Japan's Civil War Over Surnames (economist.com) 65
Japanese politicians failed to pass legislation last month that would have allowed married couples to keep separate surnames, despite surveys showing majority public support for the change. Japan remains the only country requiring married couples by law to share the same surname, with women taking their husband's name in 95% of cases.
The ruling Liberal Democratic Party's skepticism blocked opposition bills aimed at reforming the system. Keidanren, Japan's largest business lobby, says the current law "hinders women's advancement" as name changes complicate professional reputations. A study by NGO Asuniwa suggests reform could prompt 590,000 cohabiting couples to marry legally, potentially boosting Japan's birth rate since strong stigmas discourage births outside marriage.
Some couples have developed workarounds. Teachers Uchiyama Yukari and Koike Yukio have divorced and remarried three times to sidestep the law, living unmarried most of the time but remarrying for each child's birth registration before divorcing again.
The ruling Liberal Democratic Party's skepticism blocked opposition bills aimed at reforming the system. Keidanren, Japan's largest business lobby, says the current law "hinders women's advancement" as name changes complicate professional reputations. A study by NGO Asuniwa suggests reform could prompt 590,000 cohabiting couples to marry legally, potentially boosting Japan's birth rate since strong stigmas discourage births outside marriage.
Some couples have developed workarounds. Teachers Uchiyama Yukari and Koike Yukio have divorced and remarried three times to sidestep the law, living unmarried most of the time but remarrying for each child's birth registration before divorcing again.
Quite a bit of culture in Japan is ossified (Score:4, Insightful)
For some thigns that is good, but for others it prevents them or slows them down in adapting to societal changes. And there is a price to be paid for that, in the form of more and more people unwilling to participate. Just look at their reproduction numbers.
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Not disagreeing with you, but it should also be possible to positively influence culture without throwing out established norms. E.g. introducing a mechanism to preserve women's professional reputations after family name changes. In the West, the French word "née" is often used to show the name they grew up with, and in the USA, the bride's surname is often used as a new middle name. Just establish a Japannese-oriented convention. It would not be the first time government propaganda changed publi
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Re:Quite a bit of culture in Japan is ossified (Score:5, Insightful)
Or, and I'm just spitballing here, not require people to take one last name when married.
No need to jump through hoops for such a simple concept.
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I agree, but not likely for the same reasons. No need to attach so much financial and business value to a surname. There should be no reason for a name change, man or woman, to impact career advancement or business relationships. Why "jump through hoops" to make people keep their name to keep advancing in business?
I could turn this passage into a mad-lib about traditional shit that japanese people are tired of but can't stop doing.
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No, surnames did not come from the religion, in Europe specificity it became necessary as the population boomed with the economy after the black death killed off the static social class system. Especially since families of lower classes could grow without the explicit approval of the land's nobility like the local Barron.
Before that, you were 'john of 'town's name''. Later that became 'John the 'smith'' because there were more than one John in the settlement and not all of them had the same profession. Not
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No, surnames did not come from the religion
Indeed, it was the French emperor Napoleon I (who was far from a religious figure [wikipedia.org]) who made family names compulsory for Jews in 1808 [napoleon.org] and in The Netherlands in 1811 [www.hvnf.nl].
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As for the Japanese side of things, any casual research from non western sources shows the opposite. The overwhelming majority of the public did not like this.
I didn't claim they liked it. I pointed out how many aspects of post-war life were imposed on Japan by occupying forces from the USA and UK. This included changes to how men and women married: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
They viewed it as western culture warriors 'trying' to imprint their ideals(specifically feminists) over Japanese culture and traditions. Marriages are considered a union if two families, not a separation of the children from their parents. The two partners are considered equal and in no way do the women feel 'oppressed' they can't keep their maiden name.
I'm pretty sure the legal equality of men and women came from Western influence than Japanese tradition. Before the Allies showed up a woman was expected to obey her father until marriage, her husband until his death, and then as a widow her sons. Maybe the women didn't feel "opp
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Since Japan introduced surname : you can not pick one yourself. And that was something like 200 years ago.
Japanese law doesn't require the wife to take the husband's name, the husband can take the wife's name.
Correct, that is the only "progressive" part in their current law.
