TOKYO — When Fumino Sugiyama, then a fencer for the Japan women’s national team, decided to come out to one of his coaches as a transgender man, he wasn’t sure what to expect.
What followed shocked him in its brutality. “You’ve just never had sex with a real man,” the coach responded, and then offered to perform the deed himself, according to a letter that Mr.
Sugiyama wrote last fall to Thomas Bach, the president of the International Olympic Committee. Mr. Sugiyama, 39, who is now an activist, wanted to give Mr.
Bach an unvarnished picture of the deeply entrenched discrimination in Japan, particularly in the rigid world of sports. He also hoped Mr.