{"id":30077,"date":"2025-11-28T04:48:51","date_gmt":"2025-11-28T09:48:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/?p=30077"},"modified":"2025-11-28T04:48:51","modified_gmt":"2025-11-28T09:48:51","slug":"japans-same-sex-marriage-ban-is-constitutional-says-tokyo-court","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/2025\/11\/28\/japans-same-sex-marriage-ban-is-constitutional-says-tokyo-court\/","title":{"rendered":"Japan’s same-sex marriage ban is constitutional, says Tokyo court"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A Japanese court has ruled the country’s ban on same-sex marriage as constitutional – bucking a trend set by courts around the country that had raised hopes for marriage equality in Japan.<\/b><\/p>\n

The ruling was met with disappointment from plaintiffs and their legal team who had gathered outside the Tokyo courthouse.<\/p>\n

Japan is the only G7 country that does not fully recognise same-sex couples or offer them clear legal protection. But it’s not an outlier in Asia, where only Taiwan, Thailand and Nepal offer same-sex marriages.<\/p>\n

Ayumi Higashi, the judge who delivered the verdict, said laws on same-sex marriage should first be deliberated in parliament, the Mainichi reported.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Outside the Tokyo courthouse on Friday, the plaintiffs of the lawsuit and their legal team held up signs that read “unjust verdict”, local media reported.<\/p>\n

Shino Kawachi, one of the plaintiffs, told local media that the ruling was “difficult to comprehend”.<\/p>\n

“What is justice? Was the court even watching us? Were they considering the next generation?” she told local media.<\/p>\n

Her partner, Hiromi Hatogai, said she was “extremely outraged” and wondered if the judiciary was “on our side”. But, she added, they would “keep fighting”.<\/p>\n

Amnesty International described the ruling as a “damaging step backwards on same-sex marriage”.<\/p>\n

“The Japanese government needs to be proactive in moving towards the legalisation of same-sex marriage so that couples can fully enjoy the same marriage rights as their heterosexual counterparts,” the rights group’s East Asia researcher Boram Jang said in a statement.<\/p>\n

The verdict on Friday is the last among six high court rulings on same-sex marriage lawsuits filed between 2019 and 2021, in courts across the country from Sapporo to Osaka to Fukuoka.<\/p>\n

Among them, five found the ban unconstitutional – though they rejected the plaintiffs’ compensation claims.<\/p>\n

Friday’s ruling by the Tokyo high court marks an exception to this series of verdicts, which had been adding weight to the push for same-sex marriage to be legalised in Japan.<\/p>\n

The cases will next be taken to the Supreme Court.<\/p>\n

Source: bbc.co.uk<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Japanese court has ruled the country’s ban on same-sex marriage as constitutional – bucking a trend set by courts around the country that had raised hopes for marriage equality in Japan. The ruling was […]<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":30078,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[15,109,2,6],"tags":[562,11873,1678,9282,2415,8591,4690,8592,2760,1891,5246,9281],"class_list":{"0":"post-30077","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-human-rights","8":"category-headline","9":"category-news","10":"category-world","11":"tag-amnesty-international","12":"tag-fukuoka","13":"tag-japan","14":"tag-japan-supreme-court","15":"tag-nepal","16":"tag-osaka","17":"tag-same-sex-marriage","18":"tag-sapporo","19":"tag-taiwan","20":"tag-thailand","21":"tag-tokyo","22":"tag-tokyo-high-court","23":"pmpro-has-access"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30077","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30077"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30077\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30079,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30077\/revisions\/30079"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30078"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30077"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30077"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30077"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}