Maybe there is a different law that forbids that option but I didn't see any mention of it. It would be opposite around: there needs to be a law that allows it, and such a law does not exist.
they can pick a surname that is different fro
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I seem to recall that the only reason that husbands can take the wife's name is because there was legal action over it, and the court ruled that the equality clause in the constitution required it to be allowed.
They are making slow progress on same sex marriage too. Some local governments allow it, but not nationally. So depending on where you live you might be able to get married, or you can go overseas and do it.
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It would be opposite around: there needs to be a law that allows it, and such a law does not exist.
Citizens of Japan are forbidden from changing their names except from marriage? While I can see that happening I have my doubts that is the case today.
If people are allowed to change their name before marriage then there's a means for a married couple to pick a name other than using the original surname of either partner in marriage.
What they want is to keep the surname: ....
I understand that but I'm confused on why this is such a big deal. There's name changes all the time all over the world and the records from education, military service, work
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Japanese law doesn't require the wife to take the husband's name, the husband can take the wife's name. Or, and I'm just spitballing here, they can pick a surname that is different from both surnames prior to marriage. Maybe there is a different law that forbids that option but I didn't see any mention of it.
In a country that can trace back family lineage literally hundreds of years, I really don't see that suggestion sticking.
Needless to say the 17th Generation Sushido clan might not take kindly to a "Mr. and Mrs. Bubba Bojangles" announcement from the officiant.
Re: Quite a bit of culture in Japan is ossified (Score:2)
"Literally hundreds of years", lol. We Europeans are extremely lucky compared to most other parts of the world. In the best places (Belgium, for some reason) you can get back to the 1600s on all lines, not just the paternal. It isn't just colonialism. Europe just kept much better track of its commoners than anywhere else. Japan first implemented a European-style census as part of the Meiji restoration in the 1870s, and it was only then they demanded everyone should have a last name.
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We Europeans are extremely lucky compared to most other parts of the world. In the best places (Belgium, for some reason) you can get back to the 1600s on all lines, not just the paternal.
Yes, I found my paternal Belgian line easily back to 1450 but the maternal British line runs out 200 years earlier.
The power of two. (Score:2)
Or, and I'm just spitballing here, not require people to take one last name when married.
The idea is good but there are realistic issues here. Consider the following situation: two children take both of their parents surnames and in turn they have a child. Does the child then take four surnames? Is there is there any limit to the number or length of a surname?
Without limits, in 10 generations you will have children with 1024 surnames. If you think nobody would do that then you don't know people. There are people who would declare it a point of heritage and keep every single surname forever. Thi
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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I know/knew some Japanese women who are/were living in the West, refusing to move back to Japan because they were not prepared to accept the subservient role demanded there - not least by their relatives there. One of them never really adjusted either, she moved to a small village after retirement (she had been there frequently over the years) but retained her cultural attitudes and was always an outsider there.
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Otherwise they might have enjoyed abuse and mental suffering in a self erasure they are too intelligent to blindly accept.
Few people get to live a perfect life, regardless of the memes of society.
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For some thigns that is good, but for others it prevents them or slows them down in adapting to societal changes. And there is a price to be paid for that, in the form of more and more people unwilling to participate. Just look at their reproduction numbers.
What you call ossified they call tradition.
Unfortunately you are very much correct about their birth rate problem. Adult diapers have outsold baby diapers in Japan for over a decade now. Not sure what more to say. They're very good at math, so they know how this ends without necessary change.
Japans traditions were timeless. Until they weren't.
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And you are entirely missing the point for that sake of being an ass. Does speak really badly of you.
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Their culture is for them to decide, not YOU, foreigner. Butt out. It's always the same with you judgmental jerks whether you're ruining African cultures with USAID or Japanese culture with your ideas that don't belong and disturb the WA, just like Johnny Somali.
Foreigners can certainly "butt out" as you suggest. But ask yourself the obvious; how does this end well for Japan if they refuse to see the forest or the trees? They know damn well their birth rate problem isn't fixing itself. Should those with foreign status simply pretend it doesn't exist? Is the death of Japanese culture THE right answer if Japan inadvertently creates it?
As I said before, Japans traditions were timeless. Until they weren't. Adapt or Die, isn't a concept confined by "foreigner" sta
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step aside and allow Western Feminism to continue to fall on its Sword of Unaccountability
So... your problem is that progress means women won't be coerced into being subservient? Why am I not surprised?
