Advocates are calling for Japan to create national legislation to protect LGBT individuals from being outed, as the current piecemeal approach is failing to tackle the damaging form of discrimination and is putting lives at risk, they say.
Current central and local government efforts to prevent disclosure of a person's sexual orientation or gender identity against their will are insufficient, experts say, and measures that exist can only be applied in a limited scope.
A handful of city and ward authorities have ordinances that specifically ban the outing of people who identify as being from a sexual minority, but only one out of 47 prefectures — Mie — is working to implement something similar, according to a survey by Kyodo News in July.