Photo/Illutration The new example for marriage reports used by the Nakano Ward government no longer has a check mark next to "husband's name" but only asks that one surname be chosen. (Satomi Sugihara)

Marriage report example documents provided by municipal governments often showed a bias toward choosing the husband’s surname, a new study has found.

Married couples in Japan are legally required to use the same surname, but couples can choose from either the husband’s or wife’s family name.

Although both options are equally legal, in 2022 couples chose the husband’s surname on their marriage reports about 95 percent of the time.

Since October, Asuniwa, an organization promoting gender equality, has been investigating the example documents that municipal governments provided to help couples fill out their marriage reports.

“We found out that municipal staff held an unconscious bias," said Hideyuki Kitamura, the Asuniwa official in charge of the team that planned and conducted the study. "We hope this serves as a catalyst to review the examples used.”

For example, in marriage reports couples indicate which surname to use after marriage by checking off a box next to either “husband’s surname” or “wife’s surname,” to mark their choice.

In about 90 percent of the example documents, a check mark had been placed next to “husband’s surname.”

Asuniwa staff conducted the research by asking 175 municipal governments (about 10 percent of all those in Japan) about the example documents they had on display at the window where marriage reports are submitted.

They found that the examples had a check mark next to “husband’s surname” in 162 cases, or 92.6 percent of the time.

Only one local government, Yachimata in Chiba Prefecture, had the check mark next to “wife’s surname.”

However, that decision was not meant to send out a specific message. One city official contacted by The Asahi Shimbun said, “We did not make a decision after holding discussions, but we only checked the wife because either surname could be chosen.”

Seven municipal governments followed the example found on the Justice Ministry website, which has different examples of how to fill in that section depending on which surname is chosen.

There were other areas in the examples marriage report documents that also had a decidedly sexist tilt.

For example, two witnesses are required for submitting the report, but 64 municipal governments, or 36.6 percent of the total, used the names of two males. There were only six municipal governments that used two female names for the witnesses.

In another section of the marriage reports, couples write their current names and addresses along with the location where the new family will register their home. There were some example documents in which the head of the household at the woman’s current address was listed as her father.

As a result of the Asuniwa study, the Nakano Ward government in Tokyo completely revised its example marriage report documents.

In the past, the check mark was placed next to “husband’s name,” but the new example has no check mark in either box. Instead, there is an explanation by that section asking that a check mark be placed in the box of the chosen surname.

Another change is that the Nakano Ward example now lists both the man and woman as the head of their own household before marriage. And the couple’s new home address now differs from the past example in which the address of the husband’s residence was used.

One ward official said the study was an excellent opportunity to rethink the ward's example documents because, although the ward has made it policy to promote joint participation in society by both genders, there was the concern that couples were being led to choose the husband’s surname by the example.

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