CCPR/C/JPN/CO/5
page 9
28. The Committee reiterates its concern that children born out of wedlock are discriminated
against with regard to the acquisition of nationality, inheritance rights and birth registration
(art. 2 (1), 24 and 26).
The State party should remove any provisions discriminating against children born
out of wedlock from its legislation, including article 3 of the Nationality Law,
article 900 (4) of the Civil Code, and article 49 (1), item 1, of the Family Registration
Law prescribing that birth registration forms shall indicate whether or not a child is
“legitimate”.
29. The Committee is concerned about discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual and
transgender persons in employment, housing, social security, health care, education and other
fields regulated by law, as exemplified by article 23 (1) of the Public Housing Law, which
applies only to married and unmarried opposite-sex couples and effectively bars unmarried
same-sex couples from renting public housing, and by the exclusion of same-sex partners from
protection under the Law for the Prevention of Spousal Violence and the Protection of Victims
(art. 2 (1) and 26).
The State party should consider amending its legislation, with a view to including
sexual orientation among the prohibited grounds of discrimination, and ensure that
benefits granted to unmarried cohabiting opposite-sex couples are equally granted to
unmarried cohabiting same-sex couples, in line with the Committee’s interpretation
of article 26 of the Covenant.1
30. The Committee notes with concern that, as a result of the non-retroactivity of the
elimination of the nationality requirement from the National Pension Law in 1982 combined
with the requirement that a person pay contributions to the pension scheme for at least 25 years
between the ages of 20 and 60, a large number of non-citizens, primarily Koreans who lost
Japanese nationality in 1952, are effectively excluded from eligibility for pension benefits under
the national pension scheme. It also notes with concern that the same applies to disabled
non-citizens who were born before 1962 owing to a provision that non-citizens who were older
than 20 years at the time when the nationality clause was repealed from the National Pension
Law are not eligible for disability pension benefits (art. 2 (1) and 26).
The State party should make transitional arrangements for non-citizens affected by
the age requirements stipulated in the National Pension Law, with a view to ensuring
that non-citizens are not discriminatorily excluded from the national pension scheme.
31. The Committee is concerned that State subsidies for schools that teach in the Korean
language are significantly lower than those for ordinary schools, making them heavily dependent
on private donations, which are not exempted or deductible from taxes, unlike donations to
private Japanese schools or international schools, and that diplomas from Korean schools do not
automatically qualify students to enter university (art. 26 and 27).
1
See Young v. Australia, communication No. 901/1999 and X v. Colombia, communication
No. 1361/2005.