I'd believe it just because it's not the only oddity about family records and naming in Japan.
In Japan, the public, legal family records track children by gender-specific birth order, e.g. "First son, first daughter, second son".
If your first 'son' later needs to change gender this is a bad relational database problem! You can't have two first daughters since they aren't twins. The trans daughter can't be added as a second daughter, because then the age order would be wrong and there would be no first son. You'd have to either wipe out the ordering or bump up the second son to first son, and first daughter down to second, making them useless as primary keys. I don't remember how Japan typically solves this.
It's funny because in America, to my knowledge we don't even track that, it doesn't matter. It's just a Japanese tradition that only worked while everyone was presumed to be cis.
For us in America, only the parent-child relationship is tracked, by birth certificates, and luckily most people live in states where those can be amended. (I don't like changing a historical record, but otherwise I'd have to haul around name change receipts to anyone who wonders why my legal gender and name on some documents doesn't match other documents, and it's just a PITA)
That just sounds like yet another reason not to organize society around 'gender identity' in lieu of sex. It leads to so many nonsensical and illogical outcomes, just to uphold this ideologically-driven legal fiction.
First child, second child, etc. who cares about the sex or gender!?
This problem appears in other related areas too. Many people think that the right way to fix racisim is to make everyone obsessed about their racial identity.
I get it; it all started because it's right to feel people proud and not ashamed of what they are, but I think going too far in that direction is backfiring greatly
In Japan, the public, legal family records track children by gender-specific birth order, e.g. "First son, first daughter, second son".
If your first 'son' later needs to change gender this is a bad relational database problem! You can't have two first daughters since they aren't twins. The trans daughter can't be added as a second daughter, because then the age order would be wrong and there would be no first son. You'd have to either wipe out the ordering or bump up the second son to first son, and first daughter down to second, making them useless as primary keys. I don't remember how Japan typically solves this.
It's funny because in America, to my knowledge we don't even track that, it doesn't matter. It's just a Japanese tradition that only worked while everyone was presumed to be cis.
For us in America, only the parent-child relationship is tracked, by birth certificates, and luckily most people live in states where those can be amended. (I don't like changing a historical record, but otherwise I'd have to haul around name change receipts to anyone who wonders why my legal gender and name on some documents doesn't match other documents, and it's just a PITA)
I think I learned it from the English translation of "The bride was a boy" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bride_Was_a_Boy