Why does Surname Matter? Past, Present, and Future Prospect of Family Law from a Gender Perspective in Japan

Abstract

On December 16, 2015, the Supreme Court Grand Bench of Japan ruled on constitutionality of a single surname system among married couples for the first time. The court ruled that it is constitutional even though it is typically the woman (wife) —96% in 2015— who gives up her maiden surname and changes it to the man’s (husband’s) surname in the family registry. Accordingly, Japan is still a unique modern state in that its national law obliges a married couple to have a single surname, even now in 2018. In this article, I discuss the history of Japanese law governing surnames after the Meiji Restoration in 1868, amendment of and deliberation on the single surname rule by 2018, and the Supreme Court Judgment on the constitutionality of enforcing the single surname rule for married couples. I argue that “the value of Japanese family” has systematically oppressed women’s status for a long time since modernization, and the single surname rule has effectively worked as a tool to enforce this mechanism. However, currently people’s attitude toward introduction of selective different surname system seems to be changing, and more people support introduction of this system. This may trigger to increase the number of people who doubt the reasonableness of current single surname system with no exception. Continuous effort to educate people – from elementary school to leadership positions – is necessary in order to make the Diet to finally introduce a selective different surname system in the future.