Yukari Uchiyama has divorced the same man three times but not because of marital disputes.

She says she has undergone the troublesome procedure to prevent the loss of her identity from the Japanese system that requires married couples to choose only one surname.

Uchiyama and her partner are among 12 people who will file a group lawsuit on March 8 in the Tokyo and Sapporo district courts against the central government over the ban on dual surnames for married couples, their lawyers said.

They argue that the rules forcing married couples to use only one family name violate Article 24 of the Constitution, which guarantees freedom of marriage.

The plaintiffs say the one-surname system has caused losses of identity and a sense of honor while creating “a situation where we have no choice but to give up our marriage.”

Those suing the government include one legally married couple and five couples in de facto marriages. They live in Tokyo, Hokkaido and Nagano Prefecture.

They will argue that Article 750 of the Civil Code, which requires married couples to use the same surname, and Article 74 of the Family Registration Law, which stipulates the procedures for marriage registration, are “neither necessary nor reasonable.”

This will be the third group lawsuit seeking the right to use dual surnames.

The Grand Bench of the Supreme Court ruled in 2015 and 2021 that the one-surname system is constitutional.

Of the 15 justices, five wrote dissenting opinions in 2015 and four did so in 2021, stating that the system was unconstitutional.

The plaintiffs’ lawyers said social conditions have changed.

They cited recent public opinion polls showing that about 87 percent of young people are in favor of a system that allows married couples to use dual surnames.

In addition, an increasing number of local assemblies have adopted written opinions calling for the introduction of a dual-surname system. In January this year, Keidanren (Japan Business Federation) called for changes to the one-name policy.

“The ball has been passed to the legislature many times, but the Diet has not moved,” Makiko Terahara, one of the group’s lawyers, said. “I hope that this time, the judiciary will decide that the legislation is unconstitutional.”

NAME IS ERASED

Uchiyama, 56, a high school teacher in Nagano Prefecture, lives with her former colleague and ex-husband, Yukio Koike, 66.

In 1991, she and Koike became engaged, but Uchiyama wanted to keep her family name.

Koike, who was the eldest son in his family, vehemently opposed the idea. The wedding took place in the same year without a decision on whether they would register the marriage.

However, Koike’s father did so while the newlyweds were on their honeymoon.

The couple continued to discuss—and argue—over the name issue. Uchiyama went by her maiden name at work but was forced to use “Koike” for her payroll and other accounts.

Some time later, Koike found a book about separate family names among married couples. The book explained the meaning of living under someone else’s surname and the difficulty of changing one’s family name to another.

“This is what she (Uchiyama) was talking about,” he realized.

They remained married for the birth of their son in 1992 so that Koike would be registered as his father.

The couple then were “paper divorced,” but they still lived together and carried on as if they still legally married.

They remarried for the same registry reasons when their two daughters were born.

They are now technically divorced.

In 2019, their second daughter, who was a senior in high school at the time, made a documentary in the school’s broadcasting club about her parents and their separate surnames.

The daughter said she wanted to tell as many people as possible about the issue.

In 2020, Uchiyama received a call from the eldest daughter, who had just gotten married and was in the process of changing her surname to that of her husband.

“I feel like I’m at my own funeral,” the daughter said. “My name is being erased one by one.”

Uchiyama and Koike had thought their generation would resolve the surname issue. But when their married daughter revealed her torment, they decided to actively work for a dual surname system and joined the lawsuit.

DE FACTO MARRIAGE

Mana Sato, 37, a medical professional living in Sapporo, met Kiyotaka Nishi, 31, at a hospital where she worked in 2015.

They planned to wed, and sato was happy. But she worried that she would not be herself if she changed her family name.

After waiting for the start of a system that allowed people to put both their maiden and married names on residence cards, they got married in November 2019.

But she later found that the Sato surname in her bank book had been crossed out with a double line and overwritten with “Nishi.”

“It looked like ‘Sato’ was a mistake,” she said.

She had intended to continue going by Sato at the hospital, where she had worked for more than 10 years.

But everything, from her work schedule to her nameplate, was changed to Nishi.

When she complained about the changes, her boss told her, “Your real name is Nishi, isn’t it?”

At work and at home, she would suddenly burst into tears. She began losing her appetite and grew weaker.

One day, she explained her ordeal to her husband.

Nishi suggested, “Let’s make it a de facto marriage.”

Sato was diagnosed with an adjustment disorder and quit her job in June 2020. The couple divorced on paper in August that year.

Her health has recovered, and she started working again.

“I didn’t want to hold a grudge against the person I love,” Sato said.

She said she hopes that the lawsuit will show people that there are other couples who suffer like they do.

(This article was written by Kazufumi Kaneko and Chifumi Shinya.)