TOKYO — Once a week, the Japanese insurance company where Shunsuke Nakamura works tries to enliven its morning staff meeting by having employees give personal presentations. The topics tend to be mostly innocuous: hobbies, pets or wine recommendations.

Mr. Nakamura used his turn, though, to come out as gay.

“There was silence. People were surprised,” Mr. Nakamura, 33, said of his talk, which he gave to a group of about 50 colleagues last year.

His company, like many in Japan, is trying to become more gay-friendly. It recently extended family benefits to employees’ same-sex partners, and said it would allow its gay customers to name their partners as beneficiaries of its life insurance plans, something previously limited only to legally sanctioned, opposite-sex spouses. Such changes have proliferated across the economy in recent years, with a rising number of goods and services targeting the gay community in what many Japanese describe as an “L.G.B.T. boom.”

It is a striking trend in a country where departures from the norm, sexual or otherwise, have long been something to keep hidden — especially at work. Being openly gay was something for niche transgressive pop stars; for the average gray-suited “salaryman,” it was all but unthinkable. And when it comes to the government, marriage for same-sex couples remains off limits.