LGBT issues are still emerging in Japan, but one Zen Buddhist temple is offering wedding ceremonies, even though Japanese law does not recognize same-sex marriage.
From the Huffington Post
Japan allows same-sex marriage ceremonies within its borders, according to the Council On Foreign Relations, but these couples won’t be given the legal rights and privileges that heterosexual couples have. Despite these restrictions, deputy head priest Rev. Takafumi Kawakami claims five couples have come the Shunkoin Temple in Kyoto since 2010 to symbolically tie the knot.
Kawakami is seeking to escalate the conversation around LGBT issues in order to help his countrymen see this as a human rights issue
Actually, most Japanese people don’t know about the LGBT issues in Japan. They think that LGBTs are only in foreign countries. But not in Japan. Just recently, Japanese medias started talking about the LGBT issues in Japan. But most of them talked about the LGBT issues in the context of economy, like LGBT tourism. Only few of them treat the LGBT issues as the human rights issues. So, I thought it is very important to make people think that the LGBT’s rights are a very important topic to improve in this country. I thought that performing the same-sex wedding can make this issue more visible to everyone in Japan.