Japan

Transgender man Tomoya Hosoda, 25, was recently elected to the council in Iruma, Japan, a city of about 150,000 people.

While Buddhist monks usually dress in an austere fashion, Nishimura believes, “It isn’t wrong if it helps you deliver your message to people.”

Two different manufactures have teamed up to create packaging that shows couples kissing when you put their products side by side.

Right after the ceremony, Takashi had to leave his new husband behind in the hospital to return to Japan and hope he could get back to America in time.

Panasonic, the first major Japanese company to start recognizing same-sex partnerships in its ranks, has gotten both praise and harshly negative responses to the new policy.

With a landmark vote by the assembly of Tokyo’s Shibuya ward, the district famous as a mecca for trendy youngsters became the first locale in Japan to recognize same sex partnerships as the “equivalent of a marriage,”

TOKYO — George Takei said he needed courage and anger to come out as gay and to join the equal rights movement for sexual minorities in the U.S., and he hopes his Japanese counterparts will do the same to make their society more equal. Takei said he has noticed a movement beginning in Japan, though the country of his ancestry has a long way to go.

TOKYO — Thousands gathered in Tokyo’s trendy Shibuya business and shopping district for LGBT Pride on Sunday.

When top Western leaders decided to stay away from Russian President Vladimir Putin’s Winter Olympics, he wasn’t exactly left friendless: he has the heads of leading Asian nations and others to help show the world that not everyone is put off by his human rights record and the anti-gay law he championed.

TOKYO — Japan’s Supreme Court this week ruled that a toddler born to a transgender man and his wife through artificial insemination shall be regarded as their legitimate child.