Japan women's minister opposes plan to allow keeping of birth names

Tamayo Marukawa among 50 conservative MPs to urge local body not to support policy change

Justin McCurry in Tokyo
Fri 26 Feb 2021 10.28 EST

Japan’s minister for women’s empowerment and gender equality, Tamayo Marukawa, is among a group of conservative MPs who have opposed a legal change that would allow women to keep their birth name after marriage.

Japan is one of only a few industrialised countries where it is illegal for married couples to have different surnames. The country’s civil code, introduced in 1896, requires married couples to share a surname and while it does not stipulate which name they should adopt, in practice women take their husband’s name in 96% of cases.

Pressure to change the law has built in recent years. In 2015 women’s rights activists were dealt a blow when the supreme court ruled that the requirement to share surnames did not violate the constitution.

Marukawa, who recently took on the women’s empowerment portfolio after her predecessor, Seiko Hashimoto, was appointed head of the Tokyo 2020 Olympics organising committee, said her opposition to allowing couples to use different surnames would not affect her commitment to women’s rights.

Marukawa, who doubles as the Olympics minister, was among 50 upper and lower house members of the ruling Liberal Democratic party (LDP) who wrote to their colleagues on the Saitama prefectural assembly urging them to oppose the adoption of a written opinion favouring a policy change.

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