The world’s only Japanese couple surname system and Ghibli movie message
In Japan, there is a system in which married couples must choose which surname to give. Although it is legally stipulated as “husband or wife”, according to the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare’s 2016 “Statistics on Marriage”, 96% who change their surname after marriage are women.
Overseas, many countries allow couples to give different surnames, and according to the Ministry of Justice, Japan is the only country that is obliged to give the same surname.
On June 23, 2021, the Supreme Court of Japan filed a lawsuit on whether the provisions of the law that Japanese common-law married couples can only marry with the same surname violate the Constitution. They have ruled that it has not violated (from NHK News). In other words, the Supreme Court has concluded that the law does not allow selective surnames for married couples in Japan.
I read this news and remembered a scene. It is a scene from the Japanese Ghibli movie “Spirited Away”. It is a scene where the main character girl “Chihiro Ogino(荻野 千尋)” is dominated by a witch from another world, Yubaba, who magically blocks her mouth, takes her name, and is forced to use another name “Sen（千）”.
I think this scene contains various messages in addition to the name, but I think this scene symbolizes social pressure on Japanese women, such as the same surname of a married couple and their behavior as a wife. felt. In particular, Japan is basically a country where people often call each other by their surnames.
For women who change their surnames, the deprivation of the surnames they have used by national law will make them feel like erasing their lives for at least 18 years. In fact, all my acquaintances had a negative opinion about changing their surname. In Japan, it is still a prerequisite for women to enter the home.
The problem with this revision of the law is the fact that the teams that examine married couples’ surnames are all male, and no one is in their 50s or younger. According to a 2017 Ministry of Justice survey, the percentage of people who think that “couples should always give the same surname and do not need to amend the law” is 2% for all age groups from 18 to 59 years old, regardless of gender. While it is over 30% for those in their 60s and over 50% for those over 70s, which greatly boosts the overall “opposition to the revision of the law to selective surnames for married couples”.
Why are Japanese married couples not allowed to have different surnames? I think the answer lies in politics. The average age of the members of the National Representatives in 2021 is 55.5%, and the percentage of females is less than 1%. As I said earlier, most people who “oppose the revision of the law to selective married couple’s surnames” are middle-aged and older men. For them, “selective married couple surnames” is a field that has nothing to do with them. In other words, people without a sense of ownership play a central role in politics, so discussions will not proceed. In addition, Japan has a declining birthrate and an aging population, and the average age of Japan in 2019 is 47.4 years. In other words, since the majority of voters are of a generation who is not interested in “selective married couple surnames,” I think it will take a long time to resolve this issue.
What do you think?
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