as far as I am concerned, but pundit predictions, including those that said Takaichi would never be PM, are increasingly difficult to put faith in.
Fingers crossed that by the time I retire in 2030, the time Hiro and I plan to return to Japan, Japan’s xenophobic tendencies will have crested and ebbed once more.
Paid subscribers, I have not forgotten you! The plan is to post the fall foliage issue tomorrow!
