Family Law

Battle Over the Surnames

By ckramer

In Japan, there is a battle raging among the progressives and the conservatives. The Democratic Party of Japan, the progressives, came into power last year with a plan to give women the freedom to choose their married name. The current law in Japan allows only one surname per family, which is traditionally the man?s.

Many feel this requirement is wrong, and that neither side should have to change their names.

The Democrats came into power after 55 years of nearly continuous conservative control of Japan. Part of the agenda was a bill that would allow Japanese women and men to keep separate surnames after marriage.

Conservative politicians have stalled the bill, and accused the Democrats of pushing an agenda that would destroy Japanese family traditions, according to the Chicago Tribune.

According the leader of the former ruling Liberal Democratic Party, which counter-intuitively is the conservative party, allowing two surnames for one couple ?would destroy the country.?

With elections looming, a poor showing at the polls could make it difficult for the Democrats to progress on this bill.

Japan is one of the few countries that still require both members of a marriage to have the same surname. Even China and South Korea allow women to have different surnames than their husbands.

Many of the Japanese women that have progressed into the professional, corporate and academic world want the right to retain their maiden names and many even use aliases at work.

With the Democrats in power, Japan may have a historically rare opportunity to make this change and give women the freedom of keeping their names.

This opportunity may be slipping as a strong opposition is mounting. ?I don?t understand the mentality of couples who marry to be together but prefer separate surnames,? said Shizuka Kamei, leader of the People?s New Party. ?Do we want to see door signs showing various surnames written on them at each home??

Absent from Kamei?s argument, however, was an explanation how separate names on door signs would destroy the country.

The current system is disproportionately burdensome on the women. It places inconsistencies on social activities and can even cause the loss of identity for women.

In some very rare cases, Japanese couples use the wife?s surname. But this is typically done is the rare case that the women is an only child or to benefit the couple financially.

To force a couple to have to choose a single surname is putting an unnecessary amount of stress on a couple. With many women starting their careers before getting married, it can become an increasingly difficult task to convert an entire profession world and reputation to a new name. When a successful professional man meets a successful professional woman, it just seems wrong to require one of them to cave and have to re-establish their name among their peers.

Full post as published by The Divorce Blog on July 15, 2010 (boomark / email).