By WATARU NAKANO/ Staff Writer
May 25, 2025 at 07:00 JST
FUNABASHI, Chiba Prefecture--Megumi Nagai first felt uncomfortable about her gender identity in her early childhood.
Born male, she tried hard to act like a boy until she was a junior high school student.
But she was jeered at on occasion, and at other times sprayed with water to coerce her into taking off her clothes in front of classmates.
She attended senior high school wearing a skirt, but a teacher there cruelly remarked during a class one day that she was a “sick person.”
Nagai moved on from her native Saitama Prefecture to attend a university in neighboring Chiba Prefecture.
She often went to a bar in the Ni-chome area of Tokyo’s Shinjuku district that attracts sexual minorities and thought about working there. But the proprietress told her she must have something she wanted to do in life.
Nagai, 41, now works as a teacher at a public junior high school here.
She wears a skirt when she teaches classes.
Nagai came out as a transgender woman seven years ago.
Determined to change the current landscape of compulsory education, she had decided to disclose her sexual identity in her 10th year as a teacher.
That moment came during a moral education class when Nagai was teaching third-year students for whom she served as a homeroom teacher.
As she was talking about sexual minorities, one student asked if she was gay.
Nagai replied that she is a transgender.
The students looked serious. Nobody laughed at her or showed disgust.
Nagai later learned that they talked about her revelation after class.
She felt she was accepted.
Now she wears makeup on her commute to work.
She changed her officially registered name to Megumi, the name she had been going by.
Nagai was instrumental in introducing gender-free uniforms.
She also gives lectures and works with municipal governments on events covered by the mass media where she can share her opinions.
Her aim is to spread awareness about people suffering from discrimination and prejudice.
“I want to tell them that you are not alone and that it’s OK to be alive,” Nagai said.
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Megumi Nagai (Photo by Wataru Nakano)