Japans traditions were timeless
Nonsense. Like most conservatives, you're confusing a romanticized caricature of history with actual history.
Is the death of Japanese culture THE right answer if Japan inadvertently creates it?
Social conservatism always dies. You can adapt and keep what works alive or cling to shitty old ideas and lose it all. Just look at conservatives in the US. They're clinging so desperately to their 1950's fantasy that they don't even realize that they've thrown out every value that mad
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step aside and allow Western Feminism to continue to fall on its Sword of Unaccountability
So... your problem is that progress means women won't be coerced into being subservient? Why am I not surprised?
So, you're denying the obvious problem of zero accountability eating feminism wholesale as they attempt to stand more and more in mens shoes? Modern feminism arrogantly fails to respectfully understand what it means to be subserviant to a Provider and Protector. Zero accountability, is what is ultimately feeding that self-sabotage.
Weird how every wave of feminism before this one understood what it meant to be subservient to their benefit rather than to their detriment. The 21st Century Boss Bitch wants
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You realize USA, South Korea, most "1st" world countries are having birthrate issue, correct? In fact, anywhere that women are allowed an education, it turns out they prefer freedom over children. Having three cats, I get this on a certain level. I can't just do whatever I want without first making sure they are going to be cared for. Children are a whole level above that. So of course modern women are opting out.
Saying any given social policy is going to change things is reducing this down to a trivial pro
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Yep, keep telling yourself that, stupid. Are you a MAGA?
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What you describe as a Japanese problem (low birthrate due to government policies) is a problem across most the developed world. So if I take your comment and extrapolate, what you are saying is all modern governments are doing it way wrong because in all modern economies, birthrates are dropping, despite different governments having different social policies and various levels of freedom.
I think there is more going on here and to break it all down goes beyond the scope of this post, but I recommend you bro
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Interesting FP, but that's not the cause of the declining birth rate. Rather that is a more general problem linked to a broadly detached misunderstanding of how things work or how to fix the problems. Japan is still fishing for an economic solution.
Ma Nature has a simpler approach. Each couple is supposed to produce at least four children, but only the two with the best genetic luck are supposed to survive long enough to reproduce. That's the equilibrium status based on averages, but Ma Nature's version of
News for nerds (Score:1)
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The subline of /. is:
News for Nerds, stuff that matters.
If marriage laws do not matter for you, move on.
If you are not a Japan nerd, move on (give me your Tamagotchi first, please).
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You have spent waaaay to much time listening to incel and incel-adjacent podcasts.
There's a biological need for women to stay close to their young children for the first years of their lives.
Ahh, the pathetic attempt to justify your desire to impose your will on other people with some made-up science. Among other things, you should read up on breast pumps and baby formula.
Like all of your posts, you started from the conclusion and then invented facts to justify that conclusion. It's a weird way to waste yo
Re:Do the Japanese need a lesson in biology? (Score:4, Informative)
If your name never changes then all of your achievements are indexed together. If your CV has to say, "I worked at XYZ between these dates, but under a different name" then that makes it a little bit harder to get a reference that's verifiably about you. You also potentially miss out on people seeing your CV on the pile and saying, "I worked with her before, she's worth calling in for interview". Little bits of friction can make a big difference.
Also, as an aside, talking about "modern audiences" reflects a cultural bias. There are cultures in which the wife always kept her surname. There's nothing inherently antiquated or modern in naming customs: it's "what I'm used to", "what my grandparents were used to", and "what that particular group of foreigners do".
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The surname thing is a kind of nightmare in IT systems, too.
Considering what you call an IT system, of course. And considering that it would be kind of straight forward to handle, if people would not forget in the early stages of building (and using) the system, that "name changes are an option".
And that is not only due to marriage, but also adoption, or an abusing first name, or change of sex or gender (I keep mixing up what the difference in English is, forgive me), and there are probably a few more. E.g.
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The number of times that my wife has had to submit a copy of her marriage certificate to confirm her original name even though we've been married for 11 years baffles me. It made some sense in the first year or two, but she still has to do it a couple of times a year for seemingly random things. I encouraged her to keep her original name when we were planning the wedding, but she insisted on the name change.
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It can be an issue when travelling too. Children's names not matching the parent's name is common in some countries, but only for men, for example. Now we have problems with countries not recognizing people's gender too, although most do accept same-sex marriage even if they don't allow it themselves (Japan is like that). I read about a girl getting harassed in Dubai because she had short hair, by immigration officials.
