On April 7th Ayako Fuchigami was elected as a member of the prefectural assembly in Hokkaido Japan, making her the first openly transgender person to hold a position in the assembly. She ran as a member of the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan in Sapporo’s Higashi Ward.
Fuchigami was designated male at birth and transitioned to a woman as an adult. Kotaro Adachi of the Hokkaido News Department reports, “Fuchigami first realized she was attracted to boys in her elementary school days, but didn’t disclose her feelings for many years. This began to change a year after she left the ministry, when she made her debut working as a show dancer at a club in Sapporo’s popular downtown Susukino district. Later she officially registered her first name as Ayako.”
Fuchigami ran on a pro-LGBT rights platform, saying “I want to create a society where opinions from diverse people are reflected.” She has openly talked about the experiences of herself and other transgender people in Japan. After she received hormone replacement therapies and coming out she said, “I felt so much better, and I could enjoy the process of feminization.”
One of Fuchigami’s central policies is working to expand Sapporo city’s LGBT partnership declaration system across Northern Japan. She has also called for allowing LGBT peoples to become more involved in education.
On this day, 18 April 1888 the Imperial British East Africa Company was founded in London to run what is now Uganda and Kenya as British colonies. As with all of Britain’s other colonies, the British outlawed homosexuality, and propagated homophobic values. As of 2017, half of all the world’s countries which outlaw being gay, including Uganda and Kenya, were part of the British Empire.
This Pride month we have a series of podcast episodes coming out about LGBTQ history. Support us on patreon to get first listen: http://bit.ly/2EHaZuj
Pictured: a recent LGBT protest in Kenya http://bit.ly/2GmD6hC
