Five people in Japan are reportedly preparing an unprecedented legal challenge against the Japanese government. Why? They claim that a civil law forcing them to choose a single surname after marriage violates their constitutional rights. If they succeed, married men and women in Japan will for the first time be able to retain their own surnames, removing one of Japan’s few remaining legal obstacles to gender equality.
In the vast majority of cases in Japan, women are required to relinquish their maiden name after marriage, although a small number of men take their wife’s maiden name as their new surname. Critics, however, say the time has come to modernise the law surrounding marital surnames in Japan – the only G8 nation with laws governing such matters.
The five challengers of the law argue that the law’s requirement that a single surname be chosen contradicts articles of Japan’s constitution guaranteeing individual liberty and equal rights to husband and wife. The five are also seeking 1m Japanese Yen each in compensation …
… from the government. Previous attempts to change the law have been made, the most recent being in 1996 when an amendment that would have given married women the right to retain their maiden names was blocked by MPs who claimed it would undermine the family unit.
A report in the UK’s Guardian this week included a contribution from Kyoko Tsukamoto, who changed her maiden name after marrying in 1960 but retained it in daily life. Tsukamoto reportedly told the Guardian that:
‘My husband and I still love each other, but this and the issue of Tsukamoto are different. I thought I would get used my husband’s name, [but instead] I felt a strong sense of loss growing inside me.’
Critics also say that the law ignores dramatic post-war changes to the role of Japanese women in the home and the workplace. Th movement for change gathered particular pace in the 1980s when more women entered the workplace, with many women saying that changing their names after marriage was detrimental to their career prospects. Yet the Japanese seem to be divided over the issue as a whole – a 2009 survey showed 49% of respondents were for a change in the law, with 48% opposed to an amendment.
I think that, as a developed country which promises independence and equal rights between husband and wife, Japan needs to update this law. Though I intend to take my husband’s name if I ever get married, I’d be kinda pissed if someone told me I had to, no choice, no questions asked. Japan needs to seriously question why they are the only G8 nation to still have laws regarding marital surnames. The way I see it, Japanese women rock (they certainly live a hell of a long time), and such laws are a barrier to them attaining true workplace and gender equality. If other countries have successfully let married women keep their maiden names, then Japan certainly can too.
In Spain, women do not change their surname upon getting married. It is not contemplated by the law. The children born in that marriage have both the first surname of the father and the first surname of the mother. I still do not understand why would anyone change their surname when they get married. My boyfriend’s mum took her husband’s surname and divorced him when my boyfriend was 2. What is the point? Why do women think it is important to change their surname to their husband’s?
Ok, this actually brings me to a question that’s bugged me. If the kids have 2 surnames, how many surnames do THEIR kids have? I realize the number of surnames hasn’t increased exponentially, so there has to be a means of picking one of the parents’ 2 surnames and applying 1 each to the kid. I’m confused…I feel like I just said a whole lot of stupid.
I have two surnames because my mother never changed hers, and I often threaten to give my children three :P I wouldn’t though, I think they’d hate me. I will either give them only one of mine, or skip that part and just give them their dad’s. Heck, I might take my husband’s name too, but only if it’s cool. Like Danger. Shannon Danger. YES.
Erin, I think mireee is saying in Spain they take the first sir name that appears. So it ever excees two sir names. In America we don’t have a system like that so it gets complicated.
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I read a great post on another site about this very topic. It is hard to give up the sense on unification a family gains from having the same sir name(s).
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I really really really dislike the idea of giving my own kids separate names. I’d give up my last name before I let that happen.
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Jessica Titone and Kelly Harris ow btw we are sisters. Bleh.
Having two surname is illogical but also causes several problems in this . In my country, as Spain, I have to legal surnames, however none really call himself (or herself) by two. Only father’s surname is used. My mother, though divorced since I was 5, at my school was usually called Mrs. “my father’s surname”, just because of that was my surname.
I would rather just having a single legal surname. In addition, you can only wonder how confusing are our passports abroad, or to decode name-surname for legal immigrants when they are granted our national ID’s.
Typically, in countries that give the kids two surnames, the father’s is the one more used. And when they pass on a name to their kids, it is the father’s father’s, and the mother’s father’s.
So it is JUST as patrilineal as is our system – it just skips a generation. Instead of getting only your father’s name, you get the name of both of your grandfathers.
And now you have a big pile of names.
They only receive the parent’s first surname. My surnames are Nicolas Sánchez, but my kid will only be Nicolas plus the dad’s first surname. A new law has been passed and the surnames’ order is alphabetical, unless the parents state they want it otherwise. :)
So if surnames are ordered alphabetically, and you pass on the first one (is that also law or just custom?), then it is no longer to be determined by grandfathers, but simply by whichever one came first alphabetically? So your child will have his grandmother or grandfather’s name depending on which was first in your name, depending on which one comes first in the alphabet?
Or will the practice of using the first one lost its standard and the child will receive his mother’s father’s name and his father’s father’s name, and they will simply be ordered on the child alphabetically?
If, in fact, the first surname remains the standard, even when the father’s is no longer first, that would make for a very interesting evolution in Spanish surnames.
In essence, there would be a selection towards the start of the alphabet. A woman who is given the surnames Nicolas and Sanchez will have Nicolas go first, and then pass on Nicolas to the children. Anyone named Sanchez would have to find someone with a surname from T-Z in order to get theirs first, and thus get it passed on to their grandchildren.
The ones in the latter parts of the alphabet would basically die out, except for a few people who prefer otherwise.
A very interesting concept.
That said, of course, I suspect it will go the other way I considered, and the names of the grandfathers will continue to be passed on, and the new law affect merely the ordering on the kid. So still no functional change.
My 2 cents, I set business cards for a major company that employs a lot of women. Women who change their names after marriage account for about 3% of my business. Industry wide that is a good amount of money. Just saying, think of the printers.
Also ladies take into account how long your new hyphenated name will be, if most forms have 23 letter spaces and your new name is 44 it is not going to fit!
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Now you are going to start a new rant about the forms not being fair to women.
o.O Seriously?
What I am reading is that technically, the law says nothing about women changing their names – only that the two must be the same after marriage? Technically speaking, that is absolutely gender-equal, and it is only a tradition of men being unwilling to change that is the issue.
But I agree it is lacking in freedom, even if the freedom is not of a gendered sort. Not that lacking freedom due to being steeped in tradition is anywhere remotely surprising from Japan..
Good on some Japanese for finally standing up for some individual rights.
I can see a value in a family having the same name. I can see why patrilineal or matrilineal systems developed, to have a standard way of figuring it out along generations.
These days, the meaning of marriage is a little different, we want gender equality, and family ties are different in different families.
What I think would be nice is to simply choose a new name for the family upon marriage. Both people change the name, and the ‘new beginning’ symbol exists, but it goes to whatever desired. If there is a strong connection with one side of the family, you could take their name (or a grandparent’s). If you’re big family people, you could combine the family names in some way. If you’re not, you could pick something entirely different that has some meaning to you as a couple and work with that.
Individual families have one name, but no gender assumptions implicit.
Because really, is it any more feminist to choose your father’s name over your husband’s?