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Ok dude that's your 2nd totally naive post in this thread and you turned this one into a long weird thing about breast feeding and shit.
You're out of your element donnie and your element is a very small place.
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Psthetic (Score:2)
Either the woman marries her husband or she marries her job. Keeping her surname is disrespectful to her new family. I’m surprised there’s public support for this kind of legislation.
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It's only disrespectful if someone chooses to believe that it is. Why would they? And why would the government enforce that view?
There's no reason to meddle in people's personal affairs; people can decide for themselves what they wish to be called.
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Either the woman marries her husband or she marries her job. Keeping her surname is disrespectful to her new family. Iâ(TM)m surprised thereâ(TM)s public support for this kind of legislation
Either the man marries his wife or he marries his job. Keeping his surname is disrespectful to his new family. Iâ(TM)m surprised thereâ(TM)s public support for this kind of legislation.
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When I got married my wife asked me if I wanted her to change her name. I told her "I don't care, do whatever you want." Because that name is a few characters that will show up on a piece of paper. And frankly who has time to give a fuck about that?
In practice, we both respond to both last name when people make the mistake of calling us assuming we changed name. Once again, names are meant to enable to refer to someone in a way that is clear. As long as there is no ambiguity, who gives a fuck?
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How is a woman keeping her name any more disrespectful to her in-laws than a man keeping his name disrespectful to his in-laws?
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Regressive (Score:2)
Imagine living in a regime so repressive that the government enforces what you may or may not call yourself.
Quirky Side Effect, everyone will be named Sato... (Score:2)
Obligatory: How many a**holes we got on this ship anyhow? Yo! I knew it, I'm surrounded by a**holes.
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Nowadays, some people refuse to marry a Fujiwara-descended last name (like Sato) just based on principle. https://www.youtube.com/shorts... [youtube.com]
The name game (Score:2)
I can understand women (or men) not wanting to change their last names. Although in most cases THAT IS YOUR FATHER'S NAME, not your mother's, so it is already a bit strange. But fine. Keep your maiden, take your husband's, pick a totally different one. Whatever.
What I can't understand and don't like is all this ridiculous hyphenation stuff. It makes everything very long and complex. I suppose it was meant to be some type of strange compromise, but it is more of a kludge. I don't care what your last n
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What I can't understand and don't like is all this ridiculous hyphenation stuff. It makes everything very long and complex. I suppose it was meant to be some type of strange compromise, but it is more of a kludge. I don't care what your last name is, I just wish everyone WOULD JUST PICK ONE NAME. At marriage, my mother changed her middle name to be her maiden name.
In Germany, everybody has a family name. When you get married, you pick one of the two possible family names. And then you can pick oldname-hyphen-newname if your family name wasn't picked The children get the family name, which is never hyphenated.
Re: The name game (Score:2)
Such an unsolvable problem! Except that in many cultures it's been solved for a long time. You have two last names, one patrilineal, one matrilineal.
Hyphenated names go way back, and it's all about prestige. If the wife came from a prestigious family (too), they wanted to let the world know that these kids, they have connection to two prestige families. An example from my part of the world is the former defense minister Kristin Krohn-Devold. Other well known hyphenated prestige names in Norway are Rieber-Mo
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Oh no! Some people have a culture I do not like or even understand. I could google it, but I dislike it enough I'd rather build strawmen arguments!
How much difference does the name make? (Score:2)
Is the issue the name or rather the underlying societal attitudes? After all, in the US, there is great latitude in changing names or not when getting married. In fact, most states make it possible to change one's name to almost any arbitrary name. The name changes or not are completely insignificant to how women are viewed.
I don't know about others, but I find name changes due to marriage it any other reason to be completely insignificant to how I view that person professionally or otherwise. I imagine tha
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The name changes or not are completely insignificant to how women are viewed.
I don't know in Japan, but in Korea my understanding is that once you have kids, the women is almost never referred to by name anymore. But rather they are referred to by that-kid's-mother or that-man's-husband. Talk about being de-humanizing.
Or you could have the exact opposite (Score:2)
In Quebec, it is actually illegal for a couple to have the same surname (unless they already had the same name, I presume) when they get married, without a special exemption.
There's really nothing (Score:2)
No middle names either. (Score:2)