Poll: Majority of Japanese tolerate same-sex romance

A majority of Japanese people tolerate romantic feelings between same-sex people, but many have strong resistance to having friends who are homosexual, a research team said Saturday.

Although same-sex relationships are becoming more widely accepted in Japan, many tolerate the relationships only among unfamiliar people, said the team led by Kazuya Kawaguchi, professor at Hiroshima Shudo University.

The survey was conducted in March with subsidies from the Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology Ministry. The door-to-door survey was carried out on 2,600 adults aged between the 20s and the 70s. Valid responses came from 1,259 people.

Of all respondents, 51.7 percent said they are not uncomfortable with romantic feelings between men, against 43.8 percent who said they are uncomfortable.

A total of 56 percent said they tolerate such feelings between women.

By gender, 41.2 percent of men accept same-sex romantic feelings — fewer than 63.2 percent among women.

Of those who tolerate romantic feelings between men, about 60 percent said they are uncomfortable with sexual conduct between men. In addition, about 30 percent said they would feel resistance if they find that male friends are homosexual.

“Many people can accept romantic feelings between same-sex people, but there is strong intolerance to such feelings of familiar people and same-sex sexual conduct,” the team said.

Also in the survey, about 60 percent of respondents said they tolerate gender changes by neighbors and colleagues, while about 70 percent said they cannot accept the conversion of sex by relatives.