This thesis is concerned with lifestyles in Japan that have hitherto remained largely unreported. The main research categories are gay men, lesbian women, single men and women, and feminist men and women. In addition attention is given to transvestites, transsexuals and hermaphrodites. The main aim of the thesis is to provide an ethnography of the lives of the various categories, which is a new angle from which to view Japanese society. The research methods consist of participant observation and indepth open-ended free attitude interviews. Participant observation in this case includes all aspects of people's life: personal relationships and reading what people from the categories say they read. In addition I developed experiential research, i.e. experiencing what informants may experience. The major question from which the research started out is that of how people whose feelings, ideas or lifestyles do not agree with heterosexual marriage cope with life in a society in which everyone is expected to marry. In this sense the research goes a step beyond what much of anthropology does: establishing what are more or less standard lifestyles in a particular culture. After discussing the position of marriage in Japanese society in chapter three, including political and legal aspects, this thesis discusses how people of the various research categories may try to fit in with the idea that one should marry by entering marriage and the problems this may give in chapter four. In chapter five alternative lifestyles are discussed and in six ways of dealing with an outside world that has little understanding ~ people with alternative lifestyles, feelings, or ideas. In chapter seven ways in which the various categories are regarded and relate to each other, especially the relations between gender and sexuality and discourses of sex and sexual activites are investigated, as well as debates within and between individual and circles consisting of people from the various categories. In conclusion four themes, that played a role in the background throughout the ethnographic body of the thesis, are drawn together: 1) space, gender and sexuality, 2) constructions of homosexuality, .3) selves, and 4) changes: developments that took place while the research was conducted and have continued since.

This diploma work deals with homosexually oriented persons that want to establish a family or that already have a child and raise it up. It concerns to biological parentage or "only" psychological parentage or a relationship with same-sex partner or an individual care for a child. The work specifies basic terms and contains a short overview of homosexuality in view of history, religion and medicine. The work learns the reader in history and legislation differences of the registered partnership and matrimony. It also marginally deals with possibilities and rights of homosexual persons in the world. The work also includes opinion on family, its functions and types. It describes today's possibilities of homosexuals' ways to a child. The work also focuses on issue of rising up a child by homosexuals. To clarify links, it describes here gay and lesbian relations and families, including development of a child being raised up in a non-traditional family. Aim of the work is to document subjective opinions of the homosexuals themselves to the issue of rising up children by persons with such an orientation, to find out how they evaluate attitude of the society to this topic and how these persons are interested in LGBT situation. For the survey and reconnaissance of the opinions, on-line questionnaire was...