Photo/Illutration Kiyoko Kashiwagi, left, and Kazuhiro Soda attend a film festival in New York. (Provided by Kazuhiro Soda)

The Tokyo District Court rejected a bid by a Japanese couple who married in America under different surnames to have their marriage officially recognized as legitimate here.

The court ruled on April 21 on a lawsuit filed by Kazuhiro Soda, a filmmaker, and Kiyoko Kashiwagi, who married in the United States 24 years ago and kept their respective surnames. They were seeking confirmation their marriage is also legitimate in Japan.

The court said the marriage itself had been effectively established, but it did not go any further on the legitimacy request. It said if the couple are still dissatisfied, they should take the matter up with family court based on the Family Register Law.

The district court stood by the Supreme Court’s 2015 ruling that said the Civil Law requirement that married couples in Japan take the same surname is constitutional.

Soda and Kashiwagi married in 1997 in New York state, which allows couples to marry under separate surnames. In 2018, they tried to register their marriage in Japan. But because they said in the form that they would use both surnames after marriage, the application was rejected.

It was denied on the grounds that it would violate Article 750 of the Civil Law, which states only one spouse’s surname can be retained, as well as Article 74 of the Family Register Law, which requires couples to register which surname they will use after marriage.

Later in 2018, they filed the lawsuit against the government arguing that a marriage under different surnames registered in the United States should still be valid in Japan.

The couple said in the suit that the Civil Law provision was not a condition to effectively establish a marriage.

The Family Register Law does not have a provision for publicly certifying the marriage of a Japanese couple who did not choose which surname to use. The suit argued that constitutes a failure to act by the legislative branch and that it violates the Constitution on gender equality grounds.

The government argued the couple’s marriage could not be recognized as legitimate in Japan because they had not agreed on which surname to use after marriage.

During the case, Soda explained why they had chosen to keep their respective surnames.

“Rather than blend into one, we want to mutually respect each other’s roots and differences and maintain independent personalities while still seeking to form a compatible relationship,” he said.

He said not having their marriage officially recorded in a family register would detrimentally affect them when it comes to taxation and inheritance.

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