It has been a year of triumphs and setbacks, gains and losses, and an ever-so-incremental step forward for issues of gender in Japan.

This country has always been a complex creature to the hundreds of thousands of queer people residing in it. As a place boasting one of and one of the toward sexual and gender minorities, Japan offers a degree of physical safety for the LGBTQ community most of us cannot take for granted. At the same time, Japan has also made a name for itself among the G7 nations as the country with the fewest laws protecting LGBTQ minorities in the workplace, the only country not to recognize same-sex marriage, and the country with the worst track record for transgender rights and recognition.

First, the setbacks. The year 2023 saw the government pass its first-ever law explicitly addressing LGBTQ discrimination, but failed to prescribe any penalties for employers, schools or government institutions breaking this law. In May, a Nagoya district court ruled the ban on same-sex marriage was unconstitutional, but a few weeks later, a Fukuoka district court decreed the ban was constitutional. This was the year that the most inhumane restrictions on transgender people¡¯s ability to legally transition ¡ª conditions that forced them to be sterilized ¡ª was finally revoked by Japan¡¯s Supreme Court; however, it was also the year that the Tokyo Trans March was put on indefinite hiatus amid controversies surrounding its parent organization, Transgender Japan.

For the people affected by all these decisions, 2023 felt like running up a descending escalator, or slipping on dry leaves: moving forward, but also falling back. It was a year of heartbreak and goodbyes: Rising queer celebrity and outspoken activist Ryuchell passed away in July, and beloved drag queen staple of the underground and counter-cultural communities rocketed to a higher orbit in September.

And yet it has been a time of great beauty, too, in which the queer community has shown its resilience and its ability to thrive. It¡¯s louder and angrier than ever before. It held one of the largest Tokyo Rainbow Pride events in history, and began powerful, more pointed demonstrations like the Tokyo Liberation March. It found space for joy, space for discontent and the desire for action. It built its ballrooms bigger, took voguing to the streets in solidarity with O¡¯Shea Sibley and his community, and deepened the bonds between Japan¡¯s queer movements and those overseas. And the community helped its queens thrive, the children of Spelmermaid who are always the loudest and gaudiest spectacles in the cities¡¯ gay towns. Tokyo queens have appeared in world-famous television...