In the early 1950s, the most attention went to Christine Jorgensen as being the first operated-on transsexual. However there were others around the world who were in the news before the Jorgenson story broke, and who even had surgery earlier than Jorgensen did. We know of Marta Olmos in Mexico, Marie Jefferson in Canada and Xie Jianshun in Taiwan (not to mention the sex-change surgeries in Berlin in the late 1920s - early 1930s, and in Switzerland in the early 1940s).
There was also Nagai Akiko 㯠ḽ㖶⫸, a hostess and cabaret singer in Tokyo. She had surgery 1950-1 at the Nippon Medical School Hospital 日本医科大学, and in November 1954, in accordance with Article 113 of the Family Register Law, Nagai had her civil status changed.
However, unlike Jorgenson, Olmos, Jefferson and Xie, that is all that we know of her. Not even historians Mark McLelland or Howard Chiang have any more to say - nor is there agreement re her birth year,
- Mark McLelland. Queer Japan from the
Pacific War to the Internet Age. Lanham Md & Oxford: Rowman &
Littlefield 2005: 113.
- Ishida Hitishi & Murakami Takanori,
translated by Win Lunsing. “The Process of Divergence between 'Men who
Love Men' and 'Feminised Men' in Postwar Japanese Media”. Intersections:
Gender, History and Culture in the Asian Context, 12 January 2006. p8.
- Howard Chiang. “Transtopia: A Keyword for Our Century”.
Cupblog.org, 2021/06/01. Online. p3-4.
- Eric Seizelet. “Transidentité et droit
au Japon". Revue du droit
public et de la science politique en France et à l’étranger, 2023, 5, pp.4-5.
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