In light of calls from the public, the city of Fujisawa, Kanagawa Prefecture, said Wednesday it will remove gender notations in official documents when deemed unnecessary, municipal officials said.
The city now has some 1,700 official documents, of which some 400 have spaces in which to note gender. But it will follow moves by the cities of Koganei in western Tokyo, Niiza, Saitama Prefecture, and Tottori to eliminate them as much as possible, they said.
A number of people, including those diagnosed as having gender identity disorder, have sought to have gender notations eliminated from such documents.
People with GID feel uncomfortable with the sex they were born in and desire to live and be accepted as members of the opposite sex. They say documents that reveal their gender at birth cause them inconvenience and humiliation.