A Tokyo couple, both 26 and engaged to be married, were struggling over whether to choose Tamura or Ishikawa as their family name. They were also at a crossroads on how to decide.

The man, who referred to himself as Tamura, and Ishikawa, his future wife, were classmates at junior and senior high school. They felt they could speak frankly about anything in their equal relationship.

They set a clear rule to never force certain gender roles on each other, such as men organizing schedules and women taking care of cleaning chores.

Married couples in Japan must select only one surname for registration. Tamura and Ishikawa both wanted to keep their family names.

If one of them had a surname like Domyoji that was “so cool that everyone envies it,” the other would be willing to accept it.

But both Tamura and Ishikawa are quite common surnames in Japan.

A 30-year-old husband and wife in Kyoto Prefecture who faced a similar problem were featured in the “Otoko to Onna” (Men and women) column of The Asahi Shimbun’s Feb. 14, 1971, morning edition.

They picked their family name by lottery.

“One of the spouses has to give up his or her surname in this era of gender equality,” the wife said after her surname was chosen in the lottery. “I cannot compromise because I have been called by the name since birth and feel so attached to it. As a doctor, I will work in the same way as my husband.”

Fifty years after the article was published, Tamura and Ishikawa reached a solution: They asked strangers on the internet which surname “sounds better.”

They paid each respondent 10 yen (9 cents) on a questionnaire site. After about an hour, 300 individuals responded. Ishikawa won by a 7:3 ratio, and they adopted the more popular one.

Asked about the defeat, Tamura said, “There is no choice since we had promised to accept the outcome with no hard feelings.”

Although his parents strongly protested the name change, describing the decision as “unbelievable,” Tamura and Ishikawa checked the wife’s surname in the space on their marriage notification. The document was submitted in May 2019.

The husband calls himself Tamura at his workplace and currently uses Ishikawa only when he “visits medical centers and elsewhere as of now.”

“Some people ask me if I was taken into my wife’s family as a son-in-law, but most friends simply say, ‘Oh, I see,’ or something like that,” he said.

At their wedding ceremony, there was no sign stating “the Tamura and Ishikawa families.” They had their given names written instead.

“I felt many people still believe inside that those who change surnames are incorporated into the other person’s family, although the traditional family system no longer exists,” the wife said.

She continued: “Times have changed, and the demerits of changing surnames now outweigh the advantages of using only one out of a sense of unity within families. A mechanism should be introduced for people to select different surnames.”

MATRIMONY IMPOSSIBLE

The Asahi column from 50 years ago also reported on a different couple who opted for a de facto marriage after they could not legally tie the knot because of issues involving their family names.

They initially used different family names, but the wife used her husband’s surname when they submitted a marriage certificate to register their son as their legitimate child.

After the baby was born, they divorced so the wife could again use her original surname. She said in the column, “All I can do is withstand and ignore a public who regards us as immoral.”

Reading the report, Noriaki Takahashi, 40, who lives in Tokyo, said the story “does not appear to date back to 50 years ago” and that he could find “nothing old” in it.

“I feel respect for them because they were trying to honestly do what they really wanted despite the far stricter social norms back then,” Noriaki said.

In summer 2018, Noriaki proposed to his girlfriend, Akari Jinno, now 27, who had said she did not want to replace her family name with his.

Her family name was Takahashi before her parents split when she was a sixth-grader at elementary school. She refrained from using that surname because she wanted to forget the past affairs associated with it. So she built her life as Jinno, and did not want to lose that identity through marriage.

Noriaki first became aware of how serious Akari was when they tried to fill in their marriage form. Noriaki told Akari that he would change his name instead.

“I had mistakenly believed she would eventually change her surname,” Noriaki explained. “I had a view that it is natural for women to change their names.”

Their decision infuriated Noriaki’s father, who argued that it is “common for women to change their names.”

“As a parent, I cannot accept that my son will use a different family name,” he said. He refused to let the couple enter his home.

Noriaki did not talk to his parents for a year.

The young couple opted for a de facto marriage instead of an official one in summer 2019 because they did not want to sadden their parents and break relations with them. 

After learning about the dual-surname systems in other countries, Noriaki and Akari are now calling for municipalities and lawmakers to introduce a framework that gives married couples the option of choosing different family names.

They said they want to legally wed as soon as such a surname selection mechanism takes effect.

They noted there is “only one right choice in Japan,” and that they will work to reform “the atmosphere of society so that differences are accepted or rather preferred.”

PAIN OF CHANGING SURNAMES

The column half a century ago ends as follows:

A growing number of people hope to continue working even after their marriages. More women may realize the “pain” of changing surnames and ask their future husbands for “equality.”

If more men compromise and find the current practice inconvenient, that may reignite the once-active debate among experts over whether “husbands and wives should be allowed to use different family names.”

However, at least for the time being, women will continue exchanging the same greetings at alumni gatherings: “I would like to attend the session next year after changing my surname, like Mrs. X.” Then they start chatting and laughing by calling one another by their maiden names.

PUBLIC SUPPORTS REFORM

The government’s Legislative Council in 1996 drafted a Civil Law amendment that included the introduction of an optional two-surname system.

According to an Asahi Shimbun opinion poll conducted in January 2020, 69 percent of citizens backed the dual-surname framework.

The government has said Japan is the only nation where married couples are required to use the same family name.

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This article is part of The Asahi Shimbun’s special coverage on gender equality and diversity “Think Gender” series and was originally published in Japanese in February 2021.