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NewsPlanet Staff
May 14, 1998

After more than 10 years of wishing and waiting, a Japanese transsexual will get treatment at last -- the first of hundreds who have made requests.

Japanese physician Dr. Takao Harashina has been given the go-ahead to perform the nation's first legal sex reassignment. The biological female who will begin the six-month process within the next few weeks has been waiting six years for the medical procedure and has wished for it for more than a decade. Estimates of Japanese citizens desiring sex reassignment range from 2,200 to 7,000. Previously, those wishing gender reassignment were forced to go to other countries, although it's suspected that "back alley" reassignments have taken place. Japan's slow progress in this area has been attributed to the 1969 conviction under the Eugenic Protection Law of a physician who performed a sex reassignment without the required legal actions.

Harashina had applied in 1995 on behalf of the current subject and another female only to be rejected by the ethics committee of the Saitama Medical School in 1996 on the grounds that society would not approve. But later the school went on to set up a gender clinic which developed a set of guidelines for the diagnosis and treatment of transsexuals, and last year the Ministry of Health and Welfare agreed to a set of conditions developed by the Japanese Society of Psychiatry and Neurology under which sex reassignment could be approved. Those conditions include arrangements for psychotherapy and hormone treatment following the surgery. In July 1997, a medical team at Saitama reassessed Harashina's two patients. One was recommended last month for treatment, and on May 12 the school's ethics committee gave final approval.

Two hundred people have submitted requests at Saitama Medical School, 70% of them female, although only about 10% of them are expected to receive final approval under the strict assessment guidelines. Saitama deputy director Kazuo Horiuchi noted that, "Japan's social and legal conditions do not recognize the change of gender. Although we can help our patients feel at home with their true sexuality, we can do little in helping them fight against the legal and social prejudice shown towards them." The Ministry of Justice reaffirmed May 13 that it is adamant in refusing to change birth records to reflect sex reassignment.

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The original Agence France Press story quoted the 30 year old construction worker slated for SRS, referring to the FTM as "she" --

"I just want to get back to my true gender," she told the Asahi Shimbun newspaper. "I feel joy but I am also skeptical about whether the operation will really work for me. I am repulsed by the way people see me as a sick person only because my body and mind do not quite correspond. I don't feel like living whenever I think someone may find out my real identity."

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