With the recent rise of public interest in sexual and gender minority populations across societies, asking about sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI) in social surveys has become increasingly important. However, most studies on the measurement of SOGI focus on North American and Western European countries. Therefore, it is currently difficult to evaluate whether the findings from these previous studies are applicable to countries with distinct legal, religious, and cultural contexts regarding sexual and gender minorities compared to Western societies. This paper focuses on Japan and summarizes the findings from focus group discussions and pilot surveys as well as the preliminary results of the Osaka City Residents' Survey, which is one of the first population-based surveys that include SOGI questions in Japan. It also makes comparisons with previous studies in the United States, illustrating the significance of studying the measurement of SOGI outside of the United States.

No abstract

In recent years, the aromantic/asexual spectrum has become more visible in Japan, and research on sexual orientation among the aromantic/asexual spectrum remains limited but is increasing. However, there is extremely little research that focuses on romantic orientation. Studies on romantic orientation in Western countries tend to discuss aromanticism as one of the romantic orientations that asexual people possess. In Japan, on the other hand, the framing of romantic orientation in the aromantic/asexual spectrum community differs from that in Western countries, as the terminology in Japan occasionally labels someone “asexual” only if they are neither romantically nor sexually attracted to other people. Furthermore, extant quantitative research tends to be limited to discussions that rely on the dichotomy of aromantic or not, despite findings from community-based surveys that suggest romantic orientation is multifaceted, making it necessary to discuss various dimensions of romantic orientation. This study used the “Aromantic/Asexual Spectrum Survey 2020,” a web survey conducted by the Aro/Ace Survey Executive Committee, to examine the multidimensionality of romantic orientation by describing romantic identity, romantic attraction, and romantic desire. Findings indicated that the distributions of romantic attraction before and after self-identification as aro-ace differed by aromantic spectrum identity, such as alloromantic, aromantic, gray(a)romantic, demiromantic, lithromantic, and questioning. Differences by aromantic spectrum identity were also observed in the distributions of deep interest in a particular person, romantic excitement, and the desire to date. Items related to desires that involve actions with others, such as the desire to date, tended to have a lower percentage of positive responses than items related to desires that do not necessarily involve actions with others, such as deep interest in a particular person and romantic excitement.

As a growing amount of research examines the impact of sexuality on various demographic outcomes, it becomes important to understand the complex intersections of sexual orientation identity, sexual/romantic attraction, and sexual behavior. However, most previous studies use data from Western countries that have particular histories of sexuality, limiting the generalizability of the findings beyond Western societies. We describe dimensions of sexuality in Japan, where there has not been any religious authority condemning same-sex behavior and any law prohibiting same-sex relations except for a decade in the late 19th century. We use data from the “Survey on Diversity of Work and Life, and Coexistence among the Residents of Osaka City,” the first population-based survey with detailed questions about multiple aspects of sexuality in Japan, to conduct descriptive analysis. More women identify as bisexual or asexual than lesbian. Among the respondents who selected “Don’t want to decide, haven’t decided”—a category originally created for queer/questioning respondents—as their sexual orientation, the proportion of those who indicated exclusive heterosexuality is higher than expected, raising the possibility that some heterosexual respondents with no heterosexual identity may have mistakenly chosen this category. The data suggest that the population of heterosexual-identified men who have sex with men is small. The prevalence of the asexual population differs by whether sexual orientation identity or sexual/romantic attraction is used to capture this population. Our analysis extends the demography of sexuality by examining unique non-Western data and putting in context the previous findings observed in Western countries.

In Western countries, studies using representative surveys and community surveys have begun to reveal the size and the diversity of the asexual population. On the other hand, in Japan, there are only a few studies using representative surveys, and the detailed realities of the asexual population are yet to be explored. This article analyzed a web survey “Aromantic/Asexual Spectrum Survey 2020,” conducted by the Aro/Ace Survey Executive Committee. Most of the respondents tended to be cisgender women, young people, and residents of the southern Kanto region. Many identified as aromantic and asexual, but some identified as other aro/ace identities. We also conducted an analysis on “nonsexual,” an identity category unique to Japan. While masturbation and sex drives were found in a certain number of asexual respondents, the proportion of those who would like to have sexual contact with others was particularly low among asexual respondents. We conclude that sexual contact with others has important implications for self-identification.