WHAT'S IN A NAME? Support Grows for Dual-Surname System September 21, 2001 Debate on the idea of allowing married couples to use separate surnames in family registers--official records of all Japanese kept in city offices--is heating up again. In a recent Cabinet Office survey, 42% of respondents said they favored revising the Civil Code to permit such a change, exceeding the 30% who were opposed. In a survey taken five years earlier, those opposed to the idea outnumbered supporters. When including those who feel that married couples should at least be allowed to use separate surnames informally in the workplace and on certain forms of identification, support reached 65%, compared with 55% five years ago. It appears as though momentum is building toward the introduction of a new system. Changing Attitudes The Cabinet Office survey was conducted in May 2001. Of the 5,000 men and women across Japan who were surveyed, 69% turned in valid responses. The survey shows that 30% of respondents opposed any revision to the law and felt that married couples should always use the same surname, down from the 40% who felt this way in 1996. Meanwhile, 23% advocated requiring married couples to use the same surname in their family register but had no objections to the use of different surnames in common practice. This figure was largely unchanged from the previous survey. The percentage of those who favored allowing married couples to use separate surnames even in household registers rose, however, from 33% to 42%. Looking at men and women separately, 68% of women supported greater freedom in the use of the surname, as compared with 62% of men. Around 80% of men and women in their twenties and thirties, who are most likely to face the choice of which name to use, supported liberalization. Support for change was highest among women in their thirties at 87%. Opponents of change outnumbered supporters, however, among people in their sixties and seventies. Even among those in favor of revising the law to allow dual surnames, though, only 18% said they would actually use their premarital names, while 50% said they would not, and 31% were unsure. Asked whether the use of separate surnames would weaken a family's sense of unity, 52% responded negatively, while 42% said that it would. At the same time, 66% said that the use of separate surnames would have an unfavorable influence on children; only 27% said that there would be no influence on children. Debate Grows As for other countries, married couples keep their original surnames in China and South Korea. Most of the major countries in Europe, such as Britain, France, and Germany, allow couples to choose what surname they will use. In the United States, individual states have their own systems. In Japan, however, the Civil Code stipulates that married couples must use the same surname, be it the husband's or the wife's. In actual practice, an overwhelming majority of couples use the husband's surname. This is because the traditional concept of ie, or a patrilineal household, remains strong; when a woman marries, it is often said that she enters her husband's household as a bride.   Your Name What did you think of this article? It was interesting. It was boring. Send this article to a friend Beginning in the 1980s, however, a number of women began calling for an end to the inconveniences caused by changing their surname after marriage. Taking this into consideration, in 1991 the Legislative Council, an advisory panel to the minister of justice, began studying issues related to the use of separate surnames by married couples. In 1996 the council submitted a proposal for a system that would allow the voluntary use of separate surnames. The proposal also called for married couples who choose to use separate surnames to register in advance the surname that would be taken by their children and for all the children to use the same surname. There was a great deal of resistance to the proposal from conservatives. Many expressed the fear that a revision might lead to the collapse of the family unit and the breakdown of order in society. Since the 1996 survey found that more people were opposed to a change than in favor, a bill concerning revisions to the Civil Code was scrapped before being submitted to the Diet. But as the latest survey indicates, public opinion has changed in the last five years. Minister of Justice Mayumi Moriyama has said that changes to the Civil Code should at least now be taken up for discussion, and the government has indicated that it will give serious consideration to the results of this year's survey. It seems as though debate over revising the Civil Code to introduce a dual-surname system will continue to grow. Copyright (c) 2001 Japan Information Network. Edited by Japan Echo Inc. based on domestic Japanese news sources. Articles presented here are offered for reference purposes and do not necessarily represent the policy or views of the Japanese Government.