Sperm bank for donors willing to be identified, planned in Tokyo

A sperm bank for donors who agree to disclose their identity is being planned by a fertility clinic in Tokyo, and would be the first of its kind in Japan.

Japan Today reported that staff at the Private Care Clinic Tokyo were planning on opening the sperm bank by the end of the year. There is currently no legislation concerning donor gamete use in Japan, though proposed legislation published in November 2023 outlined that access to donor gametes and IVF would continue to be restricted to heterosexual married couples (see BioNews 1215). Planned legislation also stated that donor-conceived people would have access to non-identifying information about their donor, upon reaching adulthood.

Fertility clinic counsellor Hiromi Ito told Japan Today she hopes the clinic will 'create a society where parents can openly tell their children the facts about their births'. She said: 'medical institutions have requested confidentiality from (sperm) donors and recipients and the procedure has been treated as something to feel guilty about'.

Japan first introduced legislation concerning legal parenthood of children born following fertility treatment in December 2020 and lawmakers published revised legislation concerning donor gametes in November 2023, though this has not yet been passed.

While donor insemination has been practised in the country since 1948, just 16 facilities are registered in the country to carry out treatment with donor gametes, and many have suspended services in recent years (see BioNews 1132). Ito, who also heads up international sperm bank Cryos International's Japan operations told Japan Today she feared that lack of register services could force people to seek donors via riskier methods such as on social media.  

A number of high-profile cases in Japan in recent years have highlighted the impact of the lack of regulation. The latest planned legislation was outlined after a lesbian who accessed IVF overseas was denied treatment for her pregnancy at a hospital in Japan, a move that was condemned by politicians (see BioNews 1215). Another case saw a woman put her child up for adoption after learning her sperm donor she had met online was not Japanese, but Chinese (see BioNews 1128).

Cryos International, the world's largest sperm bank based in Denmark, revealed last year that demand for donor sperm was growing in the country, Kyodo News reported.