Japan nurseries mull how to teach gender identity issues after boy bullied for wearing girls’ clothes

The boy enrolled in a municipal nursery school in Otsu, Shiga prefecture, in April 2019. His parents later learned that he was being taunted by classmates, who would call him names such as “boy-girl.” In barely legible handwriting, the boy scrawled “left out,” “beaten up,” “go away” and other messages on a piece of paper he showed his parents.

But when the parents consulted the municipal government, they were told that “bullying did not apply in this case” since a law aimed at preventing school bullying was only applicable to junior school students and older.

After the parents’ repeated pleas for the situation to be addressed, the city in November 2020 admitted the presence of bullying at the nursery and apologised that its “response to the problem had been inappropriate.” By then, however, the boy had refused to go to school for nearly a year and a half.

The law in question, which came into force in 2013, was enacted following the 2011 suicide of a second-year junior high school boy who had been bullied at a school in Otsu.

Although the law was not enacted with nursery school students in mind, “bullying can occur in early childhood,” said Toshiyuki Kasugai, graduate school professor at Ritsumeikan University and chair of a committee set up by the Otsu government to protect children from bullying.