Dec 14, 2020 (Kyodo) - Marriage and childbirth go hand in hand in Japan, perhaps more so than in many other developed countries, but for Rei Kakyoin, a self-identified asexual, the former was never an option.
Kakyoin, an unmarried manga artist living in the Kanto region who prefers to be identified by a penname, managed to realize a dream of having a child through artificial insemination despite being from a country where doctors are generally prohibited from assisting with sperm donations for commercial purposes.
Rei Kakyoin plays with daughter in Tokyo in May 2019. (Photo courtesy of Rei Kakyoin)(Kyodo)
Choosing the father from a sperm bank in the United States, Kakyoin, 35, gave birth to a girl in the fall of 2016.
While a law was enacted on Dec. 4 in Japan's parliament to recognize as legal parents married couples who have children through donated eggs and sperm, concrete rules on the rights of children to seek the identity of their genetic parents remain undecided.
The new law stipulates that a woman who gives birth using a donated egg is the child's mother. It also says a husband who consents to his wife giving birth with donated sperm will be unable to deny that he is the child's father.
The addition to the current civil law, which both ruling and opposition parties supported, will come into effect a year after it is promulgated.
