Malaysian and Japanese Law

On November 7, 2014, a three judge panel of the Putrajaya Court of Appeal said that a state of Sharia law ban on cross-dressing because it was “degrading, oppressive and inhuman” and that as long as it was in force, transgender people “will continue to live in uncertainty, misery and indignity.”

The case was filed by a transgender women in Malaysia who challenged section 66 of the Sharia law in Negeri Sembilan state, which prohibits “any male person who in any public place wears a woman’s attire or poses as a woman.” The state’s Religious Department has used this law repeatedly to arrest transgender women – most recently, in a mass arrest of 16 transgender women at a wedding party on the night of June 8, 2014.

The Court of Appeal ruled that section 66 was unconstitutional and void because it violated the appellants’ rights to live with dignity, earn a livelihood, and directly affects their freedom of movement, expression, and equal protection of the law. The court stated that transgender people “will commit the crime of violating section 66 the very moment they leave their homes to attend to the basic needs of life, to earn a living, or to socialize; and be liable to arrest, detention and prosecution. This is degrading, oppressive and inhuman. … [It is] discriminatory and oppressive and denies the appellants the equal protection of the law.”

Muslims are subjected to state-level Sharia (Islamic law) ordinances, in addition to the federal criminal law. Since the 1980s, every state has passed Sharia criminal enactments that institutionalize discrimination against transgender people. All 13 Malaysian states prohibit Muslim men from “dressing as women,” while three states also criminalize “women posing as men.” The laws, enforced by state Islamic Religious Departments, do not define what constitutes transgender dressing or posing.

In comparison with Japan

Shinto, Buddhism and Confucianism that are in Japanese traditional religions, do not prohibit homosexuality and transexualism explicitly. For 1872 years, at the beginning of the Meiji era, some action of transexualism are decided as illegal under the influence of the Western politics and culture. But this rule disappeared in 1880 -eight years later. After that any big discrimination and court case does not happen in Japan. However same-gender marriage is not accepted by law, except in some area in Japan.

  

Translated from: 日本の伝統的な宗教である神道や、仏教、儒教などは同性愛や異性装を明示的に禁止しておらず、日本の歴史においてそれらは肯定的なものと捉えられていた。その後、明治時代初頭の1872年、西洋の政治・文化の影響などで同性愛行為のうち鶏姦（肛門性交）のみが違法とされたが（鶏姦罪）、8年後の1880年に制定された旧刑法（施行は1882年）からはこの規定はなくなった

Sources: http://www.hrw.org/ja/news/2014/11/08-1