JAPAN: Women Battle to Keep Identity in Marriage

By Suvendrini Kakuchi Reprint | | Print |

Suvendrini Kakuchi

TOKYO, Feb 5 1995 (IPS) - Mari and Gen have been living together for the past nine years, refusing to comply with Japan’s conservative laws which require either partner to give up his or her name after marriage.

“In Japan a marriage must be licensed under one name. But we are both not willing to give up our surnames so under present laws, we cannot get married,” says Mari, a 36-year-old Western- educated career woman.

The couple is rebelling against the long-honoured Japanese social system, the family registration law enacted in 1871 which identifies the individual through the male family head.

According to Japanese tradition, the ‘ie’ or household is headed by a male, and a woman who enters it through marriage must adopt her husband’s surname.

In 1898 the government enacted the Civil Code which stipulated that the husband and wife should have the same surname. Japan revised the Code in 1947, allowing the couple to use the surname of either the husband or the wife.

While the vast majority of Japanese comply with the law without question, a growing number of women resent the fact that society expects them, and not their male partners, to give up their surnames after getting married.

“There was no question over who should be the one to take on the other’s name. I felt I would lose my identity if I gave up my name,” says Mari.

For Gen, adopting Mari’s surname was also out of the question. “I had the choice of changing my name to Mari’s to be able to get married officially. But I guess it’s my upbringing, I just didn’t feel comfortable with the idea,” he says.

Gen and Mari thus decided to just live together and wait for the day when Japan would change its conservative laws and give couples the option of retaining their names after marriage.

Considering how deeply rooted the ‘ie’ system is in Japan, they expected their wait to be a very long one.

The Justice Ministry has announced it would present a bill to parliament in 1996 that would allow married couples to register their union under different names.

But the proposed law will retain the old family register system through a clause requiring only one person to be registered as head of the family.

Critics point out that this clause works against the fundamental principle behind the fight to allow women to keep their own names in a marriage.