Japan’s women face uphill battle to keep their identity

Women in Japan are going through an identity crisis.

They’re fighting to overturn a law that bars married couples from having different last names, which creates complications for women with established careers and reputations.

The law says that after marriage a couple must have the same surname. Technically, a man may take his wife’s family name. Yet in practice, only about 4 per cent do.

The issue roared into the public debate during the campaign for the upper house election, with opposition parties making gender equality a key part of their platform against Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and his Liberal Democratic Party. Abe’s conservative party argues that the current law is equal to both men and women, and it’s a matter of tradition.

But others point out that it’s not exactly an ancient tradition. Before the current law was passed in 1898, Japanese people didn’t typically use surnames. In 1948 it became legal for couples to choose either spouse’s surname, but they still had to stick with one. And marriages to foreigners aren’t subject to the law.

The surname issue is only one of a number of ways Japan lags behind on gender. Japan has the thirdhighest gender-pay gap among OECD countries. Women hold only 4 per cent of managerial positions, 2 per cent of seats on boards of directors and about 10 per cent of the seats in the lower house. The #MeToo movement has had difficulty gaining traction. The law has led to some unusual marital arrangements — even divorces on paper, while couples stay together.

Others choose to live in the equivalent of a domestic partnership. Yuri Koizumi and Hiroshi Tanaka have been living together for 26 years, raising a son without getting married. They can’t take advantage of the same tax deductions as married couples. And they get tired of explaining to new friends and coworkers that they really are husband and wife, and their children really are theirs, even though they have different last names.

In 2015 Japan’s Supreme Court said the law didn’t violate the constitution. A Tokyo court this year ruled against a similar challenge, and the plaintiffs plan to appeal.

One of those plaintiffs is Yoshihisa Aono, chief executive of software company Cybozu. He legally took his wife’s last name when they married in 2001 but continued to use his birth name professionally. His shares are registered under his legal last name — Nishibata — causing confusion among investors about why the CEO doesn’t appear to own a stake in the company.

The law has prompted some people to go by their birth names in public, while using their spouse’s last name on official documents. That can be tricky. Women worry about whether their academic degrees will be recognised abroad. Companies sometimes mistakenly book flights or hotel rooms for employees under the name they use in everyday life, rather than the legal name they need to use when checking in.

Abe’s solution has been to encourage employers to allow workers to informally use the last names they were born with. This November people will be allowed to list both last names on certain government ID cards, allowing them to open bank accounts or take out loans with their surname of choice.