On the night of July 11, a 37-year-old man was arrested for bathing in the women’s area at a hot spring facility in Nagoya. He is suspected of breaking and entering, as the man dressed as a woman, including wearing a wig, and stating that he was a woman at heart. A similar case occurred at a hot spring facility in Kuwana, Mie Prefecture in November last year, when a 43-year-old man, who was also arrested and charged, claimed that he was a woman at heart, so why shouldn’t he be allowed to enter?
The man arrested was bathing with a towel covering part of his body, and claimed that he didn’t enter the bath to see the women naked.
The day before, the Hiroshima High Court decided to approve a change in the gender identity of a person diagnosed with gender identity disorder, in a review of a family affairs case in which the person sought to change her gender on the family register from male to female under the Special Law on Gender Identity Disorder without surgery to change the appearance of the genitalia.
Also, a man was sentenced to six years in prison for indecently assaulting a woman under the false pretense that he had gender identity disorder and that he looked like a man but was a woman at heart.
Hot spring facilities and public bathhouses are required by the Public Baths Law to take necessary measures for public morals. Separating men’s and women’s baths and prohibiting mixed bathing is one such measure.
The issue is how to distinguish between men and women, but the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare issued a notice in June last year, taking into account the social situation regarding transgender people. It says: “for the purpose of stipulating the prohibition of mixed bathing from perspective of public morals, the physical characteristics of the person are used to judge the person” and “operators of bathhouse must ensure that, for example, person who are male in body and female in mind do not enter women’s baths.”
In other words, the rule is that hot spring facilities and public baths distinguish between men and women based on physical characteristics such as whether or not they have male genitalia, irrespective of the person’s gender identity or the gender on their family register. Therefore, if a person bathes in a woman’s bath even though he looks male, whatever the motive, he is guilty of trespassing in a building under the Criminal Code, as there is no justifiable reason for doing so.
