Last year, a group of plaintiffs including Yoshihisa Aono, CEO of software firm Cybozu, and three other plaintiffs filed suit seeking ¥2.2 million ($20,000) damages for what they called “psychological damage” for being forced to use their spouse’s names, and the costs of the expensive bureaucratic process of changing one’s name on official documents. The plaintiffs also claimed that by excluding Japanese married to foreigners from that law, the law is discriminatory and therefore unconstitutional.[...]
Japanese couples can only revert to using their own names after they divorce—a law that prompted one Tokyo woman interviewed last year by Quartz to divorce her husband in order to use her own name, instead of her husband’s, even though the two remain a couple. Another woman, who only has sisters, told the Japan Times last year (paywall) that her parents only wanted her to marry a man who would be willing to take her family name in order to continue the family name.
The court’s ruling is the first on the matter since 2015, when five women challenged the law on the grounds of gender discrimination. Japan’s top court ruled then that the law in question, Article 750 of the civil code, would be upheld as it did not harm ”individual dignity and equality between men and women,” and because maiden names can still be used informally.
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