Her name will soon be his...

Yesterday, four women and one man stood up for the first time in 113 years to let the Japanese government know they want individuals to be able to keep their last names if they marry.  Japanese law currently “requires married couples to choose just one surname for the man and woman to share, and custom means it’s usually the man’s,” TIME magazine reports.  The plaintiffs in the related lawsuit are “seeking a total of 6 million yen ($70,000) in damages from the government for their distress and demanding that local government offices accept marriage certificates that list their separate surnames.”

When Democrats came to power in Japan in 2009, they promised to “craft legislation designed to allow couples to keep separate surnames.”  Thanks to conservative opposition, legislation allowing a woman to keep her name stalled and has been surpassed in importance by economic issues.  According to TIME, “Japan is the only one of the Group of Eight industrialized nations that requires married couples to have the same family name.”

Some activists are going so far as to call this “a serious human rights violation,” and TIME notes that “a growing number of Japanese women, including those who have advanced in corporate and academic ranks… already use their maiden names as aliases at work.”  Many married American women I know act similarly, in that they change their names legally to that of their spouse, but continue to be known by their maiden name.  That’s how I handled the marriage-surname issue, which in hindsight seems silly, since I just recently had to legally change my name back to a name no one ever stopped calling me.  I suppose my desire to change my name on paper was a reflection of my desire to be truly unified with my husband, which felt even more important after we had a child.  After all, it’s easy to identify a family when you have a family name.  I actually struggled a bit with changing my name back to Castiglia, because I didn’t want my daughter to think I didn’t want to bear the same name she does, but then I realized, “What’s in a name?”  (Someone should write a play about that.)

What I love most about this lawsuit is that two of the plaintiffs are a formerly married couple who are still together but got divorced just so the woman in the pair could use her maiden name in her freelance writing work.  It’s one awesome dude who supports a lady like that.  According to TIME, “Only in rare cases in Japan does a couple use the wife’s surname, for instance if she is an only child and there is pressure to carry on the family name, or if it benefits them financially.”  If I re-marry, I’m going to keep my newly reacquired maiden name.  Or, if I feel really sure this next one’s gonna last, I may do like the Swedes and make up a whole new last name.  Carolyn Ruffiglia sounds good, no?  Too bad Mark Ruffalo’s married…

Photo via Flickr

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