People :
The book “Double Happiness” describes one person's experience of gender identity disorder (GID)
Mr. Fumino Sugiyama

Mr. Sugiyama was born in 1981 in Tokyo and graduated from Japan Women's University Senior High School. At Waseda University, he studies “sexual minorities and education” under the supervision of Professor Koji Maeda. He is a former representative from Japan of women's fencing and is now coaching it at the Waseda Club.

A chance encounter led Mr. Sugiyama to write a book about his experiences. When he happened to see Mr Hirotada Ototake, a sports journalist, on the side of the road in Okubo, he spoke to him. “I wanted to ask Oto-san a question, but we ended up talking about me,” said Mr. Sugiyama. “And he recommended me to write a book, saying ‘you should, because you're interesting’.” Immediately afterwards, Mr. Ototake introduced him to an editor, so he decided to publish a book. He titled the book “Double Happiness” with the feeling that “I, having GID, feel twice as much pleasure and joy, along with struggling and sadness.”

Mr. Sugiyama humorously and honestly described his countless troubles, which cannot be fully expressed by such a phrase as “twists and turns.” However, he never gave a conclusion to the problem of gender identity disorder. “My book doesn't solve all problems, and I didn't want to impose my opinion on other people. But this story is closer to you all than you imagine. I hope this book makes them think about it”. He is still receiving more reaction from the readers than he had expected, including counseling, criticism, and backing. What he strongly felt was that he really had wonderful friends and parents, he said.

Writing composed his thoughts. Although people ask him whether he intends to be a human rights activist or not, he doesn't think about it at all. “GID is little more than one side of me,” said Mr. Sugiyama. Now he is thinking about his next step. He feels that one's dream for the future isn't necessarily linked directly to an occupation, so he is trying to do various activities because “meeting new people broadens one's life”. While teaching fencing to elementary school pupils, he does cleanup activities as the leader of the Kabuki-cho team of the NPO “Green Bird,” and, for the Shibuya University Network, he works as a “teacher” of GID, as well as learning as a student. “So I have little time to write my MA dissertation�c” he laughs.

“These days, we are often confused, since there is too much information. So I suppose we should value our true feelings and calm our minds. Then, I believe, we can find the answer,” he said. We cannot help but look forward to what he will find next.

Editorial note:
Although Fumino Sugiyama is officially a female, the English version uses such expressions as “he” and “Mr.”, since Sugiyama uses boku (the first person pronoun used by males).