When the paperwork involved with changing last names is making people not want to get married, there’s at least one solution: Marry someone with the same last name as yours.
That’s what’s happening in Japan, where by law married couples have to share the same last name. To try to get around this rule, one organization is hosting matchmaking events for people with the same surname.
Asuniwa, a Japanese NGO that has advocated for changing the “family name” law, partnered with matchmaking services provider IBJ to host four events in Tokyo through May of this year, and an online event in June that brought together young people with the last name Suzuki, the second most common surname in Japan, the Japan Times reported. The first most common last name is Sato.
The events were meant to draw attention to the family name law requiring married couples to share a last name, known as Article 750, which has been on the books for 128 years. Couples in Japan can choose which last name of the two they would like to adopt, but by tradition it is often the woman who gives up her last name after marriage.
The law has in some cases discouraged people, and especially women, from wanting to marry at a time when Japan’s birth rate has fallen to dangerously low levels. A 2021 government survey from Japan’s Gender Equality Bureau found that, of those who did not want to marry, 31.9% of women respondents cited changing their last name as the reason, compared with 8.6% of men.
