Photo/Illutration Tomoko Sasaki (Photo by Satoko Tanaka)

A refusal to listen to logic has been the biggest obstacle to progress on the issue of giving married couples the option of using separate surnames, a former lawmaker and prosecutor said.

Calls for the introduction of a dual-surname system have been made for decades.

But Tomoko Sasaki, a lawyer who previously worked to promote an optional dual-surname system as an Upper House member of the Liberal Democratic Party, said opposition by a certain segment in the party has been startlingly fierce.

She explained what she went through as a lawmaker pushing the issue in a recent interview with The Asahi Shimbun.

Excerpts of her account follow:

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Sasaki: When I served as an Upper House member two decades ago, there was momentum within the LDP to introduce separate surnames for married couples.

I learned various things and had diverse realizations when I was a lawmaker, albeit for only one term (six years).

The subject of dual surnames, however, is unique because it left behind a bitter memory.

I began working on the theme of separate surnames for married couples after a lawmaker asked me to provide theoretical support for the movement as a specialist in law. I didn’t have any particular awareness of the issue, but I didn’t like the fact that people had to change their family names upon marriage.

It appeared doubtlessly better to give married couples the option of using separate surnames.

Now that the old household system is gone, names belong to individuals, so there is certainly no need whatsoever for insisting that married couples use a common surname.

BIG FUSS AT INTRAPARTY MEETINGS

Once I began working on the issue, however, I soon realized the matter was never so simple.

I was heckled terribly when I briefed an LDP policy division about submitting a corresponding bill to the Diet. Opponents had mobilized lawmakers to make a big fuss there.

I was really in low spirits before I had to attend policy division meetings, as I thought to myself, “Oh, I will have to go through all that again.”

My office received more than 1,000 faxes. Some of them said Japan would “no longer be able to retain its national polity” if dual surnames were permitted. Others said such a measure would “lead to the dismantlement of families.”

Still others called me names, such as “leftist” and “unpatriotic.”

I was once waylaid by members of a group that was against the proposal. That really startled me.

The opponents were so uncompromising that we were forced to give concession after concession. We ended up with a draft plan to allow married couples to have separate surnames under only “exceptional” conditions, such as requiring permission from a family court.

But that still didn’t work.

They refused to budge from their stance that the bill must never be submitted. So, the plan was killed within the LDP.

LOGIC DOESN’T MATTER

The biggest hurdle lies in the way that logic doesn’t matter to the opponents.

They talk about “national polity,” about “leftism,” and about “Japan’s good morals and manners.” They have no theory, so there is no way to talk to them. There is simply no way even to get near them.

Lawmakers backed by groups opposed to the dual-surname option probably cannot afford to express their approval, whatever they may think personally.

In view of what I experienced, I find it hardly surprising that the dual-surname option has yet to become a reality 20 years since then.

It’s just taking too much time.

So many people have been inconvenienced during all this time. And those people have probably given up hope on Japan, which has never gotten around to realizing something so simple as a dual-surname system.

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Tomoko Sasaki, a lawyer and professor of law at Teikyo University, served as a prosecutor with the Tokyo District Public Prosecutors Office before she became an Upper House member of the LDP in 1998.

Her books include “Keisatsukan no tame no Wakari-yasui Keiho” (A plain discourse on the Criminal Law for police officers).

(This article is based on an interview by Satoko Tanaka.)

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